AN ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDY OF THE SOCIAL MOVEMENT IN ALGERIA, THE HIRAK

The protests that erupted in the four corners of Algeria in April 2019 for a period of 13 months were unprecedented in the modern history of Algeria in terms of scope and magnitude. Algerians demanded a radical political change while maintaining peaceful protests. The Hirak, characterized by its carnivalesque atmosphere and an overflowing display of creativity, included all segments of society while transcending space, age, language, gender, ethnicity, and social class. In this ethnographic study based on ethnographic fieldwork research for a period of 14 weeks including participant observation and interviews with participants in the Hirak, I argue that through the mobilization of creativity and collective memory, the Hirak enabled radical imagination to flourish, allowing Algerians to make radical demands to envision better futures and to generate a politics of becoming. By using theories from political philosophers, standpoint feminists, anthropologists, and social movement scholars, this ethnographic study on the Hirak explores how radical imagination operates within collective action through the use of creativity and collective memory.