Mohamed Amer Meziane is a philosopher and performer. After 4 years of teaching as a Fellow and Lecturer at Columbia University, he will join Brown University as an Assistant Professor during the fall of 2023. He is the author of "Des empires sous la Terre," his first book, published in French by La Découverte in 2021. The book will soon be translated and published by Verso Books. It deploys an ecological and racial history of secularization, thus rereading of the history of Western modernity during the 19th century through the lenses of both its colonial matrix and its environmental consequences. His work on 19th Algeria plays a crucial role in this history as a site in which the racialization not of color but of politics and religion, of Jews and Muslims, has been deployed by colonialism.    

Towards a philosophy of uprising: Algeria as a point of view on decolonization

Algerian independence has been an object of study for the humanities. History, sociology, and anthropology have been used as tools to objectify Algeria and Algerians. On the other hand, the event has also been studied by examining the works of artists and particularly of literary authors. What would it mean to speak not about Algeria but from the perspective of the Algerian uprising? Would that involve speaking as an academic, in the realm of the humanities, or would it mean something else, another kind of discourse and speech? And what does Algeria refer to in such a speech? To a nation? To an imaginary? To a point of view? To a voice? To a self?