Arthur Asseraf
@ArthurAsseraf
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Ass Prof @cambridge_uni currently @SCAS_Uppsala | 📖 ELECTRIC NEWS ⚡️LE DÉSINFORMATEUR 🕵🏼♂️ COLONISATIONS NOTRE HISTOIRE | colonialism, media, Orangina
the sea the white the middle
Joined August 2018
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Comment la colonisation française fabrique-t-elle notre présent?
J'ai l'immense plaisir de vous annoncer ce livre
COLONISATIONS: NOTRE HISTOIRE
où nous avons rassemblé + de 200 auteurs pour réfléchir ensemble
On ne pourra plus dire qu'on ne savait pas
15/09 chez
@EditionsduSeuil
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lol this is the most colonial map of them all
Map of Africa using ethnically drawn borders, rather than those drawn by imperial powers.
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just to be explicit about why this is bad:
- it assumes Africans have never had states, Africa has no politics and no history, only 'ethnicity'
- it assumes ethnicity is territorial and has borders
- it assumes that ethnicity is a natural way to form a state (cf. Switzerland)...
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roll up, roll up:
I was not planning to tweet about my travels but I have just visited possibly the BEST museum in the whole world and I had to share.
Follow me for a visit of the MUSEUM OF CHEESE in KARS, Turkey 🧀🇹🇷🤯👇🏼
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- this kind of thinking encourages ethnic cleansing and a whole bunch of really dumb political projects
- and lastly, most of the names and territories are literally made up
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60 years ago, on 17 October 1961, the Parisian police threw Algerians into the Seine.
Dozens of men and women who were demonstrating against a discriminatory curfew targeting Algerians were massacred.
This event has to be understood as part of a bigger story 1/
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Algiers is one of the most beautiful cities in the world (I like to think I'm pretty objective about this because I'm not Algerian 😅)
It's also one of the least visited by tourists and nobody's traveling much at the moment, so come along, let's go on a little walk (THREAD)
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Je suis lié par une malédiction ancienne à Gabriel Attal: tous deux nés en 89 dans le 92, séfarades et homosexuels, je suis le seul à pouvoir le vaincre. Nul ne peut vivre tant que l’autre survit. Je me tiens à la disposition de la nation
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How do you decolonise a settler colony?
I am struck that people seem to write as if this question has never been asked before, so let’s look at a concrete case - Algeria 🇩🇿 1/
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International Relations is a fake discipline based on 3 sad books written in the mid-20 century and everyone knows it
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I'm sick of writing about the 19th century, everyone's bio is like 'born in Ukraine, worked as a stripper in North Dakota then scammed their way into becoming king of Malaysia before ending up as a circus performer in London. Invented open-heart surgery & Nazism'
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What’s France’s longest border?
With Spain? With Belgium? With Italy?
Why not it’s with BRAZIL of course!!!
A thread on the EU’s only South American border 🇧🇷🇫🇷 🧵
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ok kids, the time has come for
A PARISIAN
reviews
NETFLIX'S "EMILY IN PARIS"
I've poured myself two glasses:
one is full of wine 🍷
the other is full of righteous judgment 🍸
and I'm double-fisting hard
~~ join me ~~
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So I was in the archives minding my business, when I found the most insane box:
a STASH of LOVE LETTERS between Spanish women and Moroccan men from the 1940s seized by colonial authorities for having ILLEGAL RELATIONSHIPS
follow me!! 🇪🇸🇲🇦💄💃
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@Logic_Rebellion
sorry this is a map of states, Africans don’t have states and never had hope you understand :)
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Emily makes it to her new apartment, which is obviously in the 5th because that's the only place rich Americans know.
A comic misunderstanding unfolds where Emily thinks the 4th floor is the 5th!!! Cultural difference is so wild!!!! wait till she hears about socialism
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Do you have different personalities in different languages?
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I have just been given a very powerful gift:
A 1923 tour guide to Algeria and Tunisia!
Follow me on this trip through the wild world of colonial tourism
👇🏼🇩🇿🇹🇳🛤⛰🚢🚂👇🏼
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Are you stuck at home or perhaps having a generally difficult week?
Come, take a walk with me.
