Algeria nation, culture and transnationalism, 1988-2015

Algeria Nation, Culture and Transnationalism 1988–2015

F R A NCOPHON E P O STCOL ON I A L ST U DIE S The annual publication of the Society for Francophone Postcolonial Studies New Series, Vol. 8

Francophone Postcolonial Studies The annual publication of the Society for Francophone Postcolonial Studies The Society for Francophone Postcolonial Studies (SFPS) is an international association which exists in order to promote, facilitate and otherwise support the work of all scholars and researchers working on colonial/postcolonial studies in the French-speaking world. SFPS was created in 2002 with the aim of continuing and developing the pioneering work of its predecessor organization, the Association for the Study of Caribbean and African Literature in French (ASCALF). SFPS does not seek to impose a monolithic understanding of the ‘postcolonial’ and it consciously aims to appeal to as diverse a range of members as possible, in order to engage in wide-ranging debate on the nature and legacy of colonialism in and beyond the French-speaking world. SFPS encourages work of a transcultural, transhistorical, comparative and interdisciplinary nature. It implicitly seeks to decolonize the term ‘Francophone’, emphasizing that it should refer to all cultures where French is spoken (including, of course, France itself), and it encourages a critical reflection on the nature of the cognate disciplines of French studies, on the one hand, and anglophone postcolonial studies, on the other. Our vision for this new publication with Liverpool University Press is that each volume will constitute a sort of état present on a significant topic, embracing various expressions of Francophone postcolonial cultures (e.g. literature, film, music, history), in relation to pertinent geographical areas (e.g. France/Belgium, the Caribbean, Africa, the Indian Ocean, Asia, Polynesia) and different periods (slavery, colonialism, the postcolonial era, etc.): above all, we are looking to publish research that will help to set new research agendas across our field. The editorial board of Francophone Postcolonial Studies invites proposals for edited volumes touching on any of the areas listed above; proposals should be sent to Dr Charlotte Baker (c.baker@lancaster. ac.uk). For further details, visit www.sfps.ac.uk. General Editor: Dr Charlotte Baker (Lancaster University, UK) Editorial Board Chris Bongie (Queen’s University, Canada) Charles Forsdick (University of Liverpool, UK) Pierre-Philippe Fraiture (University of Warwick, UK) Alec Hargreaves (Florida State University, USA) Jane Hiddleston (Exeter College, Oxford, UK) Nicki Hitchcott (University of Nottingham, UK) Lydie Moudileno (University of Pennsylvania, USA) Jean-Marc Moura (Université Paris Ouest, France) David Murphy (University of Stirling, UK) Ieme van der Poel (University of Amsterdam, Netherlands) Srilata Ravi (University of Alberta, Canada) Andy Stafford (University of Leeds, UK) Dominic Thomas (UCLA, USA)

Algeria Nation, Culture and Transnationalism 1988–2015

Edited by Patrick Crowley Algeria: Nation, Culture and Transnationalism

Liverpool Universit y Press

First published 2017 by Liverpool University Press 4 Cambridge Street Liverpool L69 7ZU Copyright © 2017 Liverpool University Press and the Society for Francophone Postcolonial Studies The right of Patrick Crowley to be identified as the editor of this book has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication data A British Library CIP record is available print ISBN 978-1-78694-021-6 cased epdf ISBN 978-1-78694-809-0

Typeset by Carnegie Book Production, Lancaster

Contents Contents

Illustrations vii Acknowledgements viii Abbreviations ix Introduction Algeria: Nation, Culture and Transnationalism 1988–2015 Patrick Crowley

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Nation, State and Society In the Shadow of Revolution James McDougall Algeria’s ‘Belle Époque’: Memories of the 1970s as a Window on the Present Ed McAllister

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The Many (Im)possibilities of Contemporary Algerian Judaïtés 63 Samuel Sami Everett 1988–1992: Multipartism, Islamism and the Descent into Civil War Malika Rahal

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Algerian Heritage Associations: National Identity and Rediscovering the Past Jessica Ayesha Northey

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Cultural Mediations Writing in the Aftermath of Two Wars: Algerian Modernism and the Génération ’88 123 Corbin Treacy The Persistence of the Image, the Lacunae of History: The Archive and Contemporary Art in Algeria (1992–2012) Fanny Gillet Music, Borders and Nationhood in Algeria Tony Langlois

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Algerian Youth on the Move. Capoeira, Street Dance and Parkour: Between Integration and Contestation Britta Hecking

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Sport in Algeria – from National Self-assertion to Anti-state Contestation Philip Dine

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Beyond France-Algeria: The Algerian Novel and the Transcolonial Imagination 222 Olivia C. Harrison Afterword Performing Algerianness: The National and Transnational Construction of Algeria’s ‘Culture Wars’ Walid Benkhaled and Natalya Vince

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Notes on Contributors 271 Index 275

Illustrations Illustrations

Table 1. Wilayas with the highest density of cultural associations

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Figure 6.1. Wilayas with the highest density of cultural associations in Algeria (associations per 100,000 inhabitants).

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Figure 8.1. Rachida Azdaou, Archives d’Alger, 2010.

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Figure 8.2. Amina Menia, Enclosed (display cabinet, Issiakhem), 2013. 145 Figure 8.3. Ammar Bouras, Iatirafate irhabi, 1996.

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Figure 8.4. Ammar Bouras, Tag’Out (detail), 2011.

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Figure 8.5. Mustapha Sedjal, Un seul héros le peuple … mon père, 2012–2013. 151 Figure 8.6. Mustapha Sedjal, Nedjma. L’éternel retour, 1994.

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Figure 8.7. Sofiane Zouggar, Time Machine, 2012.

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Figure 8.8. Fatima Chafaâ, Générique, 2012.

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Acknowledgements Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the support of the Irish Research Council for the award of a Government of Ireland Senior Research Fellowship in 2011. Megan C. MacDonald was IRCHSS postdoctoral fellow on the project and made a vital contribution to its success. This publication follows from research undertaken in 2011–2012 and since. It also benefited from the sabbatical leave policy put in place by University College Cork (UCC) which enabled research and editing to be undertaken at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in 2015–2016. I am grateful for the support and encouragement I received from colleagues in the Department of French and the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures at UCC. I would also like to thank the executive of the Society for Francophone Postcolonial Studies, in particular Nicki Hitchcott, Charlotte Baker, Charles Forsdick and the anonymous readers from the Francophone Postcolonial Studies Editorial Board who carefully read the initial proposal and eventual chapters and provided feedback which greatly contributed to making this volume better. Anthony Cond and the production team at Liverpool University Press have been a pleasure to work with and continue to set the benchmark for academic publishing. Thanks also to Rachel Adamson and all at Carnegie Book Production for their professionalism. Emily Harding, once again, has done a wonderful job in designing a cover illustration that flags the contents and maintains the look of the excellent FPS series. Finally, I own a debt to the contributors to this volume for the generosity of their collaboration, their stimulating scholarship and their enduring commitment to the project. viii

Abbreviations Abbreviations

CNCD

Coordination Nationale pour le Changement et la Démocratie [National Coordination for Change and Democracy]

CNSA

Comité National pour la Sauvegarde de l’Algérie [National Committee for the Protection of Algeria]

DRS

Direction du Renseignement de la Sécurité [Military Intelligence Services]

ENA

Étoile Nord Africain [Star of North Africa]

FAUED

Femmes Algériennes Unies pour l’Égalité des Droits [Algerian Women United for Equal Rights]

FCNAFA Festival Culturel National Annuel du Film Amazigh [Annual National Cultural Festival of Amazigh Film] FFS

Front des Forces Socialistes [Socialist Forces Front]

FIS

Front Islamique du Salut [Islamic Salvation Front]

FLN

Front de Libération Nationale [National Liberation Front]

GIS Groupement d’Intervention Spécial [Special Intervention Group] HCA

Haut Commissariat à l’Amazighité [High Commission for Amazigh Affairs]

HCE

Haut Comité d’État [High Committee of State]

MAK

Mouvement pour l’Autodétermination de la Kabylie [Mouvement for Kabylie Self-determination] ix

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MNR

Mouvement National pour la Renaissance [National Movement for Renaissance], Islamist party

MSP

Mouvement pour la Société et la Paix [Movement for Society and Peace] (formerly HAMAS), Islamist party

MTLD

Mouvement pour la Triomphe des Libertés Démocratiques [Movement for the Triumph of Democratic Liberties]

OAS

Organisation Armée Secrète (OAS) [Secret Army Organization], Pro-French Algeria paramilitary group

OS

Organisation Spéciale [Special Organization]. Led to the eventual formation of the FLN

PAGS

Parti de l’Avant-Garde Socialiste [Party of Avant-Garde Socialism], Marxist party

PPA

Parti du Peuple Algérien [The Algerian People’s Party]

PT

Parti des Travailleurs [Workers’ Party]

RCD Rassemblement pour la Culture et la Démocratie [Rally for Culture and Democracy] RND Rassemblement National Démocratique [Rally for National Democracy] SIT

Syndicat Islamique du Travail [Islamic Workers’ Union]

UDMA

Union Démocratique du Manifeste Algérien [Democratic Union of the Algerian Manifesto]

UGTA

Union Générale des Travailleurs Algériens [General Union of Algerian Workers]

UMA

Union du Maghreb Arabe [Arab Maghreb Union]

UNJA

Union Nationale de la Jeunesse Algérienne [National Union of Algerian Youth]

Introduction Algeria: Nation, Culture and Transnationalism 1988–2015 Patrick Crowley

Introduction

At the core of the process of transcendence in the fashioning of the imagined community lies the problem of the aesthetic as a political phenomenon, of art as the model for the self-creation, manifestation, and self-recognition of a people. (Carroll, 2000: 120) 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 languages1 as well as through performance – have given shape and expression to ideas of Algeria in ways often contrapuntal to those of the state. Most of Algeria is diglossic and much of it is polyglossic (see Berger, 2002; and for the wider context of the Maghreb see Dobie, 2003). Standard Arabic is the national language, Amazigh was recognized as a national language in 2002 and draft legislation introduced in 2016 proposes that it be recognized as an official language of the state. Amazigh (or Tamazight) is made up of at least 11 Berber languages/dialects. Dialectical Arabic (derja) is the language of home and street. Outside of France, Algeria is likely to be the country with the greatest number of French speakers. 1

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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 ‘FrancoAlgerian 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. Cultural production draws from history as well as the vicissitudes, patterns and encounters of daily life. This is true of the contemporary Tamazight novel (see Sadi and Salhi, 2016); the recent work of Arabophone novelists such as Ahlam Mosteghanemi, Bachir Mefti, Waciny Laredj and Mohamed Sari;2 the proliferation of hip-hop groups who perform in Algerian Arabic (derja) (Chauvin, 2011); and a range of Algerian novels written in French by novelists such as Salim Bachi, Mustapha Benfodil, Anouar Benmalek, Maïssa Bey, Kamel Daoud, Yasmina Khadra and Boualem Sansal, who pursue the possibilities of literary form in ways that continue, and enrich, the literary legacies of earlier generations. Equally, since 2000, Algerian-born film directors – such as Merzak Allouache, Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche, Yamina Bachir-Chouikh, Nadir Moknèche, Tariq Teguia and, of late, Malek Bensmaïl – have produced films which, like many Algerian novels, explore aesthetic form yet also offer representations of contemporary Algeria. These range from Bachir-Chouikh’s film Rachida (2002) and its portrayal of the violence of the ‘black decade’ to Allouache’s drama Le Repenti (2012), which tells the I am grateful to Lynda-Nawel Tebbani and Mohamed Sari for their insights into configurations of algérianité (Algerianness) and interrogations of the nation in the contemporary Algerian Arabophone novel and its reception. 2

Introduction

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story of an Islamist fighter, Rachid, who takes up the offer of a government amnesty that brought the violence of that decade towards a closure, of sorts. To cite these two examples is to begin a process of framing Algeria, of giving it an outline based on two films, and this raises the question of ‘representation’; of the ways in which we can talk about ‘Algeria’, and the manner in which this volume of essays seeks to do so through an imbrication of historical research, anthropology and cultural studies based on archival research, fieldwork interviews and close readings. The fashioning of a nation as an imagined, political community through cultural production is shaped by material conditions of funding, production and reception, by ideological viewpoints, by creativity, by structures of power, by events.3 Cultural artefacts – such as the novel, film, music, dance and the visual arts – can spur the reader to reflect on the nation and its institutional embodiment as state. At the same time, they result from the licence to lie that is at the core of aesthetic practice: as they represent, so too do they fabricate. Writers, film-makers, artists and singers can give condensed imaginative expression to everyday experiences and aspirations in ways that differ from, but sometimes complement, the work that historians, anthropologists and political scientists undertake to construct studies of past and present that draw upon archives and interviews. Indeed, historians also draw upon the imagination – Collingwood’s ‘web of imaginative construction’ (1961: 244) – to offer new insights into the discursive and material formation of a nation state regardless of the snares of representation and the risks of distorting reality. Nevertheless, we need to be careful not to tie a writer too closely to her country of origin and to read her work as representative of that country’s realities. Nicholas Harrison cautions against a slippage between two distinct understandings of representation: between Vertreten (political I want to acknowledge the allusion to Benedict Anderson’s conception of the nation as a cultural artefact (1983). Among the many valuable critiques of Anderson’s constructivist argument on nationalism, I want to highlight Jonathan Culler’s close analysis of the use to which the novel can, and cannot, be used in support of Anderson’s argument, in particular his insistence that the ‘distinction between the novel as a condition of possibility of imagining the nation and the novel as a force in shaping or legitimating the nation needs to be maintained’ (1999: 37). In doing so, Culler asserts the primary importance of material events and patterns – such as war and trade – in the forging of a nation, but maintains the value of ‘the content of novels as representations of the nation’, the ways in which they allow for the creation of a space that invites the reader to imagine or reimagine a political community (1999: 38). 3

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representation) and Darstellen (artistic portrayal). He argues that: ‘Any writer may write about India, Algeria or anywhere else, “representing” it in the ordinary literary sense, but only certain writers are eligible, it would seem, to “represent” it in the latter sense, where literary “representation” becomes linked to notions of authenticity, typicality, and the ability to speak for others’ (2003: 95). However, Harrison recognizes that ‘Under some circumstances […] writers may indeed be able to raise the profile of, or give imaginary shape to, a particular group, perhaps a group that is denied political representation’ (2003: 102). The thrust of Harrison’s concession is supported by public intellectuals from the Maghreb who have articulated a view of the writer as a porte-parole [spokesperson] for the people.4 Writing in 1968, Abdelkébir Khatibi makes clear that the writer has an important role in postcolonial North Africa. For Khatibi literature is another dimension of a revolutionary process of decolonization and an opportunity to give formal aesthetic expression to a society in crisis (1968: 11). He argues that the novel is a space within which new articulations of national culture can be expressed and that it should become part of new transnational networks of exchange with a focus upon what was then called the ‘Third World’ (1968: 14) and now the Global South (see Harrison, this volume). Khatibi’s view of the novel is of equal relevance today in relation to cultural production understood broadly and which, in this volume, comprises the novel, musics, art, street dance, parkour, cinema, cultural associations and the cultures of sport. As signalled by the title, the frames of reference for this volume are temporal and thematic but within these frames there are a range of methodologies, different approaches to the idea of Algeria and to its contemporary realities, serving to open up any discourse that might try to tie ‘Algeria’ to a fixed meaning or construct it in ways that neglect the weft and warp of the everyday. The configuration of these essays invites us to read contemporary cultural production in Algeria not as determined indices of a specific place and time (1988–2015) but as interrogations and explorations of that period and of the relationship between nation and culture. The intention of this volume is not to fetishize context – establishing it as the arbitrator of authentic representation – but to offer historical moments, multiple contexts, hybrid forms, voices and experiences of the everyday that will, it is hoped, prompt nuance in how we move between frames of enquiry. The juxtaposition of the chapters in this volume should prompt us to think about the See Abdellatif Laâbi’s comment on the importance of the ‘porte-parole’ in his ‘Prologue’ to the first issue of Souffles (1966). Available at http://clicnet. swarthmore.edu/souffles/s1/1.html (consulted on 25 August 2016). 4

Introduction

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interdisciplinary approaches we use to read ‘Algeria’ as nation state, as idea, as protean form. The chapters in this volume offer the granularity of microhistories, fieldwork and studies of the marginal in order to break up a synthetic overview and offer keener insights into the ways in which the complexity of Algerian history is culturally negotiated, public spaces reclaimed, Algeria reimagined from both within and beyond its borders.

Algeria: Nation, State and Society 1988–2015 Algeria’s history and its legacies are central to much of its cultural production. The presidency of Houari Boumediene (1965–1978) and its nation-building project – whether judged as necessary, well-intentioned or flawed – provides an obvious prelude to the temporal frame of 1988–2015. During the Boumediene era the state buttressed the country’s self-image as a nation whose revolutionary war of independence (1954–1962) had brought an end to 132 years of French colonial rule. A political and cultural policy of Arabization was pursued alongside a version of state socialism that saw the hydrocarbon industry nationalized and the implementation of social and economic policies that, in principle at least, looked to create a more egalitarian society. As McAllister demonstrates (this volume), nationbuilding during Boumediene’s presidency remains a touchstone for many in contemporary Algeria who not only recall that time’s promise of a better future based on social justice and a redistribution of wealth but whose tactical response to the present regime, and whose views of a future polity, are shaped by these same social memories. However, the Boumediene-era project to construct an Arabic, socialist state informed by Islamic principles had cultural and political implications that were exclusionary and involved a form of rolling homogenization that had implications for language, education and officially sanctioned narratives of nation. The impact was felt throughout society. As Dine reminds us (this volume) the state ‘moved quickly to appropriate the ex-colonial sports system as a means of fostering domestic legitimacy and international recognition’. The state also sought to appropriate Andalusian music as a ‘national music’ but, as Langlois demonstrates (this volume) ‘mapping music onto nationhood’ is a problematic process that effaces ethnic and historical complexities. And as the 1963 Nationality Law accorded automatic Algerian nationality only to those who could demonstrate that their father had Muslim personal status during the colonial period, this restrictive cultural and religious definition of an Algerian had the effect of alienating Algerian Jews, the vast majority of whom left Algeria just before the end of the war of independence

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after centuries of being ingrained within the cultures of Algeria and the larger Maghreb region. The result, as Everett argues (this volume), is the persistence of a form of affective belonging to Algeria constructed within Algerian Jewish communities in France. This state-sponsored image of an Islamic, Arab, socialist Algeria began to pale in the 1980s following Boumediene’s death and the election of Chadli Bendjedid as president (1979–1992). The country’s status as ‘Islamic’ was questioned by Islamist militants (Entelis, 1997) even as women had their rights as citizens reduced under the Family Law of 1984 (Vince, 2015). The demonstrations and strikes that characterized the ‘Berber Spring’ of March–April 1980 were strikingly defiant and the resentment became general across Algeria as the housing crisis intensified and unemployment rose during the 1980s. Matters were compounded by a shrinking public sector as the country endured economic decline – largely due to the fall in the price of oil – and a painful transition from socialism towards a capitalist economy as a result of the burden of debt repayments to the IMF and World Bank and the ‘structural reforms’ that were demanded in return (Hill, 2009). Public discontent and demonstrations during the mid-1980s were at times channelled through, or exploited by, Islamist organizations proposing a utopian narrative for a revolution left unfinished. However, the social unrest went beyond ethnic, regional and religious affiliations. Rahal (this volume), working with the social memories of members of the Parti de l’avant-garde socialiste (PAGS, Party of Avant-Garde Socialism), vividly conveys the hopes and uncertainties of the events and demonstrations of October 1988 – the sense of carnival but also the possibility of a premeditated manipulation of events by state agents. What is certain is that the killing of civilians by the military in response to the demonstrations dramatically raised the stakes and led to real sociopolitical change. President Chadli introduced multiparty democracy, thus inaugurating a new democratic dispensation by late October 1988. Municipal elections were held in 1990 and elections to the national assembly were held in December 1991. As Rahal details, the elections demonstrated the strength of Islamism and popular support for the Islamist party, the Front Islamique du Salut (FIS, Islamic Salvation Front), which was positioned to win a majority of the seats in the second round. In response, the army declared a state of emergency, cancelled the second round and insisted that Chadli dissolve parliament and resign. The descent into generalized violence was quick. The army, in a claim to legitimacy, invited Mohamed Boudiaf, one of the nine founding members of the FLN, to return from exile and preside over a transitional body, the Haut Comité d’Etat (HCE, High Committee of State). Upon taking office, Boudiaf made public his desire to work for a democratic Algeria and to combat

Introduction

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corruption. On 29 June 1992 he was assassinated by one of his security guards and Algeria fell further into la décennie noire [the black decade] – a term that captures the tragedy of that decade but also its obscurity for the civilian population seemed to be caught between forces which, if identified as state and Islamism, were in practice composed of many different groups and the actual perpetrators of terror were difficult to identify. Exact figures are not available but Human Rights Watch suggests that the number of dead exceeded 100,000 and Evans and Phillips estimate that it is possible that over 200,000 people were killed (2007: xiv).5 Given the scale of the killings it might appear unseemly to make particular reference to the assassination of writers (such as Tahar Djaout), intellectuals (such as Dr Mahfoud Boucebci) and singers (such as Cheb Hasni and Matoub Lounès). Yet, that they were killed indicates that their role in society, like that of assassinated members of PAGS, was not considered to be an abstraction or marginal. They were embedded in society and what they said and produced had a political impact, or was perceived as having one. There was an extraordinary response to the murders of the raï musician Matoub Lounès in 1998; an advocate for the Berber movement, a critic of the state and of Islamism, his death saw an estimated 100,000 mourners take to the streets of Tizi-Ouzou (see Langlois, this volume). But if cultural producers were seen as important in terms of drawing attention to the kinds of violence endured, their work was often critically shaped by different modes of reception both within and beyond Algeria. Literary production, for example, during the ‘black decade’ was characterized as ‘une littérature d’urgence’, initially within Algeria and thereafter in France (Forde, 2016). Bonn sees this literature as moving away from formal experimentation and as being marked by a ‘retour du référent’ [return of the referent] (1999: 11), a literary engagement with the reality of Algeria’s violent conflict which, in its least interesting manifestation, he claims, became a form of ‘témoignage’ [bearing witness] deemed by French publishing houses to reflect Algeria’s political realities (1999: 16–17). In opposition to this, Rachid Mokhtari rejects the epithet of urgence as reductive and as a failure to situate many of the works within Algeria’s literary tradition going back to Kateb Yacine’s explorations of literary possibilities (2002). Analysing the works of Tahar Djaout and Assia Djebar published in the 1990s, Fisher argues that ‘L’écriture de l’urgence, placée sous le signe de l’anamnèse, se déroule hors de tout format fixe, aux frontières de la fiction, du récit, du récit de Figures for the ‘disappeared’ suggest that at least 7,000 individuals were taken and, it is presumed, killed. See http://www.hrw.org/news/2003/02/26/algeria-ledworld-forced-disappearances (consulted on 11 November 2015). 5

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paroles, de l’autobiographie et de l’historiographie’ (2007: 18).6 She makes the case that the work of these two authors interrogates the misuse of history and its mythologization by state power. Similarly, Hiddleston sees Djebar’s work as an attempt ‘to come to terms with the renewed violence of the 1990s [and] its uncanny links with the history of colonial oppression’ (2006: 56). The themes of suppressed memory and unacknowledged histories – critically and poetically explored by Djaout and Djebar – continue to be relevant in the wake of that decade. Creative interrogations of blocked memory and distorted history are also common to visual arts practices that emerged in the 1990s and since. Gillet (this volume) details the sustained questioning of national history by Algerian artists through images and archives relating to the conflict of the 1990s and the war of independence. She notes that while the ‘return to the archive’ might have been widespread within art practices across Europe and the US, it took on a particular resonance among Algeria-based artists and artists who formed part of Algeria’s diaspora. A recurring image is that of President Boudiaf and, argues Gillet, while the moment of his assassination has been used by artists – such Ammar Bouras and Dalila Dalléas Bouzar – as an icon for a lost hope, it also serves as an index for a lack of representation of more politically charged issues. This may be due to restrictions on access to the archives or as a result of self-censorship in the wake of the Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation approved by referendum on 29 September 2005. Enacted in 2006, the legislation includes an article that prohibits: ‘par ses déclarations, écrits ou tout autre acte, utilise[r] ou instrumentalise[r] les blessures de la tragédie nationale, pour porter atteinte aux institutions de la République algérienne démocratique et populaire, fragiliser l’État, nuire à l’honorabilité de ses agents qui l’ont dignement servie, ou ternir l’image de l’Algérie sur le plan international’.7 At stake here is the issue of war crimes ‘L’écriture d’urgence, read as anamnesis, takes place outside of any fixed format, in the marchlands between fiction, narrative, oral accounts, autobiography and historiography’. All translations are the author’s unless otherwise stated. 7 ‘[Anyone] who, by speech, writing, or any other act, uses or exploits the wounds of the National Tragedy to harm the institutions of the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, to weaken the state, or to undermine the good reputation of its agents who honourably served it, or to tarnish the image of Algeria internationally’. Article 49 of the Decree Implementing the Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation enacted on February 27 2006. Quoted in ‘Algeria: New Amnesty Law Will Ensure Atrocities Go Unpunished’. Available at https://www.hrw.org/news/2006/02/28/algeria-new-amnesty-law-will-ensureatrocities-go-unpunished (consulted on 12 February 2016). 6

Introduction

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perpetrated by agents of the state brushed beneath an official image of the country that must remain unblemished. These laws were among the last in a process that saw the implementation of President Bouteflika’s policies to end the violence of the ‘black decade’ and the perception of Algeria as a ‘failed state’ (Hill, 2009). Supported by the army, Abdelaziz Bouteflika was elected president in April 1999. He quickly introduced the Law on Civil Concord in July 1999 and set the date (16 September 1999) for a referendum that sought the nation’s approval for a series of amnesties.8 These legal instruments were successful in bringing about an uneasy, incremental cessation of conflict but at the cost of historical truth and justice. Where the history of the war of independence had been appropriated by the state to construct a compressed, hegemonic and foundational narrative, a comprehensive history of conflict in the 1990s was also being blocked and distorted.9 Bouteflika’s pragmatism did bring about an unquiet peace that was consolidated, in part, through the use of exchequer returns from revenues derived from Algeria’s hydrocarbon exports as the price of oil and gas began to rise significantly between 2003 and 2014. These revenues were used to manage a society in which a majority depend on state subsidies for basic food stuffs and public sector employment (Martinez, 2010) and who have benefited from the remarkable boom in the construction of housing projects. The state (see Northey and Hecking, this volume), also began to fund large cultural projects such as the Algiers Opera House, the Arab-South American Library, the Arab Archaeological Centre as well as festivals such as the annual Festival du film Amazigh, the first of which was held in 2001 under the auspices of the Haut Commissariat à l’Amazighité (HCA, High Commission for Amazigh Affairs, established by the state in 1995). We can read this as an ongoing attempt at co-opting culture (including Berber culture) into the national project that dates back to the Pan-African Festival of 1969. It could also be read as a form of engagement with society, the effects of which can never entirely be controlled or predicted. Nonetheless, regardless of the state’s management of post-conflict Algerian society, the impact of the ‘black decade’ persisted. The campaigns of violence, notes McDougall (this volume) ‘demobilized the general public’ and the ‘climate of insecurity undermined social solidarity’ resulting in ‘a pervasive For a perspective on these amnesties situated in an international context and based on legal scholarship see Mallinder (2008: 69–71). For a historian’s perspective see Le Sueur (2010: 195–206). 9 For an analysis of history textbooks used in Algerian schools see Aït Saadi Bouras (2013). 8

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dégoûtage with all things bulitiq (“politics”)’. This view of politics, and the government’s strategic use of its coffers in response to initial protests, resulted in an ‘Arab Spring’ that seemed to bypass Algeria. McDougall argues that such symptoms – student strikes, trade union protests, roadblocks – had been commonplace in Algeria in the decade prior to 2011. These encounters between representatives of the state and the people allowed for the satisfaction of local and sectorial claims (see McAllister, 2013). And Hachemaoui details in his study of electoral politics how clientelism and corruption have come to be mediated through reactivated traditions – in particular the reinvented notions of tribe and Sufism (2013: 184) – and now serve as checks and balances for a political system that must be seen to redistribute goods. In Algeria, the state, as Serres and Davis write, ‘is the locus of competition where different groups cooperate and struggle to obtain a specific form of capital’ (2013: 105). Stability can, in many ways, be bought, but the sum of a nation is greater than that. Writing in the wake of Bouteflika’s incremental peace process, Roberts (2003: 259) argues that Algeria is marked by a form of post-nationalism embodied in an elite that seeks only to retain power and that has lost those political bearings that shaped the nation after 1962, in particular in 1965–78, the Boumediene period. Roberts writes that the ‘absence since 1993 of any positive dimension to post-nationalism in Algeria has meant that there is and can be no dialectic and no synthesis and no evolution, only impasse and a ruin’ (2003: 360–61). Following on from his negative conclusion, Roberts goes on to declare that the Algerian polity can only be saved by constitutional government, one that is bound by law and that reconciles its differing cultural legacies. Such a change in the status quo, he argues, ‘would have to take place in the mind in the first instance’ (2003: 364). Throughout his work, Roberts persistently interrogates the material manifestations of political formations within Algeria so this particular reference to the mind as a site of societal and political change is worth noting. His view that there is a relationship between a reinvigorated social project and its formulation ‘in the mind’ returns us to the question of change and its relationship to culture. Any such change would be dependent on material factors but also shaped and nudged forward by those cultural forms that contribute to the life of the mind, the opaque site of a reimagined political community which for the moment remains in the shadow of three revolutions: the war of independence, 1988 and the Arab Spring (McDougall, this volume).

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Cultural Mediations and Contestation: Algeria’s Cultural Public Spheres For Carroll, ‘all of the “natural” bases for nationalism can be shown to be in fact artificial cultural constructs, images and figures of homogeneity, mechanisms to produce collective identification’ (2000: 118). To this one could add that images and figures can equally be used to contest such processes of collective identification even if, paradoxically, they contribute to them. Hegemonic processes can lead to counter-publics that, counterintuitively, draw upon the same dominant narrative and inflect it with specific, and at times dissonant, social memories and cultural legacies. These counter-publics can take different forms, can be present within public spaces (protest marches, street dance, sporting events) and, increasingly, be informed by images and ideas that are transnational and digitally mediated by the internet. Algeria’s political system does not map on to Habermas’s notion of the public sphere as productive of bourgeois democracy but within Algeria there is critical debate and communicative exchange distinct from positions and perspectives promulgated by the state. Habermas distinguishes between the literary public sphere and the political public sphere which, though not separate from one another, have functions that diverge in a significant manner (1989 [1962]). He argues that the literary public sphere, which includes philosophical reflection, moves at a different pace to that of the rapid circulation of political discourse, yet serves to inform it with the ballast of considered thought and the modifying complexities and opacities of literature that can provoke forms of dialogical culture. Like others, such as McGuigan (2005), we can reframe Habermas’s notion of the literary public sphere as a cultural public sphere in order to take cinema and other visual art forms and practices into account. But can we transpose this into an Algerian setting? Recent work on the question of the public sphere in the Middle East and North Africa (Hoexter et al., 2002; Shami, 2009) suggests that we can, at least as an analytical framework. As Benkhaled and Vince argue (this volume), Algeria has seen the ‘politicization of culture, but also the “culturalization” of politics – that is to say, political debate after 1962 was largely only possible through debates about culture’. As such, cultural forms of production and diffusion generate spaces within which Algerians can reflect upon the problems of daily life within the frame of the nation. In responding to the death of friends during Algeria’s dark years of the early 1990s, Assia Djebar imagines the corpse of a writer: ‘c’est autour de son corps enterré que s’entrecroisent et s’esquissent plusieurs

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Algéries’ (1995: 12).10 The view that several Algerias exist and, crucially, overlap is significant. Algeria is differentially constituted by a ‘field of rival representations, each claiming to articulate its “authenticity”’ (McDougall, 2006: 9), which can result in forms of closed identities.11 To better understand these apparently competing yet paradoxically complementary expressions of Algeria, Benkhaled and Vince (this volume) analyse these representations in terms of the coded performances of three identitarian mantles: the Arab/Muslim/FLN, the radical Islamist and a third composed of cultural pluralists/progressives (into which ‘Berbers’ and ‘feminists’ are subsumed). What they make clear is that exchange takes place across these identitarian positions within the public sphere. McDougall (this volume) notes that since the mid-1990s the Algerian state has ‘taken care to create plenty of “free” space for the channelling and dissipation of social and political energy’. There are a considerable number of political parties and a relatively free press that is Arabophone and Francophone. The Arabophone titles Echourouk, El-Khabar and En-Nahar have the largest circulation, followed by the Francophone El-Watan. There are over 30 TV channels including separate state-owned channels that broadcast in Arabic, French and Amazigh as well as private channels such as El Khabar TV (KBC), which broadcasts in Arabic; El Watan Al Djazairia (set up by the Islamist party HAMAS); and Berbère Télévision, which broadcasts in Amazigh and in French from Montreuil, France. These channels appear to maintain identitarian difference but, citing examples of news reports from El Khabar TV reproduced on kabylie-news.com, Benkhaled and Vince argue that these media outlets should not be seen as representative of mutually exclusive identities and that there is more exchange among them than one might suppose. In addition, the diversity of materials that form a contemporary ‘idea’ of Algeria is supplemented by forms of transnationalism that can undermine the centripetal dynamic of the nation state paradigm. Algeria is open to the world through satellite dishes that transmit religious programmes and news channels from the Saudi peninsula, football from Spain, French films, US soap operas – transversal connections that produce a diverse and complex ‘mediascape’ (Hargreaves and Mattelart, 2012: 155). The impact The published English translation reads: ‘it is around his buried body that several different Algerias are being sketched out’ (Djebar, 2000: 14). The translators neglect ‘s’entrecroisent’; an alternative, full translation reads ‘it is around his buried body that several Algerias overlap and take shape’. 11 For an analysis of these closed identities see Rahal’s productive use of the term entre-soi (2012). 10

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has been significant. Hadj-Moussa argues that as a result of satellite dishes (first introduced in the early 1980s), ‘ossified history no longer seems to have a grip on the public imagination’ (2009: 287). And, while the building blocks of the official national narrative remain as the primary materials used to construct what Vince calls ‘conformist counter-history’ (2015: 246), the general field of cultural and historical references has expanded greatly due to new media facilitated by the internet. As Hecking details in her chapter, young people watch YouTube video clips of hip-hop artists from the Bronx and kung fu classics from the 1970s, they identify with body-based youth cultures and give public, performative expression to these transnational youth cultures. Hecking’s examples reveal the complexity of such cultural movements that become manifest across local, regional, national and transnational points of exchange and can act as spurs to excel at self-performance (and this is also true of sport) or to form new cultural associations. In fact, cultural associations have provided a stage for debate and exchange since the 1990s when, paradoxically, many thousands of local associations were established across Algeria. With more than 93,000 civil associations or NGOs registered in 2012, Algeria has more associations than any other country of the Arab world, ranging from cultural heritage, sport and social needs, to the kinds of village associations that pursue older forms of social organization by modern means (see Northey, this volume, and, on village associations, Scheele, 2009). Northey argues that cultural heritage associations have contributed to a widening understanding of Algeria’s diverse cultural ecology, in particular at the local level, and, in doing so, have created a space where negotiation and compromise can take place between association representatives and representatives of the wilaya [prefecture] in pursuit of the association’s goals. While we need to maintain a distinction between cultural public sphere, civil society organizations and public space, many of these associations make a claim to public space. Northey provides the example of the annual heritage walk organized by the Bel Horizon association in Oran that moves from the city’s historical centre up to the Spanish Fort of Santa Cruz and in doing so not only reclaims a hillside once occupied by armed Islamist groups but also challenges a government that has neglected the city’s cultural patrimony. In 2011, the event attracted over 20,000 participants, mainly young people, and spectacularly manifested on a grand scale the kinds of activities that take place throughout Algeria on a reduced scale when groups of youths take to particular parts of a city to practice parkour, street dance or capoeira (see Hecking, this volume), or where football spectators chant or sing their frustration with the conditions of everyday life

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or lay claim to a Berberist identitarian position (see Langlois and Dine, this volume).12 The importance of space to political expression can also be seen in such events as the first public congress organized by the PAGS, which took place in the 5 Juillet [5 July] sports stadium in December 1990 and was marked by political speeches and debate but also song, poetry readings and contributions from left-wing artists (Rahal, this volume). Public visibility marks all of these events. A form of visibility that seeks, and by that very demand effectively obtains, a place within the public sphere. The impact of these associations on the construction of civil society in Algeria cannot be underestimated yet while village associations are sometimes viewed as representing local needs, the view is not always shared by others within the community (Scheele, 2009). And while youth groups and sporting and cultural associations may prove to be training grounds for debate and collective action, they have not combined to act as conduits for a more general social or political movement, as demonstrated by the lack of traction obtained by the Coordination nationale pour le changement et la démocratie (CNCD, National Coordination for Change and Democracy) – a coalition of political parties and associations that formed to oppose the political regime in 2011. The demonstrations they held in Algiers in February and April of that year were poorly supported. The expression of dissent is dispersed and fragmented rather than concentrated within a broad-based political movement. Social memories and the material conditions of contemporary artistic production are central to Gillet’s analysis of the limits of dissent within the visual arts in Algeria. The artists she interviewed are less inclined to declare a position on what Algeria should be, tending instead towards ambiguities and references that may serve to undermine the certainties of state narratives. For Gillet (this volume), ‘the expression of artistic dissent takes place in a more diffuse, individualized form that is outside of an institutional frame (such as a political party) without preventing the artist from identifying with, and supporting, social issues’. The artistic assertion of an independent claim to the past and its archives – even if it involves recycling images and tropes common to the official narrative – could be said to be a dissonant mode of artistic autonomy that offers its own version of Algeria. One that could be described as consensual criticism.13 Similarly, many Algerian writers have given Algeria figure and shape through allegory and metaphor since at least the early 1950s. Their works Of course, football stadia, though open to the public, are constrained, designated spaces that are highly gendered and more acceptable, if not welcome, sites of public expressions of dissatisfaction. 13 I am grateful to Natalya Vince for her comments on this. 12

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have undercut mythological narratives through counter-myths, ambiguities and opacities (see Hiddleston, 2016). Treacy (this volume) writes that contemporary Algerian politics – embodied by the frail, wheelchair-bound, Bouteflika – is now so moribund that writers, such as Mustafa Benfodil, have become increasingly vocal in their criticism of the state. Benfodil, also a journalist with El Watan, was, for example, a co-signatory of the ‘Manifeste pour une contre-élection’ in 2014 along with other actors from civil society. Treacy writes that ‘Existing narratives and the national semantic structure need changing and art is identified as the most effective way to achieve a collective, utopian reimagining of Algerian society’. Where Treacy demonstrates that Francophone writers – such as Benfodil and Kamel Daoud – counter nationalist myth through the poetic agency of national allegory, Olivia Harrison’s chapter allows us to extend this reading through the work of the Arabophone writer Ahlam Mosteghanemi, which offers a satire of national allegory re-situated within a transnational setting. Harrison then pursues the argument for a transcolonial poetics through close readings of works by Salim Bachi, Anouar Benmalek, Yasmina Khadra and Rachid Boudjedra, arguing that while their texts reflect on the national, they also offer expressions of ‘solidarity with heterogeneous struggles across the colonized and formerly colonized world’.14 While there has always been a transnational dimension to Algerian cultural production and nationalism, it has become even more prominent with the demise of state control of the publishing and film industries in the late 1980s. The current vitality of cultural production and dissemination depends upon a range of funding sources, local and national press and the material infrastructure of bookshops, publishers, city libraries, book fairs, film festivals and internet access. Significant independent publishers based in Algeria include Casbah, Chihab, Apic, Barzakh, Sédia-Alpha Editions and Aden – the latter a publishing house founded in France by an expatriate Algerian, Lazhar Nahal, in 2002 and which now has a base in Algiers. Of these, Barzakh has been widely praised internationally. Founded in 2000 by Selma Hellal and Sofiane Hadjadj, it publishes in French and in Arabic and has established commercial partnerships with Actes Sud in France and Dar El Jadeed in Lebanon. In their ‘Edito’ of October 2012, the founders write that in founding the press they wanted to escape from a Manichean position of having to choose between two camps (state and Islamism) and sought a For other transnational perspectives see Edwige Tamalet Talbayev’s The Transcontinental Maghreb: Francophone Literature across the Mediterranean (2017) and Jane Hiddleston, Writing After Postcolonialism. Francophone North African Literature in Transition (2017). 14

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third way: ‘Faire entendre des voix “littéraires”, revenait à essayer de frayer un troisième chemin, celui de l’incertitude, de la nuance, de la complexité’.15 In 2010 the Principal Prince Claus Award, worth €100,000, was awarded to Barzakh. The citation praised the press for ‘giving concrete form to Algeria’s voices, for opening up a much-needed space for critical reflection on Algerian realities, for building a bridge connecting different languages and cultures, and for creatively breaking through the threatening cultural isolation of the country’. It’s clear that the award was not simply about production values and literary quality but was also a view that links cultural expression to ‘development’.16 European finance and, more specifically, EU funding has also begun to have a modest impact on cultural and heritage organizations in Algeria (see Northey) and such funding is clearly driven by similar objectives. International finance has been critical to the production of a number of Algerian films. Vince and Benkhaled (this volume) argue that overseas funding can often privilege certain kinds of representation of Algeria over others. Benkhaled (2016) goes further to argue that recent films – such as Viva Laldjérie (dir. Nadir Moknèche, 2003) – offer a distorted view of Algeria because international funding bodies based in France stipulate French language requirements and are more likely to support films that commodify Algeria as ‘exotic’ or promote secular viewpoints in order to appeal to Western tastes. When such films are read as ‘authentic’ representations of Algeria by scholars, Benkhaled cautions, there is a risk of distorting reality through an externally constructed prism based on, but also perpetuating, new iterations of stock orientalist or exoticist images of Algeria. Benkhaled’s corrective returns us to the question of what constitutes an ‘authentic’ image of Algeria. Drawing upon the analytical frame of a cultural public sphere, it can be argued that while no one image or text captures the ‘real’ Algeria, it is through an analysis of the diversity, complementarity and contrast of representations (in both the cultural and political sense of the word) circulating within Algeria’s cultural public sphere that we come to form an idea of contemporary Algeria. Here are two examples. The first is Merzak Allouache’s film Le Repenti (2012) that received support from TV5 Monde, Fonds Sud Cinéma and the Centre National de la Cinématographie in France. Here international capital facilitates a film that deals with a key ‘To allow “literary” voices to be heard was to create a third way, one of uncertainty, nuance and complexity’. The ‘Edito’ of October 2012 was published on Barzakh’s website, which has since been reconstructed and no longer includes the ‘Edito’. 16 I cite this from the Prince Clause Award overview available at http://www. princeclausfund.org/en/programmes/awards (consulted on 15 April 2016). 15

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national question – the state’s use of amnesties to bring about an end to conflict – and gives narrative figure to the abstractions of justice and truth that are freighted with issues of repentance and grief. The film can be read and critiqued in its own right. It can also be read in conjunction with other contributions to this critical topic, such as Barzakh’s publication of Aspects de la repentance (2012) edited by Ismaël-Sélim Khaznadar or the 2013 debate co-organized by Barzakh and El Watan on the instrument of amnesty and political practices of repentance.17 While the manifest topic was the issue of repentance in the case of France and Algeria, the relevance of the debate to Algeria in the wake of the amnesties proposed under the Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation was implicit. To this we could add Maïssa Bey’s novel Puisque mon cœur est mort (L’Aube, 2010) and its powerful indictment of the peace process. The documentary Contre-pouvoir (Bensmaïl, 2015) provides a second example. The film captures discussions that take place in the offices of the newspaper El Watan in the run-up to the presidential elections of 2014. The documentary offers an example of a more disparate international source of funding that includes France 24, Berbère TV, Media Part, the Institut de Recherche et d’Etudes Méditerranée Moyen-Orient (iReMMO) and the Ligue des Droits de l’Homme as well as contributions from individual donors, many of whom form part of Algeria’s diaspora.18 The title of the film brings to mind Shami’s remark that current analysis of the public sphere focuses ‘on competing publics and on counter-publics’ that ‘form through, and in relation to, certain discourses, texts, performances, structures and institutions’ (2009, 33). In this respect, Contre-pouvoir includes images of Mustapha Benfodil protesting in the streets with fellow members of the contestatory group Bezzzef, and of journalists debating the state of Algerian politics and how best to represent it. The press release that accompanies the film includes an opinion piece by Kamel Daoud – who is also a journalist with Le Quotidien d’Oran – as well as a brief text by Bensmaïl in which he comments: ‘Il ne suffit pas de montrer les violences, ni de raconter l’actualité mais il y a un devoir à continuer d’enregistrer les évolutions, les réflexions, les batailles, d’enregistrer une démocratie qui peine à naître mais qui se construit malgré tout, jour après jour’.19 In some ways his views on democracy echo Kateb Yacine who, For details of the public debate that took place in Algiers in October 2013 see http://www.liberte-algerie.com/culture/un-concept-extremement-problematique-120625 (consulted on 30 November 2015). 18 A list of funding partners is available at http://www.contre-pouvoirs-le-film. com/partenaires.html (consulted on 20 February 2016). 19 ‘It’s not enough to show acts of violence, or to give an account of the present 17

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in the wake of October 1988, wrote that pluralism required ‘l’apprentissage quotidien de la démocratie’ [the daily apprenticeship of democracy] (1999: 356). These two films – Le Repenti and Contre-pouvoir – form but a small part of Algeria’s cultural cross-currents. Nonetheless, using the cultural public sphere as an analytical tool, we can situate, compare and contrast these films within broader cultural and political discourses in order to better understand the connections between nation and culture and how such links are forged out of everyday experiences both within and beyond Algeria. The agency and creativity of writers, film-makers, musicians, editors and journalists, the performances of street dancers in the streets of Algiers, the stunning success of Hassiba Boulmerka in the 1,500 metres at the World Championships in 1991 and again in 1995, the daily commitment to Algeria’s cultural heritage demonstrated by associations throughout Algeria are critical to the formation of Algeria’s cultural public spheres. And while it could be asked how transformative can debate be if it is confined to a small group of cultural and political activists with links to El Watan and Barzakh, the point to be made is that there are other such publics throughout Algeria. Drawing on the analytical framework of the cultural public sphere invites an analysis of the interrelationship of a range of cultural practices and forms and their common symbolic currency.

