The Podcaster's Dilemma

3 Counter-narrative Production

Fuck it, I’m bothered.

Jemele Hill, Jemele Hill Is Unbothered

In A Dying Colonialism, toward the end of a chapter on the role of radio in the Algerian revolutionary struggle, Fanon speaks of the deconstructive force of the channel The Voice of Fighting Algeria:

In August 1956, the reality of combat and the confusion of the occupier stripped the Arabic language of its sacred character and the French language of its negative connotations. The new language of the nation could then make itself known through multiple meaningful channels. The radio receiver as a technique of disseminating news and the French language as a basis for possible communication became almost simultaneously accepted by the fighting nation.¹

Not only did the radio lose its force as a tool of the oppressor. The French language itself lost its colonizing force. Fanon notes: “The French language lost its accursed character, revealing itself to be capable also of transmitting, for the benefit of the nation, the messages of truth that the latter awaited.”² In the hands of the National Liberation Front (FLN), which was the Algerian resistance, radio became a tool of creating a new language and new meanings for a new nation.

This process of deconstructing dominant cultural concepts and stripping the colonizer’s language “of its negative connotations” necessitates more than interrogation and critique. It demands the production of counter-narratives that displace the dominant ones. ...