ABSTRACT
In his Preface to Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction, Young describes his ‘haunting’ by two photographs taken during the Algerian war. The first, of two young, unveiled, and defiant Algerian women, carries the caption ‘Les “porteuses de bombes” des stades: l’âge de Juliette, l’âme de Ravachol’ (the bombers of stadia [in colonial Algiers]: Juliet’s age, Ravachol’s soul). The second shows an Algerian man, borne aloft and naked by four European men in a field, who looks directly at the camera. On the front cover of Young’s book is a third photograph, taken in 1962, of an armed French soldier standing beside a young woman concealed by the haîk. For Young, these images function as ‘traces of the violence, defiance, struggles and suffering of individuals, that represent the political ideals of community, equality, self-determination and dignity for which they fought’ (2001: vii, ix).