This time, we'll meet in Tetouan, in Northern Morocco. As we explore the former capital of the Spanish Protectorate, we will peel away colonialism to reveal layers of history.
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I've heard the calls from my many fans and I WILL be hate-watching and livetweeting this:
My qualifications:
1) I am Parisian
2) I have radioactive levels of contempt for any Anglophone béret/baguette take on France
3) I think Sex and the City 2 is the most racist film ever made
Lily Collins is Emily in Paris.
This sumptuous new series — from the creator of Sex and the City and Younger — premieres October 2.
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Headlines in France have been dominated by events in Mayotte, a small island in the Indian Ocean, where a huge police operation is taking place.
Why is Mayotte so important for Fr politics? Why is it part of the EU? & why do most migrant deportations in France occur there? 🧵👇🏼
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I welcome
@Cambridge_Uni
's decision to investigate how it has profited from slavery. As a word of warning, let me share what happened when I got involved in a similar process at an Oxford college: a thread 1/10
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Vous êtes déjà passé rue des Mathurins, dans le 8ème? Juste derrière le boulevard Haussmann, en fuyant du C&A ou d'Uniqlo pendant les soldes?
On y trouve une surprenante façade néo-mauresque sams aucune explication - mais j'ai enfin résolu le mystère
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Emily apologises for not speaking French, but she did Rosetta Stone on the plane!
Emily is basically a missionary. She is there to teach them the gospel of social media and late capitalism, but not to learn. She is the agent of empire
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Whoever designed this cover for a book on Morocco-Vietnam relations and said YES HATS needs a raise URGENTLY
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Today was my Dad’s funeral. This grief is private, but the place of his burial feels worth mentioning -
He lies just opposite Malik Oussekine, a victim of police brutality whose death sparked a movement in France in 1986. If you’re ever in the Père Lachaise, say hi.
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At her new job, it emerges that she does not speak French. Her new boss thinks this is a problem - we are meant to think this makes the boss a Massive Bitch, because Emily Believes in Herself and she has the Right Attitude
i'm sorry this girl is not qualified
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anyways, next time you’re in Turkey, don’t just visit the Ayasofya or Ephesus visit…
Kars Peynir Müzesi.
Thank you
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In 1906, three exiled sovereigns deported by the French Empire were living in Algiers: Queen Ranavalona III of Madagascar, Emperor Hàm Nghi of Vietnam and King Béhanzin of Dahomey.
Who wants to write this screenplay with me?
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L’histoire de la colonisation française en Algérie a été écrite depuis des années par des chercheurs qui ne sont ni français, ni algériens.
Je vais vous en présenter quelques-uns ici, dans le désordre et sans exhaustivité 🧵👇🏼
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All day I've felt nauseous thinking about the attack against the Ghriba synagogue in Djerba.
Every time we're murdered, while we're shopping for food or praying, I think we've reached the lowest point.
Every time I'm proved wrong: nobody wants North African Jews to live /
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Info statue:
à Tunis, on a déboulonné il y a bien longtemps la statue de Jules Ferry, apôtre de la colonisation. Elle traîne avec d’autres détritus dont on ne sait pas quoi faire
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HOWEVER, when Emily says 'American women won't respond well to this' we take a wrong turn: American women elected Trump for president sweetie.
The male gaze is neither American nor French, it is male. The patriarchy knows no borders and your femonationalism will not save you.
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At the British National Archives today, I had the pleasure of revisiting one of the most extraordinary documents I've ever encountered:
an 1833 petition from the people of Constantine in Algeria asking for help from the British Parliament against the French 1/
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En ce nouvel an juif, vu le context je vous ressors un texte: Comme Éric Zemmour, je suis descendant de juifs devenus français en Algérie. Contrairement à Éric Zemmour, je suis historien, donc je vais essayer de vous donner un peu de contexte pour le comprendre. 1/
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If Emily was in Paris right now, she would be on the first flight out to Chicago, clutching her laptop with a crisp little op-ed draft entitled 'How the Violence in France Made Me Unsafe And Taught Me The Value of Democracy'
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UNEXPECTED EXPLORERS
a thread on Bou El Mogdad, the man who got the French government to pay for his hajj
1/
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if you’re finding this hard to watch, end the fucking occupation
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My favourite thing about travelling to Poland is the constant reminder that Jews here are seen as extinct, mythical creatures: you can still buy these little antisemitic housewarming gifts portraying a Jew holding a coin to bring good fortune!
