UCL Discovery

Abstract

The photography of Bourdieu, whilst documenting aspects of his sociological work in Algeria, problematizes the relationship between its photographic referents and their history. To grasp this relationship, I will decode the historical signification of three photographs taken by Bourdieu in the mid-1950s when Tillion published L'Algerie en 1957 and Sartre 'Le colonialisme est un systeme' situating Bourdieu's photographic and sociological work in relation to both Tillion and Sartre. Although the influence of Tillion on Bourdieu is discernable, especially in Sociologie de l'Algerie, their political positions are at variance. Bourdieu's snapshots provide us with a perspective on how to interpret the causes of the vagrancy and famine in colonial times. Despite his avowed hostility to Sartre, Bourdieu concurs with the latter's critique of colonialism. His three photographs together project a political affinity with both Sartre and Barthes. The impoverishment of native Algerian society was not due to the fact that it failed to catch the train of progress, as Tillion intimates; rather it resulted from its systematic despoilment by colonial France.