Transcending the Paradox of Violence: A Dialectical/Dialogical Interrogation of the Colonial/Anti-Colonial Struggle in Algeria

Abstract

Abstract:The growing complexity of contemporary globalized human culture, while creating greater opportunities for human relation, has likewise generated profound challenges to our human capacity to relate meaningfully. Using Gillo Pontecorvo's 1956 film The Battle of Algiers, Frantz Fanon's paradigmatic text The Wretched of the Earth, and the writings of Albert Camus as representative accounts of colonial/anti-colonial violence in the Algerian struggle for independence, this article will question the legitimacy of a dialectical approach to transcending the paradox of violence, proposing instead a manner of dialogical reconciliation through the human capacity for solidarity-in-relation.