Algerias to Come Despite the ‘black decade’ of the 1990s, what emerges from this volume is a range of perspectives on Algeria that suggest reserves of ‘resilience’ (McDougall), a desire to get on with things but not necessarily to forget, to look for change but not at the cost of radical social upheaval. There is a keen awareness that now is a time of transition: there is the demographic certainty that the generation that founded its political legitimacy in the war of independence is passing away and the sociopolitical uncertainty about what, and who, is to come.20 The year 2015 was marked by the passing of two people who sought to give definition to modern Algeria: the writer and film-maker Assia Djebar died in Paris on 6 February and on 23 December Hocine Aït Ahmed – the last of the nine leaders of the FLN and leader of the Front des Forces Socialistes (FFS, Socialist Forces Front) – died in but there is a duty to persist in recording changes, thoughts, struggles and to record a nascent democracy which is, despite everything, taking shape, day after day’. 20 The recognition of imminent generational change is shared by all, including Bouteflika (McDougall, this volume; Vince, 2014: 221–22).

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Lausanne, Switzerland. Both had lived abroad for much of their lives and both were buried in their places of birth: Djebar in Cherchell and Aït Ahmed in Aït-Yahia. Through art and political action, both articulated ideas of an Algeria that would be more inclusive. Shami notes that ‘Publics are created through processes of inclusion but also of exclusion (of women, of minorities, of the handicapped, of refugees, of migrant workers, of youth – the list could go on)’ (2009, 33). What then of Algeria’s new communities? How will the state integrate into the body politic the 50,000 or so Chinese (some of whom we see constructing the new offices of El Watan in Contre-Pouvoir), or the unknown thousands of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa who have not managed to cross the Mediterranean, or the 20,000 or so Algerian Muslims who have converted to Christianity?21 These numbers are small, yet, as with Algeria’s diaspora, the members of these communities tell, and will come to tell, a story of Algeria that adds to its mix. Algeria is a society in which, like every other, the contours of change depend on transnational flows of capital; the price of a barrel of oil matters. Yet, the ideals of Islam and the revolutionary promise of the war of independence remain a common currency and primary points of reference for those who exchange ideas and imagine change. And if younger generations appear to remain outside of institutional politics it is not always a sign of indifference but can instead be a marker of individualism, productive of diverse perspectives and aspirations that may or may not be co-opted by multinational corporations – football clubs, sportswear manufacturers (see Dine and Hecking, this volume) – or by a state that recognizes its own moment of transition. The generation of the revolution is about to pass and the younger generations seek a vernacular that draws upon history, cultural references that are no longer simply national and social memories that encode a ‘still-believed-in future’ polity (McAllister). Dine’s chapter highlights how football has been a focus for youth-based anti-state mobilization since 1988 yet change has been slow. Nonetheless, the younger generations negotiate local solutions as the memory of the revolution of independence moves from lived experience to post-memory and from the eyewitness to the archive. The chapters in this volume suggest that what is called for is a revived social contract, a more inclusive Algerian narrative that would embrace those new fictions, recovered truths and public interventions that are already giving form to an uneasy present of a changing nation. On sub-Saharan migrants see Bozonnet (2016); on Algeria’s Chinese community see Souiah (2011); for an analysis of Muslim conversions to Christianity see Marzouki (2012). And see Langlois, this volume, on the ‘African turn’ in Algerian music. 21

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Works Cited Aït-Aoudia, Myriam. 2015. L’Expérience démocratique en Algérie (1988–1992). Apprentissages politiques et changement de régime. Paris: Presses de Sciences Po. Aït Saadi Bouras, Lydia. 2013. ‘L’histoire nationale algérienne à travers ses manuels scolaires d’histoire’. In Benoit Falaize, Charles Heimberg and Olivier Loubes (eds), L’École et la nation. Lyon: ENS Éditions: 445–53. Anderson, Benedict. 1991 [1983]. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. London and New York: Verso. Benkhaled, Walid. 2016. ‘Algerian Cinema between Commercial and Political Pressures: The Double Distortion’. Journal of African Cinemas 8.1: 87–101. Berger, Anne-Emmanuelle (ed.). 2002. Algeria in Others’ Languages. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Bonn, Charles, and Farida Boualit (eds). 1999. Paysages littéraires algériens des années 90: témoigner d’une tragédie? Paris: L’Harmattan. Bozonnet, Charlotte. 2016. ‘Les invisibles d’Algérie, naufragés sur la route de l’Europe’, Le Monde, 12 January. Available at http://www.lemonde.fr/ international/article/2016/01/12/migrants-subsahariens-les-invisibles-dalgerie_4846086_3210.html#rJr1kuwBzOw1CUeC.99 (consulted on 12 February 2016). Calhoun, Craig. 1993. ‘Civil Society and the Public Sphere’. Public Culture 5: 267–80. Carroll, David. 2000. ‘The Aesthetics of Nationalism and the Limits of Culture’. In Salim Kemal and Ivan Gaskell (eds), Politics and Aesthetics in the Arts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 112–39. Chauvin, Luc. 2011. ‘Flou, limites et expérience fragile de l’identité dans les productions culturelles des jeunes algérien/nes’. MA dissertation: University of Lyon 2. Clavin, Patricia. 2005. ‘Defining Transnationalism’. Contemporary European History 14.4: 421–39. Collingwood, R. G. 1961 [1946]. The Idea of History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Culler, Jonathan. 1999. ‘Anderson and the Novel’. Diacritics 29.4: 19–39. Davis, Muriam Haleh, and Thomas Serres. 2013. ‘Political Contestation in Algeria: Between Postcolonial Legacies and the Arab Spring’. Middle East Critique 22.2: 99–112. Djebar, Assia. 1995. Le Blanc de l’Algérie. Paris: Albin Michel. ——. 2000. Algerian White. Trans. by David Kelly and Marjolijn de Jager. New York: Seven Stories Press. Dobie, Madeleine. 2003. ‘Francophone Studies and the Linguistic Diversity of

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the Maghreb’. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 21.1–2: 32–40. Entelis, John P. 1997. ‘Political Islam in the Maghreb’. In John P. Entelis (ed.), Islam, Democracy, and the State in North Africa. Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN. Indiana University Press: 43–74. Evans, Martin, and John Phillips. 2008. Algeria: Anger of the Dispossessed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Fisher, Dominique D. 2007. Écrire l’urgence: Assia Djebar et Tahar Djaout. Paris: L’Harmattan. Forde, Joseph. 2016. ‘Rethinking Urgence: Algerian Francophone Literature after the “Décennie Noire”’. Francosphères 5.1: 45–65. Hachemaoui, Mohammed. 2013. Clientélisme et patronage dans l’Algérie ­contemporaine. Paris and Aix-en-Provence: Éditions Karthala and IREMAM. Hadj-Moussa, Ratiba. 2009. ‘Seeking Liberty and Constructing Identities: Algerian Publics and Satellite Television’. In Seteney Shami (ed.). Publics, Politics and Participation: Locating the Public Sphere in the Middle East and North Africa. New York: Social Science Research Council: 263–98. Harrison, Nicholas. 2003. Postcolonial Criticism: History, Theory, and the Work of Fiction. Cambridge: Polity. Habermas, Jürgen. 1989 [1962]. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Trans. by T. Burger and F. Lawrence. Cambridge: Polity Press. Hargreaves, Alec G. 2002. ‘France and Algeria, 1962–2002: Turning the Page?’ Modern & Contemporary France 10.4: 445–47. Hargreaves, Alec G., and Tristan Mattelart. 2012. ‘Médias et migrations dans le bassin méditerranéen. L’internationalisation des savoirs?’ Questions de communication 21: 145–56. Hiddleston, Jane. 2006. Assia Djebar: Out of Africa. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. ——. 2016. ‘“On peut apprendre de la literature à se méfier”: Writing and Doubt in the Contemporary Algerian Novel’. Contemporary French and Francophone Studies 20.1: 58–66. ——. 2017. Writing After Postcolonialism. Francophone North African Literature in Transition. London: Bloomsbury. Hill, J. N. C. 2009. ‘Challenging the Failed State Thesis: IMF and World Bank Intervention and the Algerian Civil War’. Civil Wars 11.1: 39–56. Hoexter, Miriam, Shmuel Eisenstadt and Nehemia Levitzion (eds). 2002. The Public Sphere in Muslim Societies. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Kateb, Yacine. 1999. Minuit passé de douze heures. Écrits journalistiques 1947–1989. Paris: Seuil.

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Kessous, Naaman, Christine Margerrison and Andy Stafford (eds). 2009. Algérie: vers le cinquantenaire de l’Indépendance: regards critiques. Paris: L’Harmattan. Kumar, T. Vijay. 2007. ‘“Postcolonial” Describes You as Negative’. Interventions 9.1: 99–105. Le Sueur, James D. 2010. Algeria since 1989: Between Terror and Democracy. New York and London: Zed Books. Lionnet, Françoise, and Shu Mei Shih (eds). 2005. Minor Transnationalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Lorcin, Patricia (ed.). 2006. Algeria and France, 1800–2000: Identity, Memory, Nostalgia. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. McAllister, Edward. 2013. ‘Immunity to the Arab Spring? Fear, Fatigue and Fragmentation in Algeria’. New Middle Eastern Studies 3. Online journal available at http://www.brismes.ac.uk/nmes/archives/1048 (consulted on 15 March 2016). McDougall, James. 2006. History and the Culture of Nationalism in Algeria. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McGonagle, Joseph, and Edward Welch. 2013. Contesting Views: The Visual Economy of France and Algeria. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. McGuigan, Jim. 2005. ‘The Cultural Public Sphere’. European Journal of Cultural Studies 8: 427–43. Mallinder, Louise. 2008. Amnesty, Human Rights and Political Transitions. Bridging the Peace and Justice Divide. Oxford and Portland, OR: Hart Publishing. Martinez, Luis. 2010. Violence de la rente pétrolière. Algérie, Libye, Irak. Paris: Presses de Sciences Po. Marzouki, Nadia. 2012. ‘Conversion as Statelessness: A Study of Contemporary Algerian Conversions to Evangelical Christianity’. Middle East Law and Governance 4: 69–105. Mokhtari, Rachid. 2002. La Graphie de l’horreur. Essai sur la littérature algérienne (1990–2000). Algiers: Chihab Éditions. Roberts, Hugh. 2003. The Battlefield. Algeria 1988–2002: Studies in a Broken Polity. London and New York: Verso. Rosello, Mireille. 2007. ‘Les tranches circulaires de la grande pastèque: images de l’Algérie’. Expressions Maghrébines 6.1: 1–18. Sadi, Nabila, and Mohand Akli Salhi. 2016. ‘Le Roman Maghrébin en Berbère’. Contemporary French and Francophone Studies 20.1: 27–36. Scheele, Judith. 2009. Village Matters: Knowledge, Politics and Community in Kabylia, Algeria. Oxford: James Curry. Shami, Seteney (ed.). 2009. Publics, Politics and Participation: Locating the Public Sphere in the Middle East and North Africa. New York: Social Science Research Council.

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Shepard, Todd. 2006. The Invention of Decolonization: The Algerian War and the Remaking of France. Ithaca, NY and London. Cornell University Press. Silverstein, Paul A. 2004. Algeria in France: Transpolitics, Race and Nation. Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press. Souiah, Farida. 2011. ‘L’Algérie made by China’. Méditerranée 116: Online journal, available at http://mediterranee.revues.org/5468 (consulted on 6 April 2016). Tamalet Talbayev, Edwige. 2017. The Transcontinental Maghreb: Francophone Literature across the Mediterranean. New York: Fordham University Press. Vince, Natalya. 2015. Our Fighting Sisters. Nation, Memory and Gender in Algeria, 1954–2012. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Nation, State and Society

In the Shadow of Revolution James McDougall

In the Shadow of Revolution

On 13 September 2015, the man widely believed to be the real centre of power in Algeria officially left office. General Mohamed ‘Toufik’ Mediène, sometimes nicknamed rabb dzair [the lord of Algeria], the 76-year-old head of the country’s intelligence and security apparatus – never seen in public, rarely glimpsed in unverified photographs, the incarnation of the opaque, unaccountable, faceless form of le pouvoir – had retired, ‘relieved of his functions’ in the terse formulation of a presidential communiqué as reported in the press. Whether he left the office he had occupied unchallenged for 25 years of his own choosing or under pressure from the coterie around the ailing 78-year-old President Abdelaziz Bouteflika was unclear – and relatively unimportant. The move could have been significant. ‘Toufik’ was the architect of the Département du Renseignement et de la Sécurité (DRS, Military Intelligence Services), the iron core of the ‘deep’ state that had waged its merciless war on, and of, terror through the 1990s and had become indispensable, untouchable, all but unnameable, known to every Algerian and answerable to no one. Observers of Algeria and human rights activists both in the country and abroad had long recognized that any meaningful move towards more democratic, accountable and law-bound government must necessarily pass through the removal of the DRS from the centre of the state and its subordination to legal oversight; doubtless for their own factional reasons, as well as or more than on principle, Algerian political party leaders regularly demanded the dismantling, or at least the thorough ‘restructuring’, 27

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of the political police.1 In 2015, and for several years before, the rumour mill of the Algerian media was regularly fed with accounts of the ongoing tussle between the presidency and the DRS, and in the course of the summer of 2015 the agency did indeed see its prerogatives reduced, transferred to elements of the army, in what some saw as a significant clipping of the sharpclawed secret services’ wings. In the context of a long-deferred ‘transition’ away from Algeria’s apparently calcified authoritarianism, the retirement of Toufik might indeed have signalled a real departure, ‘la fin d’une époque’ [the end of an epoch] (Ouali, 2015), ‘un véritable séisme dans la vie politique nationale’ [an earthquake in the nation’s political life] (Mesbah, 2015).2 But there was no such transition. The appointment of Toufik’s successor, Major-General (retired) Athmane ‘Bachir’ Tartag, previously ‘number two’ in the DRS and most recently, since his earlier retirement from the military, in a holding position as a counsellor to the presidency, was a strong signal of continuity. Tartag, like Toufik, was a career soldier recruited into the Boumediene-era Sécurité Militaire and trained by the KGB in the 1970s. During the 1990s, he commanded the notorious Centre Principal Militaire d’Investigation (CPMI, Principal Military Investigation Centre) at Ben Aknoun in the south-western suburbs of Algiers, a detention centre nominally charged with combating Islamist influence in the army, but by most accounts one of the DRS’s main centres of torture and extrajudicial killing, where civilian suspects and soldiers were held, interrogated and murdered (Algeria-Watch and Salah-Eddine Sidhoum, 2003). What distinguished Tartag from Toufik was simply the fact that he was a decade or so younger, a child during the struggle for independence (which Toufik apparently joined, as a 22-year-old, in 1961), and a student in the early 1970s when he responded to Boumediene’s appeal for graduates to enlist in the army. Like Toufik, Tartag rose through the ranks in the mid-1980s and found himself in a critical position of power in 1990 (‘Athmane Tartag’, 2014; Mesbah, 2015). Like Toufik, he would be a relentless ‘eradicator’ and a leading practitioner of the policy of ‘the management of society by violence’.3 Hardly This was particularly the case of Amar Saïdani, secretary general of the FLN since 2013, whose sorties against the DRS were widely seen as reactions to the agency’s own (no doubt equally opportunistic) widely mediatized investigations into corruption involving some of those close to Bouteflika, especially the president’s younger brother Saïd, a close ally and patron of Saïdani. 2 Other well-placed observers suggested that Toufik’s official departure was, in reality, no such thing, but merely a retirement further behind the scenes. 3 The phrase is that of a former minister in the governments of 1988–90. Interview, Algiers, 7 June 2007. 1

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signalling a generational transition, even less did this suggest an institutional change or even a modification of policy. But the change from Toufik to Tartag was another small instance of the slow, inexorable passing away of the generation born in the late 1930s, the generation of the revolution, of the youthful, energetic and forward-looking men of 50 years ago, of whom Bouteflika himself now remained the last, visibly fading, representative, clinging to power as to life, by his fingertips. The disarmingly insignificant removal, or retirement, of Toufik, and his replacement by a man whom Bouteflika, on assuming his first mandate in 1999, had himself pushed into retirement for having played an especially brutal role in the ‘dirty war’ of the 1990s, who had more recently shown himself less than adroit in handling the hostage crisis at the In Amenas gas facility in the Sahara in January 2013 (Black, 2015)4 and who had been returned to office by the factional manoeuvres of the president’s brother, was also, however, a sign of other changes. 5 It illustrated the continuity of the ‘fierce state’, the degree to which Boumediene’s desire, after 1965, to create institutions capable of outliving personalities, had been realized, at least in respect of the secret services and the informal powers around the presidency that had been at the core of the state since Boumediene’s time. But it also illustrated their state of disintegration, their ageing, along with the men who ran them, and their reduction, at the very centre of power, from instruments intended to serve the construction of a strong state that would make its people strong, to bickering fiefdoms, instruments of cliques and coteries serving to divide the spoils of the state among themselves.6 Le  pouvoir, intended by the wartime FLN, then by Ben Bella On In Amenas, see Chrisafis et al. (2013). Having formerly been Toufik’s ‘right-hand man’, in the drawn-out succession struggle from 2011 onwards, Tartag appears to have returned to favour, to a post at the presidency and then to the direction of the DRS, through Saïd Bouteflika’s attempt to counter the DRS and shore up his own position at the head of the ‘presidential clan’. 6 The great exception to this pattern, the Algerian Foreign Ministry and its diplomatic corps is all the more remarkable in this context. Despite the protracted impasse in domestic politics, it was able, in 2011–2014, to reposition Algeria once again as a major arbiter in the region, between the collapse of Libya, the near-collapse of Mali and the troubled transition in Tunisia. Since the wartime establishment of the FLN’s foreign relations, skilled diplomacy abroad has been as consistent a characteristic of Algeria’s political class as has factional sclerosis at home. On the origins and importance of Algeria’s foreign relations during and immediately after the war of independence, see Connelly (2002); Byrne (2016). 4 5

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and Boumediene, and still by Chadli and at least some of those around him, to generate and direct energy into the construction of a progressive and prosperous society under its firm but beneficent guidance, had collapsed into a black hole, sucking resources, opportunities and the very future of the country into itself. American diplomats in 2007 characterized the regime as ‘fragile in ways it has not been before, plagued by a lack of vision, unprecedented levels of corruption and rumblings of division in the military […] a government drifting and groping for a way forward’. In 2009 they wrote of the system as ‘a series of largely incompetent institutions […] spinning their wheels independently, with nothing to connect the dots’ (‘Ailing and Fragile’, 2007; ‘Bouteflika’s Army’, 2009).7 By 2015, even the terrible, omnipotent DRS had seemingly become a frayed, thinning institution (Rabia, 2015).8 At the centre of le pouvoir as throughout the political system, with its ramifying party clientelism, its proliferation of independent local candidates and their local means of patronage, and throughout the day-to-day economy from which many, perhaps most, Algerians earned their livelihood, it was the ‘informal sector’ rather than ostensible institutions that now held sway. And while, again ever since the wartime FLN, the ‘informal’, personal and factional, interior realities of the state had always had primacy over its formal, impersonal and constitutional external appearance, that informality now worked less through the institutionalized forms of the ‘shadow cabinet’, the departments of the presidency and the DRS than in personal cliques divorced from any real arm of the state, no more law-bound than the old primacy of informal politics had been, but without their stability and capacity for self-perpetuation. And this, at a time of regional turmoil, with civil war on the country’s borders, an ailing president and an interminable, insoluble succession crisis, and suddenly falling oil and gas prices. The war See also McDougall (2007). I owe the image of le pouvoir as a ‘black hole’ to an Algerian colleague. Conversation in Algiers, May 2009. 8 The various sorties in the press, sometimes mutually vituperative, of former DRS officers Hichem Aboud and Mohamed Samraoui – both authors in the 1990s of books denouncing the state’s complicity in massacres of civilians, and both, from 2012, involved in factional politics once back in Algeria (Aboud campaigning against Saïd Bouteflika, while Samraoui was allegedly – an allegation he denied – ‘recuperated’ by Bouteflika’s faction) – illustrated the extent to which the service’s most prominent former dissidents, neither of whom denied that they subsequently remained in touch with their former colleagues, had become part of the game around the succession crisis, inconceivable a decade earlier, though both were then already at odds over their respective credentials. 7

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that tore Algeria apart in the last ten years of the twentieth century had been over for more than a decade. Algeria was as far from the resolution of its conflicts as it had ever been.

A Desert in Springtime? As Algeria celebrated 50 years of independence in 2012, the wave of protest and change engulfing the Arab world from Tunisia to Syria ironically seemed to have bypassed the region’s most iconically revolutionary nation. In December 2010 and January 2011, at the same time as the first protests began against the Ben Ali regime in Tunisia, after the self-immolation of the young street trader Mohamed Bouazizi, similar protests erupted in Algeria, and for similar reasons. A police crackdown on unlicensed pavement trading in Bab el-Oued, and the lifting of subsidies that caused a spike in the prices of essential commodities, provoked what became known as the zzit wa sukkar [oil and sugar] riots. Such popular protests had been common in the assertive public spaces of Algeria – unlike its more tightly compressed neighbour – for a decade already. And, in terrible counterpoint to the capacity for collective action in some instances, dozens of Algerians, whose names would go mostly unnoticed by the outside world, had similarly burned themselves, sometimes to death, in desperate, isolated protest outside local offices of the state. More would do so in the first months of 2011, in a wave of dramatic protests that would continue sporadically for the next three years.9 But by November 2011, while Egyptians were protesting against the post-Mubarak military authorities’ attempt to maintain the unaccountability of the army relative to the new civilian government that was expected to emerge from the elections that were about to begin, while Tunisia witnessed the swearing-in of a new constitutional assembly and Islamists and leftists entered a coalition government, and while elections in Morocco following that country’s constitutional revision saw the emergence of the Islamist PJD as the largest party, in Algeria, life carried on as normal. In Tizi Ouzou, a demonstration by the National Federation of Retired Workers brought pensioners from villages all over Kabylia to stage a sit-in at the regional government office, with placards reading ‘We want our rights’ and ‘No to poverty’. In Sidi Bel Abbès, residents of the Sidi Amar shantytown put up Self-immolations in Algeria were reported as early as May 2004. A list was compiled on Wikipedia of 45 cases reported in the press between January and October 2011. See, for example, ‘2011 Algerian Self-immolations’ (n.d.).; ‘Voyage dans l’Algérie des immolés’ (2012); ‘Un homme d’une trentaine d’années’ (2014); ‘Chômeurs, enseignants’ (2014). 9

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roadblocks and stopped the traffic for several hours, demanding that the state take action to rehouse them. In Boumerdès, university students went on indefinite strike against the expulsion of their activist peers. In Mostaghanem, a young man shot by police lay in a coma, and other young men rioted in protest. Elsewhere, and all that month, other roads were closed by inhabitants of other underserved peripheral housing projects, other students protested in other universities, other workers went on hunger strike, other young people confronted other policemen and rioted in other towns … (Tighilt, 2012; Alim, 2012; Ouahab, 2011; ‘Boumerdès: les étudiants’, 2011; ‘Boumerdès: la RN24’, 2011; ‘Draa el Mizan’, 2011). In the context of the Arab Spring, Algeria seemed to have been left in the shade – and as the Spring withered and turned sour, with counter-revolution and civil war overwhelming democratic aspiration in Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Syria, Algerians increasingly agreed with regime spokesmen that they were best spared the tumult. But it would be better to explain what was happening, what would and would not happen, by recognizing that Algeria – which, as ever, had its share of dramatic events in and after 2011–2012 – was less in the shade of its neighbours’ history than in the shadow of three revolutions: the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings of 2011, and what they were thought to portend for the region (which, in Algeria, was earlier seen more pessimistically than elsewhere), for sure, but also and more importantly Algeria’s own upheaval of 1988–1990, which ended the era of the single party there earlier than in other Arab states, and, still fundamentally, the inheritances of the founding revolution of 1954–1962. It was from their shadows, in a rather darker sense, that Algeria’s contemporary history was, and ordinary Algerians were, struggling to emerge. The seemingly perverse ‘normality’ of Algeria in 2011–2012, and the absence of any more substantial transition at the departure of Toufik three years later, indicated not an absence of change, but both a conjunctural relation of social and political forces, and longer-term historical dynamics at work, the cumulative effect of which was recognition that there were good reasons, in the Arab world’s new revolutionary moment, not to have a new revolution in Algeria. To be sure, demonstrators in Algiers in January and February 2011 echoed the spirit of others in Tunis and Cairo with the slogan ‘Boutef dégage’ [Boutef get out]. Bouteflika had been in power for a much shorter time than Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia, let alone Muammar Gaddafi or Hosni Mubarak, but was at least physically not unlike the other ageing presidential incumbents in the region, whose departure had suddenly become the focus of regional aspirations for social and political change. At 74 years of age and suffering for years from an illness that visibly (on the rare occasions when he

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was visible) verged on incapacitation, Bouteflika’s long and tenacious decline mirrored that of the revolutionary generation as a whole. His clinging to power, however, was evidence less of his own wilful tenacity than of the general impasse at the summit of the state, the resilience of le pouvoir in the wake of the civil war, but also its incapacity to imagine the resolution of an unavoidable, impending generational change. As Algerian political sociologist Nacer Djabi observed, it was the whole ‘tab jnanou generation’ – the generation whose time was done, in Bouteflika’s own words – not just Bouteflika himself, that needed ‘to organize its departure’, but seemed incapable of doing so (Cherfaoui, 2011; Meddi, 2012).10 Bouteflika’s entrenchment in the presidency was the most obvious sign of this incapacity to chart a course to a managed transition: the constitutional amendment of 12 November 2008 allowed the incumbent a third mandate, reversing the provision of the 1997 constitution that had fixed a limit of two five-year terms to the office. The two subsequent electoral campaigns were notable only for the political class’s failure to use them as opportunities to address the country’s systemic malaise.11 In place of open, public politics, Algerians had only the unedifying theatre, played out via the press and online, of the internal tussle within the regime. This, it was widely thought, was not simply a matter of the DRS versus the regular military and partisans of Bouteflika, as was sometimes reported, but also a function of splits within the DRS, between factions among generals, and their respective business interests and party political allies or mouthpieces: corruption scandals, imprisonments and cabinet reshuffles were all decoded for evidence of the changing configuration of influence.12 If le pouvoir had become a fragmented, For a fuller exploration see Djabi (2012). The expression tab jnanou – literally ‘its garden has ripened’ – refers to something having passed its time. Bouteflika used the phrase in a widely commented speech in Sétif on 8 May 2012, when he said, to general surprise, ‘Jili tab jnanu, tab jnanu, tab jnanu’ [The time of my generation is done, done, done]. 11 Presidential elections were held in September 1999, April 2004, April 2009 and April 2014. 12 This had been the case at least since 2004, when Ali Benflis, the FLN’s secretary-general and Bouteflika’s 1999 campaign manager, ran against his former patron with support from the army chief of staff Mohamed Lamari and others. The campaign was especially acrimonious, and led to a hard-fought split in the FLN, which by 2009 had been brought back into line by supporters of Bouteflika. Other notable incidents included the assassination, on 25 February 2010, of director-general of the sûreté nationale (DGSN, the national police force or aman al-watani) Ali Tounsi, at his office in the Algiers police headquarters, by one of his colleagues, Chouaib Oultache, who was jailed in November 2011 10

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polycentric system, this was in part because of an at least limited generational shift: it was no longer under the sway of the janviéristes, the putschist generals of January 1992 who, with the exception, as yet, of ‘Toufik’ Mediène, were now all out of power, or relatively tamed and on their way out.13 Khaled Nezzar had already opted for retirement in 1994. Mohamed Lamari was pushed out in July 2004 and died in February 2012. Larbi Belkheir, sent into ambassadorial exile in Morocco in August 2005, died in January 2010. The especially opaque Ismail ‘Smain’ Lamari died in August 2007. In 2011, aside from Toufik, only two strongmen décideurs remained, both by negotiation with the president: Abdelmalek Guenaïzia, who went as ambassador to Switzerland in 1993, had returned at Bouteflika’s behest in 2005 to the post of minister-delegate for defence (in effect heading the defence ministry, the defence portfolio itself being held by the president), which he occupied until 2013; Mohamed Touati, known as ‘El-Mokh’ (‘the Brain’), had first retired in August 2005, and returned in 2011 as presidential advisor for security affairs, but would finally be removed in July 2014.14 Bouteflika, it seemed, had done away with all the men who had, reluctantly, brought him to power at the end in a corruption case along with several other DGSN cadres (having not yet faced trial for the murder); the removal in May 2010 of the long-serving and powerful Noureddine ‘Yezid’ Zerhouni, a Sécurité Militaire veteran, from the post of Interior Minister that he had occupied since 1999; and the spectacular corruption scandal at the national oil company SONATRACH that brought down Chekib Khelil, the former World Bank petroleum expert, SONATRACH president from 2001 to 2003 and Energy Minister from 1999 to 2010. 13 The palace coup d’état of January 1992 – which forced President Chadli Benjedid from office, ended the electoral process that the Islamist FIS was more than half-way to winning, and instituted a formal transitional régime under a Haut Comité d’Etat (HCE, High State Committee) fronted by civilian political personalities – was engineered by a group of army general officers: Khaled Nezzar (b. 1937), Minister of Defence; Mohamed Lamari (b. 1939), commanderin-chief of ground forces who became chief of the general staff in 1993; Belkheir (b. 1938), Interior Minister and Chadli’s principal chief of staff (chef de cabinet) with responsibility for security affairs; ‘Smaïn’ Lamari (b. 1941), a veteran of the Sécurité Militaire and head of its department of internal security and counterespionage; Mohamed Touati (b. 1936), an advisor to the general staff; and Abdelmalek Guenaïzia (b. 1936), chief of the general staff. Mohamed Mediene (b. 1939), had taken charge of the Sécurité Militaire, soon to be renamed DRS, in 1990. 14 In 2011, Touati would also be a member of the Bensalah commission established to consult on political reforms (an exercise that was merely window dressing; see further below).

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of the war.15 But their war, and the recomposition through it of a formalized party political system as the expression of their own, and the broader political class’s, factional interests, had nothing new to replace them; and nor, apparently, had Bouteflika any viable notion of how to replace himself.16 In the face of this impasse, Algeria’s 2011 protests were relatively muted. According to the Interior Ministry, protests and rioting between 5 and 10 January left five dead and perhaps eight hundred injured; one thousand arrests were made (‘Apaisement en Algérie’, 2011). In late January, the Coordination nationale pour le changement et la démocratie (CNCD, National Coordination for Change and Democracy), a coalition of political parties and some civil society groups, emerged to organize opposition to the regime, and demonstrations were held in Algiers in February and April. In response, the regime made symbolic gestures to buy time: the state of emergency, in force since 9 February 1992, was lifted on 24 February. A ‘reform process’ was announced in March, and a commission headed by the President of the Senate, Abdelkader Bensalah, held a flurry of highly publicized meetings with prominent personalities in May and June. Its report, submitted in July, was never published; draft laws on the press, elections and the regulation of political parties and civic associations, published that August, indicated, if anything, a regression of public liberties. There was also, inevitably, repression: while the state of emergency was lifted, a ban on public demonstrations in Algiers was declared instead, and the attempted marches in the capital on 22 January, 12 and 19 February, and in particular the students’ demonstration of 12 April, which almost succeeded in reaching the vicinity of the presidential palace at El Mouradia, were met with overwhelming numbers of police (‘Les étudiants forcent le passage’, 2011). At the same time, more significantly, the regime stepped up the strategy that had been followed since Bouteflika was met with endemic protests against economic conditions during the 2004 presidential campaign and throughout his second term: l’arrosage [splashing around] money from the state’s deep foreign currency reserves to buy acquiescence. In 2005, a development plan for the south amounting to some US$3.4 billion had been announced in areas where the 2004 re-election campaign had been especially hit by local rioting; in 2011, public sector salary hikes varied between 30 US diplomats noted as much in 2009, during Belkheir’s prolonged illness. See ‘Biology favors Bouteflika on election eve’, Thomas F. Daughton, Algiers to Secretary of State, 23 March 2009, 09ALGIERS278_a. Available at https:// wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/09ALGIERS278_a.html (consulted on May 20 2015). 16 On elite reproduction and (lack of) political system change, see Werenfels (2009). 15

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and 100 per cent (‘Malgré les augmentations’, 2011). The price rises in basic commodities – oil and sugar – were reversed. These responses effectively stifled the immediate dynamics of protest which, in other countries, were at that time gaining momentum.

The Logic of the Régime But this was not the whole story. The CNCD lacked popular traction, found no echo among the general population. Its few demonstrations were almost comically divided between inimical factions: during a rally at the highly symbolic Place du 1er mai [1 May Square], where in the 1930s communists and trade unionists had united against fascism, and which Algiers bus drivers still called chamaneuf (for the pre-1962 champ de manœuvres), the fiercely secularist Said Sadi, head of the political party Rassemblement pour la culture et la démocratie (RCD, Rally for Culture and Democracy), found himself awkwardly in company with the former Front Islamique du Salut (FIS, Islamic Salvation Front) firebrand Ali Benhaj; while supporters of the latter chanted ‘Ya Ali, ya Abbas, al-jabha rahi la bas!’ [Hey Ali (Benhaj), Abbasi (Madani), the Front’s still going strong], other demonstrators shouted ‘Boulayha barra!’ [‘“Beardie” (Islamist) out!’] (‘Un premier pas’, 2011). Algerians across the country were protesting, demonstrating, rioting and striking on an almost weekly basis, and had been doing so for years. But no broader, coalescing movement of opposition emerged from these many sporadic, fragmentary but at the same time endemic and constant local protests. Partly, this was due to the CNCD’s own lack of credibility, especially the prominence within it of Sadi and the RCD, a party long seen as having been partly created in collusion with the security services, and which had lost much of its support by remaining in Bouteflika’s ‘presidential coalition’ government for some time after the beginning of the ‘Black Spring’ in Kabylia a decade earlier. More important were basic differences between Algeria and its neighbours, both in the structure of the public sphere and its management by the regime, and in the nature of the opposition and of social protest. Both are important to understanding the inertia and the long-term dynamics of Algeria in 2011–2015. Unlike Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria, Algeria’s presidency had perhaps become an office for life, but not a family business. Bouteflika, for all his longevity, was not seen by most Algerians as an embodiment of the system in the same way that Ben Ali or Mubarak were by Tunisians and Egyptians. Algerians well knew that there were multiple centres of power within the regime. Oppositional energy was thus somewhat dispersed for lack of a single focus, a dispersal accentuated by the considerable space within the system

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for the absorption of stress. Unlike the tightly controlled, indeed virtually asphyxiated public sphere in Tunisia, Algeria’s rulers since the mid-1990s had taken care to create plenty of ‘free’ space for the channelling and dissipation of social and political energy: the political parties (two Berberist parties, two legal Islamist parties, a Trotskyist left, a secular-republican regime party, as well as the historic and renovated FLN and a plethora of younger movements) and the proliferation of privately owned newspapers, in French and Arabic, expressing every shade of opinion, provided no end of avenues for the distribution and cooling of social energies. When demonstrations did occur, care was again taken to give no focus to popular anger – unlike in 2001, and unlike in Tunisia, there were to be no funerals of martyrs. The police hardly needed to use relative restraint, given the balance of forces on the street, in which an estimated 30,000 policemen faced perhaps 2,000 protestors. Several hundred protestors were arrested on 12 February, but all were reportedly released soon afterwards, in some cases within less than an hour. But more crucial even than the regime’s management of the protests was the fragmentation of the opposition and the fact that it existed, not in a simple face-off with le pouvoir as a bloc, but as a disjointed series of separate protests that in fact worked within, not against, the logic of the régime – in the more technical sense of the political economy of state-society relations. Not only did the political landscape encourage disunity, and not only did the CNCD, and especially the RCD, suffer from a lack of credibility. The organization of protest by professional groups, corps de métiers, unions, neighbourhoods, meant that each could be repressed or bought off as the particular situation demanded, or as local political interests dictated.17 As had been true throughout the long colonial period and through the convulsions of the war of independence, the tumultuous surface events and the consistently intractable underlying logics of political life at the summit of the state made up only one, and perhaps not the most significant, layer of Algerian history. Below le pouvoir on the heights of Algiers lay a society that was still robust and resilient, with a system of functional, if episodic and informal, engagement between society and the more local instances of the state: the provincial governorates (wilayas), the municipal assemblies (APCs), even the local political parties (kasmas) of the FLN and the RND. And, in some places, informal mechanisms of influence and arbitration still This argument has been made independently by several observers besides myself; I am indebted especially to Robert Parks, Mohand Akli Hadibi, Mohammed Hachemaoui, Daho Djerbal and Hugh Roberts for discussion of this question. See also Roberts (2002); Goodman (2013); Hachemaoui (2012); Parks (2013; 2015). 17

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embodied very old forms of local consultation: councils of aarouch in Kabylia or village thajmaaths, sometimes remodelled as ‘patrimonial associations’, preserved the function of the ancient male, adult consultative assembly; meetings of ‘tribal’ heads of families in Tebessa or Timimoun; halqas of scholars and community leaders in the Mzab. At these local and pragmatic levels of political life, Algeria’s authoritarianism was not, in fact, as calcified as it might seem; it too was flexible, resilient, capable – as long as it had money to distribute – of a selective responsiveness to popular demands, assertions of sectional interest or bargains of patronage and clientelism. Thus had the political economy of rioting had operated throughout the country, on a more or less permanent basis, throughout the past decade. There was no connection between protests across national political space because, whatever they shared, each riot, sit-in or demonstration was for both protestors and authorities a local protest over primarily local issues, resolved or kept in deadlock by local mediation and the local deployment of the state’s resources – electricity, housing and salaries, or batons, bullets and tear gas. It was only when there was no network of such collective action available, and – of course – no political traction to be gained from the bureaucracy by the law-based demands of the individual citizen, that this informal but relatively functional system broke down: it was in these circumstances that Algerians set themselves on fire. But there was no risk of a wider conflagration. This was not because Algerians were collectively ‘traumatized’ by the experiences of the 1990s, a supposition often made but not borne out by observation within the country and made questionable by the sheer pace of demography.18 Rather, fears of a return to violence, however severe, were outweighed by the generalized popular political demobilization that had been the more readily observable effect of the 1990s. Rather than being simply afraid to speak out – which in fact they did, loudly, and all the time – Algerians were for the most part, more simply, as they regularly put it, dégoûtés [disgusted] with the thoroughly distasteful, compromised business of politics. If there was no Although many Algerians, individually and within family groups, undoubtedly continued to suffer from the effects of the war (including psychological trauma as clinically defined, which some studies suggest might be transmitted intergenerationally), many of the young people protesting in 2011 could themselves have had little or no conscious memory of the worst of the violence between 1992 and 1998. By 2010, 20.8% of the population was aged between 15 and 24 (i.e., born between 1986 and 1995); the under-15s, fully 27.1% of the population, had been born mostly since the peak of the conflict in the mid-1990s. See ‘Demographic profile of Algeria’, UN-ESCWA. Available at http://www.escwa.un.org/popin/ members/algeria.pdf (consulted on 2 November 2015). See also McAllister (2013). 18

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linkage between endemic social protest and anaemic political opposition, this was partly because there was simply no interest in the latter among those, very many, people involved in the former. This was above all, perhaps, visible in the differences between January’s social protests – what became known as zzit wa sukkar [oil and sugar] protests in the popular quarters of Algiers where they occurred, Bab el-Oued and Belouizdad (Belcourt) – and the attempted mobilization for ‘change’ in February. The organized political rallies were largely boycotted by those who had been involved in the spontaneous popular protests only weeks earlier. As journalist Ghania Mouffok astutely observed in reporting the words of the apparently ‘pro-Bouteflika’ youths who briefly formed a counterdemonstration at chamaneuf on 12 February, these were anything but ‘pro-regime’ protestors: We’re just fed up, that’s all, they can go have their fights somewhere else, this is our patch [quartier/Houma], our homeland [patrie]. Us, when we demonstrate, they call us scum, thugs [de racaille … de voyous] […] So why do they come and have a go at us? Us, when we go out on the streets for two days, at least we get the price of oil and sugar down. And them, what do they want? These parties just use us to climb up to positions of power. (Mouffok, 2011)19 As one taxi driver in Oran put it, again drawing a clear line between attempted political mobilization and the past winter’s local social protests: ‘Us, we know them. They’re doing that for themselves, not for us. There’ll be nothing happening in our neighbourhoods, because that lot, they did nothing for us in the riots’.20 Endemic social protest thus combined with a disinterest in the vacuity of ‘politics’. If this was, in part, the result of post-1990s circumstances, it also indicated longer-term factors at work.