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Reminder: Israelis currently control the territory between the river and the sea. They've failed to ensure equality for the people within it. The burden is on them to explain what's worth retaining in their system, not the other way around. Anything else is a distraction.
The full phrase is "From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free."
If you believe that freedom for Palestinians means eradicating Jews, it says more about you than anyone else.
Stop trying to tell Palestinians what they mean when they call for freedom.
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Second, the whole place is decorated with a level of hipster sophistication that would make Bushwick blush.
Look at this decor! This lighting! Your espresso/juice bar could never
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her colleague: actually we're being mean to you because we're scared :-( French people are inadequate at making money and working hard. Catholicism and the centralised state have not equipped them with the go-getting spirit of Protestantism and the American frontier, Emily
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Like many others, I owe many debts to the historian Omar Carlier, who passed away today.
I want to share one of his most spectacular bits of research - a grand political history of the coffeehouse ☕️ 🇩🇿 👇🏼
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As Lent begins, I just want everyone to know that the word for “Lent” in Maltese is “Randan”, from Arabic “Ramadan” رمضان
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First off, the BUILDING IS MADE OF CHEESE WHEELS. Strong, bold architectural design
(The geese are another symbol of Kars, there’s a lot of geese coming up)
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On a personal level, one of my first 'political' memories was when Papon was on trial in 1997. He asked for clemency for his old age.
As we were watching the TV, my mom said icily, 'well he didn't spare the elderly when he shipped us on trains to be killed'
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Emily eats a pain au chocolat and it's SO GOOD GUYS that she has to post it on social media (this is a 2020 show! It's really hip guys!)
Emily thinks that no one has ever lived in Paris before and that her aggressively mediocre self is worthy of attention and praise for existing
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Emily has a language class (good for her), to which she wears a red béret. I drink, reluctantly: a béret is not just a cliché. By this point, it's a cliché of a cliché.
I half expect Emily to join a radical independentist Basque movement and raise sheep at this point.
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aaaaand boom, it's 4 minutes in, and GRATUITOUS EIFFEL TOWER SHOT, WE'RE IN PARIS.
This means it's time to drink! We drink every time there's an Eiffel Tower or béret, so this is going to go south fast.
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I can’t believe that I won the Middle East Studies Book Prize!
Thanks so much to the British-Kuwait Friendship Society for selecting “Electric News in Colonial Algeria” and for promoting scholarly work since 1998.
@camhistory
@ouphistory
@pembroke1347
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Le niveau du débat sur Colbert aujourd'hui, surtout par des gens qui pensent avoir de la culture et donner des leçons aux autres alors qu'ils sont fiers de leur ignorance de l'histoire coloniale, me désole.
1) On ne peut pas dire que l'esclavage, c'était l'époque
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On this day 150 years ago began the largest insurrection against French colonial rule in North Africa.
On 16 March 1871 shaykh al-Moqrani launched a war that ended in a brutal repression. The vanquished were exiled around the world. This week, we explore some of their lives :
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Emily makes a further vigorous appeal to Protestantism by having cybersex with her boyfriend while the sheets are up to her neck
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Kars cheese is very famous in Turkey but this museum has far greater ambitions: it offers a WORLD HISTORY OF CHEESE. It is a universalist museum
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Why am I saying this? Because I think it’s worth pointing out that what happens to actual settlers in a process of decolonization is a rather messy, somewhat contingent and random process. It does not work out according to a plan. 10/
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Emily has 7,000 followers for posting pictures of women in sweatpants smoking. Has anyone in this universe ever been to the North of England?
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If you follow me, you probably know that Orangina was invented in Algeria. 🥤🍊🇩🇿
But only today did I realise it was invented by Algerian Jews!
Orangina was developed in the 1930s in Boufarik when Léon Beton bought a recipe from a Spanish pharmacist. This bit is well-known...
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Because it's Netflix, the show is ~~diverse on the surface: they have cast non-white actors for a number of roles that are functionally written as white. Behind this façade, this is a show written by middle-aged Americans desperate to appear relevant but feels incredibly dated.
