Different versions of ‘Algeria’ – as idea and image of the nation – have been woven into the fabric of its history from the period of French colonial rule (1830–1962), through the Boumediene era of nation-building (1965–1978), in response to the violence of the 1990s and across the past 15 years of an uneasy peace. The state has produced its version of ‘Algeria’ and so too have an extraordinary range of cultural actors who – in all four of its languages as well as through performance – have given shape and expression to ideas of Algeria in ways often contrapuntal to those of the state.

The essays in this collection recognize the shaping forces of history within Algeria as well as the transformative effects of a transnational dimension – whether read as diaspora, or global capital, international funding bodies, overseas publishers and TV channels, international sport or internet access. Hargreaves was among the first to suggest that ‘Franco- Algerian relations are being gradually refashioned by the wider dynamic of globalisation’ (2002: 447). And the same is true of Algeria's relationship to itself. For while the relationship between France and Algeria remains a vital area of research (Silverstein, 2004; Lorcin, 2006; Shepard, 2006; McGonagle and Welch, 2013), there has been an increasing emphasis on the study of Algeria in its own right rather than through the prism of France (Rosello, 2007; Kessous et al., 2009). The essays in this collection focus on Algeria's recent history and offer insights into the encounter between official narratives of the nation state and alternative versions which, though often local, are inflected by a transnational dynamics that can take many forms. A transnational perspective, as Lionnet and Shih remind us, is also about not forgetting ‘lateral networks that are not readily apparent’ (2006: 1): horizontal, transversal networks that form across frontiers. Doing so, argues Clavin, helps us to rethink the nation as a bounded entity and ‘to break free from dominant national paradigms’ (2005: 434) while not neglecting the vertical importance of a nation's history.