The Shadows of Revolution In 2011–2012, Algerians looked back at their own earlier revolutionary moment of 1988–1989 that had ended the post-revolutionary single-party era, ushered in a brief moment of apparent ‘democratization’, and then the protracted crisis of society and state, accompanied by atrocious violence, that had lasted through the 1990s and, though more sporadically, into the Circulated by email. All translations from French or Arabic in this essay are by the author. 20 ‘N.’, Oran, communicated by personal email, 14 February 2011. See also Parks (2013: 115). 19

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past decade. As many Algerian commentators observed, rather than being ‘left behind’ by the revolutions of 2011–2012, they were in advance of their neighbours, having already ‘been there’ 24 years previously. Whatever political manoeuvres may have lain behind them as proximate cause, the massive youth protests of October 1988 were undoubtedly the expression, most basically, of demography, of the generational shift since independence and the demand of a disenfranchised populace for a more responsible, accountable state that would live up to the essential demands of its people for the guarantee, and equitable distribution, of public goods.21 The subsequent conflict, from 1991 to 1999, not only crushed but also effectively delegitimized utopian Islamism as a revolutionary solution that would ‘re-enact’ the revolutionary dynamic of the war of independence, as some FIS militants in 1989–1991 had understood themselves to be doing, instead fragmenting the Islamist constituency, isolating, manipulating and undermining its most radical factions while co-opting and taming others. It also effectively demobilized the general public, which was terrorized by both Islamist insurgency and state repression. The climate of insecurity undermined social solidarity, destroying trust even between neighbours and within families, and instilling not so much pervasive fear as a pervasive dégoûtage with all things bulitiq [politics]. This is all the more striking a result given the extremely high level of popular politicization in Algeria and the country’s very assertive popular political culture, built up by oppositional social movements of all political colours during the 1980s, but developed in the momentum of state and nation-building in the 1960s and 1970s, and born in the revolutionary war of national liberation. And, indeed, behind memories of 1988–1989 lay the presence of that first revolution. In the Algeria of 2012, the foundational revolutionary legacy of 1954–1962 remained as potent and relevant as ever before, in the shape of the Algerian state itself and in its relationship to Algerian society; in the languages Algerians used to express their situation and aspirations; in both the consequences it had had for their history ever since independence and in the potential it had left unrealized. But the legacy of the war of independence, and the revolutionary state formation that came out of it, has been neither simply heroic nor secretly traumatic, but profoundly ambiguous. The FLN’s counter-state, like other such movements in Africa and the Middle East in the years of the Cold War, was both a popular revolutionary and an authoritarian military state, For these expectations as durably underlying Algeria’s popular political culture (and as considerably more important than more procedural or ‘liberal’ constituents of ‘democracy’ as conventionally understood by democratization theorists), see Parks (2011; 2015); McAllister (2014). 21

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including ‘the people’ as a whole in its distribution of wealth while excluding them from a share in their own sovereignty. It was a popularly responsive kind of authoritarianism, with the state as guarantor of basic living standards, as agent of a project of improvement and uplift in which – even if results were slow in coming – people could generally believe, and as the distributor of goods that – even if few and far between – were thought to be made available on a reasonably equitable basis to all. ‘The people’, homogenized, heroized, unified, was the basis of the political community and the ground of ownership of public goods. At the same time, the state was factional, secretive and unaccountable, with power located not in formal, open, law-bound institutions nor even in the party, but in the army and its intelligence services, where it was divided and negotiated between changing configurations of factions that only sometimes – under Boumediene – recognized a common arbiter whose decision would be respected by all. All they shared otherwise was their unwillingness to submit their hard-won positions of influence and access to privilege to the uncertainties of popular electoral consultation. As the socialist experiment first foundered, by the late 1970s, and was then unravelled in the late 1980s, and as neoliberalism crowded in, opening markets and opportunities, democratizing corruption and vastly inflating the value of the stakes in play, the putative higher purpose of the stability which the system sought evaporated. Ferociously re-establishing that stability, and the status quo ante, against the threats of both Islamism and a more genuine democratization through the 1990s, by 2015 the regime had rendered itself fragile, hollow and with little idea of what to do next save accelerate its rapaciousness. As the veteran of the wartime FLN and leading political personality Abd al-Hamid Mehri put it, ‘the current system contents itself with a democratic facade and a single-party reality [which] can maintain itself, but not solve the problems [that it faces]’.22 ‘The people’ had long since spilled out of the unified, homogeneous, heroic mould into which the new nation state had tried to press them, asserting their differences – sometimes to a horrifically violent degree – against each other, but also demonstrating their plurality, their belonging to a shared universe of references – linguistic, religious, cultural – different interpretations of which provided the grounds of their contests among themselves (Rahal, 2012). But of its distributive function, the system that governed them had retained only the capacity to buy short-term acquiescence; of its guarantees of law and order only the ability to repress; of the revolutionary state only the secretive, factional habits of what was now a gerontocracy, whose privileges could be exploited by those who had grown up in its charmed circles. 22

Interview, Algiers, 25 March 2007.

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The legacy, the long shadow of Algeria’s revolution, and of the revolutionary era in the Third World as a whole – of which in the 1950s and 1960s Algeria was such a powerful symbol – has been double-edged, an enduring inspiration and an unfulfilled aspiration. The promise of 1 November 1954, of a democratic state established by and for its people, integrated into a fraternally united Maghrib, remained the unfulfilled requirement for the solution of the country’s pressing social, economic, environmental and political challenges. In Mehri’s words, ‘to return to the origin of the FLN is [in this sense] also to respond to the reality of the present moment’,23 but it was the factional politics of the nationalist past, not its project for the future as imagined at the outset of the revolution, that remained hooked in power 60 years later. The generational shift that has produced Algeria’s contemporary population and its aspirations for change thus confronts the maintenance of a status quo untenable in the longer term but capable of reproducing itself apparently indefinitely for the time being. And, at the same time, one of the ways it could do so, at least while hydrocarbon prices remained high between 1999 and 2015, was by reverting, after the 1990s’ straitjacket of indebtedness and structural adjustment had been removed, to the old ruling bargain of redistribution, albeit in a stripped-down, episodic, crisis-management mode, without implying any more genuine inclusion of participatory politics in the government of the country. In the shadow of the revolutions of 2012, Algerians thus engaged not in frontal opposition to the state but in the demand for a state, and for the public goods that the state, according to most Algerians, is supposed to deliver. But in the ways Algerians have thus organized themselves, outside the sphere of formal politics and in a striking recomposition of more fundamental, locally constructed social movements, Algeria’s contemporary impasse also points to the resilience of society, its capacity, faute de mieux, to get by without, or in the absence of, the state. And this, perhaps, is one of the longest-term and deepest structural factors of Algerian history, reaching back through the colonial period and indeed well before the French conquest: less the sound and fury of revolutionary politics than the quiet endurance of a resilient society.

Works Cited ‘2011 Algerian Self-immolations’. [n.d.] Available at https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/2011_Algerian_self-immolations (consulted on 10 May 2015). Algeria-Watch and Salah-Eddine Sidhoum. 2003. ‘Algérie: la machine de mort, 3: les centres de détention secrète, de torture et d’exécutions’. Available at 23

Mehri interview, Algiers, 25 March 2007.

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http://www.algeria-watch.org/fr/mrv/mrvtort/machine_mort/machine_mort_ rapport_3.htm (consulted on October 12 2015). Alim, Yacine. 2011. ‘Violentes émeutes à Mostaganem’, El Watan 29 November. Available at http://www.djazairess.com/fr/elwatan/349072 (consulted on 20 May 2015). ‘An Ailing and Fragile Algerian Regime Drifts into 2008’, Ambassador Robert Ford, Algiers, to Secretary of State, 19 December 2007, 07ALGIERS1806_a. Available at https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/07ALGIERS1806_a.html (consulted on 20 October 2015). ‘Apaisement en Algérie après les émeutes contre la hausse des prix’. 2011. Le Point 10 January. Available at http://www.lepoint.fr/monde/apaisement-enalgerie-apres-les-emeutes-contre-la-hausse-des-prix-10-01-2011-128578_24. php (consulted on October 12 2015). ‘Athmane Tartag, l’œil d’El-Mouradia’. 2014. Jeune Afrique 9 October. Available at http://www.jeuneafrique.com/42885/politique/alg-rie-athmane-tartag-l-oeild-el-mouradia/ (consulted on 10 May 2015). ‘Biology favors Bouteflika on election eve’, Thomas F. Daughton, Algiers to Secretary of State, 23 March 2009, 09ALGIERS278_a. Available at https:// wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/09ALGIERS278_a.html (consulted on 20 May 2015). Black, Ian. 2015. ‘Algerian Hostage Crisis Could Weaken Veteran Spymaster’, Guardian 25 January. Available at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/ jan/25/algerian-hostage-crisis-tewfik-mediene (consulted on 15 October 2015). ‘Boumerdès: la RN24 fermée par les habitants de Boukerroucha’. 2011. El Watan 10 November. Available at http://www.elwatan.com/actualite/boumerdes-larn24-fermee-par-les-habitants-de-boukerroucha-10-11-2011-146775_109.php (consulted on 19 October 2015). ‘Boumerdès: les étudiants de l’UMBB en grève illimitée’. 2011. El Watan 29 November. Available at http://www.elwatan.com/actualite/boumerdes-lesetudiants-de-l-umbb-en-greve-illimitee-29-11-2011-149096_109.php (consulted on 15 October 2015). ‘Bouteflika’s Army: Civilian Control at What Price?’ Pearce, Algiers, to Secretary of State, 13 January 2009, 09ALGIERS39_a. Available at https://wikileaks.org/ plusd/cables/09ALGIERS35_a.html (consulted on 20 October 2015). Byrne, Jeffrey James. 2016. Mecca of Revolution: Algeria, Decolonization, and the Third World Order. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cherfaoui, Zine. 2011. ‘Nacer Djabi: “La génération de novembre doit passer le relais”’. El Watan 21 June. Available at http://www.algeria-watch.org/fr/article/ pol/administration/passer_relais.htm (consulted on 20 May 2015). ‘Chômeurs, enseignants: l’immolation par le feu n’épargne personne en Algérie’. 2014. Algérie-Focus.com 24 February. Available at http://www.

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algerie-focus.com/2014/10/chomeurs-enseignants-limmolation-par-le-feunepargne-personne-en-algerie/ (consulted on 10 May 2015). Chrisafis, Angelique, Julian Borger, Justin McCurry and Terry Macalister. 2013. ‘Algeria Hostage Crisis: The Full Story of the Kidnapping in the Desert’, Guardian 25 January. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/ jan/25/in-amenas-timeline-siege-algeria (consulted on 15 October 2015). Connelly, Matthew C. 2002. A Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria’s Fight for Independence and the Origins of the Post-Cold War Era. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ‘Demographic Profile of Algeria’. UN-ESCWA. Available at http://www.escwa. un.org/popin/members/algeria.pdf (consulted on 2 November 2015). Djabi, Nacer. 2012. Li-madha ta’akhkhara al-rabi‘ al-jaza’iri? Algiers: Chihab. ‘Draa el Mizan: les résidants du lotissement nord protestent’. 2011. El Watan 10 November. Available at https://www.dzairnews.com/articles/elwatan-draael-mizan-les-residants-du-lotissement-nord-protestent (consulted on 20 May 2015). Goodman, Jane. 2013. ‘The Man behind the Curtain: Theatrics of the State in Algeria’. Journal of North African Studies 18.5: 779–95. Hachemaoui, Mohammed. 2012. ‘Y-a-t-il des tribus dans l’urne? Sociologie d’une énigme électorale (Algérie)’. Cahiers D’Études Africaines 205: 103–63. ‘Les étudiants forcent le passage’. 2011. El Watan 13 April. Available at http:// www.algeria-watch.org/fr/article/pol/syndicat/etudiants_marche_reussie.htm (consulted on 20 May 2015). ‘Malgré les augmentations consenties, la fonction publique reste en ébullition’. 2011. Liberté 10 November. Available at http://www.liberte-algerie.com/dossiereconomique/la-fonction-publique-reste-en-ebullition-98466 (consulted on 20 May 2015). McAllister, Edward. 2013. ‘Immunity to the Arab Spring? Fear, Fatigue, and Fragmentation in Algeria’. New Middle Eastern Studies 3. Available at http:// www.brismes.ac.uk/nmes/archives/1048 (consulted on 18 October 2015). ——. 2014. ‘Yesterday’s Tomorrow Is Not Today. Memory and Place in an Algiers Neighbourhood’. DPhil thesis, University of Oxford. McDougall, James. 2007. ‘After the War: Algeria’s Transition to Uncertainty’. Middle East Report 245: 34–41. Meddi, Adlène. 2012. ‘Si la génération “tab j’nanou” refuse d’organiser son départ, ce sera l’affrontement’. El Watan, 8 June. Available at http://www.algeriawatch.org/fr/article/tribune/djabi_generation_tab_jnanou.htm (consulted on 20 May 2015). Mesbah, Salim. 2015. ‘Athmane Tartag: un “bombardier” à la tête du DRS’. El Watan 14 September. Available at http://www.algeria-watch.org/fr/article/mil/ drs_fin_epoque.htm (consulted on 20 May 2015).

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Mouffok, Ghania. 2011. ‘La révolution de onze heures à midi’. International Solidarity Movement, 16 February. Available at http://www.ism-france.org/ analyses/La-revolution-de-onze-heures-a-midi-article-15115 (consulted on 18 February 2011). Ouahab, Khider. 2011. ‘Des travailleurs poursuivent leur grève de la faim’. El Watan  10 November. Available at http://www.djazairess.com/fr/elwatan/ 346673 (consulted on 20 October 2015). Ouali, Hacen. 2015. ‘Le général Toufik mis à la retraite: la fin d’une époque’. El Watan 14 September. Available at http://www.algeria-watch.org/fr/article/mil/ drs_fin_epoque.htm (consulted on 17 May 2015). Parks, Robert P. 2011. ‘Local-national Relations and the Politics of Property Rights in Algeria and Tunisia’. PhD thesis: University of Texas at Austin. ——. 2013. ‘Algeria and the Arab Uprisings’. In Clement Henry and Ji-Hyang Jang (eds), The Arab Spring: Will it Lead to Democratic Transitions? New York: Palgrave Macmillan: 101–26. ——. 2015. ‘Public Goods and Service Provision in Algeria: Subnational Supply and Demand’. Unpublished working paper presented at the Middle East Centre, London School of Economics and Political Science. Rabia, Said. 2015. ‘Mirage et réalité de la police politique’. El Watan 14 September. Available at http://www.algeria-watch.org/fr/article/mil/drs_fin_epoque.htm (consulted on 15 May 2015). Rahal, Malika. 2012. ‘Fused Together and Torn Apart: Stories and Violence in Contemporary Algeria’. History and Memory 24.1: 118–51. Roberts, Hugh. 2002. ‘Moral Economy or Moral Polity? The Political Anthropology of Algerian Riots’. Crisis States Research Centre working papers series 1.17. Crisis States Research Centre, London School of Economics and Political Science. Available at http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/28292/ (consulted on 19 May 2015). Tighilt, Kouceila. 2011. ‘Tizi Ouzou: des milliers de retraités ont marché hier à Tizi Ouzou pour cirer leur misère’. Liberté 29 November. Available at http:// www.djazairess.com/fr/liberte/166977 (consulted on 22 May 2015). ‘Un homme d’une trentaine d’années s’est immolé jeudi à Chlef’. 2014. Le Matin Algérie 7 February. Available at http://www.lematindz.net/news/13571-unhomme-dune-trentaine-dannees-sest-immole-jeudi-a-chlef.html (consulted on 10 May 2015). ‘Un premier pas pour le changement’. 2011. El Watan 13 February. Available at http://www.djazairess.com/fr/elwatan/311487 (consulted on 20 May 2015). ‘Voyage dans l’Algérie des immolés’. 2012. El Watan 29 January. Available at http://www.algeria-watch.org/fr/article/eco/soc/voyage_algerie_immoles.htm (consulted on 10 May 2015). Werenfels, Isabelle. 2009. Managing Instability in Algeria: Elites and Political Change since 1995. London: Routledge.

Algeria’s ‘Belle Époque’: Memories of the 1970s as a Window on the Present Ed McAllister

Algeria’s ‘Belle Époque’

Something very special happens every evening in Algiers. As the light begins to fade, Alger la blanche changes colour. Twilight turns the white facades of the city’s buildings an intense, dusty blue and their ornate wrought iron balconies a deep indigo. As the pace of the frenetic city slows, the feeling is at once reflective and calm, nostalgic even. Walking through Place Audin one evening, as the hues began imperceptibly to transform, I saw two blue-clad policemen flag down a passing car, ostensibly to check the driver’s papers, but possibly just to ogle at the rarity: a beautiful sea green 1967 Peugeot 404 in immaculate condition, complete with whitewall tyres and shining chrome details. While they exchanged pleasantries with the middle-aged driver, complimenting him on his classic, I began to notice that heads were turning. Women passed by with the same knowing smile that accompanied the commonly used phrase ‘kī kānet ddunya dunya’ [when everything was as it should be], and a group of teenagers nudged each other and pointed, saying, ‘chēbba, chrīkī!’ [cool, man]. A van pulled over in front of the car, and two bearded Islamists got out to shake the driver’s hand, all smiles and declarations of ‘mā chā’ Llāh’.1 A small group of old men sitting on a bench In this context, ‘mā chā Llāh’ denotes an expression of wonder or appreciation. The transliteration system used here for Algerian Arabic dialect adopts Algerian vernacular spellings in Latin script, including ‘ch’ for the letter ‫ش‬, and ‘3’ for the letter ‫ع‬, as most appropriate for rendering the vernacular language of Algiers 1

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overlooking the square began to nod and reminisce, one declaring, ‘Eh oui, c’était l’époque où on pensait qu’on allait s’en sortir’ [That was back when we thought we were going to make it]. Something about relationships to the past, present and future was clearly being triggered by the appearance of this relic, producing different but related reactions among diverse groups of people. If only for a fleeting moment and within a diminutive space, a deeply divided, wounded and fragmented society seemed to be in agreement on something, perhaps even briefly at peace with itself in the soothing light of approaching dusk. This scene underscores some of the central issues emerging from social memories of the recent past in Algeria. Memories of the optimism and certainties of the post-independence period in the late 1960s and 1970s translate several issues: lost feelings of community, solidarity and equality forged through the struggle for independence and the austerities of socialist nation-building; a sense of mourning for the passing of a once imagined bright future and the breakdown of the powerful imaginary of time-asprogress that underpinned Algeria’s attempt at modernist industrialization; as well as the social fragmentation brought about by civil war during the 1990s and the more recent emergence of a consumer society. Rather than evaluating the 1970s as a period in its own right, this chapter aims to explore how present-day expectations of the state in Algeria are articulated through the socially held narratives of this period in contemporary Algeria. In this sense, the current rift between society at large and the political system, as well as ongoing social contestation in present-day Algeria – the strikes, protests and sit-ins that daily fill newspaper headlines (see McDougall in this volume) – demanding greater social justice and redistribution of wealth, are closely linked to memories of the period in which these egalitarian claims formed the basis of the state’s modernization project.2 This chapter draws on doctoral research, based on a one-year fieldwork stay in the low-income Algiers neighbourhood of Bab el-Oued in 2012–2013. As well as consulting newspaper archives, ethnographic methods of participant observation and semi-structured interviews were used to get at the complexities of present relationships to a period for which official archival in the same way its speakers do. However, to avoid confusion through the use of French dipthongs, diacritics are used to denote long vowels. IJMES transliteration is used for Standard Arabic, including bibliographical references. This and all subsequent translations are by the author of this chapter. 2 For a more detailed analysis of the regional uprisings of 2011 and social contestation in Algeria itself, see McAllister (2013a).

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material is unavailable in Algeria. After a brief analysis of some of the characteristics of the nation-building period, coinciding with the presidency of Houari Boumediene (1965–1978), the chapter will focus on narratives of politics and everyday life in the recent past and the ways in which these translate both dissatisfaction with the present and hopes for the future.

Socialist Nation-Building in Algeria Algeria’s war of liberation from France (1954–1962) remains one of the most emblematic conflicts of the twentieth century. As the only country in the Middle East and North Africa to win its independence through armed struggle, Algeria’s decolonization produced shock waves that were felt all over the world. However, following independence in 1962, another battle began: that of liberating the country from the inequality and underdevelopment left behind by the colonial system (Bourdieu, 1963; Bourdieu and Sayad, 1966). The grinding poverty created by settler colonialism in the Algerian countryside, the destruction of local elites and increasing urbanization contributed to a levelling in Algerian society that, along with the emergence of a militant nationalist culture among Algerian industrial workers in France during the interwar period, had predisposed Algerian nationalism towards socialism as a solution to the challenges that lay beyond the horizon of independence. In the 1960s and 1970s, Algeria became the model for other developing countries, standing at the forefront of the Third World’s dialogue between the capitalist West and the socialist East (Malley, 1996). During this period, Algeria embodied the idea that colonized nations could not only win their freedom, but could meet the world on their own terms and build a brighter future for themselves without owing anything to anyone. Independent Algeria subscribed to the dominant metanarrative of modernization present during the first half of the twentieth century: the ‘utopian dream that industrial modernity could and would provide happiness for the masses’ (Buck-Morss, 2002: xiv). Given the hopes generated by independence, Algeria’s national narrative had always contained a strong logic of social transformation. In this sense, the legitimacy of the state as supreme sovereign power rested not on the liberal claim of formal democracy based on universal suffrage, nor solely on the anti-colonial struggle, but on the socialist claim of substantive democracy based on the egalitarian distribution of social goods. As in other socialist systems, political power was to be judged in terms of historical progress towards social justice and equality, in an imaginary of time that, as long as it remained victorious, legitimated its own rule (Buck-Morss, 2002). Under Boumediene, with absolute power over both material and temporal resources, the state willed development to take

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place and decreed the speeding up of time. Aimed at achieving economic independence, Algeria’s developmentalist strategy set out to create a modern, egalitarian society that would not only match, but morally surpass, the developed capitalist nations across the Mediterranean. The 1970s was a time of intense social mobility, of rising living standards and job opportunities, especially in relation to the privations of the war and the immediate post-war period. These improvements were fuelled by massive state investment within the context of centralized economic planning, which began in 1967, and whose effects began to be felt during the early 1970s, especially after the nationalization of the oil and gas sector in 1971 (Ruedy, 2005). Whatever one’s view of socialism and its legacies, during the 1970s at least, the state was largely successful in its attempt to generate growth and improve socio-economic well-being. Over the decade, the economy grew by 483% and per capita income in Algiers increased by 6% a year (Bennoune, 1988: 252–53). Under the socialist system, Algerians gained access for the first time to universal healthcare and education: while in 1962 only 25% of children attended school, by the end of the 1970s the figure had jumped to 71% (Bennoune, 1988: 224–25). By the end of the decade even France was taking note of the tangible improvements in the country’s economy and living standards. In 1979, Pierre Judet wrote in Le Monde Diplomatique that ‘en moins de vingt ans, cet ancien territoire colonial a pris rang parmi les puissances économiques dont il faut tenir compte en Méditerranée’ (1979: 1). 3 The decade was also characterized by the construction of strong institutions,4 a process aimed – in Boumediene’s famous phrase – at building a state that would ‘outlive both events and men’.5 The 1970s is therefore the period in which the architecture of the Algerian state, much of which survives to this day, was first built. As well as improving living standards, social transformation was also geared towards building a nation, fusing a heterogeneous and diverse population into a single, unified body. The state’s industrialization policy was designed to incorporate the urban working class into the national community through employment in state companies and worker self-management programmes; agricultural reform was intended to ‘In less than 20 years, Algeria, this former colonial territory has become one of the economic powers to be reckoned with in the Mediterranean region’. 4 The literature devoted exclusively to post-independence politics is scant. See Bruno Étienne (1977); Rachid Tlemcani (1986); Maurice Maschino; Fadela M’rabet (1972). 5 In French, ‘l’édification d’un État capable de survivre aux événements et aux hommes’. See Boumediene (n.d.: 78). 3

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weaken traditional centres of authority in the countryside and bring the rural masses within the ambit of the state for the first time; the cultural policy of Arabization and universal education were aimed at forging a single cultural community (Roberts, 2003). In this sense, Algeria’s modernization project was also clearly authoritarian. For much of the decade, the country lacked any formal institution of participatory government (Leca and Vatin, 1975). From the coup that brought Boumediene to power in June 1965 until elections to the National Popular Assembly which were finally held in 1977, Algeria was ruled by decree through an unelected 26-member Revolutionary Council under absolute military control (Balta, 1978). The strength of the intelligence services, the Sécurité Militaire (SM, later renamed DRS. See McDougall in this volume), meant that freedom of speech was severely curtailed, both for the press and individuals. While the press frequently highlighted the difficulties of everyday realities – particularly if these involved the poor, or any kind of exploitation – as well as policy implementation, this was not permitted to grow into a form of dissent that questioned the appropriateness of the policies themselves. Furthermore, the late 1960s and 1970s saw the assassination of several major opposition figures, both in Algeria and abroad,6 and the ­imprisonment and torture of many others.

Critiquing the Present: Memories of Everyday Life in the 1970s In Bab el-Oued, relationships to the period in question are ambivalent, mirroring some of the themes outlined above. Two broad narratives depict the 1970s as either a peaceful paradise of social justice and national pride, or an authoritarian dictatorship that rode roughshod over civil liberties. However, these narratives are not mutually exclusive, and are often used by the same individuals in the same conversations. Despite drawing on seemingly opposing sets of ideas, common themes of stability, social mobility and a sense of seriousness in the management of public affairs emerge. The intention here is to go beyond the tropes of a neat binary split in narratives, in order to examine how socially held ideas about the period translate present concerns and, in doing so, to assess the ways in which people compare the recent past to the present. By far the most common narrative on the period is a positive one relating to work and living standards. Public-sector employment is one of the easiest For example, wartime FLN leaders Mohamed Khider, assassinated in Madrid in 1967, and Krim Belkacem, assassinated in Frankfurt in 1970. 6

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ways for the state to redistribute wealth: after a decade of planned economic development, the state provided 85% of wages and salaries and 60% of employment (Bennoune, 1988: 252–53). Unemployment in Bab el-Oued during the 1970s was seemingly low; the 1977 census records 2,517 people in the area as unemployed, 4% of the total working-age population.7 As a result, the 1970s is remembered as a period of full employment, one in which finding a job was not only easy but part of an expected life trajectory for young males: ‘The majority of people worked in the state companies. People would leave school, go through military service and then find a job straight away. There was no problem and the population was much smaller’ (Anis, 37).8 A common trope used to illustrate full employment is the image of three or more people doing a job intended for one person. While expressed with bemused disbelief due to the contrast with today’s competitive job market and high unemployment, there is little indication that this kind of full employment is necessarily considered negative – rather a successful policy of a state that saw itself as responsible for the nation’s welfare. However, there are also suggestions that the aim went beyond providing income, and was also intended to ‘keep people busy’, so there was no time to ‘get into trouble’. Again, this does not imply a necessarily negative assessment: It was a government policy. For example, if a company needed 200 workers, they’d recruit 500 so people wouldn’t be idle. You’d find yourself with 4 or 5 others doing the same job! And it was easy […] we hardly worked at all! We worked for a few hours a day – or less! They were keeping us busy. It was like being paid to go to nursery school. (Samir, 55) In contrast, employment opportunities for young people in Bab el-Oued today are few and far between, the available options being invariably low-paid and almost always without the social security benefits that should be paid by employers. Other, riskier solutions can – and frequently are – found, from pick-pocketing to prostitution; or from hawking to drug running: We usually set up a stall in Ramdan, buy merchandise and re-sell it. Slippers, tissues, whatever […] water, soft drinks that are about to go off. Then there are other ways of making cash. A dealer will ask you to take 50g of dope round to some place in Bainem or Ben Aknoun, and off you go with your back-pack. I try not to look like myself; sometimes I wear a qāmīṣ, or a proper shirt and dark glasses. You can earn 5,000 DA for a Recensement Générale de la Population 1977, Office Nationale des Statistiques. All the quotes in this chapter are from interviews recorded in Bab el-Oued in 2013. All names are pseudonyms. 7 8

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Algeria: Nation, Culture and Transnationalism run. If you steal it and sell it yourself, you can earn way more. But that’s super risky. (Kader, 18) Today, there’s no future for young people. Even the little ones tell you there’s no point in studying. Because they’ve seen their older brother put his diploma in a frame on the wall, and just sit at home. You can never work in the area you’re trained for. You study international commerce, and work as a security guard! It’s all personal connections […] you have to be someone’s son, or someone’s grandson, to get a job. Now you even need connections to be a rubbish collector. I swear! That’s why our young people are so demoralized. (Narimene, 29)

Prices doubled throughout the 1970s but household incomes tripled, resulting in a 48% increase in purchasing power by the end of the decade (Bennoune, 1988: 254–56). State-enforced austerity meant that few consumer goods produced outside Algeria were readily available, which forced a sort of saving programme on households, many of whom had more money than they could actually spend. This is remembered in Bab el-Oued through frequent depictions of low prices in relation to wages and general ease of living standards. This is by far the single most common narrative of the 1970s encountered in Bab el-Oued, crossing generational and ideological divides. At the same time, the 1970s was the period in which many acquired the trappings of middle-class life for the first time: by the end of the decade, Algerians owned more washing machines, televisions and fridges than ever before – many of them made in Algeria. Industrial output increased dramatically, but productivity lagged behind consumer demand (Ruedy, 2005: 219–20), meaning that Algerian-produced industrial goods were sometimes only sporadically available. The manufactured products of Algerian industry are remembered for their quality and durability, especially in comparison to current imports from countries such as China and India. This view goes hand in hand with extremely positive evaluations of Boumediene’s industrialization policy, and is closely associated with images of a strong nation whose industrial prowess and technical skill are linked with concepts of masculinity. Standardization of nationally produced goods meant little consumer choice and variety, that many Algerian homes contained similar products, from fridges made by ENIEM to the ubiquitous framed picture of a little boy praying. These shared aesthetic references link people of the same generation, who grew up with readily identifiable stylistic references. Furthermore, the slower pace of obsolescence of socialist-era goods meant that generations from the late 1960s to the early 1980s often shared the same references, in contrast to today, when a few years can mark significant generational differences (Nadkarni and Shevchenko, 2004: 489–519).

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In parallel with these images of increased well-being, the 1970s are also remembered for les pénuries – intermittent shortages of basic goods – through recollections of queues outside state-run supermarkets and a make-do attitude towards shopping. While young people who had grown up in an era of consumer choice could simply not imagine going to the market and not being able to find potatoes, the older generation seeks to dignify what must have been trying circumstances with a narrative of, ‘we didn’t have much, but we were happy’. The term qinē3a [satisfaction with what one has] is used by older people to criticize the materialism and individualism of the present, to mark themselves as not belonging to today’s ‘soft’ society, and as having the strength to endure a degree of adversity. In contrast, young people often put this down to their parents’ low expectations at the time, especially after the war, and foreground their own much higher expectations of life in general. Memories of daily life and the standardization of socialist-era aesthetics – the Volkswagen Passats imported by the state for the domestic market, clothes made by the state textile company, SONITEX – reinforce perceptions of the absence of class differences, clearly locating the 1970s before the onset of the more individualized consumerism that emerged in the 2000s. Money is universally remembered as having been less important in people’s lives, since people could not hope to amass large sums in a bank account and even where they did, state-enforced austerity meant there was little to spend it on. The few who possessed significant wealth were subject to strong social disapproval of ostentation, which was much less socially acceptable than today, given the state’s hostility to large inequalities and the accumulation of property in private hands. Class differences certainly existed during the 1970s, but given the lack of wide income disparities, austerity and lack of available consumer goods that characterized the time, such differences were expressed in ways other than displays of material wealth. As today, language was used as a major gauge of social stratification, as was casting oneself as a wlīd l blēd [someone from the capital] as opposed to being a rural migrant. However, the main form of social differentiation was articulated through privileged access to goods that were supposed to be collectively owned: either by gaining a position in a state company that allowed bargaining for a greater proportion of state resources, or by knowing the right people and making the best of one’s contacts. Use of public resources for private gain was remembered as relatively commonplace, and was explicitly linked to the appearance of new social hierarchies based on access to the system and its resources rather than on income and material success. The term employed today for the use of personal contacts to get what one wants, ma3rīfa [literally ‘knowledge’], underscores the idea that

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success was not about what one had, but who one knew. Such use of personal connections, which in Bab el-Oued is today both bitterly complained of and enthusiastically participated in – often by the same people and often associated with the present rather than the past – would seem therefore to have its roots in the social coping mechanisms developed to survive in an era of a state-controlled economy, endemic shortages and low levels of monetarization: We’d queue because there were shortages in the state supermarkets like the Souk el Fellah. But there was always ma3rīfa, hidden priorities […] you could navigate the system, someone always knew someone, and from there classes began to appear in society. It was in that period that ma3rīfa began. And the system of corruption we know today began to emerge. (Mourad, 45)

Mapping Futures: Representations of Politics and the State All of those encountered in Bab el-Oued clearly remembered the politics of the 1970s as authoritarian. The most frequent word used when talking about the politics of the period was dictateur, in relation to Boumediene himself. Perhaps because political comparisons between the past and the present provide little contrast as far as genuine political representation is concerned – the political institutions built by Boumediene remain widely associated with a lack of representativeness – authoritarian politics per se is explicitly mentioned hardly at all when remembering the politics of the 1970s, almost as if this fact was self-evident. In contrast, the most common component of memories of authoritarianism is the lack of freedom of speech during the 1970s, an area in which there is significant contrast with the greater freedom of speech that currently prevails under Bouteflika. Residents remember tight controls on the press and media, and particularly the inability to criticize the state in public settings such as cafés, due to constant awareness of the possible presence of the SM. During the 1970s, expressing radical opposition to the state was therefore not an option for most people, leading to a split between public and private topics of conversation that most people came to experience as second nature: We didn’t speak out, there was no freedom of speech. We didn’t talk about Boumediene, or the ministers, or the generals, nothing at all. The SM was everywhere, at the cinema, in the markets […] But behind closed doors, they said he was a dictator, because in Boumediene’s time, as soon as someone spoke out, they were in for it! (Djamila, 52)

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Even in today’s climate of greater freedom, several older people told me that they did not want to talk about politics; that the thought of having their political views recorded was so unnerving is indicative of the political environment in which they grew up. Indeed, this arrangement formed part of the tacit social contract that characterized the nation-building period in Algeria from independence to 1988, whereby people retreated from politics into private affairs and material concerns, in return for security and freedom from political harassment. Ordinary citizens were generally spared the repression meted out to political opposition figures: virtually no one in Bab el-Oued mentioned anyone who had been a victim of political repression, though the possibility was enough to maintain a level of unease that fuelled a certain estrangement from politics. As a result, politics was understood both as a subject best avoided in conversation and as a dangerous game that should be divorced from daily life. A minority in Bab el-Oued maintain that the regime had intense popular support that translated into ideological adherence, particularly those on the secular left who made a clear distinction between the 1970s as representing a secular, peaceful, Mediterranean society and the Algeria that emerged from the 1980s as a more Islamized space from which they feel culturally estranged. In contrast, most people speak of their lack of involvement in, even estrangement from, the socialist ideology espoused by the state in the 1970s, even if many seem simply to have taken their political system for granted. However, ideological support must be differentiated from broad tacit support for a regime seen by the majority as providing rising living standards. This tacit support rested on broad social consensus around three key policies: the nationalization of foreign capital, state investment in social welfare and wealth redistribution through public-sector employment (Etienne, 1977; Roberts, 2003). Despite support from a population that wanted to get on with everyday life, alienation from all things political was maintained by the threat of repression, conceptions of politics as being reserved for politicians as well as the fact that the intense ideological propaganda of socialist Algeria, with its increasingly hackneyed vocabulary of popular mobilization, production targets, economic plans, working masses and revolutions ended up making people switch off, as defence mechanisms against the invasive repetition of dogma were developed.9 Some who had been in their late teens or early twenties during the 1970s sought to downplay once-felt affinities with the regime because the politics See Fitzpatrick (2000), who shows how Soviet citizens organised themselves in similar ways to cope with systemic scarcity. 9

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of that period is now frequently labelled as authoritarian. This was particularly evident in the ways in which people talked about their experiences of volunteering as students during holidays to implement and monitor the agrarian reform policy, among other roles. Apologetics and justifications aside, those who participated in the volontariat explained that they felt – at the time at least – that they were doing something good that was contributing to making Algeria a better place to live. There seems to have been a palpable sense that Algeria was a project under construction and that taking part in this project was attractive to many young people. Though perhaps viewed in retrospect as having been naïve, no apologies are made for this sentiment, even though people may seek to disassociate themselves from a socialist ideology now seen as anachronistic. As mentioned above, nationalism is firmly separated from ideology here. On a more prosaic level, participation in the volontariat was also very much an opportunity to get away from home for a few weeks and go on an all-expenses-paid adventure somewhere new with friends. If such memories demonstrate an avoidance of ideology, and a past and present reluctance to engage directly with politics, opposition to past authoritarianism is expressed in other ways, particularly freedom of expression in a more general sense. Older people remember crackdowns in the name of public morality led by Minister of Religious Affairs Mouloud Kassim, as conservative segments of the population railed against the dégradation des mœurs [decline in moral standards] in the press at the beginning of the 1970s (Willis, 1996: 49–54). In this climate, wearing a short skirt for women or having long hair for men was not only fashionable, but also subversive, especially since the reaction of the authorities could be severe – some men remember having had their hair forcibly cut at police stations. This, coupled with memories of general social conservatism in Bab el-Oued at the time, such as the absence of women in the workplace and public spaces in general – in contrast to today – undermine the anti-Islamist narrative that opposes a secular past to a more religiously conservative present. From the perspective of Bab el-Oued, this was often couched in oppositional terms – the past was remembered for low levels of religious practice, but with traditional forms of public morality intact, while the present is often depicted as having greater religious observance, but greater moral laxity. Such estrangement from politics has important legacies today. The oft-depicted political apathy of Algerian youth, far from being a recent phenomenon, seems to have its roots in the authoritarianism of the 1970s. If people remembered being apathetic because the political sphere had seemed beyond their reach, many feel the same way about politics today. Dissatisfaction with today’s politics is overwhelmingly expressed in terms of anger against high-level corruption and the lack of distribution of revenues

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from the country’s natural resources. As a man in his sixties told me, walking down Bab el-Oued’s main street one evening, ‘Before we had social justice but no political freedoms, and now we have neither’. In these terms, the comparison obviously favours the past over the present. However, the vast majority of younger people view the choice between arguably greater freedom of expression in the present and the past’s greater equality and rising living standards as a false one. Though never clearly enunciated, many were exasperated by prevailing past-present representations that forced them into an impossible choice between freedom and social justice. Many young people thus reject both the past for its authoritarianism and the present for its lack of social justice, which produces ambivalence about both the past and the present and a sense that ‘things have never been right’. Rather than being couched ideologically, then, politics in general is evaluated in moral terms, based on its adherence to commonly held principles of social justice and integrity which cross boundaries of gender, class and age, and which underpin worldviews in the neighbourhood. Such values are often associated with the characteristics ascribed to Boumediene himself and are often couched in ways that suggest that they are absent from present politics. Indeed, descriptions of Boumediene’s character and those of Algeria during the 1970s are intertwined in a narrative of both economic and personal austerity. Another major theme in descriptions of Boumediene and, by extension, of the principles that governed Algerian politics during the 1970s is the concept of redjla [masculine honour, pride]. Redjla was often used to describe someone who has integrity; who is honest, trustworthy and upstanding; who is respectful and inspires respect; someone with broad shoulders on whom people can always rely. Within this definition of masculinity, Boumediene is the very personification of redjla. Political integrity is defined in two main ways that are used to highlight what is lacking – and expected – of politicians in the present: first, straightforward honesty and a lack of corruption; second, and closely associated with the above view on masculinity, the importance of remaining true to one’s word and following up on words with concrete actions that improve the lot of the average Algerian: I’d like to live in that period. It’s true that people say he was a dictator, this and that. But for me, the most important thing about Boumediene is that he took his decisions firmly, did what he said he was going to do and always put Algeria first. He worked hard and he never filled his own pockets – and he could have had anything he wanted. He was the one who built the university in Bab Ezzouar, he was the one who started free healthcare, who built the schools. He actually cared about us. After him came the democrats and the Islamists, all the styles you can imagine. But

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Since October 1988, Algeria’s political system has lurched from the classic authoritarian politics of a one-party state to an authoritarian pluralism in which elections represent an opportunity for the ‘periodic distribution of shares among majority stakeholders’ (McDougall, 2007: 39) and an underlying consensus about not rocking the boat among those political parties not relegated to meaningless opposition, despite various branding strategies as nationalist, Islamist or secularist. In popular parlance, this complex state of affairs even has a name that eloquently expresses the high levels of political savvy and cynicism palpable in Algeria: la démocrature.10 Political parties are continually lambasted in Bab el-Oued as being self-serving, co-opted and ineffectual. Despite criticism of the past for its lack of freedom of speech, there is a strong feeling that the transition to a multiparty system has not led to positive change. Indeed, the two main criticisms of the current political system are that the country’s wealth is unequally redistributed, and that corruption is rife. This is often referred to in everyday moral terms as thieving from the public, and is contrasted with memories of the 1970s characterized by little corruption, often accompanied by proud assertions that under Boumediene, harsh punishments were meted out to those caught stealing from the public purse. It would certainly make sense that corruption was dealt with more harshly during the 1970s, since the existence of widespread corruption would undermine the state’s egalitarian claims. Since the 1990s, the state has retreated from these declared aims – while still providing a minimum of redistribution to buy stability – to focus on security and the rise of a business elite. This shift in focus means that corruption is no longer inimical to the state’s raison d’être. However, portrayals of corruption being less prevalent than today, as well as those relating to the state delivering on its promise of social justice and raising living standards, continue to articulate popular expectations of politics today. Honesty and integrity are political ideals closely associated with Boumediene and his period in general, and usually surface quickly during discussions of the leader, even among his greatest critics: Back then, there wasn’t a single person who stole a single dinar from society. If it did happen, it wasn’t like a crime, it was like you’d betrayed the whole country! Now, this place is like a box of cheese and everyone’s taken This portmanteau combines the French words démocratie [democracy] and dictature [dictatorship]. For an example of this term in use, see the song ‘Liberté’ by Algerian hip-hop group Intik (2001). 10

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a piece. Before, it wasn’t like that. Then, if you stole from a state company, you were in the shit! People would denounce you because everyone lived together. Now, it’s all about money […] a hypocritical pouvoir that only thinks of itself and leaves us to fight for the scraps. (Mehdi, 25) Memories of the 1970s translate a strong conviction that the nation’s wealth belonged to all Algerians and should be distributed accordingly as well as being reinvested to improve the socio-economic situation of the average citizen. Strongly held beliefs in equality and social justice bear the hallmark of the nationalist and socialist rhetoric that emerged from decolonization and continues to define expectations of present-day politics. Thus, the past remains as a blueprint against which present political standards are judged, with depictions of integrity used to draw negative contrasts with today’s political class as corrupt and self-serving. The crisis of the Algerian state – epitomized by the disconnect between a discourse of revolutionary egalitarianism that seemed increasingly irrelevant in the face of the rising social inequalities, economic crisis and urban decay that gripped the country from the mid-1980s – is experienced, particularly by young people, as hogra: the contempt or disrespect of those in power for the population at large. The term is also used as a verb denoting power being lorded over those in inferior social or political positions. Many in Bab el-Oued remember this word becoming widespread in everyday language during the 1980s, maintaining that it was not in common use, or had not had its present meaning, during the 1970s. Indicative of a widening gap between state and society, the use of the term also translates a bitter disappointment and outrage that the state has not lived up to its promises, and reflects a sense of having been cheated by history.