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but back to the CHEESE!!!
Nowadays the cheese most associated with Kars is a kind of Gruyère developed in the late 19th century, but the region produces many others displayed in the museum.
Kars probably has the highest density of cheese shops I’ve ever seen (and I’m French)
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Wow a lot of you believe that you know exactly how you would behave in a major historical event and that of course you would be born on the right side, hope that works out for you
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Sylvie proceeds to read Emily to filth.
'You come to Paris. You treat the city like it's your amusement park, and after a year of food, sex, wine, and maybe some culture, you'll go back from you came. Perhaps we'll work together, but we won't be friends.'
#jesuissylvie
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you’ve missed me! we’re back!
a PARISIAN reviews
EMILY IN PARIS
**saison 2**
We’ve been told Emily has changed! She’s in on the joke, she’s self-aware guys it’s like totally chill, IS IT?? scroll down to find out
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girl it's the original stage - wtf do you think 19th century imperialism was about?
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🍿 film club is back! 🍿
tonight we're watching THE SLEEPING DICTIONARY (2003)
in which, according to IMDB, Jessica Alba plays an indigenous Malaysian woman (???) who falls in love with a British man
the concept is already so messy let's see how far we can get
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It also ambitiously describes the nature and history of the surrounding Kars area, not just the cheese. This gallery of different local plants came with a SMELL DISPLAY so you would sniff as you walked past
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It is partly because of Papon that the massacre is famous. At the time, it was censored, and there was not much discussion of it. But it re-emerged in the 1990s. Before Paris in 1961, Papon had coordinated the massacre of hundreds of Jews in the Southwest of France in 1942-44 5/
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In 1995, Papon was put on trial for his involvement in the Holocaust. Activists pointed out that he was not being prosecuted for killing Algerians less than twenty years later, spurring more discussion of the October 1961 massacre 6/
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Here it comes,
episode 2 of
A PARISIAN
reviews
EMILY IN PARIS
a show which is slowly sucking my life energy, a vampire-show, a dark night-creature show which feeds on our souls
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I had brazenly said I would never watch season 2 of Em*l* in P*ris but then G-d gave me covid on the day of its release and cancelled my Christmas: who am I to disobey His will? Buckle up guys, recaps coming
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First, a theoretical note: settler colonialism embodies a particular structural domination (colonialism) into a group of people (settlers). This raises peculiar issues: if you dismantle the structure, what do you do with the people left? 2/
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Sure you’ve been to Morocco, probably gotten lost in Marrakech or walked on the seaside in Essaouira, but have you ever stopped to visit ~*Casablanca*~?
Let’s take a walk 🇲🇦 🚶🏽♂️👇🏼
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The world-historical ambitions are also displayed through the budgét: this place looks expensive. The wax models are eerily realistic. The cheese is glamour lit for Instagram perfection
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There’s even a Russian military cathedral that is now a mosque and the vibes are strong
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A drinkable history of colonialism in North Africa, vol 2: LEMONADE 🍋🍊
You are probably familiar with the delicious orange sparkling soda Orangina. What you may not know is that it was invented in Algeria, in a dramatic TALE OF TWO SODAS *loud slurping noise* 1/9
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ps: there is an essay about this, and the difficulties of learning how to connect different forms of racial violence, that I have written in my mind for a very long time. commission me <3
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The new apartment is allegedly a 'chambre de bonne'
FACTCHECK: first, she the floor below the chambre de bonne. second: judging by the camera shots and my specialist real estate sense, that apartment is at least 20-25 m2 so she's doing great
low points for accuracy
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Algerians had long migrated to France in large numbers since the 1920s. Colonial methods of repression followed them in their migration. Special police services tracked them, often made up of officers with experience in North Africa. 2/
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so let me send a message:
making things 'diverse' does not mean making things look American.
Americans, it's great that you're paying more attention to racial issues at home. But diversity does not look the same everywhere. There is no Paris without North Africans.
