The Poetics of Grievance: Taxi Drivers, Vernacular Placenames, and the Paradoxes of Post-Coloniality in Oran, Algeria☆

Based on sixteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in the Mediterranean port city of Oran, this article examines why Algerians, after nearly sixty years of independence, continue to use French colonial-era placenames instead of the post-colonial names commemorating the martyrs of the Algerian War of Independence (1954–1962). I argue that vernacular place-naming, including the use of colonial-era names, should be understood as a component of what I call the “poetics of grievance,” whereby city dwellers simultaneously draw attention to linguistic and physical urban forms to express dissatisfaction with their post-colonial authoritarian state. By examining local taxi drivers’ detailed knowledge of vernacular placenames and the everyday talk that often accompanies them, this article demonstrates how the colonial past can become a powerful poetic resource for city dwellers, serving as a means to conceptualize the potential for grief and rage to bring about revolutionary change in post-colonial cities.