Conflict and Modernity in Algeria: A Dialectical Interpretation of Strategy and Urban War

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• Matthew Lewis, King's College London
• Wednesday 11 November 2015, 17:00-19:00
• Wolfson Seminar Room South, Trinity College .

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Though confronted by the grotesques of Aleppo and Kobane, ‘orthodox’ Strategy has yet offered no coherent explanation for the scale of Twenty-First Century urbicide. Whilst a number of compelling narratives account for the increasing likelihood of ‘wars amongst the people’ and the subsequent escalation of urban violence, the emergent ‘Systems Theories’ are anything but systematic: distilling down to crass comparisons of demographic ‘ferality’. This paper, which represents an early overview of the doctoral research I have recently begun at the Defence Studies Department KCL , will attempt to make a short case for the relevance of early Frankfurt School scholarship (principally Theodor Adorno) to the effective interpretation of modern urban violence.

In examining the Algerian War of Independence and the oblique and sometimes direct influence it had on Sartre’s conception of dialectical reason; I will attempt to build an interpretation of Algeria’s ensuing patterns of recursive violence as explicitly dialectical phenomena: noting how it is represented, reproduced and reflected in urban space.

Bound to a broadly optimistic historiography that presents a linear vision of technical progress, orthodox Strategy clings to culminative (Hegelian) visions of change; historic episodes are thus presented as ‘Revolutions in Military Affairs’ apparently contributing as much to the democratisation of the conflict zone, as to the emergence of ’Post Heroic’ warfare. In contrast to the rigour of dialectical thought, Strategy remains framed by moribund classifications that evoke Clausewitz and the nature/character binary. Seemingly content to cram the vast complexities of modern conflict into useless categories, progress is typically conceived in terms of four ‘megatrends’, whose irony instead speaks more to Adorno’s ‘Enlightenment as domination over nature’: rapid population growth, accelerated urbanisation, littoralisation and increasing connectedness.

This talk is part of the Violence and Conflict Graduate Workshop, Faculty of History series.

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• Violence and Conflict Graduate Workshop, Faculty of History
• Wolfson Seminar Room South, Trinity College

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