The Architecture of Memory
A Jewish-Muslim Household in Colonial Algeria, 1937–1962

Recalling life in a single house occupied by several Jewish and Muslim families, in the generation before Algerian independence, this is a micro-history of a period which came to an end in the early 1960s.

Joelle Bahloul (Author)

9780521568920, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 28 July 1996

176 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1 cm, 0.27 kg

"This well-written and accessible translation is a required addition to the libraries of students of culture and memory, the ethnography of Jewish life, North Africa, and the identity of immigrants in their adopted countries." Gut Heskell, Religious Studies Review

Recalling how they lived in a single house that was occupied by several Jewish and Muslim families, in the generation before Algerian independence, Joelle Bahloul's informants build up a multivocal micro-history of a way of life which came to an end in the early 1960s. Uprooted and dispersed, these former neighbours constantly refer back to the architecture of the house itself, which, with its internal boundaries and shared spaces, structures their memories. Here, in miniature, is a domestic history of North African Muslims, Jews, and Christians living under French colonial rule.

Introduction
l. Foundations
2. Telling places: the house as social architecture
3. Telling people: the house and the world
4. Domestic time
5. The poetics of remembrance.

Subject Areas: 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], African history [HBJH]