Beyond Past and Present It is worth pointing out that the faces of Algerian society of the 1970s and the 2010s bear striking similarities. Both could be described as emerging from protracted periods of conflict – the war of independence and the 1990s – and are characterized by an overwhelming desire for stability and tangible improvements in daily life after difficult times, as well as by feelings of a lack of ownership over the political process, despite much greater freedom of expression in the present. In the 1970s, given the widespread sense that the state was performing its redistributive function relatively well, maintaining corruption within tolerable limits and ensuring rising living standards that transmitted a sense of hope for the future, popular alienation from politics did not necessarily engender a split between state and society, despite the

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state’s infantilization of the mass public through entrusting control over the means of production to the imaginary masses, rather than to actual individuals. In contrast, on the basis of interviews undertaken, it is clear that current perceptions of the state’s retreat from effective wealth redistribution, coupled with the difficulties of making ends meet for many families, foreground a lack of ownership over politics, simply because the political system is not seen as performing the duties society expects of it. In Bab el-Oued, the legitimacy of the Algerian polity continues to be judged against this standard of substantive democracy, based on aspirations for the equal distribution of social goods and resources. With their roots in the need to overcome the humiliations of colonialism, the populist-egalitarian claims of socialist-inspired developmentalism of the 1960s and 1970s generated a series of socially held expectations of the state that continue to exist in Bab el-Oued, forming the nation-building period’s most significant and lasting legacy. Wealth redistribution has always been identified in the neighbourhood as the state’s most important function. While this role is viewed today as having largely been successful during the 1970s, today the redistributive role of the state is seen as having receded dramatically. This retreat of the state from its responsibilities is visible in depictions of increased corruption and a widening wealth gap that has left residents in Bab el-Oued feeling angry and abandoned. If a closed political sphere could be broadly accepted during the 1970s because it provided a sense of social justice and integrity, as well as rising living standards, today’s equally closed political sphere, despite greater freedom of speech and much democratic window dressing to disguise the continuation of authoritarian political practices, proves unacceptable due of the absolute failure of the reformist FLN to capitalize on the improvements of the 1970s and deliver ‘a better life’11 to the majority in the 1980s and beyond. In this sense, nostalgic remembering embeds itself in the gap between once experienced horizons of expectation and the realities of the present (Koselleck, 2004): In their time, they never imagined it would turn out like this. My mum never wanted to emigrate back then. She said Algeria was better, that it was going to become something. They loved this place […] they never thought it would turn out like this. They had lots of hope. That’s why we young people are nostalgic for a time we never even lived through. For the moment, I’m surviving. Nothing is stable here. Overnight, things could explode. They tell me to keep studying, get my diploma, be someone. But the future is much more uncertain, compared to the optimism they felt. We’re always between optimism and pessimism. (Yacine, 20) 11

‘For a better life’ was the slogan used the FLN during the 1980s.

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Yacine’s clear illustration of a once-glimpsed, fading horizon suggests that nostalgia for the lifeworld of the 1970s has little to do with the past itself. No one in Bab el-Oued wishes to turn back the clock to the strict authoritarianism of the Boumediene era, or to see freedom of expression curtailed as it once was. Rather, memories of erstwhile hope for the future articulate the generalized feeling that things have not turned out as once expected and translate the sense of past-futurity that emerges from the unravelling of Algeria’s state-led project of industrialized modernization, as both the heroic revolutionary past and the utopian future created by postcolonial modernism have gradually faded from view and become divorced from everyday realities. Furthermore, in articulating both a critique of the present and a sense of disappointment in relation to a once-felt optimism, lyricized memories of everyday life and sociability in the past also describe a set of hopes and desires, providing a vocabulary that traces the contours of the polity in which people in Bab el-Oued would like to live. Along with memories that describe the politics of the 1970s as characterized by integrity, pride and austerity, and that were linked to the person of Boumediene, expectations of greater social justice and wealth redistribution by the state articulate a series of principles that reproduce the narrative of the moral polity which postcolonial nationalism set out to create in Algeria. These fragments of the past are simultaneously used to critique the present and describe a still-believed-in future. The images and tropes that make up social memory in Bab el-Oued translate a set of principles – social justice and equality, solidarity between individuals, traditional morality, seriousness in the management of public affairs, political integrity and dignity – that provide a map for the future based on a reimagined past. Here, the social imaginary of the past in Bab el-Oued has more to tell us about the present – and future aspirations – than the past. The use of memories of the past to criticize present politics and its ability to deliver social justice, as well as the absolute rejection of a return to the authoritarianism of the past, all articulate the most significant political principles for the residents of Bab el-Oued in the present: wealth redistribution by a strong state, social equality, political integrity and freedom of speech.

Works Cited Balta, Paul. 1978. La Stratégie de Boumediène. Paris: Sindbad. Bennoune, Mahfoud. 1988. The Making of Contemporary Algeria. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Boumediene, Houari. [n.d.]. ‘Déclaration du Conseil de la Révolution, 3/12/78’. In Discours du Président Boumediene, Tome VIII. Algiers: République algérienne

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démocratique et populaire, Ministère de l’information, Direction de la documentation et des publications. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1963. Travail et travailleurs en Algérie. Paris: Mouton & Co. Bourdieu, Pierre, and Abdelmalek Sayad. 1964. Le Déracinement. La crise de l’agriculture tradionelle en Algérie. Paris: Éditions de Minuit. Buck-Morss, Susan. 2002. Dreamworld and Catastrophe: The Passing of Mass Utopia in East and West. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Étienne, Bruno. 1972. ‘Le vocabulaire politique de la légitimité en Algérie’. Annuaire de l’Afrique du Nord 10: 69–101. ––. 1977. Algérie. Cultures et révolution. Paris: Éditions du Seuil. Fitzpatrick, Sheila. 2000. Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Judet, Pierre. 1979. ‘L’économie algérienne et la logique de l’indépendance’. Le Monde diplomatique 299: 1, 12–13. Koselleck, Reinhardt. 2004. Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time. New York: Columbia University Press. Leca, Jean, and Jean-Claude Vatin. 1975. L’Algérie politique, institutions et régime. Paris: Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques. McAllister, Edward. 2013a. ‘Immunity to the Arab Spring? Fear, Fatigue and Fragmentation in Algeria’. New Middle Eastern Studies 3. Available at http:// www.brismes.ac.uk/nmes/archives/1048 (consulted on 15 January 2016). ––. 2013b. ‘Algeria’s Belle Époque: Narratives of Social and Religious Change’. Texture du temps: Algérie contemporaine. Available at http://texturesdutemps. hypotheses.org/836 (consulted on 30 October 2015). McDougall, James. 2007. ‘After the War: Algeria’s Transition to Uncertainty’. Middle East Report 245: 34–41. Malley, Robert. 1996. The Call from Algeria. Third Worldism, Revolution and the Turn to Islam. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Maschino, Maurice, and Fadela M’rabet. 1972. L’Algérie des illusions. La révolution confisquée. Paris: Robert Laffont. Nadkarni, Maya, and Olga Shevchenko. 2004. ‘The Politics of Nostalgia: A Case for Comparative Analysis of Post-Socialist Paractices’. Ab Imperio 2: 489–519. Roberts, Hugh. 2003. The Battlefield: Algeria 1988–2002. Studies in a Broken Polity. London: Verso. Ruedy, John. 2005. Modern Algeria: The Origins and Development of a Nation. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Tlemcani, Rachid. 1986. State and Revolution in Algeria. London: Zed Books. Willis, Michael. 1996. The Islamist Challenge in Algeria: A Political History. Reading: Garnet.

The Many (Im)possibilities of Contemporary Algerian Judaïtés Samuel Sami Everett

The Many (Im)possibilities of Contemporary Algerian JudaïtésCHANGE

La Criée Theatre, 1 April 2012 On 1 April 2012 the final event of a three-day conference – ‘La Guerre d’Algérie: 50 ans après’ [The Algerian War: 50 years on] – took place at La Criée Theatre in Marseille. It was hosted by Maurice Szafran,1 who chaired a discussion between Bernard-Henri Lévy and Zohra Drif. In her opening address, Zohra Drif, a moujahida [female resistance fighter] of the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) during the war of independence, introduced herself as a woman of Algerian, Maghrebi, Amazigh (Berber) and African origins, and of Arab-Islamic culture. Bernard-Henri Lévy – writer, philosopher, public intellectual, born in Algeria in 1948 – introduced himself as, above all, French. However, he also emphasized that he was the grandson of a Jewish shepherd from Tlemcen and in doing so seemed to implicitly declare an Algerian identity. Lévy’s affective attachment and genealogical connection to Algeria are two factors that underlie an Algerian Jewish stake in the history and culture of the country beyond the question of juridical citizenship. Szafran was the founder, with Jean-François Kahn, of the political magazine Marianne in 1997. The magazine sees its mission as offering an alternative to la pensée unique (a French expression that infers the predominance of a single worldview). 1

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It is to France that the vast majority of Algeria’s Jews went in the months prior to Algerian independence in 1962.2 And contemporary France has become an important site for a significant degree of Algerian JewishMuslim intellectual exchange and daily interaction. As with the positions adopted by Drif and Lévy, these forms of exchange are inflected by a broader politics relating to colonial historiography in France and in Algeria as well as transnational geopolitics – such as relations between Israel and Palestine and the ‘War on Terror’. These discourses shape relations between ‘Jews’ and ‘Arabs’ in France to some extent. The complex question of Jewish Algerianness cuts across these dichotomies in interesting ways and speaks to contemporary North African multiculturalism (particularly in France) as well as to the tensions around difference and the possibility of differing loyalties which came to the fore during the Algerian war of independence and have re-emerged as a result of events in Algeria between 1988 and 1999. The debate between Zohra Drif and Bernard-Henri Lévy highlights the fraught nature of remembering Algeria in contemporary France and the memory of France in contemporary Algeria, what these occlude and how they render Jewish identification with Algeria complex. Whether consciously or not, Drif’s list of self-describing adjectives corresponds to an exclusively Muslim definition of Algerian identity. In what follows, I argue that it is this form of exclusivist positioning that obscures the more intimate realities and shared transnational proximities of personal experience that might reflect a subtler way of thinking through and acting out algerianités – a range of ways of belonging to Algeria, as locality or as culture – and how these intersect with judaïtés that are anchored within affective and political-historical positions. This chapter draws primarily from textual production by Algerian Jews as well as interviews with Parisian intellectuals of Algerian descent 3 and is informed by the transnational impact of discursive constructs of nationhood prompted by key moments such as the Algerian civil war of the 1990s, the fiftieth anniversary of independence in 2012 and the supposed rise of Muslim anti-Semitism in France since 2001.4 According to Le Foll-Luciani, some 140,000 Algerian Jews left, the majority as ‘repatriates’ to France (2015: 8). 3 For my thesis I conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Paris between 2010 and 2012. During this period I interviewed a number of eminent Algerian Jewish intellectuals such as Brigitte Stora, Hélène Cixous and Benjamin Stora. 4 Several commentators and public intellectuals have, since the 1980s, become torchbearers of this particular argument. See Trigano (2003; 2006) in relation to anti-Semitism. 2

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My aim is to rethink contemporary identification with Algeria by relating it to the historical experience of Algerian Jews and how this has been thought through and appropriated in national histories and by Jewish Algerians since 1988. After a short discussion of key terms such as judaïtés, the chapter is divided into three parts. Part one provides an insight into Algerian Jewish testimony of anti-colonial resistance and draws on my discussions with intellectual, singer and documentary-maker Brigitte Stora, who has explored the issue of Jewish Algerianness. Part two examines the identification, or non-identification, with Algerianness for Jews born in Algeria but now living in France. It reviews contrasting positions adopted by historian Benjamin Stora and sociologist and philosopher Shmuel Trigano. Part three pursues the relationship between Algerian Jews and Algerian history and culture through an account of the reception of the film El Gusto (2012) and its attempt to reinscribe Jews and Judeo-Muslim cultural practices into the national Algerian story.

Judaïtés: From Indigènes to Pieds-Noirs to Algerian Jews Hélène Cixous and Jacques Derrida, respectively born in pre-Second World War colonial Oran and Algiers, remained in Paris after the Algerian war of independence.5 Both are inhabitants of what Cixous would call a ‘stranjew body’6 and both have consistently opposed the reification of Jewish ‘religious’ or Algerian ‘national’ identities that do not translate the diverse facets of complex and evolving identifications to multiple (North African and otherwise) localities and heritages. The neologism judaïtés – a deconstructionist term indebted to both Cixous and Derrida – gives expression to ‘a certain equivocation, an indefinable and undeterminable diversity, that may well constitute the interiority of Judaism today’ (Cohen and Zagury-Orly, 2007: xi). The complexity of judaïtés is historically layered: the term is not meant to define or explain but rather to act as a hermeneutic tool for opening up spaces of reflection.

Cixous and her mother did not move definitively from Algiers to Paris until 1971. 6 In her contribution to the colloquium ‘Judéités: questions pour Jacques Derrida’ at the Jewish community centre in Paris on 3–5 December 2000, Hélène Cixous, a close friend of Jacques Derrida, would make intertextual sense of their shared identification to a Jewish body, and the monolingualism of his/and their strange Algerian-born French (Jewish) body (Cixous, 2007: 75). 5

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Indeed, looking at Algerian Jewish nomenclature since the late nineteenth century, the importance of judaïtés as a non-teleological way of thinking through Jewish Algerianness becomes clear. The French colonial administrative term for Jews in Algeria was israélites as opposed to juifs (Lorcin, 2012: 904). This underlined a racial conceptualization of the North African Jew taken from French anthropology. Jews were at once tribal descendants from Israel in biblical Palestine, and israélites indigènes, simultaneously similar to, in their backwardness, but religiously distinct from, Muslims. Hubert Hannoun (2004) argues that the proposal of naturalization for Jewish and Muslim indigènes by the Napoleon III Senatus-Consultus of July 1865 (see Weil, 2003: 10) ended in failure with less than 5% of town-dwelling Jews seeking naturalization. It was therefore under the Third Republic that the salient disjuncture within Judeo-Muslim history was created by the ‘ethnocultural’ Crémieux decree of October 1870 (Savarese, 2002: 79). The decree imposed French citizenship en masse upon Jews across northern Algeria without taking account of Algerian Jewish choice (Schreier, 2010: 49). It was subsequently revoked under the Peyrouton decree in October 1940 in line with anti-Semitic policies pursued by the Vichy regime. This revocation of citizenship was followed by discriminatory policies relating to business profits and, later, property rights (Abitbol, 1983: 104). Following General de Gaulle’s arrival in Algiers in June 1943 – in the wake of the Allied landings of November 1942 – it took a further five months for citizenship to be restored to the majority of the Jewish population in October 1943 (Le Foll-Luciani, 2015: 82). Despite the anti-Semitic crimes of Vichy and the fact that there was no rush to reinstate citizenship, even after the military defeat of Vichy in Algeria, many Jewish people from North Africa would self-designate as pied-noir upon arrival in France. Pierre Daum defines pieds-noirs as ‘all those non-Muslim French Algerians, that it is to say Europeans and Jews, who left or stayed’ in Algeria (2010: 22). However, the term pied-noir, invented after Algeria gained independence (Shepard, 2006: 151), has both strong national-legal (citizen of France) and transnational, political (Algerian-born but ‘repatriated to France’) implications in its relation to Frenchness.7 Though a marker of Algerianness, the pied-noir label meant, and continues to mean, Algerian citizenship was not offered en masse to non-Muslims who stayed in Algeria after 1962. Daniel Timsit explains that the Algerian state’s requirement that non-Muslims undergo naturalization in order to obtain Algerian citizenship after 1962 was difficult to accept by those FLN Jewish Algerian activists who, like him, had been in favour of Algerian independence and had taken up arms against the colonial regime in the hope of helping to forge a new, plural Algeria (2002: 28). 7

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being a culturally assimilated French citizen (i.e., a speaker of French imbued with enlightenment values). However, since the turn of the millennium, many Algerian Jews have sought to dissociate themselves from the pieds-noirs (Allouche-Benayoun and Bensimon, 1999). This process can be read in tandem with the reappropriation of a certain Algerianness, often born out of a desire by Algerian Jewish liberals to self-differentiate from the settlercolonial implication of the term pied-noir, in addition to a distancing from the colonial period and its fraught historiography (Zytnicki, 2011). This redefinition – from being French to being primarily Jewish Algerian – follows a general tendency towards atavism in religion that has taken place in French society since the 1980s (Hargreaves, 2007; Amselle, 2011). Such reinterpretations have also gained currency in traditionalist Jewish circles8 where transnational flows of people and ideas between Israel and France permeate peoples’ lived realities (Schnapper et al., 2009). Traditionalist Jewish circles have often rejected the pied-noir label while concurrently distancing Algerian Judaism from Algerian Arabism and, by corollary, Islam.9 Such transnational, multifactor views of Algerian Jewish experience – as Israelites, pieds-noirs and Algerian – and their continual redefinition across France and Algeria renders more complex the assimilationist teleology prescribed by significant authors of Algerian Jewish history, such as Chouraqui (1972) and Ayoun and Cohen (1982), who saw Algerian Jews in terms of their movement towards French modernity.

I Jewish Algerian Anti-colonial Struggle and Algerian Citizenship Algerian Jewish anti-colonial political engagement also calls into question a teleological historiography that sees the Jews of Algeria naturally assimilated as French. It highlights how the politics of Jewish Algerianness was not ultimately of a sufficient scale to unravel the Arab-Islamic nationalism represented by According to Erik H.  Cohen and Maurice Ifergan, Jewish traditionalists assign importance to societal values linked with ‘authority, religious faith, founding a family, honouring one’s parents’ (2007: 138). Thus Traditionalism can be equated to a socially conservative outlook. 9 This was clear from contributions to the conference ‘La présence juive en Algérie: Histoire et perspectives’ [The Jewish Presence in Algeria: History and Perspectives] organized by the carefully named association Exode des Français Juifs d’Algérie [Exodus of French Jews from Algeria], which took place at the Palais du Luxembourg, Paris on 18 June 2012. 8

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the FLN movement and Algerian citizenship after independence. Mohammed Harbi argues that from 1956 onward the focus of the FLN was nationalist and that ‘le nationalisme algérien était musulman’ [Algerian nationalism was Muslim] (2011).10 This history of Algerian Jewish resistance to colonialism as a racial and structural ideology was further distanced from Algeria’s official version of history with the argument for an exclusivist Islamic conceptualization of Algerian identity in the dark decade of the 1990s. Recently the Musée de l’art et de l’histoire du judaïsme (MAHJ, Museum of Jewish Art and History) countered this view by incorporating Jewish anti-colonial figures into the broad-brush history of Jews in Algeria in its permanent exhibition. And, in terms of academic research on the subject, the work of Le Foll-Luciani is a comprehensive treatment of Algerian Jewish anti-colonial resistance from the 1934 Constantine massacre to 1962 (Le Foll-Luciani, 2015). The topic of Jewish Algerian anti-colonial resistance was also the subject of a radio documentary by Brigitte Stora in 2011. The Algiers-born Stora conducted interviews with a significant number of Jewish men and women who fought for Algerian independence. What emerges from her documentary is the sense that this anti-colonial engagement was predicated on a mythical Andalusi/Berber North African togetherness that informed spaces of rapprochement and zones of Judeo-Muslim commonality. These views are echoed in the prison diaries of Daniel Timsit, who fought for the FLN: ‘Ce que nous gardions, c’était les fêtes et la musique. Mon père jouait au piano de la musique andalouse, il chantait, et quand il y avait des fêtes, nous invitions uniquement des orchestres de musique arabe classique’ (2002: 13).11 Timsit’s vision of the Algerian socialist project prior to independence coincides with other visions of a future, plural Algerian state, such as that of Ferhat Abbas, who promoted a heterogeneous Algerian nation that would acknowledge multiple historical lineages and navigate a myriad of cultural differences (Daoud and Stora, 1995). By the end of the Algerian conflict of the 1990s, such a pluralist view and, specifically, Algerian Jewish reconciliation with the Algerian state, appeared almost impossible. Jewish relations with Algeria were trenchantly Extracted from Harbi’s contribution to Brigitte Stora’s radio documentary ‘Les Juifs d’Algérie engagés dans la lutte pour l’indépendance’ [The Algerian Jews Involved in the Struggle for Independence], which was broadcast by France Culture on 20 September 2011. Brigitte Stora is not related to Benjamin Stora. 11 ‘What we had kept [of our indigenous status] were our celebrations and the music. My father played Andalusian piano, he sang and when we celebrated [religious and non-religious events] it was only ever classical Arab orchestras that we invited [into our homes]’. 10

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depicted by Jean-Pierre Lledo in his film Algérie: histoire à ne pas dire (2007). Lledo portrays virulent anti-Semitism in Algeria and its relationship to the violent Islamic extremism that drove him to leave Algiers in 1993. Lledo, a contributor to Shmuel Trigano’s journal Controverses, has radically shifted his stance on the possibilities of a pluralist future in Algeria since leaving. Within the Algerian cultural and political context, the official distancing (indeed a form of ‘othering’) of a Jewish heritage from a sense of Algerianness is compounded by portrayals of returnee Algerian Jews from France as ‘non-Algerians’, or as pieds-noirs. This can be seen, for example, in the media coverage of the widely reported visit of several hundred Jewish Algerians from Paris to Tlemcen 24 May – 1 June 200512 which followed on from President Bouteflika’s agreement with President Chirac of France in March 2003 that sought to open up Algeria to non-Muslim tourism from France. Indeed, the narrative of a homogenous Islamic Algeria continues to be maintained by many in post-conflict Algeria. The Algerian Minister for Communication and Culture Khalida Toumi exemplified this in 2006 when, as the state representative at the Journée Arabe de la Culture [Arab Day of Culture] held in Algiers on 18 July, she outlined the main obstacle to any articulation of Algerian Jewish heritage in Algeria: ‘La nation arabe fait face à des tentatives de judaïsation orchestrées par Israël qui altèrent des faits historiques et dénaturent certains aspects culturels arabes pour les présenter comme éléments de la culture juive’ (‘Quand madame la ministre dérape’, 2006).13 Toumi’s suggestion of a cultural colonization of Arab ‘authenticity’ by Jews results from a narrative that confuses Israeli appropriation of Palestinian lands with historically shared Jewish-Muslim Arab forms of art and culture. Her conflation of age-old cultural forms with current Israeli foreign policy places Algerian Jews outside the national narrative and reinforces the claim of a contemporary homogenous Muslim El Watan and Le Quotidien d’Oran tend towards a standardized use of pied-noir (often instead of juif ), rather than Israélite, which is rarely used. More recently, such as in its coverage of the burial of the actor Roger Hanin in Algiers, El Watan made indirect reference to Hanin’s Judaism in relation to the neighbourhood Bab el-Oued, ‘où les juifs et musulmans partagaient l’ambiance de ce quartier populaire d’Alger’ [where Jews and Muslims shared the neighbourhood’s working-class atmosphere] (see ‘Hommage’, 2015). My internet searches carried out in 2012 revealed that Echourouq and Al-Khabar use the Arabic yahud [Jew] only in relation to Israel. 13 ‘The Arab nation is faced with attempts of “Judaization”, orchestrated by Israel, that alter certain historical facts and denature certain aspects of Arab culture in order to present them as Jewish culture’. 12

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Algeria.14 For his part, Lledo insists on anti-Jewish bigotry as a root problem in Algerian society and not as a consequence of a lack of critical intellectual engagement under authoritarian rule. Such deeply anchored ethno-religious perspectives from within the cultural ambit highlight the predominance of a religious frame in post-civil war discursive constructions of nation and how these define and construct, for example, ‘Arab culture’ in opposition to ‘Jewish culture’. This is the context informing Brigitte Stora’s exploration of anti-colonial militancy of Jewish Algerians who were members of the FLN. Her documentary serves to unsettle historical narratives and presentist geopolitical positions that combine to divide Muslim and Jewish Algerianness. She remarks ‘Or, elle [the history of Algerian Jews in the war of independence] n’a pas sa place dans l’histoire officielle […] c’est une histoire qui n’existe presque plus ni en Algérie ni bien sûr du côté de l’état d’Israël et du sionisme qui considère que tous ces braves gens se sont plantés’.15 The figure of the Algerian resistance fighter is central to the myth of Algerian national unity and yet it has resulted in the historical invisibility of Jewish fighters because their stories do not further the dominant nationalist narrative in Algeria or similar narratives in France and Israel. Stora continues: ‘je ne pense pas que ce qui a triomphé devrait triompher, ça c’est une forme de déterminisme, une façon de penser que l’histoire a été écrite une fois pour toute et ça va à l’encontre de l’idée que tu peux agir sur cette histoire’.16 Those who participated in Brigitte Stora’s documentary opposed the French colonial administration precisely because of its racialization of Jewish-Muslim social interaction. They were motivated by firmly held ideological beliefs that reflected their scepticism of French state humanism as practised during the Second World War. The Arab, nationalist, Islamic and socialist discourses developed by the FLN in order to galvanize nation state identity were no doubt effective tools in building anti-colonial resistance. However, the hegemonic myth of national identity that was to evolve after 1962 largely excluded non-Muslims At the same time, the Algerian state apparatus has been more open to the co-option of other identities, such as Berber language and culture. 15 Interview with Brigitte Stora, 22 October 2012: ‘There is a near total erasure of their histories [of Jewish FLN resistance fighters] in Algeria, but the state of Israel also sees those valiant individuals as having got it wrong’. 16 Interview with Brigitte Stora, 22 October 2012: ‘I do not think that that which won [after the war of independence] should have won. That is a form of determinism, a view of history as having been written once and for all and which goes against the idea that it can be acted upon, changed’. 14

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from the process of building a new Algerian nation. For Algerian Jews the sentiment of being a minority was ultimately compounded by a monolithic Arab-Muslim identity. Nevertheless, before 1956, it was the sentiment of minority injustice that guided the revolutionary attitudes of those Jewish men and women who believed that the pain inflicted by the Vichy administration should be channelled in ways that would serve all those oppressed by colonization. Le Foll-Luciani postulates that some of the more radical anti-colonial actors rethought and remodelled cultural forms of Algerian Judeity on this basis (2012: 81). Such a form of Algerian belonging ultimately proved impossible in Algeria due in part to the circulaire du code de la nationalité [nationality law] adopted in March 1963 that made non-Muslims born in Algeria foreigners (Le Foll-Luciani, 2015: 28). However, the mixture of depression and elation that accompanied their arrival in metropolitan France led to practices combining nostalgia for Algeria with a renewed sense of Jewish community, a process of remarginalization in France and the establishment of a new postcolonial minority position. Thus, for many Jews who fought for Algerian independence, becoming Algerian went hand in hand with a projected sense of belonging to a utopian Algerian state. For Jewish communists – whose numbers were disproportionately high compared to Christian comrades (Le Foll-Luciani, 2012: 77) – the process meant at once an affective reappropriation of a Judeo-Arab past and an active political alignment with Algerian nationalism as an holistic experience rather than a commitment to the specifics of Algerian state policies (Le Foll-Luciani, 2015: 336). Such a cultural appropriation of Algerianness required being able to understand Algerian Arabic if not always to speak it. Many only spoke French – as Derrida puts it, ‘je n’ai qu’une langue, ce n’est pas la mienne’ (1996: 13).17 There is a sense among Algerian Jews that French has usurped Algerian Arabic but that its remnants nonetheless remain for people of Derrida’s generation through a shared passion for Andalusi music (see Langlois, this volume). As we have seen, being Jewish has become progressively more difficult to reconcile with being Algerian as a result of Algerian and French political contexts in the 1990s. Nevertheless, the standard postcolonial narrative of Algerian Jewry – shaped by the colonial bias that marks the literature on the subject (Chouraqui, Ayoun, et al.) and gives the impression of a natural ‘progress’ from indigenous folk to French citizens – has recently been challenged by a multiplicity of different historically, geographically and religiously situated stories that break down the idea of a homogenous ‘Algerian Jewish’ trajectory. 17

‘I only have one language, and it is not mine’.

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II Identifying, or not, with Algerianness: Benjamin Stora and Shmuel Trigano As ‘nearly-Algerians’ – perceived from the outside as situated between Algerian indigenousness and French republicanism – the intellectual trajectories of Benjamin Stora and Shmuel Trigano, both well-established academics, elucidate the complexity of affective identity, geopolitical sympathies and nationalist affinities that have come to a head in France. This complexity has been marked by questions of community relations, France’s legacy in its former colonies and the instrumentalization of French national identity under President Sarkozy between 2007 and 2012. Stora and Trigano were born in Constantine (1950) and Blida (1948) respectively and grew up in observant Jewish households. Since his public campaigning for mizrahi (Eastern Jewish) rights in Israel during the 1980s, Trigano has become a fervent proponent of Zionism and the mass immigration of Jews from France to Israel. In contrast, Stora’s contemporary political engagement is focused on European diversity (2003: 17), highlighted by his position as Advisory President of the Musée de l’Histoire de l’Immigration [Museum of the History of Immigration]. Stora made a significant contribution to advancing recognition of North African culture and history in France during the 1980s. He allied himself to various initiatives that opposed the Algerian civil war of the 1990s and the manner in which it was represented in France (Stora, 1995). In addition, Stora’s implicit, yet nuanced, sympathy for FLN leftism comes across clearly in his political memoirs published in the 2000s (2003; 2006; 2008; 2012). At the same time, Stora is forthright about his Jewish identity: ‘je n’ai jamais cherché à nier ma judéité […] tout le monde sait que j’étais juif, que je suis juif et que je l’ai toujours été’.18 This is worth noting as it makes clear that Stora does not deny his Jewish identity in order to visit and speak in Algeria. Finally, Stora’s research unravels and critiques the Franco-Algerian ‘memory wars’ and the delegitimization of plurality by those who disparage it as a colonial cosmopolitanism (Plenel and Stora, 2011); a position that has led to the accentuation of nationalisms and the hardening of ideological positions in Algeria and France (Stora, 2008: 12). Furthermore, in line with Ferhat Abbas, Messali Hadj and Abdelhamid Ben Badis before him (notably in the 1930s), Benjamin Stora has maintained his commitment to a diverse Algerian nationalism. Since the inauguration of the Algerian archives at the Archives Interview with Benjamin Stora, 6 July 2011: ‘I have never sought to negate my Jewishness […] everybody knows that I was Jewish, I am Jewish and I always have been’. 18

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Nationales d’Outre Mer [National Archives of Overseas Territories] in 2001, Stora feels that there has been a coming of age in France as the secondand third-generation descendants of Algerian Muslims seek to promote a memory that is plural and shared (Stora, 2012: 134). By contrast, Shmuel Trigano objects to what he sees as Stora’s reworking of colonial history in a way that presents Algerian Jews and Muslims as peacefully cohabiting over significantly long periods of time (Plenel and Stora, 2011). During the early 2000s, Shmuel Trigano argued that a ‘new anti-Semitism’ had come into being and was predicated on what he saw as a visceral and incommensurate anti-Zionism within Arab-Islamism (2006: 283). Trigano continues to be deeply concerned about the future of French Jewry in light of the increased anti-Semitic and racist acts in France since 2000 which, for him, are the result of European somnambulism in the face of a progressive ‘Ottomanization’ (2003: 115) of society. This view is partly predicated, he told me, on a pre-existing racial anxiety he developed in his youth in Blida. This rare moment of self-reflexive exposure allows us to better understand the blame he attaches to North African Muslims (his generalizing category for Muslims of North African descent living in France) for ethno-religious communitarianism in Europe even as he remains guarded about the implications of his personal experience as a member of a minority in French colonial Algeria. Trigano has sketched the contours of a ‘European Islam’, outlining how governments should define a normative perspective for the sake of the non-Muslim European population (2003: 125–27). He draws on terms that have become part of a post-9/11 lexical field – for example Islam/terror as an intractable and singular concept – thereby contributing to an ideological terrain that presents anti-Zionism as one of the many facets of so-called new anti-Semitism. He pays particular attention to France – especially the purported danger from within the Paris region – where Jews and Muslims live side by side. Trigano is refitting his Algerian experience to the contemporary French metropole. He claims to see himself as having been a Frenchman residing in Algeria and his life in France as a continuation of that French existence ‘over there’. His research findings regarding the position of French Jews as a minority fuse with his own mental image of life in Algeria.19 By contrast, Stora empathizes with the concerns of second- and thirdgeneration urban French Muslims of North African descent in relation to their views on the Middle East, but does not see it as fitting into a Jewish-Muslim sectarian continuum. Stora does not accept the label of French-Algerian for Algerian Jews, thus distancing himself from a strongly 19

Interview with Trigano, 12 September 2011.

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held belief among many Algerian Jews in France about the benefits of a Western conception of ‘progress’.20 On the contrary, Stora argues that distancing oneself from Arab culture has been experienced as a form of cultural exile by Algerian Jews.21 For Trigano, the purpose of Stora’s views is a rapprochement between North African Jews and Muslims in France, of which he is sceptical. The positions espoused by Stora and Trigano differ greatly with respect to their views on Algeria, the feeling of Algerianness and solidarity with Algeria’s people. Each has a form of judaïté that inflects an imagined relationship to North Africa, and a personal sentiment of belonging, or not, to Algerian history. Their contrasting positions give an insight into the ambivalence of what it is to be a Jewish person of Algerian origin in France today. Trigano’s view is inward looking; experience has shown him that ‘identity’ and a moral framework should find their source in Jewish philosophy (Hyman, 1998: 209) and that Jews should look therefore to the Scriptures to develop conceptions of justice, progress and social relations (2012). By contrast, Stora adopts diverse ideas from different cultural and political sources. While these opposing views may be attributed to their differing politics, they are also a consequence of personal experience. Firmly anchored in a French context informed by a colonial past and a multicultural present, Trigano rarely writes about his life or his political, emotional and academic trajectory, whereas Stora has published a well-documented autobiographical work on his Algerian ‘return’ (2003: 204) in which he reflects on his personal contribution to contemporary French plurality. Stora, often collaborating with others such as the Algerian historian Mohammed Harbi (2004), has managed to create space for discussion around minority inclusivity in Algeria. His work has been instrumental in promoting the historical inclusion of Jewish heritage within Algeria’s national narrative. Pushing against this possibility of a connection between Algerianness and judaïtés, Shmuel Trigano deliberately elides Jew and Israeli, and consciously I make this claim based on the 2012 MORIAL conference (MORechet Iehudei ALgeria) [Mémoires et Traditions des Juifs d’Algérie, Memories and Traditions of Algerian Jews], where the issues of progrès [progress] and enlightenment were raised by Emile Karoubi in his talk on Jewish involvement in the US landings in Algeria in the Second World War. These issues were pursued afterwards through questions from the floor. The conference, ‘2000 ans d’histoire juive en Algérie: 50 ans après …’ [2,000 Years of Jewish History in Algeria: 50 Years after …’, took place at the Centre Communautaire de Paris on 19 November 2012. 21 This is a view that Stora expressed at a conference held at Sciences Po titled ‘Juifs et Arabes en France’ in June 2009. 20

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promotes his views on Islamic anti-Jewish sentiment against which the Israeli state offers a safe haven for global Judaism and a bulwark against terror.

III Affective Identity: Chaabi, Algerian Jews and the Grand Rex, Paris, 2012 As we have seen throughout this chapter, Jewish affective identification with Algeria is bound up with the history and artistic culture (music, in particular) of Algeria. This view is supported by Timsit’s comment (above) and by Benjamin Stora’s career-long commitment to maintaining a notion of plurality (Jewish and otherwise) in Algerian history and promoting respect for North African minority cultures in France. However, this complexity is disputed by many, for example Trigano’s conflation of Islam and terrorism views Algerian minorities in France as contributing to the breakdown of republican values and Algerian state ambivalence towards Jewish Algerian culture. The recent Irish-Algerian film production El Gusto (Bousbia, 2012) is a documentary that seeks to reinscribe Algerian Jewish-Muslim conviviality, musical exchange and cross-faith friendship back into Algerian history. If the café indigène had the potential to be a site for transgressing the ethnic hierarchy that separated Jews from Muslims in colonial Algeria (Carlier, 1990), it is because it provided a mixed public space where people could listen and partake in shared musical traditions. It was a space of relaxation where Judeo-Muslim musical genres fused, becoming known in Algeria as chaabi (meaning ‘popular’ in Arabic). As such, Lili Boniche, an Algerian Jew and one of the great Algerian singer-songwriters of chaabi, was an obvious point of focus for El Gusto. The documentary, which took over seven years to make, facilitates and tracks the reunion of the Jewish and Muslim members of a chaabi group from colonial Algiers known as El Gusto. The Jewish members went to live in France after the war of independence and the Muslim members stayed in Algeria. The first half of the film tells the story of chaabi as a musical form, its origins and, although less accentuated, its place within Algerian cultural resistance during the struggle for independence. The second half of the film concentrates on the lives of specific members of the group. The film ends with their first reunion concert at the Théâtre du Gymnase in Marseille, in a kind of back-to-front story of return that brings out their passion and desire to transmit this shared musical form. And while the Algerian government allowed filming to take place in Algeria, the concert itself, it seems, had to take place in France.

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Chaabi music, steeped in Andalusi tradition, attracted Jewish Algerian singers such as Reinette l’Oranaise, Lili Labassi, Lili Boniche and others who developed the genre in Algeria and then in France after 1962. It ‘belonged to the people’ and was played in homes, cafés and in workingclass districts – hence the name the genre came to acquire. Historically, Muslims and Jews produced their own chioukh (plural for the Arabic cheikh) – musical leaders who would transmit classical repertoires to younger generations (see Langlois, this volume). For example, Hadj Si Mohamed El Anka, father of El Anka (junior) who appears in the film El Gusto, like Bashtarzi and Allalou, was a pupil of Cheikh Edmond Yafil. Squeezed in between full-blown oriental orchestras and café-concert style productions, chaabi music emerged between the two world wars and became a potent site for cultural gatherings by the 1950s, particularly in and around Algiers. Unfortunately, the Algerian war of independence ended its evolution as a shared Judeo-Muslim cultural form. Although the group El Gusto’s reunion takes place in Marseille, Algiers the city, its colonial buildings and the Casbah – captured in magnificent aerial views that also show parts that have fallen into ruin since 1962 – is one of the film’s central characters. Algiers becomes a postcolonial lieu de mémoire [realm of memory] that can have a powerful visual impact on the audience. The Casbah – Daniel Timsit’s working-class neighbourhood – with its innumerable steep and narrow alleyways and its plethora of bootleg goods and illicit substances – is seen as a key site of Algerian national resistance against the French colonial regime despite the fact that it has since been neglected by the government and some of its inhabitants. In the 1950s the Casbah was home to many cafés that had a reputation as places of ill repute as well as the city’s oldest synagogue, the Djamaa lihoud [Jewish Mosque]. On 8 and 9 January 2012 at the Grand Rex in Paris, special screenings of El Gusto were followed by a Q&A with the film’s director, Safinez Bousbia, and a concert. In the queue, I heard people saying they had watched the film ‘every night for a week’. Many cried during the screening and some spoke during the Q&A. One young man said that after seeing Algiers again after 50 years his mother had spoken of her desire to return. He had booked flights and they would be visiting Algiers (for him it would be the first time) in less than a month. There were also sobering accounts of the difficulties of performing in Algiers during the 1990s civil war, when it was dangerous to play music. At the same time, a young man recounted that Salafi friends could not resist listening to chaabi because, they said to him, ‘it is not music, it is part of us’ even though strict Salafism does not permit listening to music. Some walked out in protest at the first mention of a ‘war of independence’ seeing it as a ‘politicization’ of the Q&A – and my sense was

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that the protesters were unhappy to be reminded of ‘the bad times’ and may not have shared the view that 1962 signified ‘independence’. Others, Algerian Jews and Muslims alike, stayed to ask the director questions about how she went about gaining Algerian government approval to film in Algiers. Bousbia is an idealist and, as she put it, a ‘citizen of planet earth’. The success of her film, and the concerts and the debates that followed, provide evidence that friendship and cultural heritage remain ingrained in the social memories of Algeria’s Jews and Muslims, refracted through Algerian Jewish and Muslim diaspora experience.

Conclusion In light of the sustained, intensive bombing of the Gaza strip by Israeli air forces in the summer of 2014, the Algerian Minister of Religious Affairs annulled his declaration that the 25 remaining synagogues in Algeria would be reopened (Stein, 2015). However limited, it was a gesture towards exchange and an acknowledgement of Jewish culture within Algerian history. Nevertheless, Jewish identification with Algeria remains complex, freighted as it is by a long history and by more recent factors that have had a transnational reach, such as the violence in Algeria during the 1990s, the supposed reconfiguration of minority relations in France since 2000 and the fiftieth anniversary of Algerian independence in 2012. In terms of empathy and political solidarity, Jewish anti-colonial histories in Algeria demonstrate that it was, perhaps, possible for leftist Algerian Jews to reconstitute themselves within an overarching narrative based on a shared sense of cultural and political Algerian identity. However, the exclusionary laws on Algerian citizenship have, since the ‘repatriation’ of Algerian Jews to France, pushed Algerian Jewish intellectuals, sympathetic to Algeria, into an in-between position. Algerian-born but now Paris-based, public intellectuals such as Stora, comment on events in Algeria with empathy and often in ways that seek to counter the transnational consequence of a monolithic discourse on terror. Transnational ethno-religious forms of identification among Algerian Jews and Muslims and their descendants in France are complex and necessitate historical distance and political open-mindedness. The complexity of Jewish Algerianness and the various positionings that this elicits can serve as an indicator of the difficulties that the contemporary nation state faces in establishing multicultural unity. El Gusto and other signs that the narrative of Algerian history might one day become more inclusive – such as the Tlemcen speech of 2002 or the reopening of 25 synagogues in 2014 – may be the first indicators of such a change in Algeria.

