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

Abstract

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.