Algeria – “The Hirak is not only the Space of Subjective Liberation but also that of the Collective One”: Interview with Algerian Psychoanalyst Karima Lazali (Malek Lakhal , Arab Reform Initiative)

A few months before the Hirak began in February 2019, the Algerian psychoanalyst Karima Lazali published Colonial Trauma: A Study of the Psychic and Political Consequences of Colonial Oppression in Algeria. The publication provides a psychoanalytic view of contemporary Algerian history; a history founded on fratricidal struggle and memory blanks, according to Lazali. Malek Lakhal, a research fellow with the Arab Reform Initiative, has interviewed the psychoanalyst about the Hirak’s links with memory and history, those of the war of independence as well as of the civil war that ravaged Algeria during the 1990s.

“The Hirak is not only the Space of Subjective Liberation but also that of the Collective One”: Interview with Algerian Psychoanalyst Karima Lazali – Arab Reform Initiative (arab-reform.net)

Algerian anti-government protesters take to the streets of the capital Algiers as the “Hirak” pro-democracy movement gathers renewed momentum after a year-long hiatus due to the coronavirus pandemic – February 2021. © AA/Mousaab Rouibi