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Works Cited Abitbol, Michel. 1983. Les Juifs d’Afrique du Nord sous Vichy. Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose. Algérie, histoires à ne pas dire. 2007. Dir. Jean-Pierre Lledo. Allouche-Benayoun, Joëlle, and Doris Bensimon. 1999. Juifs d’Algérie. Mémoires et identités plurielles. Paris: Stavit. Amselle, Jean-Loup. 2011. L’Ethnicisation de la France. Paris: Nouvelles Éditions Lignes. Ayoun, Richard, and Bernard Cohen. 1982. Les Juifs d’Algérie: 2000 ans d’histoire. Paris: J.C. Lattès. Carlier, Omar. 1990. ‘Le café maure. Sociabilité masculine et effervescence citoyenne (Algérie XVIIe–XXe siècles)’. Annales 45.4: 975–1003. Chouraqui, André. 1972. La Saga des Juifs en Afrique du Nord. Paris: Hachette. Cixous, Hélène. 2007. ‘This Stranjew Body’. In Bettina Bergo, Joseph Cohen and Raphael Zagury-Orly (eds), Judeities: Questions for Jacques Derrida. New York: Fordham University Press: 52–77. Cohen, Erik, and Maurice Ifergan. 2007. Heureux comme juifs en France? Etude sociologique. Jérusalem: Éditions Elkana and Akadem. Cohen, Joseph, and Raphael Zagury-Orly. 2007. Judeities: questions for Jacques Derrida. New York: Fordham University Press. Daoud, Zakya, and Benjamin Stora. 1995. Ferhat Abbas, une utopie algérienne. Paris: Denoël. Daum, Pierre. 2010. Ni Valise ni cercueil: les pieds-noirs restés en Algérie après l’indépendance. Arles: Actes Sud. Derrida, Jacques. 1996. Le Monolinguisme de l’autre, ou, la prothèse d’origine. Paris: Galilée. ——. 2007. ‘Abraham the Other’. Trans by Gil Anidjar. In Bettina Bergo, Joseph D. Cohen, and Raphael Zagury-Orly (eds), Judeities: Questions for Jacques Derrida. New York: Fordham University Press: 1–35. El Gusto. 2012. Dir. Safinez Bousbia. Everett, Samuel Sami. 2014. ‘Maghrébinicité 1981–2012: Affective Belonging from the Margins of North African Jewish Experience in Ile-de-France’. PhD thesis: SOAS, University of London. Hargreaves, Alec G. 2007. Multi-ethnic France: Immigration, Politics, Culture, and Society. London: Routledge. Hannoun, Hubert. 2004. ‘La Déchirure historique des Juifs d’Algérie’. Le Quotidien d’Oran 24 June. ‘Hommage. Roger Hanin: revoir Alger et partir’. 2015. El Watan 13 February. Available at: http://www.courrierinternational.com/dessin/2015/02/13/rogerhanin-revoir-alger-et-partir (consulted on 14 September 2015).

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Hyman, Paula E. 1998. The Jews of Modern France. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Le Foll-Luciani, Pierre-Jean. 2012. ‘Des étudiants juifs algériens dans le mouvement national algérien à Paris (1948–1962)’. In Frédéric Abécassis, Karima Dirèche and Rita Aouad (eds), La Bienvenue et l’adieu vol. II. Rabat: Centre Jacques Berque. ——. 2015. Les Juifs algériens dans la lutte anticoloniale. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes. Lorcin, Patricia M.E. 2012. ‘Manipulating Elissa: The Uses and Abuses of Elissa Rhaïs and her Works’. The Journal of North African Studies 17.5: 903–22. Plenel, Edwy, and Benjamin Stora. 2011. Le 89 arabe: réflexions sur les révolutions en cours. Paris: Stock. ‘Quand madame la Ministre dérape’. 2006. Alger républicain September: 15. Available at http://www.algeria-watch.org/fr/article/tribune/ministre_derapage. htm (consulted on 14 September 2015). Savarese, Eric. 2002. L’Invention des pieds-noirs. Paris: Séguier. Schnapper, Dominique, Chantal Bordes-Benayoun and Freddy Raphaël. 2009. La Condition juive en France: la tentation de l’entre-soi. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Schreier, Joshua. 2010. Arabs of the Jewish Faith: The Civilizing Mission in Colonial Algeria. New York: Rutgers University Press. Shepard, Todd. 2006. ‘Pieds-noirs, bêtes noires’. In Patricia M.E. Lorcin (ed.), Algeria and France, 1800–2000: Identity, Memory, Nostalgia. New York: Syracuse University Press: 150–63. Stein, Sarah Abrevaya. 2014. ‘Algeria’s Jewish Past-Present’. Jadaliyya 11 September. Available at http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/19205/algeria’sjewishpast-present (consulted on 9 October 2015). Stora, Benjamin, and Mohammed Harbi. 2004. La Guerre d’Algérie: 1954–2004, la fin de l’amnésie. Paris: Robert Laffont. Stora, Benjamin. 1995. ‘Deuxième guerre algérienne. Les habits anciens des combattants’. Les Temps Modernes 580: 242–61. ——. 2003. La Dernière génération d’octobre. Paris: Stock. ——. 2006. Les Trois Exils juifs d’Algérie. Paris: Stock. ——. 2008. Les Guerres sans fin: un historien, la France et l’Algérie. Un ordre d’idées. Paris: Stock. ——. 2012. Voyages en postcolonies: Viêt Nam, Algérie, Maroc. Paris: Stock. Stora, Brigitte. ‘Les Juifs d’Algérie engagés dans la lutte pour l’indépendance’. Radio documentary, France Culture. Broadcast on 20 September 2011. Timsit, Daniel. 2002. Récits de la longue patience: journal de prison, 1956–1962. Paris: Flammarion.

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Trigano, Shmuel. 2003. Démission de la République: juifs et musulmans en France. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. ——. 2006. L’Avenir des juifs de France. Paris: Grasset & Fasquelle. ——. 2006–2009. Controverses, revue des idées. Paris: Éditions de l’Eclat. Available at http://www.controverses.fr/Sommaires/sommaires_index.htm (consulted on 20 January 2016). ——. 2012. ‘La Condition des Juifs d’Algérie après L’exode de 1962’. Paper presented at Il y a Cinquante Ans, l’exode d’Algérie: 20 siècles de présence Juive. Conference, Palais de Luxembourg, Paris. Weil, Patrick. 2003. Le Statut des musulmans en Algérie coloniale: une nationalité française dénaturée. Florence: European University Institute. Zytnicki, Colette. 2011. Les Juifs d’Afrique du Nord. Paris: La Sorbonne.

Interviews in Paris (2011, 2012)

Benjamin Stora, 6 July 2011 Brigitte Stora, 22 October 2012 Shmuel Trigano, 12 September 2011

1988–1992: Multipartism, Islamism and the Descent into Civil War Malika Rahal

Multipartism, Islamism and the Descent into Civil War

Following the youth riots of October 1988, Algeria experienced the first serious democratic opening in the region, 20 years before the revolutions of Egypt and Tunisia. Political parties, such as the communist Parti de l’Avant-Garde Socialiste (PAGS, Party of Avant-Garde Socialism), which had been clandestine, entered the public domain. And many new parties were created, including the Islamist Front Islamique du Salut (FIS, Islamic Salvation Front), which won the first round of the legislative elections that were then suspended by the military coup in January 1992, thus ending the new-found experience of democracy. This chapter tracks the multiple issues at stake in Algeria during this brief period (1988–1992): democratization, the collapse of communism, the emergence of Islamism and the descent into a civil war in which the communists were among the first targets of assassinations. Examining the history of the PAGS during this period allows us to understand the ongoing divide in Algeria between Islamists and secularists on the one hand and – among the non-Islamists – between those who, in the name of democracy, considered all Islamists to be the arch enemy, to be eradicated at all costs, and those who, again in the name of democracy, did not.

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Between October 1988 and September 1989, Algeria underwent dramatic political reform: it went from being a single-party regime – led by the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN, National Liberation Front) – to a multiparty system planning the first free elections since the country’s independence from France in 1962. As such, 23 years before the ‘Arab Spring’, Algeria was in sync with the political evolution of the African continent: by 1994 more than 30 sub-Saharan African countries had undergone some level of regime change, and none of them still overtly called themselves ‘single party regimes’ (Bratton and Walle, 1997: 8). As in many sub-Saharan African countries, such changes carried the risk of political violence. By the end of 1992 elections had been suspended in Algeria, the main opposition party – the FIS, legalized in 1989 – had been disbanded, President Mohammed Boudiaf had been assassinated and the perspective of the war that would engulf the country for the decade to come was becoming a reality. Making sense of this period is difficult due to the rapid succession of the events in question and because our present-time knowledge of how this democratization process ended in the ‘black decade’ of the 1990s orients how we read the past and how we assess the hopes and fears of men and women at the time. In this chapter we unfold the chronology and describe the debates as they took place by following political activists of the underground PAGS party. The PAGS was created as an heir to the Parti Communiste Algérien (PCA) after the repression that followed the military coup of 1965. The party had been organized such that a small group of activists had been living entirely underground since 1965 and most of its membership led legal lives – holding jobs, and even actively participating in mass FLN-led organizations such as the official trade union, the Union Générale des Travailleurs Algériens (UGTA, General Union of Algerian Workers), or the youth organization Union Nationale de la Jeunesse Algérienne (UNJA, National Union of the Algerian Youth) – while working clandestinely for the PAGS. Under President Boumediene (1965–1978), despite being an underground organization and the incarceration of some of its leaders, the PAGS supported the more left-leaning measures taken by the president, such as the nationalization of oil and gas and the agrarian revolution of 1971. However, at the beginning of the 1980s, the arrests of several activists indicated that more repression might be in store for the PAGS, bringing to a halt the plans fostered by some leaders to seek a degree of legal recognition for the party. The PAGS’s trajectory from 1988 to the elections of the early 1990s is revelatory of the way the country tackled two distinct worldwide phenomena: the collapse of the Eastern Bloc on the one hand, and – though this was not yet perceived as a worldwide threat – the rise of Islamism and

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jihadism. This chapter presents findings of research undertaken in Algeria, Canada and France, where I conducted interviews and consulted private archives as well as the party’s publications, mainly the Francophone Saout ach-Chaab and the Arabophone Sawt ash-Sha‘b [both titles meaning ‘The Voice of the People’]. The PAGS remained clandestine until several political parties were legalized in September 1989, only weeks before the collapse of the Berlin Wall. For PAGS activists – many of whom still claimed to be communists – the timing was dramatic. The year 1988–1989 marked the beginning of a period of turmoil, a combination of political enthusiasm, existential and organizational questioning of the very nature of the party and the redefinition of a political line in the international context of the collapse of communism. This turmoil was also due to the national context of the (re)discovery of multipartism: should the party take part in free elections? And how to react to, and resist, the rise of Islamism? It quickly became obvious that the pagsistes were losing ground to the Islamist activists of the FIS and that political violence was increasing. The question of how to analyse Islamism became one of the fault lines within the party. Thus, between 1988 and 1992, during what I contend to be a revolutionary period, the history of the party was at the crossroads of two stories. On the national level, it is a story that goes from pluralism to civil war; but it also sets the country’s history in the broader transnational context of the collapse of communism and the rise of Islamism.

‘October’ During the night of 4–5 October 1988, tensions arose in Algiers in the working-class Bab el-Oued neighbourhood. Groups of youths gathered and attacked public buildings, including the famous state-owned suq al-fallah stores. On Wednesday 5 October, various neighbourhoods of the city (Bab el-Oued, el-Biar, Kouba, Ben Aknoun, Chéraga, Belcourt) experienced rioting, as did other cities throughout the country. In the morning, a bus was attacked in the centre of Algiers, as were private venues such as the Blue Note bar, the Lufthansa offices and the Polisario information centre, in a festive atmosphere reminiscent of carnival: popular Stan Smith shoes were stolen from the store of SONIPEC (the national company that manufactured them), on Didouche Mourad Street; on Place Audin, fake Lufthansa tickets to faraway destinations were issued by an individual sitting on a looted office chair. Riots took on a theatrical dimension – a donkey named Chadli Bendjedid after the president, jokes about FLN leaders, appeals for the return of the deceased president Boumediene – conveying political messages. Rioters

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made their way to the brand new commercial centre of Riadh al-Fath, where windows were smashed and shops were looted. They also attacked police stations in various neighbourhoods. The typical rioter was a male between 15 and 20, still in school or unemployed and unskilled, living in a workingclass neighbourhood, in the overcrowded apartment of a large family, with no prospects for the future. He was not connected to any youth organization or underground party such as the PAGS, nor was he a sympathizer of the Islamist movement (Charef, 1990: 95). On 6 October, President Chadli Bendjedid declared a state of siege, allowing the army to intervene with tanks and guns. Rumours of the first victims spread. Up to that point, there had been no banner, no slogan and no one to claim the riots as their own. Islamist slogans were first heard on Friday 7 October during an after-mosque demonstration of six to eight thousand people. With General Khaled Nezzar in charge of the military, the violence escalated. On 10 October a demonstration of 20,000 people, organized by a section of the Islamist leadership, marched from Belcourt to Bab el-Oued, where it was met by police gunfire in front of the Direction Générale de Sûreté Nationale (DGSN). The death toll of the entire sequence of events was heavy, with an official figure of 169 killed. The riots left many shocked by the destruction of the social pact and deeply disturbed that the Popular Army had shot and killed the country’s youth. Later that day (10 October), President Chadli gave another speech announcing a new series of political reforms, including amending the constitution (Kapil, 1990).

The Communist Experience of October The cause of the riots and their interpretation were debated in the immediate aftermath. The meaning of October was constructed following two opposing approaches. The authorities denied any political meaning to the riots, accusing the youths of vandalism, while foreign journalists, drawing on the stereotype of bread riots to which much political contestation in the Arab world had been reduced in previous years, considered the rioters to be famished crowds. On the other hand, various groups mobilized in support of the rioters in order to ‘grant them the dignity of politically challenging the FLN regime’ (Aït-Aoudia, 2015: 31). The PAGS experience of October raises a number of questions that were also debated in the aftermath. Perhaps the most troubling detail is that dozens of PAGS activists were arrested ahead of the riots. Among those arrested, several were employees of the École Polytechnique d’Architecture et d’Urbanisme (EPAU) in el-Harrach, including demographer Kamel Kateb. Many were tortured. Shortly after the October riots, a Comité National

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Contre la Torture was created by academics with writer Anouar Benmalek as secretary general. In 1989, the Comité published accounts of arrests and torture in a booklet entitled Le Cahier noir d’Octobre: for example, Hacène Benazzouz, age 35, director of a state company, claims he was arrested in the centre of Algiers at 5.30 pm on 4 October, repeatedly questioned about belonging to the PAGS and tortured. The party’s first collective response to the events was a statement circulated on 5 October, detailing arrests and calling ‘workers, patriots, citizens’ to end repression and support the victims. Another statement (9 October) condemned ‘arbitrary arrests’ and addressed army officers and soldiers directly: ‘Ne tirez pas sur les fils du peuple, vos frères’ [do not fire on the sons of the people, your brothers] (Charef, 1990: 114–15). In the light of these events, former PAGS members have questioned the spontaneity of the riots, developed theories concerning the role of the police and highlighted the economic context and tensions that had developed since the summer of 1988. Upon succeeding Houari Boumediene as president of the republic in 1979, Chadli Bendjedid had launched a series of economic reforms: there was reduced investment in heavy industry, the private sector was developed and the socialist management of industry and business was abandoned. Chadli’s slogan, ‘pour une vie meilleure’ [for a better life], was transformed by popular humour into ‘pour une vie meilleure, ailleurs’ [for a better life, elsewhere]. The national economy suffered from the 1986 economic crisis as the drop in value of the US dollar compounded the effects of the decrease in oil prices. Chadli chose a new secretary of the presidency, Mouloud Hamrouche, who, along with a group of young reformers known as the ‘Hamrouche boys’, implemented vast economic reforms. Under IMF pressure, the industrial public sector was to be divided up into smaller units. During the summer of 1988 the government itself acknowledged the housing crisis while across Algeria the price of food soared due to an agricultural crisis caused by drought. Numerous strikes took place in public companies. Even Taïeb Belakhdar, secretary general of the FLN-connected UGTA, contested the reforms. By September, strikes were commonplace in industrial areas throughout the country. In this context, it is tempting to analyse October as yet another reaction to the economic crisis and the reforms, though historian Hugh Roberts has shown how tenuous this view is by pointing out that the president’s 10 October speech brought the riots to a halt despite announcing that economic liberalization reforms would proceed (2003: 107). Many former pagsistes therefore propose their own theories. Noureddine Abdelmoumene, a former member of the party’s political bureau, explains:

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Other interviewees dismiss this idea as self-aggrandizing, given how poorly the party performed in the municipal elections of 1990. While the arrests of PAGS members are significant, theories and countertheories are impossible to verify without reliable internal sources. While it remained underground, it was impossible to assess the actual strength of a party that assumed a clandestine but mythical dimension. And Abdelmoumene does not claim that the party actually was dangerous, only that it was considered dangerous by the regime itself. According to him, before they were freed, several arrested pagsistes met the new head of the Sécurité Militaire (SM), Mohammed Betchine: ‘il leur a dit, nous savons que si vous prenez le pouvoir vous allez nous pendre’.2 And Abdelmoumene adds, laughing: ‘Moi j’ai jamais eu l’impression qu’on était près du pouvoir’. 3 Did the authorities truly believe the PAGS to be a threat? And did the pagsistes truly not believe themselves to be close to power in 1988? It is difficult to say, but what the narratives of the event reveal is that, for both the PAGS and the Islamist movement, October was a watershed moment between secrecy and transparency: former PAGS members tell the story of the moment when the Islamists revealed themselves in the streets to have developed as organization, unbeknown to their opponents. The PAGS, on the other hand, was still living in the misconstrued self-representation that it was a powerful force. Two years later, that representation would be proven false in the country’s first competitive election. What I aim to show is that this transition from an implicit, clandestine and invisible political organization to an explicit, legal and visible political party engaging with the realities, ‘doing politics’, blurred the lines of the well-known and routine political practices of the PAGS, creating a sense of uncertainty and anguish that for the pagsiste is identified as a political crisis.

Interview, Algiers, 9 March 2011: ‘In 1988, the PAGS represented a real threat, because there was going to be economic liberalization. In ’88, it had not yet been achieved […] The PAGS was the only force that could oppose it, and create difficulties for the process of economic liberalization’. This and all subsequent translations are by the author. 2 ‘He told them, we know that if you seize power, you will hang us’. 3 ‘I never had the impression we were close to seizing power’. 1

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‘La légalité’ Following the riot in October, a new constitution was adopted on 23 February 1989 that opened the door to a multiparty system and instated democratic freedoms. The legislation on political parties was soon to follow, with a law on multipartism voted on 5 July 1989. According to article 3 of the new law, a ‘legal political association’ should contribute to protect the consolidation of national independence, of territorial integrity and national unity, as well as work for cultural and social épanouissement [flourishing]. However, it should not have a religious, linguistic or regionalist basis, nor should it have objectives that go against Islamic morals. All political associations were to apply for authorization from the Ministry of the Interior. The first political party – the Rassemblement pour la Culture et la Démocratie (RCD, Rally for Culture and Democracy) – was inaugurated on 9–10 February and was not met by political repression, thus confirming the state’s bona fides. Within the Islamist movement, the decision to form a party was taken at the last minute in response to the new possibilities opened up by the reforms. Competition among several figures of the political Islam movement (including Mahfoud Nahnah, leader of the Algerian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, and Ahmed Sahnoun, neither of whom joined the FIS) encouraged a group of younger leaders (including Ali Benhadj and the somewhat older Abassi Madani) to announce the formation of the FIS on 18 February at the As-Sunna mosque in Algiers (Aït-Aoudia, 2006). For the PAGS, which had always viewed itself as a vanguard party, the sole question was whether or not to go legal. After over 20 years of underground activity, this was not a simple matter and not everyone agreed on what to do. In September, the Salle Ibn Khaldun hosted the party’s first ever public gathering, known as ‘le meeting de la sortie de la clandestinité’ [the emergence from clandestinity meeting]. Abdelmoumene recalls the danger he perceived in such a radical move by connecting it, in his narrative, with the killings that would begin in 1992: En septembre [1989], y’a eu la première sortie médiatique à la salle Ibn Khaldun avec Sadek qui présidait. J’ai pas assisté, j’étais dans un local pas loin en cas de pépin avec quelques camarades. On ne sait pas ce qui peut se passer. Mais les camarades ne prenaient pas en compte la vigilance. C’était l’euphorie, un peu. On n’avait pas protégé ne serait-ce que quelques éléments en cas d’un retour de manivelle. Y’a eu des gens qui ont poussé à ce qu’on abandonne une vigilance minimale. Et on a vu ensuite avec les tueries …4 Interview, Algiers, 9 March 2011. ‘In September [1989], there was the first

4

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In a clandestine organization where each person only had direct contact with two or three others, this meeting changed members’ experience of the party. For the first time, a physical group of people collected in one place was made visible, including to themselves, in a rediscovery, or (re)invention, of its collective self. The atmosphere was both enthusiastic and strained at this threshold moment between la clando [clandestinity] and la légalité [legality]. For the first time, activists introduced the party to spouses and families. In real life, outside of the party, they hardly knew each other and some were surprised (and sometimes disappointed) to recognize that several of their neighbours or colleagues had also been pagsistes. Abdelmoumene is not the only one to question, with the benefit of hindsight, the risk of going entirely legal rather than maintaining part of the organization underground to protect the party structure in case the democratic process went sour. The colossal enthusiasm and the rapid succession of events after the October riots prevented, they claim today, the necessary debates and exploration of options, including partial or incremental legalization. While no interviewee claimed to have foreseen the risk of civil war in 1989, the worse consequence of going legal, they said, was the total absence of any underground structure to protect activists from being killed after the assassinations began in 1992. In September 1989, along with several other parties including the FIS and RCD, the PAGS was legalized. Following the new law on political parties, the newspaper Sawt ash-Sha‘b stated in Arabic: ‘On 13 August 1989, our party filed the demand for accreditation in order to transform its activities, making them legal’. It continued: ‘Communists and their party are ready for the struggle within the framework of legality’ (21 August 1989).

The Local Elections of June 1990 For the new, and newly legalized, parties, as well as for the FLN – which had never before been challenged in any electoral competition – the reality of running in free elections came quickly. The first election was the local election of June 1990, in which the PAGS ran, and which the FIS won by a landslide, taking 853 assemblées populaires communales (APC, municipal media broadcast event at the Ibn Khaldun venue, presided over by Sadek. I didn’t attend; I was nearby, with a few comrades, in case of a problem. You never know what might happen. But the comrades weren’t thinking about vigilance. There was a feeling of euphoria. Nothing was in place in case of a backlash. There were people who pushed for us to abandon even minimal vigilance. And then we witnessed the killings …’.

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assemblies) against 487 to the FLN, and 48 assemblées populaires de wilaya (APW, departmental assemblies) against 14 to the FLN. From the outset, the conditions had been challenging with only a month for political parties to register to contest the elections. As parties were to compose lists of as many candidates as there were seats, this involved finding candidates for over 13,000 seats in 1,541 APCs, and 1,889 seats in 277 APWs. The electoral law also required every list of candidates to provide a political programme in writing (Aït-Aoudia, 2013). 5 Despite the short run-in, the party promoted local candidates and sought to demonstrate its vitality. Hachemi Cherif addressed a crowd of 500 in Jijel on 17 May, and was asked many questions: How to solve the party crisis? What is the future of socialism? What is the position of the PAGS vis-à-vis the FLN, ideological issues and notably on religion? (Saout ach-Chaab 187, June 1990). But lack of time created a sense of constant urgency that pushed the party to demand the postponing of the elections. More importantly, the PAGS appeared powerless to counter the campaign led by the FIS: ‘the FLN and the FIS have means that other parties do not’, the newspaper claims (Saout ach-Chaab 187, June 1990). One PAGS activist and candidate in the municipality of Gué de Constantine – a working-class suburb of Algiers that became a FIS stronghold and an area of intense violence during the civil war – explained why he was a reluctant participant in the campaign: Mais on s’est présentés, on a distribué, etc. Et pendant la campagne, ils nous ont bouffés, les gars du FIS. Ils avaient des moyens beaucoup plus importants, colossaux. D’abord ils étaient bien implantés: ils tiennent la mosquée donc ils tiennent tout. Et puis ils avaient fait des débats, avec des vidéos et tout. Ils sont passés dans le quartier et ont filmé tous les trucs à réparer. Au cours des élections, ils ont dominé d’une main de maître le déroulement […] c’était une organisation de tonnerre.6

Art. 5 loi 90-06 du 27 mars 1990 modifiant la loi 89-13 du 7 août 1989 portant loi électorale, JORA, n°13, 1990. 6 Interview, Delly Brahim, 1 June 2012. ‘We ran, we handed out leaflets and newspapers etc. And during the campaign, guys from the FIS chewed us up. They had colossal means, much more important than our own. Firstly, they were deeply rooted: they held the mosques, so they held everything. They had organized debates, with videos and everything. They came to the neighbourhood; they filmed everything there was to repair. During the election, they dominated the entire process masterfully […] it was a fantastic organization.’ 5

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The effectiveness of the FIS campaign was based on the control of a network of mosques that provided the logistic backbone and foreign funds which, former activists claim, had been provided by Saudi Arabia.7 Beyond the spectacular rise of the Islamist movement, narratives of this period also reveal a second source of unease: during the campaign, as PAGS activists canvassed neighbourhoods and confronted FIS members – sometimes winning public arguments – they made themselves known and were often photographed. They were thus publicly exposing themselves to the rising political violence of which they were to be among the first victims. The electoral campaigns crystallized conflicts and issues that had been developing since the beginning of the political reforms. TA, the executive manager of a state-run factory in the industrial zone of Berrouaghia, explains the increased tension of the confrontations with FIS activists. Berrouaghia is in the Medea wilaya that was part of the ‘triangle of death’ – due to intense terrorist activity – during the ‘black decade’ of the 1990s. Beginning in 1989, openly selling PAGS party newspapers resulted in hostile encounters and, at times, physical conflict. Islamists heckled PAGS rallies and were especially vocal against women activists, denouncing their t-shirts and low-cut decolletées, accusing them of being mécréantes [un-believers].8 Workplace confrontations became even more violent after the creation, in July 1990, of a Syndicat Islamique du Travail (SIT, Islamist Workers’ Union) under the aegis of the FIS, which assumed a paramilitary dimension (Zerrouky, 2002). TA emphasizes his female comrades’ courage and the protection they received from ordinary factory workers, thus dramatizing the struggle between the PAGS and FIS for working-class support, a contest that the PAGS was rapidly losing. But many members now acknowledge how reckless they were, how unaware they were of the danger they were putting themselves in by campaigning within Islamist strongholds such as Berrouaghia, Gué de Constantine and Kouba. Narratives of the ballot count at the end of election day also tell of physical tension with FIS members present in each polling station while the PAGS and RCD combined were unable to cover all polling stations. These narratives also tell of a growing concern as the results came in – only 1% of the votes were cast in favour of the PAGS. Interviewees sarcastically recall a comment Sultan Ibn Abdelaziz, Saudi minister of defence, made a public statement admitting his country had financed the FIS in March 1991 after the FIS leadership supported Saddam Hussein against Saudi Arabia. This foreign financial support was reported by the Algerian press and denied by Abbassi Madani (Al-Ahnaf, Botiveau and Frégosi, 1991: 35–36). 8 Interview, Algiers, 9 June 2011. 7

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– often attributed to party leadership member Hachemi Cherif – that the party had won very few votes but that ‘chacune de ces voix vaut de l’or’ [each of those votes is worth its weight in gold] as a pathetic attempt at making the best of a disaster. They claim to have been thunderstruck by the results, unable to analyse the news in any meaningful way. In the traditional way of the clandestine PAGS, debates took place in written form and some of the contributions can be found in private archives: they reveal an increasingly tense atmosphere. One of the party leaders, Abderrahmane Chergou, disagreed with the notion of a ‘shock’ that stunned both activists and leadership. If it took the party leadership six whole days to produce an official reaction to the results, it was not, claimed Chergou, ‘because we were “knocked out” by the results’, but because there were ‘deep differences of opinion’ as to the assessment of those results, and differences of opinion as to the legitimacy of integrating the Islamist movement within a democratic process. Several contributors criticized the party for its inability to assess political realities and devise effective tactics, and claimed that the party was malfunctioning in this new political context and unable to reach the people.9 Such organizational flaws can be linked to the lack of experience in ‘doing politics’ legally, and to the difficulty in grasping the state of public opinion on the eve of the first free elections since independence. For others, it wasn’t just an issue of tactics and inefficiency: an entirely new party line was required in response to the new political circumstances. Meanwhile, oblivious to these discussions, FIS leaders were attempting to create ‘Islamic communes’ in the municipalities they had won. They founded their governance on religious morality, imposing a new dress code on the beaches, closing music festivals and attempting to gain political influence in Algiers in the months following the municipal elections. The territory was increasingly divided, though not yet by armed checkpoints, as they would be during the war. The party reaction in the aftermath of the 12 June elections was far from unanimous. In October 1990, the party newspaper published a letter entitled ‘Sortir le Parti de la crise’ [Solving the Crisis within the Party], signed by Akila Ouami, Sadek Aïssat, A. Charef Eddine, Djamel Labidi, Abdelatif Rebbah and Mohamed Tin (Saout ach-Chaab 190, 15–31 October 1990), denouncing the party’s post-election statement of 18 June and the analysis it offered of the local election. And while some within the party leadership wished to demand the cancellation of the forthcoming legislative elections – or even the banning of the FIS – Sadek Hadjerès rejected these options in an internal report, arguing that they would reinforce popular support for the Anonymous memo, dated 18 June 1990, private archives.

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FIS, and might ‘surchauffer l’atmosphère politique’ [exacerbate the political atmosphere].10 While the recent FIS victory represented a ‘grave danger’ and democracy could well be in ‘mortal danger’ if the FIS were to win the upcoming legislative elections, Hadjerès claimed in his report, it was essential not to overdramatize the situation. Political analysis and tactics were key, he continued, to diffusing the situation, as was the groundwork needed to maintain the connection with the popular masses attracted to the FIS. His voice did not prevail, and activists were beginning to understand just how divided the party leadership was.

The December 1990 PAGS National Congress In December 1990 the PAGS organized its first national congress as a legal party in the 5 Juillet sports arena designed by Oscar Niemeyer. During the congress, Secretary General Sadek Hadjerès, who did not wish to run again, was replaced by Hachemi Cherif and a new central committee was elected. For many interviewees, the congress was a turning point in the crisis experienced by the party. The general atmosphere, as revealed by interviews and videos of the proceedings, was one of both excitement and tension. The venue had been decorated with slogans and artwork as many famous artists, including M’hamed Issiakhem and Mohammed Khadda, were party members. In the opening session, homage was paid to old PCA activists, such as Larbi Bouhali, and to guests from other parties. Branch delegates from across the country gave speeches, some read poetry or sang, or expressed frustration with the political situation and the lack of transparency within the party. Nonetheless, the excitement of being together as a public, political party, of being able to address the party as a whole, was still palpable even after a year of legal existence. However, most of the members of the party leadership remain unmoved by the memories of these collective moments. Sadek Hadjerès even expresses some annoyance with the ‘folklore’ that surrounds it. They are more interested in what happened behind the scenes. In the weeks prior to the congress, a platform proposal entitled ‘Avant projet de résolution politico-idéologique’ (AP-RPI, political-ideological draft resolution) had been circulated. It was a lengthy text drafted to redefine the party line, moving away from Marxism and class struggle, and explaining the world Sadek Hadjerès, report for the Conférence des cadres of August 1990, published on Hadjerès’s website Socialgérie on 20 February 2016. Available at https://www.socialgerie.net/spip.php?article1704 (consulted on 21 February 2016). 10

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as an opposition between the archaic and the modern. Party members were expected to discuss the text within their political cells but many interviewees explained that it was too complex to offer any space for discussion and caused much discontent. Nevertheless, the AP-RPI was adopted during the congress as the party’s new political platform (thus becoming the Résolution Politico-Idéologique or RPI), and a new leadership was elected: Hachemi Cherif became the new party figurehead. However, expressions of frustration and discontent increased and were directed against forms of partisan debate considered undemocratic and authoritarian, if not shaped by nebulous police influence on party leaders. While it has so far been impossible to confirm (or discredit) theories of a plot, or even police involvement, accounts of the congress (and, more generally, of this period of the party’s history) are interesting as they are indicative of a time characterized by newly acquired transparency in political life, and the anguished uncertainty that it created. In any event, though it seldom mentioned Islamism or the FIS by name, the 30-page AP-RPI submitted to the congress explained that the dynamic of history at this stage was not (or no longer) class struggle, but the struggle to the death between the modern and the archaic. With Islamism clearly on the side of archaism, the aim was now ‘la lutte pour l’édification quotidienne d’un large front en faveur d’une société moderne démocratique et de progrès social’.11 This dramatized opposition became the new party creed. But it failed to create a consensus.

‘Peut-on démocratiser l’intégrisme?’ [Can Islamism be Part of a Democracy?] In his contribution to the debate, Abderrahmane Chergou was very critical of former Secretary General Sadek Hadjerès, and others, for being too conciliatory towards the Islamists. He accused them of discriminating between the FIS, with which no dialogue was possible, and Hamas, a party created in December 1990 by shaykh Mahfoud Nahnah. For Chergou, Hadjerès and those who condemned the new party line of the RPI, believed that there were within Hamas ‘potentialités démocratiques’ [a democratic potential], thus refusing the blanket condemnation of all Islamist groups which Chergou and others sought. This position echoes the RPI excerpts repeatedly cited in the party press, after Noureddine Zenine was ousted from his position as news editor: ‘the struggle to construct on a daily basis a broad front that would favour a modern democratic society and social progress’. 11

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Could any Islamic fundamentalists be integrated into a democratic regime, even if they claimed to comply with democratic rules? Could Islamism be transformed? Not everyone agreed on the answer to that question. Chergou, Hachemi Cherif and others answered that they could not. Another contribution to the same effect was signed ‘El Hadj’ – in all likelihood el-Hadj Bakhtaoui – which posed the question directly and in capital letters: ‘PEUT-ON “DEMOCRATISER” L’INTEGRISME?’ [Can fundamentalism be ‘democratized’?]. He denounced the former party leadership, headed by Hadjerès, for wishfully thinking that fundamentalism could be transformed: ‘Mais Camarades, comment transforme-t-on radicalement la nature d’un phénomène? À ce jour, on ne connaît pas d’autre moyen que de supprimer ce phénomène. Ce serait donc supprimer, interdire, l’existence politique des partis intégristes’.12 Believing, he continues, that fundamentalism could be transformed is to imply that it contains ‘the germs of democracy’. At stake was the very essence of each phenomenon – democracy and fundamentalism – and any misevaluation of their nature would be a historical mistake tantamount to treason. According to several interviewees, El-Hadj Bakhtaoui was the main contributor to the AP-RPI. His style, characterized by communist jargon, is certainly recognizable: Parlant du parti intégriste Hamas, Sadek estime quant à lui qu’il faut aller ‘vers une négation de sa potentialité ultra-réactionnaire’. Ici l’idée est trop importante, […] pour ne pas relever que la potentialité n’est pas la réalité. (Le fœtus n’est être que dans le domaine de la possibilité, de la potentialité. Ce n’est qu’à la naissance qu’il devient être dans le domaine de la réalité). Cela signifie donc que le caractère ultra-réactionnaire de Hamas ne soit pas la réalité d’aujourd’hui, sa nature profonde même? Cela signifie-t-il donc que Hamas soit un parti démocratique mais avec tout au plus des tendances, des velléités, réactionnaires?13 ‘But Comrades, how do you radically transform a phenomenon? To this day, we don’t know of any other way than to suppress this phenomenon. That would therefore mean to suppress, forbid, the very existence of fundamentalist parties’ (emphasis in the original). 13 ‘Speaking about the fundamentalist party “Hamas”, Sadek reckons it is 12

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The repetition of the biological metaphor, in this text as well as others, was indicative of a society that feared for its survival, that pictured itself as a body under attack, infected by a disease that posed an existential threat. In addition to the language of ‘radical suppression’, it manifests how the language of civil war, and of the construction of the enemy, was developing within Algerian society and not only on the Islamist side. We see here how such language had permeated into the internal discourse of the PAGS. The foreshadowing of the catastrophe to come is omnipresent in these documents from 1991. In the hard-liners’ texts, it takes on a millenarian dimension that is difficult to think critically of, now that the catastrophe has indeed happened. However, the constant references to a threat to come, the apocalyptical anguish expressed and created by such discourse, emphasized by the frequent reference to the Iranian revolution of 1979 and the threat of the Islamic Republic that followed, acted as a means to construct the enemy and accelerate the descent into civil war. These sources are essential to understand that such language did not appear ex post facto, after the civil war had begun, but was forged even before the outbreak of violence. What is significant is that it not only targeted Islamism – in answer to an increasingly violent, if not yet murderous, FIS – but also those who were considered insufficiently aggressive or combative. In interviews, criticism against them now bears the added layer of what happened upon the collapse of the PAGS and during the civil war. One of the tropes emerging from these interviews is the assumption that those who resisted the language of civil war and the dramatization of violence (they are presented as not having been aggressive enough towards Islamists) ended up leaving the country during the civil war, fleeing in the face of danger. Sadek Hadjerès himself left the country in November 1991, seeking refuge first in Greece and then France, a move that is often held against him. But not all of those who refused the new party line of the RPI and the language of civil war became exiles, though most of them did quit the PAGS during the crisis even before it was terminated and never became members of the new party, Ettahaddi, after its creation in 1993. One former Central Committee member who remained in Algeria throughout the ‘black necessary to go ‘towards a denial of its ultra-reactionary potential’. Here, the notion is too important, […] not to underline that potential is not reality. (The foetus is only a being in the realm of possibility, of the potential. It’s only upon birth that it becomes a being in the realm of reality). Does that therefore mean that the ultra-reactionary nature of Hamas is not a reality today, in its profound essence? Does this mean that Hamas is a democratic party, with at most, reactionary tendencies, or leanings?’

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decade’ is clear in his view that the outright rejection of Islamism was not a responsible party attitude. After the 1990 local elections, in which the majority of voters chose the FIS, it was impossible to go to war ‘against the people’, he exclaimed during a 2013 interview. Perhaps because this group was not on the winning side of the internal party conflict, we find ourselves with fewer sources to document their views. Nevertheless, an earlier letter, written in the July 1990 by Sadek Aïssat to the party leadership, is representative of this current within the party. In his letter, Aïssat – who had been a member of the party for 17 years and a leader of its Federation of Algiers – is very critical of the new party line that was emerging. He wrote to resign from his duties as party leader in the Algiers region: Je considère, pour ma part, cette ligne comme défensive et poussant à la jonction, parce qu’elle en exprime bien le désarroi, avec la petite bourgeoisie occidentalisée. Elle nous coupe du peuple et de la réalité. Elle est porteuse, en germes, de positions non-nationales […] A mon sens le problème n’est pas d’apparaître à coups de communiqués dans la presse comme les ennemis les plus déterminés du FIS, mais d’être par notre orientation et par notre action les alliés les plus déterminés du peuple.14 Aïssat’s letter shows how the question of the crisis of communism was posed within the Algerian context: if the more popular classes – who were most influenced by the FIS – had turned to a fundamentalist party in the local elections of the 1990s, was it possible to anathematize Islamism altogether? Should the limit between what is acceptable in democracy and what is not be based on the essence of political movements – the nature of their ideas – or on the level of violence actually produced? The attitude that emphasized the dangers of Islamism has recently been denounced again by Hadjerès as a useless dramatization of the national situation preventing any strategy other than one focusing solely on having the FIS banned despite its massive success in the local elections of 1990 (Interviews, Paris, 2015; Hadjerès, 2010). Like Sadek Aïssat in 1990, Sadek Hadjerès regretted that the party was pulling back from on-the-ground social work in favour of a strategy solely based on being anti-FIS. As communists, it was the role of both men to remain with the people and the language of ‘I myself consider this line as defensive line pressing to the collaboration with the westernized petty bourgeoisie, whose disarray it expresses well. It cuts us from the people and from reality. It carries the germ of non-national positions […] For me, the problem is not to appear communiqué after communiqué in the press as the most resolved enemies of the FIS, but, through our orientation and our action, to appear the most resolved allies of the people’. 14

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civil war could not provide an acceptable political line. In other words, they refused to see the workers, peasants, youth or unemployed as enemies – even when they had voted for the Islamists – and refused this new world divide between archaic and modern. The polarization of opinions within the party is revealed by the fact that Sadek Aïssat was shortly thereafter excluded from the party and, according to several accounts, physically ousted from his party-owned apartment. He left the country and went into exile even before the beginning of the civil war: in his case, the causal relation between leaving the party (or being excluded) and leaving the country is very clear.

The General Election of December 1991 The run up to the general election that eventually took place in December 1991 was marked by confusion: the date of the ballot had been pushed back several times. It was preceded by a revision of the electoral law, according to which it was no longer legal to use places of worship for electoral purposes. The aim was to weaken the FIS in its ‘war of the mosques’, as the press called it. The law was immediately denounced by FIS leaders who refused to recognize it along with another law redefining electoral boundaries that they considered to be gerrymandering. The PAGS Central Committee of April 1991 decided against running candidates and the May–June issue of Sawt ash-Sha‘b published an article in Arabic entitled: ‘Why PAGS says “no” to the June 27 legislative election and “no” to the existence of non-constitutional obscurantist parties’. No detail was given and the entire page devoted to this issue was filled with excerpts from the RPI. The decision not to run was – once again – contested in form and content. According to Noureddine Zenine, ‘le CC a appris par la presse la décision de boycotter des élections’.15 In the meantime, the language and attitude of the FIS leadership became more strident, and its opposition to the regime clearer, with the general strike launched on 25 May 1991 which led to violent confrontations between the FIS and traders refusing to close their shops, or students refusing to boycott classes and exams. FIS leaders organized marches and rallies. To avoid further violence, Prime Minister Mouloud Hamrouche allowed the FIS to occupy several squares of the capital city, including the Place des Martyrs and Place du 1er Mai, where they displayed symbols and put on performances that had a military and religious dimension, eventually leading to confrontations ‘It was through the press that the Central Committee learned the decision to boycott the election’. In Noureddine Zenine, ‘Contribution au débat’, Algiers, 24 Septembre 1991. Private archive. 15

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with the police. The international context of the Gulf War placed the Algerian crisis within a broader international context after Saddam Hussein declared the struggle against the US-led coalition a jihad and revamped himself as a Muslim hero (Roberts, 2003: 63–79). The FIS enthusiastically supported Saddam, organizing spectacular demonstrations and offering to open training camps for combatants willing to fight the jihad in Iraq. After several days of the strike, the situation became untenable: Mouloud Hamrouche resigned and was replaced by Sid Ahmed Ghozali, an ‘état de siège’ [state of siege] was declared, the army dispersed demonstrators and the FIS leadership – including Abassi Madani and Ali Belhadj, who had immediately threatened to declare a jihad if the state of emergency was not lifted – were arrested. Questions were raised as to whether it was possible to organize elections in such a context of political violence. After the crisis of the summer, the government attempted to calm the situation by reducing its anti-FIS discourse, opening up dialogue with all political parties and revising the electoral laws. A new electoral date was set for 26 December 1991. On 22 December the political bureau of the PAGS circulated a communiqué entitled ‘Vous n’irez pas à l’enterrement de l’Algérie’ [You Will Not Go to Algeria’s Funeral]: ‘Citoyennes, citoyens! Ne jouez pas au “jeu démocratique” avec les pires ennemis de la démocratie, de notre guerre de libération et de notre longue histoire de combats pour la modernité et le progrès!’16 The first round of the elections took place in December and the FIS won over 3 million votes, almost a quarter of those cast, and three times more than the FLN (Aït-Aoudia, 2015). Only three parties were eligible to compete in the second round of the elections: the FIS, the FLN, and Aït Ahmed’s Front des Forces Socialistes (FFS). Surprisingly, the new electoral laws seemed to have put the FLN at a dramatic disadvantage and despite winning three times more votes it won ten seats less than the FFS. Reactions to the results were both spectacular and confusing. On 31 December, a Comité National pour la Sauvegarde de l’Algérie (CNSA, National Committee for the Protection of Algeria) was created and its appeal was published in the newspaper El Moudjahid: ‘Il est impossible que la démocratie soit sauvée par ceux qui la dénoncent’.17 In this context, the CNSA claimed, an FIS electoral victory would be too serious a threat for the new democratic regime. Members of the PAGS and RCD supported the CNSA’s statement, though the meaning of this support is still disputed: was it a way to prevent ‘Citizens! Do not play the “democratic game” with the worst enemies of democracy, of our war for independence and of our long history of struggle for modernity and progress!’ 17 ‘It is impossible that democracy be saved by those who denounce it’. 16

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the second round of the elections? Or simply a form of protest against the FIS? On the other hand, the FLN and FFS clearly wished for the electoral process to continue. The confusion was such that all who opposed Islamist fundamentalism – whether in favour of or opposed to the pursuit of the electoral process – demonstrated together on 2 January 1992 with the slogans ‘Sauver la Démocratie’ [Save democracy], ‘Adieu le FIS’, and ‘Ni intégrisme ni État policier’ [Neither fundamentalism nor a police state]. The media was awash with communiqués and opinions ranging from appeals for calm to expressions of panic in the face of the imminent victory of the fundamentalists. Since June 1991, President Chadli Bendjedid had resisted all demands to ban the FIS based on its religious foundation. After the first round of the elections, the army intervened and forced him to announce his resignation on television on 11 January. The president also announced that he had dissolved the National Assembly a week earlier. A form of bloodless coup had taken place that would put an end to Algeria’s experience of democratization.

