Recently the “emotional turn” has swept the social sciences, with scholars expressing a renewed interest in affective imaginaries and human experience from the “inside-out.” One noteworthy feature of this turn has been interdisciplinary engagement between the humanities and the hard sciences. Scholars in sociology, political science, and philosophy are advancing new theories of human behavior, and basing these theories on laboratory studies that use brain imaging and monitoring technologies like fMRI, SPECT, PET, and EEG. This is a growing trend in history as well, with the proliferation of monographs on “neurohistory” and “cognitive history.” This paper engages with and problematizes these trends, through an affective history of the Algerian Revolution (1954–1962). Using historical documents recovered from the Service Historique de la Défense (SHD) and the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, the paper explores how the Front de Libération Nationale/FLN and the Jeanson Network (a French anti-colonial club) mobilized emotions in the fight for Algerian independence. The paper begins with a passage from Brian Massumi’s Ontopower. In the book the social theorist employs EEG findings, in order to argue that governments use cues to trigger automatic emotional responses from populations. As Massumi argues, by flashing the color red on American television screens as part of its Terror Alert System, the Bush Administration “wirelessly jacked central government functioning directly into each individual’s nervous system... Across the geographical and social differentials dividing them, the population fell into affective attunement.” While this type of automatic cueing might work in a controlled laboratory setting, this paper argues that lived histories of human experience betray a different reality. Governments, political parties, and interest groups tried to give affective cues that would mobilize Algerian and French populations—but individuals did not automatically pay attention to, trust, or respond to stimuli, nor were populations moved to “affective attunement” across social divides. Instead, affective cues were often ignored or contested. Considering this finding, what role did affective priming and cueing play in the Algerian Revolution? What narratives did various actors promote about the emotions of decolonization? And how can historians contribute to the study of emotions in social movements? In answering these questions, the paper explores a forgotten feature of anti-colonial campaigns: the divisive emotional performances and galvanizing “affective battles” for decolonization. Such struggles demonstrate the importance of a historical engagement with the hard sciences—and highlight the pitfalls and prospects of such an engagement.