Paper short abstract:

By comparing the multiple terms for the "colonial past" that circulate in Algeria, I push for an anthropology of "orientation," the epistemological, cultural, and material practices that link multiple scales of socio-political life and produce complex spacetimes (or chronotopes) in everyday life.

Paper long abstract:

In this intervention, I call for new analytical frameworks for understanding "orientation" as a socio-political process through which people navigate and produce multiple spacetimes across different scales of social life. Drawing on 18-months of ethnographic field research in Oran, Algeria, I analyze the multiple terms for the "colonial past" that circulate in everyday speech, each of which index a speaker's ideological, social, and political orientation both on micro and macro scales. I compare the standard Arabic terms "isti'mar" (settling a place) and "mustudmir" (destroying a place), with everyday language of time in circulation in Algerian Arabic and French. The most common term, "waqt frānça" (French-times), often refers to things that were better back then ("bekri"). I argue that this is not simply a case of "colonial nostalgia." Instead, the juxtaposition of what the French "left behind" and what independent Algerians "have built" has become a powerful spatial metaphor for Algerians' grievances towards their government. These grievances erupted in 2019, when millions of Algerians mobilized for the country's "second revolution" (or al-Hirak) in 60 years. By analyzing the use of these linguistic variants, I argue that the anthropology of time should better understand practices of "orientation" as the way that "being in cultural time" (Munn 1992) is achieved. Orientation, therefore, should be understood as numerous epistemological, linguistic and cultural practices that link multiple scales of socio-political life and, in turn, produce the complex spacetimes in which people live.