Conclusion Revisiting the period 1988–1992 through the specific experience of former PAGS activists allows us to locate Algeria at the crossroads of several transnational dynamics and different chronologies. In effect, the PAGS had to face up to the end of Eastern Bloc communism and this loss of purpose and sense of isolation was shared in the 1990s by many communists worldwide. The political reforms of the late 1980s rendered visible a world that was suddenly unfamiliar and all the more distressing as Marxist theories of history failed to explain it. In Algeria, however, this feeling of being lost was augmented by the immediate physical danger connected with the rise of Islamism, which placed Algeria in the broader Muslim world, recently branded by the Iranian revolution of 1979. For those party members who agreed to the replacement of Marxism and the theory of class struggle with a theory of a historic struggle between archaic fundamentalism and modernism, Algeria, at this historical juncture, was at the heart – if not at the origin – of a worldwide struggle of which 9/11, and jihadi Islamism in the aftermath of the ‘Arab Springs’ are but the most recent avatars. As early as 1990, members of the PAGS adopted the language of civil war, took over and mobilized what was left of the party to protect themselves from violence they thought would come (and did indeed come), thus participating in and intensifying the dynamics of internecine conflict. Opposed to them were those who claimed that the Marxist vision of the world was not broken, that the old practices of ‘doing politics’ still made sense and were made all the more urgent by the need to resist the risk of civil war: working among the masses, and developing political and social activism.

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The fact that many of them disagreed with the new leadership and ended up leaving a party they no longer felt they belonged to only made them more isolated and vulnerable to the violence they were trying to prevent. On a national level, the fracture that appeared within the PAGS concerning the question of how to respond to the rise of Islamism and political violence was the main cause of the end of the party. But, more importantly, this divide can also be found elsewhere on the political spectrum: later, during the civil war, it came to be known as the divide between ‘éradicateur’ [eradicators] and ‘dialoguiste’ [conciliators] (see Benkhaled and Vince, this volume). In the present, in the aftermath of the civil war, the reconciliation between these two lines is as important, and just as difficult, as the reconciliation between the two opposing sides of the civil war itself.

Works Cited Al-Ahnaf, M., B. Botiveau and F. Frégosi. 1991. L’Algérie par ses islamistes. Collection Les Afriques. Paris: Karthala. Aït-Aoudia, Myriam. 2006. ‘La naissance du Front islamique du salut: une politisation conflictuelle (1988–1989)’. Critique Internationale 30.1: 129–44. ——. 2013. ‘Les dilemmes des nouveaux partis face à la participation à la première élection pluraliste post-autoritaire. Retour sur un impensé à partir du cas algérien’. Revue Internationale de Politique Comparée 20.2: 15–32. ——. 2015. L’Expérience démocratique en Algérie (1988–1992): apprentissages politiques et changement de régime. Paris: Les Presses de Sciences Po. Bratton, Michael, and Nicholas van de Walle. 1997. Democratic Experiments in Africa: Regime Transitions in Comparative Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Charef, Abed. 1990. Octobre, Algérie ’88. Un Chahut de Gamins?. Algiers: Laphomic. Comité national contre la torture. 1989. Cahier Noir d’Octobre. Algiers. Hadjerès, Sadek. 2010. ‘Le PAGS sur une pente fatale’. Socialgérie. July 15. http:// www.socialgerie.net/IMG/pdf/1990_Crise_du_PAGS_SH_socialgerie.pdf. (consulted on 15 February 2016). ——. 2016. ‘Rapport préparé pour la Conférence des cadres d’août 1990’. Available at https://www.socialgerie.net/spip.php?article1704 (consulted on 21 February 2016). Kapil, Arun. 1990. ‘L’évolution du régime autoritaire en Algérie: le 5 octobre et les réformes politiques de 1988–1989’. Annuaire de l’Afrique du Nord 29: 499–534. Roberts, Hugh. 2003. The Battlefield: Algeria 1988–2002, Studies in a Broken Polity. London: Verso. Zerrouky, Hassane. 2002. La Nébuleuse islamiste en Europe et en Algérie. Paris: Editions 1.

Algerian Heritage Associations: National Identity and Rediscovering the Past Jessica Ayesha Northey

Algerian Heritage Associations

State-society relations regarding cultural heritage have always been sensitive and complex domains for Algerian non-state actors to navigate. After the painful anti-colonial struggle, establishing the new nation state’s cultural identity was one of the key challenges of the postcolonial era. The construction of a national cultural identity was both a physical and psychological task, given the destruction of cultural institutions during the war of independence and the suppression of Arab-Muslim culture under colonialism. In the initial years after independence, the Soviet-inspired nationalist model of cultural policy promoted Arab-Muslim cultural identity as a unifying force for the nation (Kessab, 2014). The rewriting of Algerian history in line with a new nationalist perspective was seen as an important tool with which to tackle the previous injustices of colonialism and denial of cultural identity (Scheele, 2009: 32). So vital was this process that the newly formed Algerian state was reluctant to allow any independent actors, potentially divisive forces, to intervene. As Lahouari Addi writes, the populist project needed Algeria to be united: ‘une famille nationale unie par la mémoire des ancêtres et des martyrs’ (Bozzo, 2011: 376).1 In this context, Arabization became a ‘matter of cultural decolonization and social equity’ (Berger, 2002: 2) in that it was to open up education, political life and full access to basic social services ‘A national family united by the memory of its ancestors and martyrs’. This and all subsequent translations are by the author of this chapter. 1

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to the predominantly Arabophone population which had, under colonization, been denied such rights by linguistic barriers, as well as by forms of segregation that were administrative or cultural. The accompanying cultural and historical ‘rewriting has entailed what most Algerians see as the fully legitimate necessity of eradicating French colonial discourse, ideological structures, and imperialist constructions aimed at destroying the collective memory of Algerians’ (Gafaiti, 2002: 28). However, during the 1980s, resentment over the denial of the ‘ethnic and linguistic differences and other expressions of a multicultural community’ (Gafaiti, 2002: 28), in particular among Algeria’s significant Berber population, was exacerbated by general frustration over the lack of opportunities, jobs and social welfare. This fed into different riots across Algeria in the 1980s, from Constantine to Kabylia – culminating in the October riots of 1988 – and fuelled the desire to promote wider, more inclusive cultural heritage, identity and linguistic policies. With the subsequent constitutional and legal reforms of 1990, which opened up the associational sphere in Algeria, thousands of independent organizations were established across the country. By 2012, 93,000 associations were registered with the Ministry of the Interior, and 10,000 of these identified themselves to the ministry as cultural heritage associations. Against the backdrop of violent conflict throughout the 1990s, and the relative abandonment of the cultural sector by the state, these courageous new associations saw their purpose as being to protect and promote a wide array of Algerian cultural heritage. They carried out their mission under the daily threat of violence from the extremist insurgency and under the watchful eyes of increasingly paranoid state structures. Yet, in response to their demands, the Algerian state did assign them a role during the 1990s. The law for the protection of cultural heritage (Loi-98-04 of 1998) identifies as national heritage all tangible and intangible artefacts, buildings, monuments and traditions upon and in the Algerian soil, from prehistory to the current day. Article 4 of this law allows that such goods be managed by associations, regulated under the terms of the law on associations. With the end of the ‘black decade’, and the appointment of a new Minister of Culture under President Bouteflika, a national cultural policy was relaunched. During this phase of revived control by the Ministry of Culture – whose minister was Khalida Toumi from 2002 to 2014 – the national culture budget grew from $64 million to over $300 million annually.2 This was funded by the significant rise in gas and oil revenues as the price of the barrel rose from $37 See http://www.medculture.eu/country/algeria/structure/865 (consulted on 16 November 2015). Currency in this chapter is US$. 2

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to $147 between 2002 and 2008 (Martinez, 2010), leading to similar excesses in spending that oil-rich states had experienced in the 1970s (Martinez, 2012). The culture budget remained roughly 0.5% of the national budget throughout this period. Through it, the state set out to monopolize many aspects of cultural life, with the result that national institutions and large-scale stateorganized festivals consumed most of the budget. Lack of transparency and opaque management fuelled increasing frustration. Algerian cultural policy was seen as being mainly limited to funding grandiose events such as the Pan African Music Festival or launching huge infrastructure projects, such as the new Chinese-funded Algiers Opera House, the Arab-South American Library, the Arab Archaeological Centre or the Museum of Modern Art in Oran, which, after a series of major delays, failed to materialize (Kessab, 2014). Very little funding was given to civil society, independent organizations or the private sector. Cultural organizations and the independent sector in fact received only 0.2% of the significant culture budget. This distrust and state monopoly further aggravated what Frédéric Volpi describes as the ‘implicit antagonism’ between the Algerian state and its civil society generally (2003: 99). Within this challenging context, I want to examine cultural heritage associations from the perspective of state-society relationships in further detail. What has been the role of these cultural heritage associations and have they played any part in rethinking Algerian national and cultural identity since the 2000s against the backdrop of this renewed state hegemony within the cultural sector? The chapter will initially explore the place of heritage associations in Algeria and then analyse the work of a number of associations, examining how they work to protect historic buildings in cities, to preserve archaeological sites and to promote different forms of religious identity through, for example, the restoration of historical manuscripts. Case studies of specific associations will highlight how they cooperate, challenge and come into conflict with, but also support, the Algerian state in its task of preserving the country’s cultural heritage. It will conclude with a reflection on how contested identities are dealt with by associations on the ground, and on the role associations can play as intermediaries between the state, international actors and the population, negotiating new and more inclusive conceptions of the past.

Heritage Associations in Algeria Since the 1990 law on associations, and the subsequent 1998 law for the protection of cultural heritage, thousands of Algerian associations have been created across the country to protect Algeria’s cultural heritage and

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to use it as an educational resource. These associations have had varying results and have also varied in duration. Statistics on the numbers and sectors of registered associations published by the Ministry of the Interior in 2012 show that cultural associations represent over 10% of regional and 1% of national associations. According to Omar Derras’s 2008 study of active associations, the figure is higher, with almost a third of active associations working in the cultural heritage sector. Cultural associations appear most prominently in the south. The wilayas [provincial governorates] of Illizi and Adrar in the Sahara have the highest number of cultural associations for their populations, according to the ministry’s figures. The northern Berber wilayas of Tizi Ouzou and Béjaïa in Kabylia also have high numbers. The following table demonstrates the figures for Algerian cultural associations by wilaya. Table 1. Wilayas with the highest density of cultural associations3 Wilaya

Number of culture & heritage associations

Population in thousands

96

52

183

2 Adrar

498

399

125

3 Tamanrasset

206

177

117

4 Béchar

311

270

115

5 Ghardaïa

401

364

110

6 El Bayadh

191

229

84

39

49

79

8 Tizi Ouzou

801

1 128

71

9 Béjaïa

513

913

56

10 Naama

89

193

46

1 Illizi

7 Tindouf

Associations per 100,000 inhabitants

These figures can also be visualized in Figure 6.1. The wilayas with the lowest densities of cultural associations are the northern ones of Chlef, Oran, Annaba, Tarf and Relizane, although vibrant organizations exist in the main cities of these wilayas. Derras’s study also confirms that the southern wilayas (Tamanrasset and Adrar) are the densest in terms of cultural associations. While these associations are, he suggests, Figures are taken from the Ministry of the Interior website and are dated 31 December 2011 www.interieur.gov.dz/Dynamics/frmItem.aspx?html=2&s=29 (consulted on 29 October 2015). For most recent figures see http://www.interieur. gov.dz/images/pdf/Thematiquedesassociations.pdf. 3

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Figure 6.1. Wilayas with the highest density of cultural associations in Algeria (associations per 100,000 inhabitants).

mainly artistic with limited ambitions – such as organizing traditional music for local festivities – they represent ‘associations de quartiers qui se chargent des problèmes de la quotidienneté, de solidarité et de préservation du lien communautaire et social’ (2007: 41).4 Regional, rather than national, associations make up the vast majority of Algerian associations, and these mainly focus on their immediate environment, or one particular form of cultural expression. However, networks also enable organizations to interact at the national level. Thirty per cent of associations interviewed in Derras’s study maintain relations and networks with other associations (2007: 85). Derras reports that the actors’ motivation for joining an association comes from the desire to find a framework within which to defend certain values, to contribute to the construction of the country, to protect religion or national heritage or to defend a certain identity (2007: 82–83). A heritage association such as the ‘Association Abou Ishak Ibrahim Tefayech pour le Service du Patrimoine’, which will be discussed later in the chapter, is a clear example of such a desire. As a religiously inspired organization set up to commemorate the works and manuscripts of the Ibadite Sheikh Tefayech, the association’s goal is to preserve the heritage of the Derras: ‘local community associations which deal with everyday problems, social solidarity and preserving communitarian and social links’. 4

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M’zab region of Algeria, and it is actively engaged in activities to improve civic education and knowledge about the past.5 Aharon Layish (2002) has argued that across the Muslim world traditional religious authorities saw an incremental loss of their independence over a long period, as they became increasingly incorporated into the state establishment – whether under colonial rule or through nationalist projects – and that as a result, ‘contemporary Muslim society has lost a vital element of civil society’. And, because of this loss of independence, the societal role they played may, in some ways, ‘have been taken over by secular intellectuals and other associations’ (Layish, 2002: 84). Yet it is also true that religious associations grew in importance during the 1980s, particularly in the social sectors, providing grassroots social support to communities who were neglected, or inadequately supported, by the Algerian state through most of that decade. They also took on the protection of Algeria’s cultural heritage, such as the protection of religious texts, as exemplified by the aforementioned ‘Association Abou Ishak Ibrahim Tefayech pour le Service du Patrimoine’. Since the end of the violence of the 1990s, and with the renewal of Sufi brotherhoods (the zawiyas), many religious associations have been created, or revived, as associations whose goal is to preserve this religious heritage. The success of Sheikh Khaled Bentounes in setting up numerous associations in Algeria, and in France, is one clear example of their reach. Able to mobilize tens of thousands within Algeria, Bentounes is also influencing policymaking nationally, in France and in Algeria, and internationally, working with UN institutions (see ‘Cheikh Khaled Bentounes’, 2009). With the continued weaknesses in Algeria’s democratic institutions, associations have been increasingly recognized as important spheres in which politics happens (Ben Nefissa, 2002; Cavatorta and Elananza, 2008), and associations across all sectors have become a focus of attention in Algeria, as they have in North Africa, the Middle East and further afield. The role that cultural associations played within the short-lived Coordination nationale pour le changement et la démocratie (CNCD, National Coordination for Change and Democracy), a platform set up in 2011 in the context of the Arab revolutions, highlights the interlinking of their desire to have an impact upon the whole of Algerian society; to preserve its culture but to also improve its political life and governance.6 How then have the actors of these new Algerian associations contributed to public debate in the Interview with Mohamed Hamouda, regional facilitator with the EU support programme to Algerian associations, Ghardaia, 2 November 2011. 6 The article ‘La Coordination nationale’ (2011) signed by F.S. indicates the different associations (including cultural ones) of the CNCD. 5

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cultural sector, about identity, national heritage, history and religion, at the local level, across Algeria over the last 20 years? And what is the impact of interventions of foreign donors – such as the EU announcing its multimillion euro investments in the cultural sector (‘Nouveau soutien européen’, 2011) – upon this already strained relationship between associations and the state? The following examples will explore these developments, their impact upon the associations themselves and also on the state. The information comes from interviews and discussions with heritage associations from different towns across Algeria between 2007 and 2012. The associations represented here have all received limited support from external actors, including from the European Union; they come from a variety of regions including Oran, Tiaret and Ghardaia; and the experiences they share mirror those of similar cultural heritage organizations I have met with across the country.

Associations and Urban History In involving themselves in the protection and promotion of Algeria’s historical monuments and the architecture of its cities, associations face a number of difficulties in terms of organization, regional state actors and public response. Most also suffer from poor infrastructure as well as limited resources and technical capacity. One of the most successful organizations in overcoming such constraints, and developing its activities and reach, is Bel Horizon based in Oran. This association was created in 2001 in the context of the celebrations commemorating 1,100 years since the foundation of the city by Andalusian merchants in 901–02. One of the association’s first projects was to restore the sixteenth-century Spanish Santa Cruz Fort in Oran. This project was significant. Firstly because renovating a Spanish vestige clearly diverged from the state’s priorities in terms of primarily preserving Algeria’s Arab-Muslim heritage, and therefore conflicted with the state’s vision of which parts of history should be ‘remembered’. Secondly, the restoration involved the securitizing of a whole area of the city: the mountain up to the Santa Cruz Fort had been off limits during the 1990s when Islamist insurgent groups occupied it. The returning of this space to the population was highly symbolic. Bel Horizon, through its negotiations with local people, the authorities and the police, as well as its engagement with the historical truths of colonialism and the more recent history of violence, managed to both challenge and cooperate with the state. Bel Horizon organizes regular cultural activities, music festivals and an annual heritage walk. This walk takes the population, in its thousands, through the different historical areas of the city and up to the Spanish fort, thus publicly reclaiming this space for Oran’s citizens. In 2011 the walk

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attracted over 20,000 people, highlighting the popular interest in cultural heritage, but also the capacity of the association to inspire both its members and the public.7 Despite this success – perhaps because of it – relations with the authorities have never been straightforward. Defining heritage has national implications; but it can also question local urbanization policies as well as the authorities’ capacity to manage development and protect historical buildings. A number of conflicts have emerged, particularly concerning the status of colonial and Jewish buildings, and over how best to preserve Oran’s heritage. In interviews, the president of the association, Kouidair Metair, reaffirmed its priority to promote all of Algeria’s heritage, Arab, Muslim, Berber, Roman, Jewish, Ottoman and European, and criticized the authorities’ lack of interest in doing the same.8 In an interview with the newspaper El Watan, Kouidair explained that the motivation behind the association’s book publications – such as Oran: une ville de fortifications (2012), Oran, la mémoire (2004) and Oran: études de géographie et d’histoire urbaines (2003) – was the desire to both document and celebrate the diversity of the city’s local heritage. He argued that while many books had been published about Oran in Europe, only two had been published in Algeria, which demonstrated the lack of interest on the part of state institutions and the distance between the inhabitants and their elected leaders in the city.9 The president of Bel Horizon also gave his views on what he saw as the ideological reasons for the state’s denial of local cultural narratives across Algeria, and particularly in Oran, and how the city’s distinct cultural identity, its local elites and its narrative history have suffered due to the homogenous identity imposed since independence: Dans l’imaginaire d’un pouvoir conservateur dans le domaine culturel, Oran était le mauvais exemple. La ville est taxée tantôt d’espagnole, tantôt de ville coloniale: n’était-ce pas la ville la plus européenne d’Algérie? Par Footage of the walk can be seen at https://youtu.be/Am0tltpjhxU. Given such significant numbers, since 2011 the association has had to abandon the group walk and organize instead cultural events across the city, which now involve artists from Belgium and France. Each year the events are filmed and made available at http://www.oran-belhorizon.com/. 8 Interview with the president of Bel Horizon, Kouider Metair, 23 October 2011. 9 Taken from an interview with El Watan newspaper, published on 1 April 2005, quoted in the special edition of Bel Horizon’s bulletin 10 ans au service du patrimoine: 12. Available at http://www.oran-belhorizon.com/revue-belhorizon. pdf (consulted on 31 October 2015). 7

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conséquent une ville qui charrie des valeurs qui dérangent. Depuis, une politique de culpabilisation fut mise en œuvre, prétextant une participation tiède à la guerre de libération et une prétendue large permissivité morale. Les élites locales et autres notabilités oranaises ont été complexées et, dans une large mesure, neutralisées.10 Such claims are echoed by many cultural associations across Algeria. Many challenge the state’s refusal to accept certain narratives of local or regional identity (along with the linguistic issues that these raise) and seek to overcome this rejection through actively preserving the past.11 They also sometimes go further, standing for local government in order to have a direct impact on the decisions relating to the city and its heritage. Members of Bel Horizon and the Santé Sidi el Houari (another active cultural association in Oran) have seen their leaders go on to be elected members of local government at the communal council (APC) level. Through this transition from civic to political activism, associative actors have been able to gain experience of local politics as well as access to information and a better understanding of local government. As a predominantly Francophone organization, language is another challenge for Bel Horizon. French remains the working language of most of its meetings as well as that of its formal documents and publications. This goes against the policy preferences of the state, and even the law on associations itself which, until revised in 2012, required all associations to produce their main publication in Arabic12 (although this was largely ignored). During a planning meeting in Oran, one of the younger activists passionately asserted ‘In the minds of a conservative authority, within the cultural domain Oran was a bad example. At times accused of being Spanish, at other times colonial, was it not the most European Algerian city? As a result, it represented unsettling values. A policy of blame has been put in place which claims that Oran’s participation in the war of liberation was only lukewarm, that its moral values were permissive. As a result, local elites and leading figures became more circumspect and have largely been neutralized’. 11 APPAT in Tiaret (promoting archeological history), Association Santé Sidi El Houari in Oran (protection of the Sidi El Houari quarter), Association Castellum in Chleff (archiving of Roman ruins) and Association Archéologique of Ténès (protection of Phoenician heritage) all reported this to be one of the motivations for their activism – to protect their local heritage whether it be Phoenician, Roman or European monuments, which state institutions had allowed to fall into ruins. 12 Article 19 of the 1990 law states ‘Le bulletin principal doit être édité en langue arabe’ [The main bulletin must be written in Arabic]. 10

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– in reaction to negative responses from the authorities and the accusation that they were protecting colonial vestiges – that Oran was ‘our city’ and was formed of different external influences. He pointed out the contradiction that the authorities (like much of the population of Oran) spoke the language of colonization, while simultaneously rejecting it. Why, he asked, should they not value all the different cultures which make up the richness of the city?13 As a Francophone organization, moreover, Bel Horizon has enjoyed easier access to international funding from the EU and other donors, such as the French embassy and the Cervantes Institute, which predominantly issue their funding calls in French and have been increasingly targeting the heritage sector. This is much less the case for predominantly Arabophone associations further south, such as the Association Rostomid Artisanat or the Association Salaam el Akbar, both of which are in Tiaret,14 which, given the challenges of writing or translating all documents into French for an international donor, felt this was unrealistic and, as a result, needed to look for small grants from regional state institutions. Bel Horizon manages to network with other heritage associations around the Mediterranean, including exchanges with organizations from Spain and France – such as members of the Frenchfunded Programme Concerté Pluri-Acteurs (PCPA) network.15 Funding from EU programmes has enabled the association to professionalize, purchase technical equipment and material, and broaden its funding sources. While EU funding does not unduly influence their choice of cultural action as the funding calls have been wide in their remit, members did complain about the bureaucratic requirements of funding applications. Few associations I met with in 2013 had seen any concrete information about the new 21 million euro EU investment in the heritage sector announced two years earlier in 2011 (‘Nouveau soutien européen’, 2011), although newspaper reports indicated that it would be launched in 2014 (‘Valorisation du patrimoine’, 2013). Formal and informal networks exist, bringing together associations working in the heritage sector, primarily from neighbouring wilayas. Bel Horizon is a leading actor in these networks, encouraging other heritage associations to take ownership of historical narratives which help to define Algeria. The organization and its members challenge state narratives, participate in local government and encourage young people to engage in a more constructive political debate. Promoting more inclusive, open identities, Bel Horizon seeks recognition of Algeria’s cultural diversity through promoting a much wider Interview and discussions with Bel Horizon members, 23 October 2011. Interviewed 30 and 31 October 2011 respectively. 15 Available at http://www.pcpalgerie.org/?-Associations-Francaises-et- (consulted on 16 November 2015). 13 14

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conception of the country’s past. McDougall describes the need in twentyfirst-century Algeria for a space ‘creating new, and freer, histories’ (2006: 238). Through their daily activities, heritage associations such as Bel Horizon aim to create a space for reflection on history and the respective roles of the state and society in preserving different aspects of Algeria’s heritage and incorporating the histories that Bel Horizon sponsors into enabling narratives of identity. Through its significant public support and legitimacy, Bel Horizon appears to have secured this space, at least in the short term and within the city of Oran.

Algeria’s Archaeological Past The wealth of Algeria’s archaeological past, from prehistory to entirely preserved Roman sites and cities such as Tipasa and Djemila, is widely acknowledged to be unique in the region. The steppe region of Tiaret, whose main city is Tiaret, is known for its numerous heritage sites, including a necropolis dating back six millennia. The ancient tombs of the thirteen impressive ‘Djeddar’ monuments date back two millennia to the rule of the Berber kings of North Africa. Near the city of Tiaret, the town of Frenda is the location of the cave used by the philosopher Ibn Khaldun to write one of social sciences’ most important historic works, The Muqaddimah, An Introduction to History, in the fourteenth century. The region also hosts the site of Tihert, from which the Rostimid dynasty ruled from 761. Tihert became the capital of the most important kingdom in the Maghreb. The site of Tagdempt, another state capital, under the Emir Abdelkader in the nineteenth century, was the military, political, economic and cultural capital of Algeria for seven years from 1835 and 1841 (Kiser, 2008). As one of the most important protagonists of the resistance struggle against the colonial invasion, the emir has particular symbolic importance for Algerian nationalist history. The ruins of the emir’s house are still visible, as are the sites where gunpowder was made and the first coins of the Algerian state were minted. More recent is the Jumenterie, the largest stud farm in North Africa, dating from the mid-nineteenth century, the colonial period, and still an important site for horse breeding today. The 1990s were difficult for the citizens of the region of Tiaret, particularly so in the rural areas, which were the target of extreme violence by Islamist insurgents that resulted in a mass exodus towards the main city. Kidnappings, bombings, false police barricades, executions and the requisitioning of farms and produce were regular occurrences. Far from the capital, with imposed curfews and weakened state security structures, the citizens of the region suffered intensely. To leave one’s house was seen as an act of

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bravery, to venture into the surrounding countryside to explore abandoned ruins in an effort to protect Algerian heritage and culture, which many felt was under direct threat from the obscurantist extremist ideology, was both a political and personal act of genuine courage. Working to protect and value all of the sites described above, a local heritage association, the Association pour la protection du patrimoine archéologique de Tiaret (APPAT, Association for the protection of the archaeological heritage of Tiaret), was created in 1992 thanks to the will and dynamism of a now retired teacher, who is president of the association. The APPAT organization is registered as a regional association with the wilaya of Tiaret. Over the last 20 years APPAT has sought to identify and list all the archaeological sites of the region; 452 monuments are now listed, of which five are classified by the Algerian state as national heritage (Dilmi, 2010; Amellal, 2010). The members of APPAT are passionate about the heritage of their region but feel that knowledge about the importance of these sites is insufficient among the local population and Algerians generally. This also seems to be the case with the state, as even the sites of symbolic importance to the Algerian state are left unpreserved. Weaknesses in state structures, the years of violence and limited awareness at all levels of society have led to many of the sites being neglected. APPAT carries out civic education activities among the population, for visitors to the region and in schools, and it trains local guides to ensure that these sites are accorded the necessary protection and a place within Algeria’s national heritage.16 With a small grant from the European Union in 2008, APPAT launched a regional network of heritage actors to coordinate approaches and to develop joint training programmes with other associations on legislation relating to historic sites and on methods of identifying and preserving such sites. They initiated a new training programme for university students seeking to work in the tourism, heritage and archaeological sectors. Trained as heritage guides, and in methods of conservation, the trainees were sent to different sites across the region to learn about their history and guiding techniques. With help from a former director from the Ministry of Culture, APPAT worked with other heritage organizations in the west of Algeria to complete a common database of the various sites around the region, from prehistory to the present day. In collaboration with the Chamber of Commerce, discussions were launched with a view to developing a comprehensive distance learning diploma for young people. When interviewed in 2011 the president of APPAT, Ahmed Daoud, felt that relations with the regional government authorities were positive. The 16

Interview with the president of APPAT, Ahmed Daoud, 31 October 2011.

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authorities maintained regular contact with the association and when any ruins or archaeological sites were discovered APPAT was the first organization to be consulted. Relations with the local authorities were generally good, thanks above all to personal support from the director of the Chamber of Commerce, who had given up much of his personal time and commitment to helping APPAT association and other organizations. Clearly personal relations matter but funding, Daoud noted, is still an issue.17 The association has been lobbying local government authorities for a museum to promote the history and archaeological wealth of the region. This request has so far been turned down though the region recently inaugurated a museum commemorating the Moudjahid and the history of the Algerian war of independence. As in Oran, the debate between the state and associations concerning the representation of history and national heritage can be a sensitive one. That said, state narratives of national identity are not necessarily always in conflict with those of the individuals and associations who seek to promote their histories, monuments and traditions. In Tiaret, the state neglects all heritage sites, including those which would seem to be of key importance to its own perception of Algeria’s national identity. For example, APPAT is keen to protect sites of importance to the nationalist struggle, including the site from which the Emir Abdelkader launched the rebellion against the colonial invasion in the nineteenth century. The state’s antagonistic response might be a result of its recognition that it had failed to recognize the importance of protecting a site that marked a key moment in the history of anti-colonial resistance, or had been unable to do so in a context of violence and insecurity, or that it resented being show up by a small association willing and brave enough to take up that challenge. Indeed, state heritage services, at a regional level, have themselves been frustrated by a lack of training, a lack of security, a lack of direction from the ministry of culture and rigid hierarchical decision-making structures. These factors have been compounded by the traumas of the 1990s. As a result, regional state agencies have been abandoned by actors such as the EU, who seek instead to support, promote and fund local civil society associations.18 Associations such as APPAT have been filling such gaps, providing new solutions to promote Algeria’s heritage, insisting on broader historical narratives to include all the periods which have played a part in the wilaya’s history. This includes the nationalist struggle and Islamic heritage but also prehistory and colonial history, a recognition of which could enrich the life Interview with the president of APPAT, Ahmed Daoud, 31 October 2011. Interview with Assia Ferial Selhab, PCPA support programme funded by the French embassy, 19 October 2011. 17 18

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of the city of Tiaret and its citizens. APPAT has managed to achieve the first steps towards recognition of this broader, more inclusive history by taking a constructive approach rather than an oppositional one. With limited means, the organization has received popular support and been recognized by state institutions for its work on the region’s heritage. However, at the time of writing (November 2015), APPAT was suffering from a complete breakdown in relations with the regional authorities. Banned from holding a high-level conference on Berber history at Ibn Khaldun University in Tiaret in 2013 with guest speaker Jean Pierre Laporte – an expert on North African history – the association has since been targeted by the authorities and prevented from working on many occasions by accusations and administrative obstacles mounted for no apparent or communicated reason (Benameur, 2015). Not dissimilar to the experiences of other previously successful associations across the country, the debate about history, access to the public sphere and the capacity to speak about – and represent – Algerians and their history remain highly contested and often difficult domains for associations. APPAT’s future is unclear, as is that of the detailed work of restoration and classification of the region’s archaeological heritage that it undertakes. Equally unclear is the future of associational autonomy and the limits within which the state will allow associations to function and act as ambassadors for Algerian heritage.

Religious Heritage and Traditions The region that is now Algeria has traditionally been a crossroads for intellectual life, ideas and learning in North Africa. This explains the abundance of important religious manuscripts held in Algeria today by state institutions, such as the National Library in Algiers, and in private and family collections across the country19 – although the latter manuscripts are little known either inside and outside of Algeria (Scheele, 2010). Across the Muslim world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the growing Sufi brotherhoods, the zawiyas, had sought to communicate with remote, rural, often illiterate communities. The vernacular, darija, was used to take Islam and its spirituality to the countryside, mainly through mystical poems written in a language these communities could understand. Levtzion writes: The need to write down oral mystical poetry in folk idioms arose also with the growth in scale of the brotherhoods, whose leaders sought to Scheele quotes newspaper figures of 35,000 manuscripts, of which 4,000 are held by the National Library (2010: 294). 19

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communicate with affiliates living in remote communities. Poems in the vernaculars, which had earlier been transmitted and recited orally, were committed to writing in the Arabic script, and copies of the written texts were sent out to the literate representatives of the shaykh in different localities who then recited these texts to an illiterate audience. (2002: 115) In her detailed reports of ethnographic research carried out in two regions of Algeria, Scheele (2010) describes the complex processes involved in the current desire to conserve and promote the value of these manuscripts across Algeria and the resulting tensions between different groups, associations, families and the state. She explores the work of two heritage associations in Kabylia – Groupe d’études sur l’histoire des mathématiques à Béjaïa (GEHIMAB) and Adrar (Association des recherches et études historiques de la région d’Adrar) – concerned with protecting religious manuscripts and the difficulties involved. She describes how the protection of this particular religious heritage stirs up conflicts over political and social legitimacy: The sudden revival of interest in manuscript collections that occurred from the mid-1990s onwards was thus not an isolated occurrence, but part of a larger ‘rediscovery’ of Algeria’s long-neglected intellectual and religious heritage, and of ongoing conflicts over social and political legitimacy between central government and local actors. (Scheele, 2010: 300) Scheele feels that the challenges around the conservation of these manuscripts relate not to technical capacity, nor to the colonial destruction of Algerian culture, but more to the ‘problematic relationship that many contemporary Algerians maintain with their history and with local traditions of knowledge and scholarship’ (2010: 292). Written in vernacular Arabic, rather than classical Arabic, it is the language of these texts that raised problems for both of the organizations that Scheele studied, given the strong focus primarily on Berber identity and language in Kabylia and the devalued status of Algerian Arabic in much of the country (see Taleb-Ibrahimi, 1997). In the Kabyle case, GEHIMAB was able to use external support from the Canadian embassy to gain local legitimacy and avoided conflicts by maintaining the manuscripts in the local vicinity. In southern Algeria, the case of the historical research association of Adrar was more complex. Its ambitious project to create a centre for the conservation of manuscripts, involving state funding and an institutional structure, had the effect of adding to local conflicts, mistrust and insecurity over the value and rightful place of that heritage. The history of the Sufi brotherhoods in Algeria, and the double attack on them first by colonialism and later by the reformist orthodox Islam of the nationalist movement, meant that the legitimacy of many of the

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families who were descendants of the sheikhs and scholars who wrote the manuscripts had been damaged. Local Islam as represented by the zawiyas came to be seen as ‘morally tainted’ and inferior to the orthodox Islam of the Middle East, although the strength of such discourses still varies across regions of Algeria (Scheele, 2010). Direct attacks, both physical and verbal, on the zawiyas during the violence of the 1990s presented a further barrier to the valorization of the heritage the zawiyas reclaimed and actively preserved. Yet, increasingly, certain associations have managed to overcome these multiple obstacles to conserving these manuscripts. With the increasing recognition of the place of the zawiyas in the political sphere, and the current president’s known affinity with them, practical solutions have been drawn up by associations, perhaps more successfully than those of the state institutions. Ignoring divisions and problems of language or identity, some associations have sought simply to conserve the manuscripts and explain their importance in the public sphere. One such association in the M’Zab, the Ibadite region of Algeria, is the Association Abou Ishak Ibrahim Tefayech pour le Service du Patrimoine. Over the last decade this local association has been involved in a technical project, working with three local libraries to digitalize and conserve over 1,000 manuscripts as part of a larger project to protect all religious manuscripts in the M’Zab region. Funded initially by a small grant from the European Union and local contributions, the project honours primarily the memory of the Ibadite Sheikh M’Hammed Ben Youcef Ben Aïssa Tefayech, who was born in Ghardaia in 1821 and died in 1914 in Beni Isguen (Ammour, 2009). Self-taught, he acquired and transcribed many religious manuscripts, purchased whole libraries and dedicated much of his life to the education of others, receiving students from across the region and authoring over 300 manuscripts. In addition, the partner libraries also hold manuscripts by religious scholars from different sects and ethnic groups, including Ibadite and non-Ibadite sheikhs. At time of writing, the association has managed to successfully conserve all these manuscripts in an inclusive manner, compiling them in a digital format. It has trained young people from the region in conservation techniques as well as launching a discussion on the intrinsic value of the documents themselves. As such, the association has managed to avoid conflicts both within the community and with the state structures, by presenting a predominantly technical project that is also an inclusive one aimed at preserving one part of a common, traditional, religious heritage of Algeria.

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Conclusion With reference to tangible historical monuments and objects – and also the intangible heritage enshrined in living cultural expressions and traditions – this chapter has explored how heritage associations have had to deal with questions of identity, language and moral convictions, as well as mediate state-society relations and discuss and conserve Algeria’s national history, involving the Arab, Muslim, Berber, Roman, Jewish, Ottoman and European cultural heritage of the country. Conflicts in this sector seem to emanate, however, less from a contested identity of the Algerian nation, and more from competition between state actors and civil society organizations over who has the right and the skills to represent, to conserve and to provide a voice for an increasingly inclusive, rich and less contested Algerian memory. Lloyd writes that the concept of civil society itself needs to be wide enough to encompass such conflicts, not only with the state but also those with regard to religion, gender and ideological power structures (1999). She laments that too much focus on violence and conflict has ‘obscured the courageous resistances involved in Algerian civil society’ (1999: 488). McDougall also challenges the endless clichés of ‘fury’ and ‘revenge’ (2006), arguing for ‘a critical exploration of the relationship between forms of historical self-perception, Islamic culture, and the nationalist struggle in colonial Algeria’ (2006: 18). Lloyd further argues that it is through associative networks, such as those maintained by Bel Horizon in Algeria and across the Mediterranean, and their resources, that social actors can resist oppression ‘and formulate new social visions’ (1999: 488). In the Algerian case in particular, considerable immigration, ‘repatriation’ and significant emigration political, social and cultural reasons after the war of independence, and more recently during the 1990s, have resulted in the boundaries of the nation state becoming increasingly blurred (Lloyd, 1999: 489). As the profile of migrants has changed in recent decades, Collyer (2006) details the increasing capacity of Algerian associational activism to operate beyond Algerian borders as well as the power and potential of Algerian associations in France to contribute to the debate within Algeria. Given the immense disparities in the means available to conserve, revive and restore Algerian culture and heritage, civil society actors have had to negotiate with external actors, such as the EU, to gain moral and financial support, and are increasingly Mediterranean and transnational in their outlook (Lloyd 1999: 487). They are also more strongly connected to local populations, who are keen to provide hard-working associations with financial support if they see results from their investments. This contrasts starkly with the immense means of the state, gained from the

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windfall oil wealth over the last decade, and its limited capacity to manage such budgets and to connect with the Algerian population. As such, associations continue to play an important if sensitive role in Algeria, both internally and externally, as intermediaries between the state, international actors and the population, for the protection of Algeria’s heritage. Negotiating with state actors about how to preserve the past, they are simultaneously developing their technical, diplomatic and political expertise in order to achieve this. Some associations are expressly including state actors in their training programmes and education campaigns as part of an important process of restoring some form of trust between the state and civil society associations. Overcoming conflicts such as those experienced by Bel Horizon, and more severely by APPAT, is part of a drawn-out process in the formation, or reformation, of Algerian civil society, which has challenged and negotiated with state actors for a voice within the public sphere over the past 20 years.

Works Cited Addi, Lahouari. 2011. ‘Les Obstacles à la formation de la société civile en Algérie’. In Anna Bozzo and Jean-Pierre Luizzard (eds), Les Sociétés civiles dans le monde musulman. Paris: La Découverte: 369–84. Amellal, Fawzi. 2010. ‘“En attendant un musée de l’histoire”. Promotion du patrimoine archéologique’. El Watan 23 November. Available at www. djazairess.com/fr/elwatan/299284 (consulted on 30 October 2015). Ammour, Sihem. 2009. ‘Près de 1500 manuscrits exceptionnels répertoriés dans la vallée du M’Zab’. La Tribune 15 June. Available at http://www.djazairess. com/fr/latribune/18269 (consulted on 11 November 2015). Arkoun, Mohamed. 2004. ‘Locating Civil Society in Islamic Contexts’. In Amyn B. Sajoo (ed.), Civil Society in the Muslim World, Contemporary Perspectives. London: I.B. Tauris: 35–60. Ben Nefissa, Sarah. 2002. Pouvoirs et associations dans le monde Arabe. Paris: CNRS Éditions. Benameur, Mourad. 2015. ‘Tiaret: vers la réhabilitation de l’Appat?’ Le Soir d’Algérie 11 October. Available at http://www.lesoirdalgerie.com/articles/2015/10/11/ article.php?sid=185478&cid=4 (consulted on 31 October 2015). Berger, Anne-Emmanuelle (ed.). 2002. Algeria in Others’ Languages. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Cavatorta, Francesco, and Azzam Elananza. 2008. ‘Political Opposition in Civil Society: An Analysis of the Interactions of Secular and Religious Associations in Algeria and Jordan’. Government and Opposition 43.4: 561–78.