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If today is getting you down, good news for you:
It's time for another walk! This time, we're going to Marseille, France's largest port and one of the great Mediterranean cities ���️🇫🇷
Come along. We'll try to figure out what the fuck the Mediterranean is on this one:
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A brief history of Martinique in three destroyed statues
I. A few days ago, the mayor of Fort-de-France, capital of the French Caribbean island of Martinique, announced that the statue of Pierre Belain d'Esnambuc would be dismantled. Esnambuc is the local Columbus
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Portrait of Youcef Hamoud, founder of the Hamoud Boualem lemonade company and of the Algerian national drink (1884)
🍊🥤
#thirstory
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The massacre of 17 October 1961 is a window into a particular history of the French state, one which connects different forms of violence in Europe and North Africa, colonial and non-colonial, across multiple regimes. 9/
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The relationship between colonialism as a system and individual people’s lives is a volatile one, in which we all dance careful little delicate moves which can rapidly change. 11/
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But also, that Algeria’s past is not a model for anybody’s future.
It happened in this way for very unpredictable reasons. Much like South Africa’s negotiated transition in 1994, with which it is often contrasted, what has been made into a template cannot be reproduced. 12/
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I've passed probation and been promoted to Associate Professor! 👨🏫
So many people to thank, but especially all my colleagues at
@CamHistory
who have supported me
I promise to use my (limited) new power for good, to stay accountable and to keep the ‘ass’ in ‘Ass Prof’ 🍑
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In the midst of this violence, in October 1961, the government instituted a curfew ONLY for Algerians. In protest at this discrimination, they organised a protest. Under the orders of Maurice Papon, head of the Paris police, officers brutally repressed the demonstration. 4/
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Let’s be honest - I thought this museum would be a joke. A museum of cheese? In a random ass town in nowhere, Türkiye?
I underestimated this museum. I mocked it. This thread is an atonement.
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The massacre has rightly attracted attention bc it happened in the heart of Paris. But it is the most famous event in a much wider chain. Many more Algerians were killed far away from this attention. As préfet of Constantine from 1956-8, Papon also supervised their repression 7/
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Emily breaks up with her boyfriend. I feel nothing.
She screams into the phone:
'This city is filled with romance and light and passion and sex'
It's not. It's just a city. Just a place. Quite boring at times. Full of people.
Goodnight y'all
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By this point, a half-dozen men have flirted with Emily in Paris. Why? Why do they find her irresistible? Because she is wise, confident, or sexy?
NO Emily is a vehicle of boredom. Emily in Paris is not a bad show about Paris, it's a bad show about American women
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Emily bonds with another American in the gardens of the Palais-Royal - French people are so mean! They expect you to speak their language! :'-(
we are given yet another signalling that the show is CURRENT because her new friend Mindy is teaching her kids Mandarin (2020!)
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Algerian workers in France were often politically active. During the independence war (1954-1962), many of them were involved in the struggle. Different Algerian movement fought each other and different French targets. 3/
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un peu d’histoire pour combler les lacunes de nombreuses personnes:
1) la France a utilisé la suppression des corsaires et de l’esclavage des chrétiens comme justification de l’expédition d’Alger en 1830. Cela ne veut pas dire que c’était la raison réelle.
🚨Véronique Jacquier (CNews)🚨
« La France a colonisé l’Algérie pour mettre fin à la piraterie barbaresque et à l’esclavage en Méditerranée pratiqué à l’époque par les musulmans »
« En 1830, l’Algérie c’était rien du tout »
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BBC DAD HAS RETWEETED ME THIS IS MY CAREER PEAK
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In the chaos of the next few months, most Europeans, who had never accepted a society where they might be equal to Algerians and therefore demographically in a minority, fled in a panic 9/
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Yes, between 1878 and 1917, Kars was the southwestern-most region of the Russian Empire. The whole town is lined with Russian houses built during this period
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Ok so first, I'm a sucker for both THE SEA and some HILLS for perspective and Algiers has both - it's set on a dramatic semi-circle overlooking the bay (San Francisco go home you're drunk)
Second, it's been a major place of architectural experimentation so the buildings are WILD
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Can they continue to live there but without colonialism? Should they leave or be removed?
These are old and divisive questions. In Algeria there was no consensus within the independence movement for what would happen to Europeans after independence 3/
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aaaaaand that's it for episode 1!
Let's recap:
so far, Emily's exploration of Paris has led her to the following wide range of locations
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