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Cavatorta, Francesco, and Vincent Durac. 2011. Civil Society and Democratisation in the Arab World, The Dynamics of Activism. Oxford: Routledge. ‘Cheikh Khaled Bentounes: l’homme et le message’. 2009. Available at http:// aisa-net.com/la_voie_soufie_alawiyya/cheikh-khaled-bentounes/ (consulted on 2 February 2016). Collyer, Michael. 2006. ‘Transnational Political Participation of Algerians in France. Extra-Territorial Civil Society versus Transnational Governmentality’. Political Geography 25.7: 836–49. Derras, Omar. 2007. Le Phénomène associative en Algérie. Algiers: Frederich Ebert Stiftung. Dilmi, El Houari. 2010. ‘Tiaret: formation de guides de sites archéologiques’. Le Quotidien d’Oran 18 October. Available at www.djazairess.com/fr/lqo/5144675 (consulted on 30 October 2015). Evans, Martin, and John Phillips. 2007. Algeria: Anger of the Dispossessed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. F.S. 2011. ‘La Coordination nationale pour le changement et le démocratie: mises au point et clarifications’. Le Soir d’Algérie 24 February. Available at http:// www.lesoirdalgerie.com/articles/2011/02/24/article.php?sid=113362&cid=2 (consulted on 20 November 2015). Gafaiti, Hafid. 2002. ‘The Monotheism of the Other: Language and De/Construction of National Identity in Postcolonial Algeria’. In Anne-Emmanuelle Berger (ed.), Algeria in Others’ Languages. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press: 19–43. Hannoum, Abdelmadjid. 2003. ‘Translation and the Colonial Imaginary: Ibn Khaldûn Orientalist’. History and Theory 42.1: 61–81. Ibn Khaldun, 1967. The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, Vol. I. Translated by Franz Rosenthal. New York: Princeton University Press. Kessab, Amar. 2014. ‘Med Culture: Country Profile for the Cultural Sector in Algeria’. Available at http://www.medculture.eu/country/report-structure/ algeria (consulted on 29 October 2015). Kiser, John W. 2008. Commander of the Faithful: The Life and Times of Emir Abd el-Kader, New York: Monkfish Book Publishing Company. Layish, Aharon. 2002. ‘The Qadi’s Role in the Islamization of Sedentary Society’. In Miriam Hoexter, Shmuel Eisenstadt and Nehemia Levitzion (eds), The Public Sphere in Muslim Societies. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press: 83–107. Levtzion, Nehemia. 2002. ‘The Dynamics of Sufi Brotherhoods’. In Miriam Hoexter, Shmuel Eisenstadt and Nehemia Levitzion (eds), The Public Sphere in Muslim Societies. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press: 109–18. Lloyd, Catherine. 1999. ‘Organising across Borders: Algerian Women’s Associations in a Period of Conflict’. Review of African Political Economy 82: 479–90.

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Martinez, Luis. 2010. ‘Algeria: The Illusion of Oil Wealth.’ Les Etudes du CERI 168.2. Available at http://docplayer.net/2022490-Algeria-the-illusion-of-oilwealth-luis-martinez.html (consulted on 16 November 2015). ——. 2012. The Violence of Petro-Dollar Regimes. New York: Columbia University Press. McDougall, James. 2006. History and the Culture Nationalism in Algeria. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ‘Nouveau soutien européen pour le patrimoine culturel et le secteur des transports en Algérie’. 2011. European Union Press Release Database 17 August. Available at http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-11-965_fr.htm (consulted on 20 November 2015). Salhi, Mohamed Brahim. 2010. L’Algérie: citoyenneté et identité. Algiers: Achab. Sajoo, Amyn B. (ed.). 2004. Civil Society in the Muslim World: Contemporary Perspectives. London: I.B. Tauris. Scheele, Judith. 2009. Village Matters: Knowledge, Politics and Community in Kabylia, Algeria. Oxford: James Curry. ——, 2010. ‘Coming to Terms with Tradition: Manuscript Conservation in Contemporary Algeria’. In Graziano Krätli and Ghislaine Lydon (eds), The Trans-Saharan Book Trade: Manuscript Culture, Arabic Literacy and Intellectual History in Muslim Africa. Leiden: Brill: 291–318. Taleb-Ibrahimi, Khaoula. 1997. Les Algériens et leur(s) langue(s). Éléments pour une approche sociolinguistique de la société Algérienne. Algiers: Dar El Hikma. ——. 2002. ‘Toponymie et langage, à Alger’. Insaniyat, Revue Algérienne d’Anthropologie et de Sciences Sociales 17–18.6: 2–3. ‘Valorisation du patrimoine culturel en Algérie: lancement en 2014 d’un projet d’appui finance par UE’. 2013. El Moudjahid 11 October. Available at http:// www.elmoudjahid.com/fr/flash-actu/11922 (consulted on 20 November 2015). Volpi, Frédéric. 2003. Islam and Democracy: The Failure of Dialogue in Algeria. London: Pluto Press.

Cultural Mediations

Writing in the Aftermath of Two Wars: Algerian Modernism and the Génération ’88 Corbin Treacy

Writing in the Aftermath of Two Wars

Introduction In February 2014, Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal announced that President Abdelaziz Bouteflika would be running for a fourth term. Having won re-election, he may well serve as Algeria’s head of state for two decades. The president had recently suffered a stroke that required him to spend three months in a French hospital and, soon after returning home, Bouteflika was filmed in a meeting with the then-prime minister of France, Jean-Marc Ayrault. Official state television broadcast footage that showed a visibly fatigued Bouteflika, but one nevertheless engaged in conversation with his French guest. He is shown gesturing to the attentive nods of Ayrault, but according to the French television show ‘Le Petit Journal’, all was not as it seemed. Bouteflika’s multiple hand movements (eight, in total) were apparently the work of some creative editing (Barthès, 2013). Canal Algérie had filmed the meeting with different cameras and looped footage from each of the president’s three hand movements to make him appear less catatonic. In his second post-stroke television appearance, the president is shown discussing his candidacy for a total of 15 seconds. ‘Le Petit Journal’ once again exposed the editing team’s trucage. In the middle of a phrase that began ‘Je dépose le dossier de candidature’ [I’m filing the application], the camera angle switches abruptly and Bouteflika is shown inexplicably seated in a new position – two takes were apparently needed to paste together a coherent sentence. 123

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Oranais author Kamel Daoud noted that ‘dans les trois phrases, deux étaient proches du langage, une était à la frontière du SMS […] on est l’unique pays au monde où l’argument d’un candidat n’est pas un programme mais la preuve qu’il est vivant. La seule nation qui va se contenter de 37 mots pour élire un homme. C’est la campagne électorale la plus courte du monde. 15 secondes’ (Daoud, 2014).1 While there was considerable outrage at the prospect of five more years of Bouteflika, there was little in the way of shock. Algerians had become accustomed to the absurdity of their country’s political theatre. Power in Algeria – le pouvoir – is not restricted to one man. The army, the security services, the ministers, the state oil company and various oligarchs enjoy rotating places at the table when decisions are made, and no one is ever certain who exactly is present. Unlike Ben Ali’s Tunisia, Mubarak’s Egypt or Gaddafi’s Libya, Algeria is governed by a complex network of institutions and interests, not the diktats of an autocrat. Accordingly, Bouteflika’s poor health will likely matter little to the preservation of the status quo. Beginning with the October demonstrations of 1988, in which tens of thousands of Algerians took to the streets to express their anger at failed economic and social policies, a series of events unfolded that cemented the state-society relationship into one of storyteller and sceptical child, shattering the credibility of the government and normalizing mythology as the regime’s genre of choice. Algerians were fired upon for marching in the street, had their votes cancelled and their well-liked leader assassinated.2 And then, after suffering through a civil war during Algeria’s ‘black decade’ (the décennie noire), they were told they could neither talk about nor seek justice for any of the above (Le Sueur, 2010: 2–10). The quick succession of these events and their repetition in countless smaller ways served to systematize absurdity in Algeria. People went missing, curfews were established, censorship was ‘of the three sentences, two were close to language, one bordered on a text message […] we’re the only country on earth where a candidate’s argument isn’t a platform, but the proof that he’s alive. The only nation that is going to be satisfied with 37 words to elect someone. This is the shortest campaign in the world. 15 seconds’. All translations are my own. 2 Mohammed Boudiaf, a historic leader of the FLN, had returned from exile in Morocco to assume the presidency at the invitation of a newly formed Haut Comité d’Etat (HCE) in the wake of the cancelled elections of 1992. In his first press conference, Boudiaf promised to focus on corruption, the economy and justice in an effort to ‘restore faith in good governance by tackling profiteers within the regime itself […] he made clear that “nepotism” was the root cause of the crisis. It was courageous language that won him support amongst ordinary Algerians’ (Evans and Phillips, 2007: 174–75). On 29 June 1992, he was assassinated in the port city of Annaba while addressing a gathering of young Algerians. 1

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imposed, and when Bouteflika was elected president in 1999, he promised to bring peace. To hasten its arrival, he instituted two pieces of forced forgetting: a 1999 ‘Civil Concord’ law and, in 2005, the ‘Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation’. The first offered immunity to Islamists willing to lay down their weapons and the second expanded amnesty for the insurgents while insulating the state security services from any prosecution for their role in the violence of the 1990s (Le Sueur, 2010: 77–79, 90–91). The Charter even stipulated that ‘Anyone who, by speech, writing, or any other act, uses or exploits the wounds of the National Tragedy to harm the institutions of […] Algeria, to weaken the state, or to undermine the good reputation of its agents […] shall be punished by three to five years in prison’ (Ministère, 2006). In the wake of Algeria’s two wars, historical legacies remain contested and the resulting wounds have gone untreated; as a consequence, the surreal has become the banal. So, when reality is heavily seasoned with myth and fantasy, what happens to fiction? Journalist, novelist, playwright and poet Mustapha Benfodil provides one answer in a manifesto he penned as a way of saying ‘No!’ to Bouteflika’s fourth mandate. To the infirm candidate-president, he writes, ‘y a pas que vous, Monsieur le Président, qui avez des feuilles et un stylo. Nous aussi, nous, c’est à dire l’autre société civile, […] on a des feuilles et un stylo, et on va l’écrire, notre version, notre récit’ (Benfodil, 2014).3 Like the president, this other civil society is also able to write fictions, but they are aspirational fictions more closely aligned with the vision of independent Algeria authored by the nationalist movements of the 1950s. This symbolic act of reclaiming the national pen and taking back the rights of authorship begins to answer the question of how the cultural imaginary might begin to confront the ubiquity of the political surreal. Benfodil argues that corrosive myths must be countered with generative ones and the specific tools of fiction are needed for any deconstruction of the dominant narrative. Algerian literature from the 1990s has been repeatedly described as testimonial, a littérature d’urgence (Bonn, 1999: 7; Gueydan-Turek, 2011: 86; Mokhtari, 2000: 23). But something has changed in the past ten to 15 years. Writers born after the transition to independence in 1962, members of what Malika Rahal has termed ‘la génération ’88’,4 are now using experimental forms to respond to the increasing surreality of things. In what follows, I ‘You’re not the only one, Mister President, who has a paper and pen. So do we, us, the other civil society […] we have papers and pens and we’re going to write our version, our story’. 4 Rahal used the term in a conversation we had in Algiers in the summer of 2012. As of time of writing, she has not yet used it in print. 3

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analyse the recent shift in fiction from realism to surrealism, paying special attention to how avant-garde texts adumbrate the particularities of the Bouteflika era and offer alternatives to official memories of both the war for independence and the black decade. I focus on works by two quatre-vingthuitistes, Mustapha Benfodil and Kamel Daoud, and argue that their writings articulate a renewed vision of Algerian nationalism aimed at futures beyond the limiting terms of the static present or the calcified past. Less common in works by these authors are the bloodied victims of the civil war that populate the littérature d’urgence or the hybrid émigrés of more explicitly transnational literature. Benfodil and Daoud, along with Kaouther Adimi, Chawki Amari, Adlène Meddi and Samir Toumi, favour daring forms of writing that resist a trend in postcolonial literature, diagnosed by Timothy Brennan, wherein young authors ‘have entered a genre of third-world metropolitan fiction whose conventions have given their novels the unfortunate feel of ready-mades’ (1997: 203). Brennan goes on to describe a ‘lack of interest in the explicitly modernist or experimental writing of those who are considered not to be political enough – those who do not fit the injunction that the third-world writer embody politics in a readily consumable form’ (207), which may explain the relative obscurity of Adimi, Amari, Meddi, Toumi and (until recently) Daoud in French, British and North American literary circles. In a genre crowded with hybrid subjects, cosmopolitan migrants and identity-conflicted heroes, the writers of the génération ’88 prefer to use fiction as a way of exposing social norms as historically constructed and denouncing false totalities in texts that hew more closely to the modernist novels of Mohammed Dib or Kateb Yacine. Neil Lazarus has identified a tendency in postcolonial writing towards what he calls ‘disconsolation’ in and through literature, a writing ‘that does what at least some modernist work has done from the outset: namely, says “no”; refuses integration, resolution, consolation, comfort’ (2011: 31). At a moment in Algerian history when writers find themselves confronted with an oligarchy that resembles the former colonizer in more ways than one, it is perhaps not surprising that the modernist impulse that animated the anticolonial literature of the 1950s and ’60s should emerge again as a useful arm in the arsenal of protest aesthetics. Simon Gikandi has documented the extent to which modernism played a critical role in anticolonial nationalisms, noting that while ‘Nationalism has become a dirty word in some circles, […] for the colonized it was a redemptive project that needed an aesthetic dimension in order to fulfill its mandate’ (2003: 25), and modernism was that dimension. In the face of discredited versions of Algerian nationalist discourse – namely those championed by the state and certain voices within the Islamist political community – authors from the génération ’88 are refusing to

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surrender the nation to these two oppositional readings. At a 2014 protest in Algiers, Mustapha Benfodil walked through a cordon of police officers and attempted to affix a drawing by his daughter to a bulletin board outside the fac centrale (the downtown campus of the University of Algiers). The picture shows a man with a red mouth and red hands wearing a green shirt. It is clearly the drawing of a child, but on a white sheet of paper, the red and green cannot help but evoke the Algerian flag. Walking through the riot police, Benfodil sang the Algerian national anthem and was promptly arrested. The police officers ripped the picture out of his hands, threatened, as it were, by the subversive potential of a child’s drawing. But the picture was not overtly political. There was no text, no obvious indictment of Bouteflika or the regime and no good reason it should be destroyed. It was representational only in the crudest sense and demanded of the viewer a willingness to piece together Benfodil’s act, his song and the drawing itself. For those in attendance, the message was clear enough – the future does not belong to you and you don’t own our past – and the chosen medium was art.

Algerian Modernism The collision of modernist literary aesthetics and nationalism is on full display in Benfodil’s 2007 Archéologie du chaos (amoureux). He harnesses a knotty constellation of references, multiple narrative voices and playful uses of language to construct a labyrinthine text that is at once urban novel, mystery, political manifesto and aesthetic treatise. The story centres on Yacine Nabolci, a withdrawn, bookish intellectual from a lower middle-class family who falls in with a group of radical university students, wages war on the ruling élite, enters a period of errant wandering and eventually falls in love. Throughout, the narrative is interrupted by the commentary of Marwan K., another withdrawn, bookish intellectual who is writing Yacine’s story, the very one we are reading – also titled Archéologie du chaos (amoureux) – over the course of one drug-addled night in a squalid Algiers apartment. But we never learn how Yacine’s tale ends, as Marwan dies from an overdose before he can finish the book. Many threads are left dangling and the remainder of the novel is told in the voice of a detective, Kamel El Afrite, who must piece together the circumstances of Marwan’s death using the unfinished manuscript of Archéologie to fill in the blanks. The text ruminates on the role of the writer in a conflicted society and much of it takes place in Algiers during the late 1990s, but the civil war never occupies centre stage. It’s always there, but never gets more than the occasional mention. The protagonists in both the inner novel and the frame narrative are trying to figure out what it means to be an artist and intellectual in late twentieth-century Algeria,

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to engage meaningfully with a nation in turmoil and to stage a successful collision of aesthetics and politics. The text’s first two pages, in which Yacine recalls his first sexual experience, prepare the reader for what will be a quasi-Joycean experiment in intertextuality. The woman in question is his 17-year-old stepmother, Kheïra, and the event is compared to a journey into ‘le monde merveilleux d’Alice au pays des caprices’ [Alice’s adventures in Wonderland], ‘Le Paradis’ [Heaven] and the ‘Sublime Grotte’ [Sublime Cave] (likely a reference to Nahr al-Kalb, in Beirut). Yacine compares himself to ‘Peter Pan’ and Kheïra to ‘Lolita’, and he refers to the whole episode as his ‘personal Big Bang’ (2007: 7–8). In two pages, the narrator’s first encounter with a vagina necessitates the invocation of Lewis Carroll, J.M. Barrie, Vladimir Nabokov, religion, Levantine geology and astrophysics. As if this weren’t enough, Yacine was reading Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason prior to glimpsing the semi-clothed Kheïra, excerpts of which flash through his head as he touches her. This sexual initiation establishes some of the central tropes in the novel: return, birth, lost innocence and the inescapable figure of the mother, none of which is lost on Marwan’s fabricated narrator, Yacine, who notes: Depuis la nuit des temps, le Monde, sorti du vagin d’une femme, dérivait, comme les plaques tectoniques, vers son paradis originel, le Vagin Primordial, fondant, par là même, la généalogie du Grand Retour. C’est d’ailleurs, tout le sens de l’odyssée homérique et ses relents de nostalgie sentimentale, thème largement repris, de Joyce à Kundera. Ulysse, affranchi enfin de la colère des dieux, délaissant les mondes magiques explorés par ses sens et déjouant les pièges luxurieux de l’intrigante Calypso et ses promesses d’immortalité, retourne à Ithaque pour mourir de sa belle mort dans le vagin de Pénélope, Parangon de la Fidélité.5 (23) Buried in all this metaphysical wool-gathering is an important architecture that will structure much of what follows: things were good, then something happened and things got bad, necessitating a return to the good. As a threeyear-old, Yacine suffocated his infant sister, causing his mother to die of ‘Since time immemorial the World, out of a woman’s vagina, drifted like tectonic plates towards its original paradise, the Primordial Vagina, thus melting the genealogy of the Great Return. It is, what’s more, the whole meaning of the Homeric Odyssey and its hints of sentimental nostalgia, a widely adopted theme from Joyce to Kundera. Ulysses, finally free from the wrath of the gods, leaving magical worlds explored by his senses and thwarting the luxurious trappings of the intriguing Calypso and her promises of immortality, returns to Ithaca to die a natural death in the vagina of Penelope, paragon of loyalty’. 5

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heartache. He carries acts of infanticide and matricide on his conscience, though for much of the novel he refuses to admit feeling much of anything. Given that Yacine is a child of newly independent Algeria, it is hard not to read into his tale a form of national allegory: a happy childhood is cut short by an act of violence that causes a slow descent into frustration and spiteful resignation. Homer, Joyce and Kundera provide the textual antecedents for what is not merely a national allegory but a commentary on a more totalizing narrative of redemption and the return to a lost Paradise. Raymond Williams identifies in the work of the modernists and avant-gardists an emphasis on creativity, a ‘violent rejection of tradition: the insistence on a clean break with the past’ (1989: 52). The narrative voices of Yacine/Marwan/Benfodil seem reluctant to dispense with all previous tradition (philosophical, literary and theological), but there is a rejection of the imposed traditions of the war veteran generation that has ruled Algeria since independence. The novel’s referents are global, eclectic and, though at times rather elitist (as above), generally inclusive of both ‘high’ and ‘low’ forms of cultural production: the detective Kamel El Afrite compares himself, in one paragraph, to Humphrey Bogart, Jack Bauer of the FOX series 24 and Inspector Tahar, a character in an Algerian comedy series from the 1960s and ’70s. A clean break is sought, but not one ignorant of what came before. Throughout the novel, Yacine and his friends constantly try on different identities and different ways of imagining lives other than the ones they have been given. Addiction, as one way out of a lousy present, plays an important role in the novel. Yacine surrounds himself with friends whose political platform is limited to chasing the next high and they never seem to do much beyond exchanging the slurred maxims of dorm room philosophy. The frame narrator, Marwan, smokes so many joints the night he binge-writes Archéologie that he dies from a hashish-induced heart attack. His mother, a professor of English literature at the Université d’Alger, is an alcoholic, as is Kamel El Afrite. Self-defeating intoxication is the side effect of a greater malaise that cuts across the many socio-economic groups represented in the novel. In each instance, it short-circuits a process of generative creation: Yacine’s friends are unable to mobilize; Marwan dies before he can complete his novel; his mother has stopped her research; and Kamel ignores his family. More than a public service announcement about the dangers of drugs, addiction is presented as one treatment regimen (however destructive) for the symptoms of Algeria’s ennui. If the world has become unreal, these lives suggest, why not take flight from it? The novel offers less corrosive palliatives as well. Yacine and his entourage don various revolutionary and artistic hats in their attempt to find a meaningful form of engagement, and each iteration of their intellectual

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fraternity gets a name. The first formation is baptized the AGIR, the ‘AvantGarde Intellectuelle Révolutionnaire’. The ever-sceptical Yacine describes this group as ‘pseudo alter-Algériens qui se croyaient différents sans pouffer de rire ni rougir simplement parce qu’ils se tatouaient et écoutaient du métal’ (59).6 These largely superficial markers of alterity (tattoos, heavy metal) evolve when the group renames itself G 97, or ‘Cogit-Prop: cogitation et propagande’ [cogitation and propaganda] (65). Yacine finds this second formation to be naïve and attributes their blind enthusiasm to a biological side effect of age. But at least the G 97 has a strategic platform: as a way of exacting revenge on the nation’s leaders, the men of G 97 transform themselves into tombeurs who seduce and impregnate the daughters of the nomenklatura in the backs of SUVs at the Club des Pins – the playground of Algeria’s ruling élite. When this project ultimately fails, Yacine goes into hiding for three years, isolating himself and cutting off all contact with his friends. At night, he begins the process of putting himself back together, finding other avenues for his still-unsatisfied desire to say ‘No’ to the regime and find an authorial voice: ‘Armé d’un aérosol, je m’appropriai ainsi tous les murs d’Alger. Les murs d’Alger étaient depuis longtemps un prolongement du champ de bataille. Je réclamais ma part de démocratie murale en toute légitimité’ (119).7 The first of many graffiti images to appear in the novel are the words ‘Manifeste du Chkoupisme’,8 fragments of which unfold throughout the remaining pages. Having found a language in which to write a new political philosophy – chkoupisme – Yacine reunites with his friends and the group once again decides on a new name: ‘les Anartistes’. The Anartistes are different from the AGIR and the G 97: rather than assault the regime or subscribe to a particular political ideology, they use absurdist mockery as their chosen mode of engagement. They embark on errands of folly in an attempt to ‘bousiller la syntaxe politique du monde’ [screw up the world’s political syntax] (133). It’s a form of resistance that foregrounds the act of creation and the specificity of art forms themselves (graffiti, poetry, theatre) to provide ‘un joyeux refuge contre la morosité ambiante’ [a cheerful refuge against the gloom] (135). ‘pseudo alter-Algerians who, without blushing or giggling, thought they were different because they got tattooed and listened to heavy metal’. 7 ‘armed with a spray can, I appropriated for myself all of Algiers’s walls. The walls of Algiers had long been an extension of the battlefield. I reclaimed my part of this wall democracy legitimately’. 8 From chkoupi, a form of algae found on rocks at the shore. In colloquial use, it describes anything of poor quality, as in the popular expression bled chkoupi [shitty country]. 6

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But neither the Anartistes nor their ‘Manifeste du Chkoupisme’ advocates a retreat from society. The first line of the manifesto reads: ‘La place naturelle de l’intellectuel est dans l’opposition’ [the intellectual’s natural place is in opposition] (245). The document reappropriates the language of armed struggle and calls for a cultural maquis that will ‘prendre linguistiquement le pouvoir et défaire les récits officiels […] occuper esthétiquement le territoire’ (246).9 Occupation here becomes the business of art, an act that will liberate the population from the corrupt pouvoir. And while the Manifeste is dogma-free, existing political identities are not wholly absent. The Anartistes hope to reactivate Marxism, reclaim Islam from extremists and reanimate Kabyle solidarity movements (246). To accomplish this, the document champions a collective effort to ‘casser l’Ordre narratif dominant et provoquer un bouleversement du champ sémantique national’ (249–50).10 Existing narratives and the national semantic structure need changing and art is identified as the most effective way to achieve a collective, utopian reimagining of Algerian society. Like many modernists, Benfodil casts a wide intertextual net. One figure that appears in much of his work is the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. In Archéologie du chaos, Borges is quoted as saying ‘le secret d’un bon conte [est] qu’on “ne sente pas trop le métier”’ (44).11 This passage appears in Marwan’s journal and reflects the difficulty he’s having separating ‘le roman papier du roman conte du roman objet du roman histoire du roman jaquette du roman plaisir du roman marketing du roman écriture du roman érectile du roman projectile du roman verbe du roman marché du roman inconscient (de l’humanité)’ (43).12 Marwan’s dilemma exposes the anxieties of influence and the pressures of the literary market. This is a direct contradiction of Borges: we see all the joint work and carpentry involved in fashioning a novel that evokes less Versailles than Le Corbusier’s Cité Radieuse. It is a brutalist writing in which the labour of the artist-mason is everywhere in evidence. This emphasis on labour recasts creation as an ‘take power linguistically and undo official narratives […] aesthetically occupy the territory’. 10 ‘break the dominant narrative Order and cause an upheaval in the national semantic field’. 11 ‘the secret of a good tale is that you don’t really feel the work of it’. 12 ‘the paperback novel from the story novel from the object novel from the historical novel from the novel’s dust jacket from the pleasure novel from the novel’s marketing from the literary novel from the erectile novel from the projectile novel from the verb novel from the market novel from the unconscious novel (of humanity)’. 9

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active and dynamic process. It isn’t something that happens in a void. It is difficult, and always the product of some human hand working in a specific time and place. Benfodil here brings the more experimental elements of his work into clearer focus: his many references, word games and literary cartwheels are not the product of mere genius – Coleridge waking from an opium-laced dream to transcribe ‘Kubla Khan’ – but the self-conscious project of an individual in society. Criticism, interpretation and reading are also shown to be work, and they often lead to bad conclusions. In his effort to understand the found manuscript of Archéologie du chaos, Kamel El Afrite performs what he calls ‘l’autopsie des mots au lieu de celle des morts’ [an autopsy of words instead of the dead] (183). He calls himself a ‘tisseur d’hypothèses’ [weaver of assumptions] (184) and ends up counting the number of times the word mort appears in the text (193). He constructs a psychological profile of Marwan gleaned from both the internal narrative and his journal: ‘L’Auteur était particulièrement amateur de littérature pessimiste […] L’Auteur était déprimé et mélancolique à temps plein […] L’Auteur souffrait de vide affectif’ (196).13 This is the work of the literary critic and by creating in Kamel a surrogate for the reader of his text, Benfodil asks us to consider the act of interpretation and the pitfalls of poor reading. While not exactly wrong, Kamel’s initial conclusions tell only part of the story. To complete the picture, he enlists the help of a literature professor at the Université d’Alger. After reading the manuscript, the professor concludes that Marwan ‘souffrait d’un cycle œdipien inachevé. Ce qui expliquerait d’ailleurs sa rébellion contre la loi du père, acteur symbolique fort dans l’Œdipe lacanien […] le fait de se voir constamment rejeté pourrait avoir décidé de son orientation sexuelle’ (205).14 This interpretation leads Kamel down a rabbit hole as he searches out the mysterious ‘IL’ of the novel – an unnamed (presumably male) love interest repeatedly mentioned in Marwan’s commentary. ‘IL’, it turns out, is an elle: Ishtar Lahoud, a cousin of Marwan’s. The professor’s misreading of Marwan’s sexuality and Kamel’s many false steps towards a reconstruction of events suggest that reading is tricky; arriving at a satisfying ending requires patience and energy. ‘The author was particularly fond of pessimistic literature […] The author was constantly depressed and melancholic […] The author was suffering from an emotional void’. 14 ‘suffered from an incomplete Oedipal cycle, which would explain his rebellion against the law of the father, a strong symbolic trope in Lacan’s Oedipus […] the fact of seeing himself constantly rejected could have decided his sexual orientation’. 13

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Initial failure is almost a prerequisite for growth in the novel. Yacine only becomes an anartiste after arriving at the other end of his chain of affected revolutionary identities. He has to experience apathy, isolation and violence before he can assume a well-articulated aesthetic posture. Kamel has to reread Marwan’s text before he can begin to understand its significance. He had to get professional advice, then reject that advice and draw his own conclusions. In each case, progress is not linear, but a game of false starts. Deconstructing the dominant narrative in Algeria is a slow and circuitous process. And it is also one that requires love. Yacine, like Marwan, concludes the novel with a love interest: Amina. She appears late in the book, but transforms the misanthropic introvert into a romantic, a prospect that frightens Yacine. Upon receiving a letter from her, he writes: ‘l’amour est un terrorisme. L’amour est pire qu’un attentat!’ [love is a terrorism. Love is worse than an attack] (170). Love’s explosive quality is what makes it an indispensable weapon for the maquis esthétique [guerrilla aesthetics]. If it can transform the hardened Yacine, it may begin to tear at the fabric of le pouvoir and make space for new forms of collective life. Benfodil acknowledges the idealism of his position, writing ‘je suis un citoyen romantique, et quand je suis en panne de foi, je me dope aux utopéphamines’ (2014).15 ‘Utopéphamines’ are Benfodil’s drug of choice, and for a society so saturated with disappointment, confronted daily with the absurdist theatre of the regime, why not a little romantic aspiration? Benfodil’s œuvre combines political conviction with his love of literary artistry and the Algerian people. In 2009, he joined Chawki Amari, Kamel Daoud and Adlène Meddi to form ‘Bezzzef!’ (loosely translated as ‘Enough!’), a group of agit’auteurs who would voice the frustrations of a generation and declare that ‘malgré tout, le changement est possible en Algérie’ (Puchot, 2009).16 All four publish with Barzakh, Algeria’s most important independent publishing house, and they are central figures in an exciting moment of domestic literary production in which authors and publishers productively wed artistic innovation to political engagement.

Unwriting the Nation Like Benfodil, Kamel Daoud places the nation at the centre of his work. He has recently become an international literary star with Meursault, contreenquête, his prize-winning rewriting of Camus’s L’Étranger. But this was not Daoud’s first foray into fiction and his writing has long challenged the idea that contemporary Algerian literary works lack what Mokhtari, in an 15 16

‘I am a romantic citizen, and when I lose my faith, I get high on utopephamines’. ‘Despite everything, change is possible in Algeria’.

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interview with Yassin Temlali, called ‘la puissance esthétique et politique de ceux de la génération des “enfants terribles” des années 1980’ (2011: 57).17 We encounter in Daoud’s work a cast of suspect figures and move through claustrophobic spaces populated with tyrants, ghosts and gnomes. He writes extensively about literary creation and meditates at length on the anxieties of authorship and the notion of linguistic blockage. In the novella La Fable du nain he uses the fable genre to denounce the intolerable conditions of an absurd present, transforming political power in Algeria into a predatory monster. As in Daoud’s other works, the question of artistic labour is central: ‘Face à la feuille blanche ou à la foule, je suis parfois comme face à un mur haut: derrière, tout est possible, et toutes les histoires. Mais je ne sais pas l’escalader. Alors je m’efforce comme un écolier’ (2003: 77).18 Imagination is the only mechanism through which the high wall might be surmounted. The imposing blank page must be written on before it can be turned and Daoud calls on speculative fiction to complete the task. Published at the end of the black decade, La Fable du nain presents an allegory of the plight of Algerians who had spent over ten years living in a near-constant state of emergency. It puts forth imagination as the key to releasing the collective captivity of a people who had grown accustomed to fear and silence. One of Daoud’s short stories, ‘La Préface du Nègre’, takes place in the colonial villa of an ‘ancien moudjahid’ [former FLN fighter] who wants to write his memoir. The illiterate veteran hires a ghostwriter, or ‘nègre’, to transcribe his recollections of the war, and the preface the narrator writes is the text we read. Frustrated at having to write the veteran’s embellished tales of heroism, the narrator decides to write his own stories around the veteran’s. The text suggests that there is only one possible story that is supposed to be written in Algeria and it indicts a power structure that fails to value or even allow for fabulation. ‘La Préface’ diagnoses the progressive atrophy of beauty as a threat to Algerians, but rather than retreat to some privatized form of lament, it steps forward to decry the erosion of thought through a form of literary engagement that relies heavily on the potency of national allegory. The short story opens with the narrator in the ancien moudjahid’s home, staring out into the garden: Nous étions au paradis: il y avait le figuier, le pommier dont je ne voyais que la moitié, à droite, par la grande porte-fenêtre qui donnait sur la cour, ‘the aesthetic and political force of works by the “bad boys” of the 1980s’. ‘Facing the blank page or the crowd, it is as though I am facing a high wall: behind it, everything is possible, and all the stories are there. But I don’t know how to climb it. So, like a schoolboy, I try’. 17 18

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il y avait aussi une nuée d’oiseaux […] Je voyais aussi le ciel encore frais par-delà le mur du jardin et je m’y laissais absorber lorsque la voix du Vieux ne s’adressait plus qu’à lui-même, par-dessus toute l’humanité qui déjà lui tournait le dos.19 (2008: 73) The verdant landscape and its birds, conjuring a horizon of infinite possibility, stand in stark contrast to the murmurings of the decrepit moudjahid to whom no one listens any more. The garden – walled and owned by the veteran – can be seen as the cloistered potential of the nation. Beauty and hope are obstructed and cordoned off by the thick ramparts of oligarchy. Importantly, the villa is not the source of beauty – the garden is. The narrator’s longing is not for the material wealth of either the colons or the new residents of their former villas. It’s the quiet splendour of the birds and the expanse of possibility that, as a resident of an overcrowded city, he longs for. But as an employee and guest in the ancien moudjahid’s home, he can only watch through the window. The garden is not his and he knows it. Contemplating the ills that plague contemporary Algeria, the narrator notes that ‘ce pays souffrait non pas d’un manque de nourriture et d’espoir, mais d’un mal encore plus terrible et qui pouvait conduire à la construction de pyramides ou à la perpétration de massacres: le désœuvrement […] le pays n’avait vécu qu’une seule histoire de guerre et, depuis, ne cessait d’y explorer son propre reflet au point de refuser la guérison qu’avaient connue d’autres peuples’ (99–101).20 The singularity of the liberation narrative – repeated in street names, public monuments and political discourse to legitimate the regime, particularly during times of crisis – leads to collective inaction and destructive self-congratulation for past exploits. Stagnation is the enemy. The reference to pyramids mocks the practice of monument building in Algeria and pairing it with the commission of massacres couples malignant forms of construction (monuments that endlessly repeat tales of heroism) and destruction (disappearances, repression and collective violence). ‘We were in paradise: there was the fig tree, the apple tree that I could only see half of, by the large French window overlooking the courtyard, there was also a flock of birds […] I also saw the sky still fresh beyond the garden wall and I let myself absorb it all when the voice of the Old Man was no longer talking to anyone but himself, above the humanity that had already turned its back on him’. 20 ‘this country was not suffering from a lack of food or hope, but from an even more terrible evil that could one day lead to the construction of pyramids or the perpetration of massacres: idleness […] the country had experienced only one war, and since then keeps exploring its own reflection as if to refuse the healing that other peoples have known’. 19

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Aiming his critique up the generational ladder, the narrator describes his relationship to ‘le Vieux’ with a vitriol that extends beyond the narrow frame of their contract: J’étais chargé d’écouter comme un peuple entier la parole de cet homme, de la mettre par écrit, de la corriger et de lui donner [une] architecture […] Le bonhomme, comme tous ceux de sa génération, ne savait pas écrire mais rêvait d’un livre final, comme d’une dernière victoire sur le Colon qui lui avait refusé l’école ou qui l’avait obligé à la quitter pour prendre les armes […] Le pire était qu’il estimait que je devais lui servir de nègre non parce qu’il me payait mais parce que je devais payer une dette en quelque sorte, une dette à celui qui m’avait offert ce pays sur un plateau sans s’apercevoir qu’il en avait déjà mangé plus de la moitié.21 (81–82) The ghostwriter is a stand-in for a nation of citizens that must not only listen to, but make sense of and improve upon the received patriotic narrative without any rights of authorship. The supposed ‘victory’ over the colonizer is here rendered absurd on multiple fronts: the veteran never did learn to read and the publication of his memoir is only possible through the scribe; the ‘Colon’ isn’t listening to the veteran any more, so he’s narrating to an empty room; and, finally, the damage of reproducing the singular national epic is inflicted on contemporary Algerians, punishing them with self-serving mythologies. The ‘nègre’ is meant to listen out of a duty he hasn’t accepted as his – the payment for a half-eaten country in which he enjoys neither agency nor independence. He is reduced to a mere instrument, ‘nègre dans l’absolu, sans prénom, répondant à la clochette, à peine plus visible qu’une machine d’orthographe magique’ (85).22 ‘Le Vieux’ is also nameless and stands accused by the narrator of all the crimes committed by his generation. The memoir may have been conceived of as a revenge on the colonizer, but the veteran is trying to compensate for all the tragedies of the post-independence era. By hiring a young ghostwriter ‘I was responsible for listening like an entire population to the words of this man, putting them into writing, correcting them and giving them structure […] The man, like all those of his generation, could not write but dreamed of a final book as a final victory over Colonists who had denied him schooling or forced him to leave school to take up arms […] The worst was that he felt I had to be his scribe not because he paid me, but because I owed him some sort of debt, a debt to him who gave me this country on a plate without noticing that he had already eaten more than half’. 22 ‘a total ghost, nameless, answering the ring of his bell, barely more visible than a magic spelling machine’. 21

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to mythologize his exploits and framing them as a gift bequeathed to younger generations, he forces the narrator to become ‘l’image avec laquelle [le Vieux] surmontait sa castration, son impuissance ou la légendaire infécondité de toute sa génération’ (86).23 But once again, these attempts at repair are insufficient, as the repetition of the ‘livre unique’ only compounds the collective immobility. To rebel against the order imposed upon him, the scribe decides to smuggle into the veteran’s story his own narration, ‘une histoire clandestine qui doublerait la sienne, lui survivrait et en habiterait la carcasse comme un ver patient […] un ver dont le but n’était pas de devenir le papillon trop prévisible du proverbe, mais de manger les feuilles, le fruit, puis tout l’arbre’ (76).24 This metamorphosis is not from larva to butterfly, but from scribe to auteur-trabandiste,25 a transformation that involves turning the act of destruction on the destroyer. The rotting cadaver of the moudjahid’s memoir will serve as the incubator of a new narrative that, once nested, will ultimately consume its host. Writing fiction in Algeria requires first unwriting; counter-narration must deconstruct existing monuments before it can build anew.

Conclusion In the epilogue to his 1962 novel, Qui se souvient de la mer, Mohammed Dib invokes Picasso’s Guernica as an example of art that belongs to the collective unconscious of a people. And Dib describes his text as more than ‘un simple divertissement littéraire’ [simple literary entertainment]; it is, he tells us, ‘un engagement, un affrontement total’ [a commitment, a head-on confrontation] that could not be clothed in the traditional fabric of the novel. It needed something else and, for Dib, this something else was a writing that attempted to wed ‘le paradis et l’enfer’ [heaven and hell] in images and visions ‘oniriques et apocalyptiques’ [dreamlike and apocalyptic] (219). Qui se souvient de la mer is different from Dib’s previous novels, but it is no less concerned with the question of the nation. He realized that there was a certain absurdity in trying to capture the experience of the national liberation struggle through ‘the image with which [the old man] overcame his castration, his impotence or the legendary infertility of his generation’. 24 ‘a secret history that would double his, outlive him and dwell in the carcass as a patient worm […] a worm whose goal was not to become the all-too-predictable butterfly of the proverbs, but to eat the leaves, the fruit and eventually the whole tree’. 25 Trabandiste is the term used by Algerians to denote petits trafiquants – those who sell illegally imported goods on the black market. 23

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realism. The newly independent nation required a different style, an idiom freed from the duty to represent faithfully the trauma it had just endured. La génération ’88 has reconnected with the creative energies of writers like Dib and Kateb in this new post-conflict era, offering a model of engaged writing that isn’t afraid to experiment. The era of literary realism and testimonial fiction in Algeria served a specific purpose and, despite what has been said about it by scholars like Charles Bonn and Rachid Mokhtari, was not as purely documentary as it may appear on first inspection. But this most recent moment in Algerian letters, led by the authors of the génération ’88, offers a different model of engaged literature. Material challenges are still there, but they are groped at through form, through self-conscious attempts at destabilizing received structures and through the potential for individual transformation by the pleasure effects that art produces. Reconstituting a modernism à l’algérienne is a way of moving from diagnosis to imagination. Williams writes that ‘it is easy to gather a kind of energy from the rapid disintegration of an old, destructive and frustrating order. But these negative energies can be quickly checked by a sobering second stage, in which what we want to become, rather than what we do not now want to be, remains a so largely unanswered question’ (1989: 105). Algeria today finds itself in this second stage, and authors like Benfodil and Daoud are finding a language in which to write a story of becoming that begins to furnish answers.

Works Cited Barthès, Yann. 2013. ‘Le Petit Journal’. Available at https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=CUOZ5Q8bYCI (consulted on 23 October 2015). Benfodil, Mustapha. 2007. Archéologie du chaos (amoureux). Algiers: Barzakh. ——. 2014. ‘Manifeste pour une contre-élection’. DZMilitant 24 February. Available at https://dzmilitant.wordpress.com/2014/02/26/manifeste-pourune-contre-election-mustapha-benfodil/ (consulted on 23 October 2015). Bonn, Charles, and Farida Boualit (eds). 1999. Paysages littéraires algériens des années 90: témoigner d’une tragédie? Paris: L’Harmattan. Brennan, Timothy. 1997. At Home in the World: Cosmopolitanism Now. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Daoud, Kamel. 2003. La Fable du nain. Oran: Dar El Gharb. ——. 2008. La Préface du Nègre: Nouvelles. Algiers: Barzakh. ——. 2014. ‘Le bien portant imaginaire’. EuroAlgérie 5 March. Available at http:// www.euroalgerie.org/2014/03/05/boutef lika-le-bien-portant-imaginaire/ (consulted on 23 October 2015). Dib, Mohammed. 2007. Qui se souvient de la mer. Paris: La Différence.

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Evans, Martin, and John Phillips. 2007. Algeria: Anger of the Dispossessed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Gikandi, Simon. 2003. ‘The Short Century: On Modernism and Nationalism’. New Formations 51: 10–25. Gueydan-Turek, Alexandra. 2011. ‘“Homeland beyond homelands”: Reinventing Algeria through a Transnational Literary Community. Assia Djebar’s Le blanc de l’Algérie’. Cincinnati Romance Review 31: 85–102. Lazarus, Neil. 2011. The Postcolonial Unconscious. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Le Sueur, James D. 2010. Between Terror and Democracy: Algeria since 1989. London: Zed Books. Ministère de l’Intérieur et des Collectivités Locales. 2006. Charte pour la paix et la réconciliation nationale. Algiers: MICL. Mokhtari, Rachid. 2000. La Graphie de l’horreur: essai sur la littérature algérienne 1990–2000. Algiers: Chihab. Puchot, Pierre. 2009. ‘“Bezzzef!” est né, vive Bezzzef!’. Mediapart. 3 November. Available at https://blogs.mediapart.fr/pierre-puchot/blog/031109/bezzzef-estne-vive-bezzzef (consulted on 30 December 2015). Temlali, Yassin. 2011. Algérie: chroniques ciné-littéraires de deux guerres. Algiers: Barzakh. Williams, Raymond. Politics of Modernism. 1989. London: Verso.

The Persistence of the Image, the Lacunae of History: The Archive and Contemporary Art in Algeria (1992–2012) Fanny Gillet translated by Patrick Crowley

The Persistence of the Image, the Lacunae of History

The ‘invisible war’ is the term used by the historian Benjamin Stora (2001) to describe the decade of terror that unfolded in Algeria between 1992 and 2002. In doing so, Stora identifies the key site of his inquiry: the media coverage – print and audiovisual – in France and in Algeria and the manner in which images of the violence were politically manipulated in ways similar to that of the war of independence (1954–1962). Paradoxically, at the outset of the ‘black decade’, newspapers and television screens were the privileged forms of media used to show acts of atrocity as well as public confessions of guilt by presumed terrorists, resulting in waves of violent images circulating in the spaces of everyday life.1 According to the journalist and writer Salima Ghezali (2010) it was not so much the absence of visibility that was problematic but the absence of anything that could give meaning to these atrocities. At a workshop organized by the journal Naqd titled ‘La production esthétique dans les sociétés en crise’ [Aesthetic production within societies in crisis] (25–27 February 2016), a number of contributors commented during informal discussions that during the civil war violent images were initially circulated but later were totally absent from the media. They wondered about the reasoning that led from an excess of such images to their invisibility. Fieldwork journal, Algiers, February 2016. See also the acts of the workshop published in Naqd 1-2: 33–44 (2016) “L’esthétique de la crise II”. Available at https://www.cairn.info/ revue-naqd-2016-1.htm (consulted on 13 May 2017). 1

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The excess of real violence and the paradoxical presence and absence of images has led the critic and art gallery curator Nadira Laggoune to wonder about ‘Le mutisme des peintres ou l’indulgence du silence’ (2003: 27).2 This silence, she explains, was in part a result of the reluctance of painters to become politically engaged when faced with the double sanction of state and Islamist violence. Questioning the ‘silence’ and ‘invisibility’ that surrounded the representation of the ‘civil war’3 prompts us to examine the conditions that inform the representation of history in artworks produced in Algeria and France between the beginning of the ‘civil war’ and celebrations marking the fiftieth anniversary of independence.4 This chapter reflects critically on the political and material conditions that bear upon access to, and the use of, images, in particular archival images, relating to Algeria’s past. This return to the archive by Algerian artists relates to a need to make sense of Algerian history. Indeed, the ways in which artists draw upon the archive allows them to explore it as an institution of power that legitimizes the state (Foucault, 1969; Derrida, 1995) and also the relationship between the archive and art. As Downey notes, the turn to the archive by contemporary artists in the MENA region (Middle East and North Africa) is symptomatic of a critical approach to history (2015: 14) which, in the context of an authoritarian regime or revolutionary situation, constitutes an act of resistance. In effect, the artist has the capacity to show that which cannot be said about Algeria’s past, in particular the war of independence.5 ‘The silence of painters or the indulgence of silence’. The use of the term ‘civil war’ is contentious. However, I want to use it as it allows me, at least in principle, to avoid the partisan logic inscribed in other terms (see Martinez, 1998). Nevertheless, it is worth noting that the term ‘civil war’ is not used by those I interviewed, who prefer the term ‘black decade’ or ‘period of terrorism’. 4 This examination is based on interviews undertaken between 2011 and 2016 with artists from different generations (aged between 30 and 50) living in Algeria and France. From a methodological perspective, the choice of intensive interviews allows a range of information to emerge which, if not always directly related to our enquiry, is important in that it provides an insight into the artist’s way of thinking and the political issues at stake. In order to allow such issues to emerge spontaneously, I decided not to use the word ‘political’ as it was too closely associated with the exercise of power by state institutions and not with forms of constructive relationships that social actors can build among themselves. On this intensive method see Beaud (1996). The images included in this chapter are taken from print publications, internet sites and the private archives of the artists in question. 5 In addition, see articles published on the subject in the e-journal Ibraaz, 2 3

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In the years following Algeria’s independence, artistic production was closely linked to the political project of nation-building. The writing of Algerian history in the post-independence period was understandably influenced by what was a legitimate pursuit of intellectual and political decolonization. Artists sought to affirm and reaffirm the thawra [revolution] and to inscribe Algeria’s ‘national trajectory’ into history as a means of breaking with a colonial past and its heritage. At times this resulted in an ahistorical relationship to an immemorial past: one that facilitated the affirmation and construction of a national identitarian logic rooted in one primary historical moment, the war of independence. If the revolution of 1954–1962 resulted in the formation of its own ‘temporality’ – one that could not be questioned – in the aftermath of the war of independence artists were often faced with the contradictions involved in having to represent a new nation state that was to be Arab, Islamic and socialist. In contemporary Algerian art, it is no longer a matter of illustrating the glorious events of revolutionary action but of questioning what has been achieved, specifically and symbolically, in the light of the fiftieth anniversary of the war of independence. This questioning has involved the use of archives.

In Search of the Archive In Algeria the issue of access to the archives and the location of the colonial archives – for the most part held at the Archives Nationales d’Outre Mer in Aix-en-Provence, France – remains a source of contention (Soufi, 2000; Shepard, 2015). The archives, as Shepard demonstrates, remain closely connected to the exercise of sovereignty. The state assumes the prerogative to preserve the archive and to control access. Undertaking archival work in Algeria is not straightforward. Not only does the representation of history within art give rise to vigorous debate and division (Boissier and Gillet, 2014) but to do so, in the first place, requires artists to negotiate the difficulties of accessing archives. Fieldwork experience offers an insight into the kinds of random decision that determine access to the archives as well as the structuring expectations and norms that become part of the system of access itself.6 The process involved in locating and consulting archive collections in particular on discussion platform 006: ‘What Role Can the Archive Play in Developing and Sustaining a Critical and Culturally Located Art History?’ Available at http://www.ibraaz.org/platforms/6http://www.ibraaz.org/platforms/6 (consulted on 10 August 2016). 6 That said, it’s important not to give into the temptation of fetishizing institutional power as it could result in a failure to recognize the flexibility

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Figure 8.1. Rachida Azdaou, Archives d’Alger, 2010.

and documents exemplifies the mechanisms involved in institutionalized, or official, memory that is critical to the legitimization of power. These material conditions have inflected contemporary Algerian artworks. Created as part of a residency at Rivages, a cultural centre in Marseille, and, to my knowledge, never shown in Algeria, Rachida Azdaou’s installation Archives d’Alger (2010) deals directly with the archives as institution. It is composed of a row of identical glass bowls filled with a transparent liquid and placed upon a metal shelf (Figure 8.1). The work reflects the Algerian state’s and accommodation that exists within the system. When I undertook this research at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Algiers I seemed to have been one of few non-Algerian researchers. This may have been to my advantage. Since then, other overseas researchers have been refused access to the same documents. In some cases, documents made available to me on one occasion were withheld after other researchers had had similar requests refused. However illogically, the institute’s archivist justified this on the grounds that as the documents had not been formally incorporated into the National Archives they could only be consulted after a derogation request had been submitted and, once received, could not be photographed.

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position that Algerian history is an unchanging national narrative free of opacity. The result, argues Azdaou, is the ‘use [of] memory in order to efface memory’ and this, she says, is compounded by the dearth of historiographical research being undertaken within the country.7 Drawing our attention to the rhetoric and logic of secrecy and transparency that operates within the institution of the archive, the artist critiques the state’s preference for secrecy over the citizen’s demand for access (Milligan, 2005: 177). What is at stake in the archive, as institution, are issues of critical relevance to Algerian society. The archival document, for example, can be used both as a token of authenticity and a prompt for collective and individual forms of memory. How artists use visual documents allows them to question the role of the image in the construction of the collective imaginary in contemporary Algeria and this was reactivated by commemorative events held throughout 2012 to mark the fiftieth anniversary of independence. In France and Algeria a number of articles appeared in the press reviving the debate over the archives.8 And that year also brought renewed attention to heritage within Algeria that commemorated the war and decolonization. One such monument, located in the Jardin de l’Horloge in central Algiers, was the subject of restoration works in 2012 to mark the fiftieth anniversary.9 It was these works that prompted the artist Amina Menia, based in Algiers, to create her installation-exhibition Enclosed (2013) for the ‘Becoming Independent’ exhibition held at the Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin (see Figure 8.2). Her work is constructed around a selection of public and private archives10 – such as sketches, photographs and newspaper extracts – which invite the viewer to reflect on the remarkable history of the monument. Erected in 1978, it was the work of the artist M’hamed Issiakhem (1928–1985). Its concrete formwork covers a previous monument – the Monuments aux morts (or Pavois) – which was sculpted by Paul Landowski (1875–1961) and erected in 1928 to commemorate French Algerians and indigènes musulmans [indigenous Muslims] who died in the First World War.11 Issiakhem didn’t Interview carried out in Algiers, where the artist lives, in September 2011. In France, see Stora (2012); in Algeria, see Badjadja (2012). See also, Shepard (2015). 9 For details and images of the monument see Meddi (2012). 10 The private archives that appear in Menia’s exhibition include documents from Issiakhem, Indivision Landowski (trustees of Landowski’s works) and the Musée-Jardin Landowski and the Musée des années 30 in Boulogne-Billancourt. 11 Issiakhem’s monument was constructed to mark the occasion of the third African Games (1978), which was hosted by Algiers. The sides of the concrete formwork are graced with bas-reliefs of symbolic images – such as raised 7 8

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Figure 8.2. Amina Menia, Enclosed (display cabinet, Issiakhem), 2013.

want to destroy Landowski’s work so he had it enclosed in concrete. As such, Menia’s use of archival materials – including a found postcard of the site that dates back to the 1950s – invites us to read this sarcophagus as a synecdoche for Algeria’s post-independence attempts to come to terms with its colonial past. In her interrogation of this ‘emboîtement des mémoires’12 [nesting of memories] – these two monuments that coexist without communicating – Menia’s work attempts to bring to light the sedimentary layers of a history that still evokes pain. And this can have political implications. In the same hands breaking their chains – representing the emancipation of colonized peoples. Landowski’s monument, which lies beneath, features a recumbent body triumphantly carried by a winged personification of Victory and two soldiers – one French and the other a Spahi. The bas-relief on the base of the monument features scenes from the trenches and everyday life of the French Algerian community. On the back of the monument, Landowski represented a group of Europeans and Arabs leaning upon each other. It would seem that the quality of the work and the fraternal symbolism of its representation persuaded Issiakhem not to follow instructions from the wilaya [regional authority] to destroy it. 12 A catalogue for Enclosed was published on the occasion of Amina Menia’s lecture-performance commissioned by the Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée (MuCEM) as part of the ‘Marseille-Alger, allers et retours’ exhibition, 19–23 February 2014.

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way that Menia’s use of the archive invites us to reconsider what lies beneath the dominant state-supported narrative of Algerian history, interviews with artists undertaken for this study make clear that they see the archive as having an unsettling effect on how history is understood and, as a result, the issue of accessing archives can be problematic. Like the few material glimpses of Landowski’s work still afforded at the margins of Issiakhem’s, the past finds its way through the cracks of the present.

Accessing the Archive Incorporation of archival documents is not unusual in the history of art and has become the subject of renewed theoretical problematization in recent years.13 In Algeria, artists began to explore the incorporation of press cuttings, photographs and video recordings during the civil war. In doing so, their work signalled a change in how ‘events’ were to be represented by artists within Algerian visual arts. For example, it was during the period 1995–1996, when some within the state apparatus began to seek a political solution to the violence in Algeria, that Ammar Bouras produced Iatirafate irhabi [Confessions of a terrorist] (Figure 8.3). The title was taken from a programme transmitted by the Algerian state television service ENTV during which a presumed Islamist terrorist confessed to his crimes in public. Bouras describes the process informing the origins of the work, which was risky given the fact that he was living and working in Algiers: C’était dans mon studio. J’avais une petite télé sur une chaise, rideaux baissés, il ne fallait pas faire de bruit. Juste avant le journal de 20h, il passait cette émission. Le terroriste venait parce qu’ils [les forces de sécurité] l’avaient capturé. Il expliquait en détail comment il avait tué des gens en répondant à une voix off. C’était une situation absurde, je n’arrivais pas à en saisir le sens. J’avais mon appareil photo et j’ai commencé à photographier l’écran sans arrêt.14 The widespread use of the archive in contemporary art has been analysed by Foster (2004) and been the subject of a major exhibition by Enwezor (2008), which pursues Derrida’s reflections on archive and memory. 14 ‘I was in my studio. There was a small television on a chair, the curtains were drawn, I didn’t want to make any noise. This programme was broadcast just before the news at 8 p.m. The terrorist appeared on the screen because they [the security forces] had captured him. In response to questions put to him by an off-camera voice, he explained in detail how he had killed people. The situation was absurd; I couldn’t grasp its meaning. I had my camera and I began to photograph the screen without stopping’. Interview, Algiers, 5 February 2012. 13

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Figure 8.3. Ammar Bouras, Iatirafate irhabi, 1996.

The resulting work comprises a montage of four of the photographs taken of the TV screen with a layer of paint superimposed upon the face of the presumed terrorist. The artist’s account of the process that led to the work provides an insight into the conditions under which the photographs were taken during a time of crisis as well as the use of photography to capture the emotional texture of the moment.15 The work has never been displayed in public as the conditions determining the public visibility of art works were restricted because of the threat to life that existed at the time and the taboo surrounding any explicit critique of le pouvoir [institutions of power, in particular government and the army] and of religion. Nonetheless, what is striking is that this particular use of a ‘documentary’ image was rare at the time and only became widespread in Algeria during the 2000s. When asked about how they go about gathering documents, the artists interviewed commented on the difficulty of doing so given the constraints imposed on them by administrative bureaucrats who were less than facilitating and often ignored their requests. As a result, they had to find alternative See McGonagle (2014) in relation to the practical, symbolic and political issues at stake in relation to the photographic image during the Algerian civil war. 15

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Figure 8.4. Ammar Bouras, Tag’Out (detail), 2011.

ways of securing images or documents. The development of new information technologies has had a decisive impact on their use of the document-as-image and on the form of their projects. The availability of the digital image is not tied to a single institution or dependent upon the decision of an archivist; it allows artists to pursue strategies of ‘évitement’ [avoidance] or ‘getting around obstacles’ – whether bureaucratic or political – in order to access images relating to Algeria’s past. These issues are exemplified by Ammar Bouras’s installation Tag’Out16 (2011, Figure 8.4). The beneficiary of an award to produce an art work for the 10th Sharjah Biennial (United Arab Emirates), Bouras sought copyright permission to use images and clips from a range of documentaries dealing with the civil war. As his requests were ignored, he used photographs that he had taken during the ‘black decade’ and, crucially, he went online and found propaganda films made by the Groupe Islamique Armée (GIA) and the Front Islamique du Salut (FIS). The detail of the installation (Figure 8.4) is a digital assemblage of thousands of Bouras’s photographs which are recomposed to form the televisual image of Mohammed Boudiaf’s face immortalized a few seconds before he was assassinated. In doing so he avoided the issue of copyright as the films were non-professional and anonymous. To some extent it is not surprising that state institutions refused permission to use state archives for this project, as Bouras’s work – dealing with the civil war and produced for an international cultural event – was viewed as undermining national unity in ways proscribed by the amnesty laws.17 The title is a wordplay on ‘Taghout’, a term used by radical Islamists to designate anyone who does not support their cause. 17 Article 46 threatens imprisonment and heavy fines for any individual who 16

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While many Algerians feel justified in becoming increasingly defiant faced with a state that continues to monopolize power by granting favours to those who have connections or who resort to bribery [tchipa], interviews with artists reveal the different ways in which self-censorship can inform their art works. One artist told me of the process he had to go through in order to gain access to documents he wanted to use in a work dealing with the civil war.18 Anxious to work with documents obtained legally, he contacted someone he knew within an institution that possessed high-quality images of testimonies of ‘repentis’ [repentants]19 and of women who had been kidnapped by the GIA and had converted to the cause. His request was refused, not due to hogra20 but, according to the artist, because of the sensitivity surrounding the subject due to The Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation.21 Accessing and incorporating archives can be a political act due to the way they are used to read and represent the past (Didi-Huberman, 2009: 11). The search for archives suggests a will to unveil the historical ‘truth’, which is seen as having been confiscated by le pouvoir. Following the refusal of his request, the artist created an alternative archive by going directly to those involved in the conflict (to different degrees), asking if they would be willing to provide him with oral accounts of their experience as well as documents, such as personal photographs, from the period. An analysis of the strategies used by artists to get around bureaucratic processes that normalize restrictions and obstacles (Hibou, 2006) provides an insight into the material conditions that effect artistic production in a society where the writing of history is still tightly controlled. By setting up a relationship of anamnesis between the civil war and the war of independence, might undermine the state in his or her treatment of the ‘National Tragedy’. This law was presented as part of the implementation of the Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation approved by referendum in 2005. See Crowley, this volume. 18 Artists living in Algeria whose works deal with the period of the civil war but which remain either unfinished or have never shown in public are not named in this chapter. 19 Former members of the GIA and other armed Islamist groups who ‘confessed’ and sought an amnesty under the terms of the amnesties introduced after the ‘civil concord’ law of 1999. 20 Hogra is usually translated into French as mépris [disrespect] and is used by Algerians to designate the condescension of those in power. 21 If, in conversation, some artists evoke a form of censorship resulting from the Charter, others are more evasive. The interviews revealed the different ways in which self-censorship is expressed given the opacity surrounding access to the past.

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contemporary Algerian artists attempt to make sense of the fratricidal violence that has been subjected to an intentional form of institutionalized forgetting. In this way, artists’ use of archives reveals a sensitivity that contributes to a reconfiguration of cultural memory (Blümlinger, 2013: 12). Their work highlights the ‘survivance’ [persistence] (Didi-Huberman, 2002) of the image in Algerian art and its importance to an understanding of Algerian history.22

Re-membering the Memory of War(s) If the war of independence remains a privileged moral and identitarian point of reference for contemporary artists, the traumatic civil war of the 1990s has prompted a form of anamnesis that has provoked a reconsideration of the revolution. In contrast to the generation of artists that worked in the early post-independence years, today’s artists are committed to the pursuit of their own vision of art and society rather than affiliating themselves to any dominant ideology, or at least not one that would identify them as partisan (either in favour of the state or Islamism). As such, the expression of artistic dissent takes place in a more diffuse, individualized form that is outside of an institutional frame (such as a political party) without preventing the artist from identifying with, and supporting, social issues rooted in individual memories and collective historical experience. For example, Mustapha Sedjal’s installation Un seul héros: le peuple … mon père [A Single Hero: The People … My Father] (2012, Figure 8.5) seeks to deconstruct the mechanisms of official memory. Central to the work is a photograph of six historical leaders of the FLN – Rabah Bitat, Mostefa Ben Boulaïd, Mourad Didouche, Mohammed Boudiaf, Krim Belkacem and Larbi Ben M’Hidi – who launched the war of independence on 1 November 1954. It is through these photographs that Sedjal interrogates the state’s mythical, foundational moment. He grants the archival photograph its symbolic status and uses the image as a medium through which he can both construct a fiction and insert autobiographical details that are linked to the national imaginary. He does so by evoking the memory of his father, who was a member of the FLN resistance, and in this way seeks to humanize an official political With regard to the study of Algerian history through images – and, more specifically, the Algerian war of independence – see the work of Marie Chominot (2008) and Sébastien Denis (2009). Hannah Feldman (2014) provides a theoretical analysis of the effects of France’s wars of decolonization – the Algerian war of independence in particular – on theories and practices of modernism within French art between 1945 and 1962. 22

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Figure 8.5. Mustapha Sedjal, Un seul héros le peuple … mon père, 2012–2013.

discourse that only recognizes as war hero the plural entity of al miliun wa nisf shahid [the one and a half million martyrs]. The installation makes use of photographs, drawings, paintings and videos in order to confront the state’s commemorative excesses – based on an official ‘compression’ of Algerian history – with forms of individual memory that can no longer be contained. Sedjal’s work is not directly confrontational but can be identified as an intermediary work that seeks to account for the tensions between individual memory, the problematic construction of ‘collective memory’ and historical memory.23 The reference to the war of independence in Sedjal’s installation is not a matter of a simple reiteration of the facts but is concerned to reread the past through an auto/biographical present inflected by the civil war. The effect of anamnesis that the ‘civil war’ has had on the memory of the war of independence has been the object of a number of academic studies (Carlier, 1995; Bourdieu, 1997; Etienne, 1998; Moussaoui, 2006; McDougall, 2006). It can be seen in the work of contemporary Algerian artists who engage with, and sponsor, the anamnesis that arises from the relationship between these two events. Indeed, the way in which contemporary artists creatively explore the violence and ideological manipulations of these events suggests that their new ways of telling or showing can produce a form of ‘dissonance’ (Downey, 2015: 20) that questions the meaning and validity of the dominant official narrative. One of Sedjal’s early video artworks, Nedjma, l’éternel retour [Nedjma, the Eternal Return] (1994, Figure 8.6), explicitly references Kateb Yacine’s novel McDougall refers to the ‘social relations of praxis [that are] preferable to psychologising and mechanistic notions like “collective memory”’ (2010: 34). 23

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Figure 8.6. Mustapha Sedjal, Nedjma. L’éternel retour, 1994.

Nedjma (1956), which was published during the war of independence, yet also deals with the early years of the civil war. Having left Algeria to study, Sedjal completed this video in France and it was one of the first artworks to engage with Algeria’s civil war.24 The video is a montage composed of different audiovisual materials: a text by the Tunisian poet Amina Saïd read in voice-off by the artist; videos shot while travelling across Algeria before the beginning of the civil war; clips from documentaries dealing with the war of independence – including Peter Batty’s La Guerre d’Algérie (1984)25 and At the time, the work was shown at a number of international festivals. However, in an interview conducted as part of this research, Sedjal said that he withdrew the video from public performances as he feared that it would be recuperated by one of the two main protagonists of the civil war. For this reason, and also in order to avoid surveillance by the security services (DRS), he chose not to show another video dealing with the same theme, Chronique d’une blessure [Chronicle of a wound] (1995). 25 A five-part documentary by a former BBC correspondent who covered the war of independence, it traces the war through archival footage and interviews 24

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Benjamin Stora, Philippe Alfonsi, Bernard Favre and Patrick Pesnot’s volume Les Années algériennes (1991) – which include images of demonstrations that occurred in Diar El Mahçoul, a suburb of Algiers, in December of 1960, and killings carried out by the French army in Aïn Abid in 1955. The work also includes amateur video footage filmed in Algiers in 1991 during FIS demonstrations which, according to the artist, were circulated clandestinely in France by the Fraternité Algérienne en France (FAF).26 In Nedjma, l’éternel retour we can see how the experience of immigration feeds into a desire to bear witness through the gathering of documentary information. Sedjal remarks: ‘Ces images du réel, je les faisais avec des documents que j’avais sous la main. Comme c’est un moment que je n’ai pas vécu, je voulais puiser dans ces images parce qu’elles sont authentiques, ce sont des vérités, des témoignages et pas de la fiction ou de la mise en scène’.27 It is through such images – which the artist sees as having an objective value – that Sedjal reflects on the violence of the early 1990s, presenting it as a consequence of a revolution that had been confiscated and bureaucratized. As Ammar Bouras observes in relation to his own installation Tag’Out, the artist’s choice of images is deliberate: ‘ce sont des images de référence qui renvoient à la mémoire collective. Ce sont des images qui rappellent ce qu’on a vécu en Algérie pendant le terrorisme. Ce sont des repères’.28 The evocation of the war of independence in these two works identifies it as the ‘glorious’ or ‘mythical’ threshold from where it is (also) possible to critique history. Nevertheless, as with other artists, this work of reflection also participates in perpetuating an ‘official’ or ‘stereotypical’ discourse that summarizes Algerian history as a narrative of antagonistic, ineluctable violence since the beginnings of French colonization in 1830. In his installation Time-Machine (2012, Figure 8.7), Sofiane Zouggar similarly explores the collection and montage of selected documentary with those involved. Broadcast in Britain in 1984, and shortly after in Belgium, it was not until 1990 that it was broadcast in France, by FR3. 26 Fraternité Algérienne en France (FAF) was a registered not-for-profit association in France during the 1990s that supported the FIS. 27 ‘I created these images of the real with the documents that were to hand. As I didn’t live through the experience myself, I wanted to draw upon these images because they were authentic, they have a truth value, they bear witness and are not fictional or representational’. Interview carried out in Paris in November 2013. 28 ‘these images are references held in common and linked to a collective memory. These are images that are a reminder of what one had to live through in Algeria during the years of terrorism. They are points of reference’.

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images because of their ‘importance historique’ [historical importance]. Time-Machine was first exhibited at Box24 as part of a collective exhibition of work titled N’50iW that opened to mark the fiftieth anniversary of independence.29 Born in the city of Khemis-Miliana in a region particularly ravaged by civil war, Zouggar works with videos found on YouTube that show images of the war of independence and the death of President Mohammed Boudiaf. He seeks to interrogate ‘le fait que l’histoire enseignée est faite d’oublis’.30 Zouggar is less explicitly concerned with images as Box24 is a private apartment which, until the beginning of 2015, served as an alternative, autonomous gallery in Algiers. 30 ‘the fact that the history that is taught [in schools] leaves out a great deal’. 29

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authentic documents and more interested in them as pedagogical tools ‘pour comprendre et apprendre à ne pas commettre les mêmes erreurs […] en projetant les contradictions de la société’.31 The appropriation of audiovisual documents found online provides the artist with both tools of creation and objects of interrogation. Ammar Bouras’s desire to interrogate history sees him return to the truth value of the documentary in his video Ez-Zaïm, le roi est mort, vive le roi [Ez-Zaïm, the King is Dead, Long Live the King] (2002–2003) filmed at the end of the civil war. Filtered through the use of images from television, Bouras explores the problematic issue of Algerian ‘collective memory’ through a form of détournement of images, a remobilization of common points of reference that occur within political rituals and symbols. In critiquing a political system that the media serves to reproduce, Bouras places the figure of the zaïm [leader] – the current President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, a symbol of the politics of national reconciliation – alongside a succession of visual references to the violence of the civil war – such as the balaclava-covered face of the ‘ninja’32 – set against a red background. The work’s impact is made all the more powerful in its representation of violence as ‘inexplicable’ through his use of saturated sounds. It is also clear that the archival images he has chosen often have an iconic status in Algeria and are central to this artwork of re-memoration.33 One such reference is a still from the newsreel that captures an expression of enquiry on the face of President Boudiaf as he begins to turn around having heard an unexpected sound behind him a few seconds before his assassination on 26 June 1992. For many Algerians, Boudiaf was an incarnation of a democratic hope and the image represents what they wish to remember over and above what they wish to forget. It is often broadcast on national TV, in particular around the time of the anniversary of Boudiaf’s assassination. Like ‘in order to understand [the past] and to teach how not to commit the same mistakes […] by highlighting society’s contradictions’. Interview, Algiers, 21 November 2012. 32 ‘Ninja’ is an informal name for the Groupement d’Intervention Spécial (GIS), the elite anti-terrorist unit that was part of the DRS. 33 In this, his work can be compared to that of Dalila Dalléas Bouzar. Born in Oran in 1974, she is currently living in Berlin having grown up in France. Her work converts archival photographs (such as the moment of President Boudiaf’s assassination) into forms that evoke icons through the use of a yellow background. A collection of her work was exhibited in the Savvy Contemporary Gallery in Berlin in 2010 as part of the ‘Here and Now … Amnesia’ exhibition. Her work is published along with a number of essays in Algérie, année 0. Ou quand commence la mémoire (2012). 31

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certain forms of portraiture or death mask, this image keeps the deceased alive in order to attenuate an unbearable loss and is part of an ‘unfinished work of mourning’ (Azoulay, 2001: 4). The ante-mortem image of Boudiaf, reconstituted as a post-mortem image through its circulation, has taken on an iconographic status prompting artists – such as Dalila Dalléas Bouzar’s drawing ‘Boudiaf, the instant before death’ (2012) – to work on the history it evokes. Boudiaf’s image, so familiar to Algerians, stands in contrast to the photographs that remain of the many thousands who were ‘disappeared’ or killed during the ‘black decade’. In ways that resonate with André Gunthert’s analysis of the dissemination of photographs of the victims of the attacks in Paris on 13 November 2015 (Gunthert, 2015), Omar Daoud, in his book Devoir de mémoire. A Biography of Disappearance: Algeria 1992– (2007), and Fatima Chafaâ, through her photographic exhibition, Générique (2011–2012, Figure 8.8), use photographs, or list the names of many of those who were ‘disappeared’ during the civil war, in order to individualize the victims and remind the viewer of the humanity of those whose bodies have never been recovered. In order to give voice to absence, and in ways similar to those used by Sofiane Zouggar, Daoud travelled across Algeria to find traces of the ‘disappeared’ – personal objects, ID photos – which he places next to images of their place of origin and alongside transcripts of the testimony of those who were close to them. Chafaâ’s work is based on lists of names and photographs received from Djazaïrouna [Our Algeria] – an association that seeks to bring attention to those who were assassinated during the civil war and to support surviving memories of their families. Chafaâ links those who were killed to popular images of the khamsa [symbol of protection] in ways that generate a tragic irony and provoke a form of commemorative reflection, a duty to remember the dead.

Conclusion For the generation of artists working post-October 1988, memory, in its widest sense, is not restricted to an untouchable past but rather is constituted by, and is active within, the present moment of artistic creation. This contrasts with a view of the past that was dominant in artworks produced by the first generation of post-independence artists, which were marked by a need to affirm the thawra [revolution]. Nonetheless, for today’s generation as well as for past generations of artists, the war of independence remains the primary point of reference in debates over morality and identity. As such, any engagement with the ‘aura’ that surrounds the war of independence has the potential to unsettle long-held views on the war that

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Figure 8.8. Fatima Chafaâ, Générique, 2012.

have been underpinned by a social and political consensus. To represent the war of independence, to incorporate images and documents from that period, is to enter into a politically sensitive arena. It’s true that over the past ten years or more, an international aesthetic has come to the fore encouraging artistic practices that draw upon research methodologies such as those used by historians (see Delacourt, Schneller, Théodoropoulou, 2016). However, with the exception of the work of Amina Mena (cited above), which was produced for a European art institution, the works under consideration in this chapter appear not to be linked to these international expectations. In general, the use of the archival document – in terms of its most basic function to act as a ‘proof’ of history – appears not to be folded within a conceptual form that one might expect from artists trained in theories of

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the archive. The inclusion of the archival document, in that sense, appears ‘naïve’ or straightforwardly referential – it is a token of a ‘real’ past. As such, recourse to the archive reveals a systemic crisis within the institutions of state and the established order. While recognizing that there is an ethics of responsibility linked to the artist’s role in society, an expectation that presses him or her to denounce forms of oppression, in Algeria today the thirst for archives is fundamentally linked to a widespread, popular demand for ‘truth’ in the face of le pouvoir’s instrumentalization of history (McAllister, 2013). If we accept this, then there is a need to be aware of the sociopolitical conditions that have an impact on representations of history. In doing so, we can better understand the cultural factors that influence the transmission and survival of images as well as the infrapolitical strategies at work within Algerian society (de Certeau, 1990; Scott, 2008). Equally, if we accept the view that a restrictive political context spurs artists to reflect critically on the realities of domination (Godfrey, 2007; Downey, 2015), it does not follow that such forms of reflection are necessarily Manichean denunciations of the political system. The work of many contemporary artists in Algeria does not correspond to the practices that we associate with anti-imperialist or anti-colonial activism, or with the politically explicit language of engaged artists. This chapter makes the case that we need to rethink the expectation (the imperative, even) that artists should create works linked to direct political activism. Such expectations are rooted in the romantic idealism of local elites and foreign commentators and are projected upon artists living within an authoritarian society. For the current generation of Algerian artists, the suppression of the riots in October 1988, the assassination of Mohammed Boudiaf and the impact of civil war have provoked a disavowal of the state as it is, yet any direct expression of political engagement must be seen in the context of the real constraints that form, and inform, their everyday experience. As one artist told me, in Algeria ‘créer est déjà un engagement’ [to create is already a form of (political) engagement].

Works Cited Azoulay, Ariella. 2001. Death’s Showcase: The Power of Image in Contemporary Democracy. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Badjadja, Abdelkrim. 2012. ‘Algérie-France: la guerre des archives se poursuit’. Le Matin d’Algérie 20 March. Available at http://www.lematindz.net/news/7609algerie-france-la-guerre-des-archives-se-poursuit.html (consulted on 11 August 2016).

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Beaud, Stéphane. 1996. ‘L’usage de l’entretien en sciences sociales. Plaidoyer pour l’entretien ethnographique’. Politix 9.5: 226–57. Blümlinger, Christa. 2013. Cinéma de seconde main. Esthétique du remploi dans l’art du film et des nouveaux médias. Paris: Klincksieck. Boissier, Annabelle, and Fanny Gillet. 2014. ‘Ruptures, renaissances et continuités. Modes de construction de l’histoire de l’art maghrébin’. L’Année du Maghreb 10: 207–32. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1997. ‘Dévoiler et divulguer le refoulé’. In Joseph Jurt (ed.), Algérie-France-Islam. Paris: Éditions L’Harmattan: 21–27. Bruno, Etienne. 1998. ‘Amnésie, amnistie, anamnèse: amère Algérie. Dire la violence’. Mots, 57: 148–57. Carlier, Omar. 1995. Entre nation et jihad. Histoire sociale des radicalismes algériens. Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques. Certeau (de), Michel. 1990. L’Invention du quotidien, I: Arts de faire. Paris: Éditions Gallimard. Chominot, Marie. 2008. Guerre des images, guerre sans image? Pratiques et usages de la photographie pendant la guerre d’indépendance algérienne: 1954–1962. Unpublished PhD thesis, Université Paris VIII. ——. 2012. ‘Algérie, août 1955: la mort filmée en direct’. 17 March. Available at http://ldh-toulon.net/Algerie-aout-1955-la-mort-filmee.html (consulted on 9 January 2016). Daoud, Omar. 2007. Devoir de mémoire, A Biography of Disappearance. London: Autograph ABP. Dalléas Bouzar, Dalila. 2012. Algérie, année 0. Ou quand commence la mémoire. Algiers: Éditions Barzakh. Delacourt, Sandra, Katia Schneller and Vanessa Théodoropoulou. 2016. Le Chercheur et ses doubles, Paris: Éditions B42. Denis, Sébastien. 2009. Le Cinéma et la guerre d’Algérie: la propagande à l’écran (1945–1962). Paris: Nouveau Monde Éditions. Derrida, Jacques. 1995. Mal d’archives: une impression freudienne. Paris: Galilée. Didi-Huberman. Georges. 2002. L’Image survivante. Histoire de l’art et temps des fantômes selon Aby Warburg. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit. ——. 2009. Quand les images prennent position. L’œil de l’histoire, I. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit. Downey, Anthony (ed.). 2015. Dissonant Archives: Contemporary Visual Culture and Contested Narratives in the Middle East. London: I.B. Tauris. Enwezor, Okwui. 2008. Archive Fever: Uses of the Document in Contemporary Art. New York: International Center of Photography. Feldman, Hannah. 2014. From a Nation Torn: Decolonizing Art and Representation in France, 1945–1962. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Foster, Hal. 2004. ‘An Archival Impulse’. October 110: 3–22.

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Foucault, Michel. 1969. L’Archéologie du savoir. Paris: Éditions Gallimard. Ghezali, Salima. 2010. ‘Off Camera’. Camera Austria International 111: 13–16. Godfrey, Mark. 2007. ‘The Artist as Historian’. October 120: 140–72. Gunthert, André. 2015. ‘Les visages des victimes, un monument d’inquiétude’. Available at http://imagesociale.fr/2399 (consulted on 15 February 2016). Hibou, Béatrice. 2006. ‘Le travail normalisateur de l’appareil bureaucratique’. In Béatrice Hibou (ed.), La Force de l’obéissance: économie politique de la répression en Tunisie. Paris: La Découverte: 131–56. Laggoune-Aklouche, Nadira. 2002. ‘Le mutisme des peintres ou l’indulgence du silence’. Naqd 17: 27–37. McAllister, Edward. 2013. ‘Immunity to the Arab Spring? Fear, Fatigue and Fragmentation in Algeria’. New Middle Eastern Studies 3: 1–19. McDougall, James. 2005. ‘Savage Wars? Codes of Violence in Algeria, 1830s–1990s’. Third World Quarterly 26: 117–31. ——. 2006. ‘Martyrdom and Destiny: The Inscription of Imagination of Algerian History’. In Ussama Makdisi and Paul A. Silverstein (eds), Memory and Violence in the Middle East and North Africa. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press: 51–72. ——. 2010. ‘Social Memories “In the Flesh”: War and Exile in Algerian Self-Writing’. Alif 30: 34–56. McGonagle, Joseph. 2014. ‘Dispelling the Myth of Invisibility’. In Liam Kennedy and Caitlin Patrick (eds), The Violence of the Image. London: I.B. Tauris: 78–94. Martinez, Luis. 1998. La Guerre civile en Algérie 1990–1998. Paris: Éditions Karthala. Meddi, Adlène. 2012. ‘Patrimoine: le Pavois d’Alger se dévoile’. El Watan2 25 October. Available at https://elwatanlafabrique.wordpress.com/2012/10/25/ patrimoine-le-pavois-dalger-se-devoile/ (consulted on 13 July 2016). Milligan, Jennifer S. 2005. ‘“What is an Archive?” in the History of Modern France’. In Antoinette Burton (ed.), Archive Stories. Facts, Fictions, and the Writing of History. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press: 159–83. Moussaoui, Abderrahmane. 2006. De la violence en Algérie. Les lois du chaos. Algiers: Éditions Barzakh and Arles: Actes Sud. Scott, James C. 2008. ‘La prise de parole sous la domination: les arts de la dissimulation politique’. In James C. Scott (ed.), La Domination et les arts de la résistance: fragments du discours subalternes. Paris: Éditions Amsterdam: 153–98. Shepard, Todd. 2015. ‘“Of Sovereignty”: Disputed Archives, “Wholly Modern” Archives, and the Post-Decolonization French and Algerian Republics, 1962–2012’. The American Historical Review 120: 869–83.

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Soufi, Fouad. 2000. ‘Les archives. Une problématique patrimonialisation’. Insaniyat 12: 129–48. Stora, Benjamin. 2001. La Guerre invisible. Algérie, années 90. Paris: Presses de Sciences Po. ——. 2012. ‘Algérie-France, mémoires sous tension’. Le Monde 18 March 2012. Available at http://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2012/03/18/algerie-francememoires-sous-tension_1669417_3212.html (consulted on 11 August 2016).

List of Works

Azdaou, Rachida. 2010. Archives d’Alger, mixed media installation, unknown dimensions. Bouras, Ammar. 1996. Iatirafate irhabi, acrylic painting on black and white silver print, 48 x 36 cm. ——. 2002–2003. Ez-zaim, le roi est mort, vive le roi, video, 3’51’’. ——. 2011. Tag’Out, digital print, variable dimension. Chafaâ, Fatima. 2012. Générique, digital print, 1,50 x 1 m. Dalléas Bouzar, Dalila. 2012. Algérie année 0. Ou quand commence la mémoire, variable media on paper or canvas, variable dimensions. Menia, Amina. 2013. Enclosed, documentary-based installation. Sedjal, Mustapha. 1994. Nedjma. L’éternel retour, video, 7’. ——. 2012–2013. Un seul héros le peuple … mon père, mixed media installation. Zouggar, Sofiane. 2012. Time Machine, video installation, 150 x 80 x 160 cm.

Acknowledgements I would like to thank the following artists, who gave of their time to speak of their work: Rachida Azdaou, Ammar Bouras, Fatima Chafaâ, Dalila Dalléas Bouzar, Rima Djahnine, Amina Menia, Mustapha Sedjal, Kamel Yahiaoui, Sofiane Zouggar.

Music, Borders and Nationhood in Algeria Tony Langlois

Music, Borders and Nationhood in Algeria

On the road that follows the River Aghbal north, to the resort of Marsa Ben M’hidi, is a popular parking place where for much of the year the national border between Algeria and Morocco consists of a parched stream and a few bushes. The site is marked on either side of the riverbed by rows of patriotic flags facing one another, while its concrete banks are decorated with graffiti that tends to contradict any such dichotomy – messages convey greetings to friends and relatives; local football teams are tagged; Farid says ‘Yes’. Cars on the way to the twin beach resorts of Marsa and Saidia (on the Moroccan side) regularly stop so that people can wave, shout messages and, for the boldest, jump over the stream and shake hands with people on the other side. This would not be a remarkable situation at many European borders, but this frontier has been officially closed since the early 1990s; the only legal way to travel from western Algeria to eastern Morocco is to fly from Oran to Casablanca (the opposite side of the country) then travel most of the way back again. Since the ‘closure’ of the border on security grounds during Algeria’s long decade of self-destruction in the 1990s, cross-border black market traffic has thrived. Borders, after all, place a premium upon goods that are scarce on the other side, and so could be thought of as creating both the economic conditions for smuggling and the networks required to sustain such enterprises.1 Ironically, although this area of Algeria’s national Donnan and Wilson (1994) show that this is a common phenomenon in

1

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frontier is one of its most clearly defined,2 even here the flow of goods, people and ideas is filtered rather than interrupted by the border. This is largely because regional, ethnic and familial connections have retained their currency despite (or perhaps because of) uncertain frontiers. People speak the same way on both sides, are possibly members of the same Berber community and enjoy the same music. This chapter explores the nature and significance of Algeria’s internal borders, considering them as just one among several ways of imagining relations between ‘place’ and ‘community’. My case studies will focus upon musical means of constructing and contesting identity. Music, especially when recorded and disseminated, is one of the most fluid of cultural materials, and among the hardest to suppress. Mediated internationally, music also links diasporic communities and, over time, suggests nostalgic constructions of an original homeland. The persistence of local musical traditions maintains linguistic and social practices that are core components of cultural identity. Musical meanings are complex and polysemic; cultural ‘insiders’ will decode and engage with music in ways inconceivable to outsiders – and decontextualized recordings afford multiple lines of engagement. A ‘musical text’ can signify various things at different times while retaining associations that are stubbornly resistant to appropriation. Following a discussion of three different kinds of Algerian music and their relationship to discourses of national identity, I will suggest that, regardless of ‘nationhood’, the region we call ‘Algeria’ is effectively situated at the centre of a cultural crossroads. Historical influences from each cardinal direction play a role in the Algerian imagination of place, and music can be a potent signifier in this equation. Constructions of place and their requisite boundaries are always emergent and I will argue that Algeria’s debate about nationhood, ongoing since at least the achievement of independence, is linked to an over-reductive construction of identity, limited by a postcolonial understanding of ‘statehood’ that fails to engage with a far richer and more complex cultural reality.

border regions. McMurray (2000) describes the black market economy of the region from the perspective of nearby Melilla. 2 Zartman (1965) explains that the 1845 treaty of Lalla Maghnia, signed after the French defeat of the Moroccan army at nearby Isly, settled the most northern stretch of the border. However, much longer sections were never agreed and state boundaries remain dormant disputes between Algeria and most of its neighbours.

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A Short History of Borders National borders are the manifestations of inherited legal and pragmatic conventions, even if these are matters of dispute. Therefore, drawing upon Zartman (1965) and Brower (2011), it is necessary to outline the historical context in order to explain how those conventions were established and by whom. Algeria’s national borders are legally contentious in a number of locations, but roughly correspond to those laid down during the French colonial period. Before the French arrived, the region had long seen fluctuations of allegiance, shifts in ethnic boundaries, the emergence and disappearance of mercantile highways, and flows of persuasive ideas from all directions. Each major influence generated powerful but ultimately transient constructions of identity and locality – some of these formations we might qualify as ‘states’ though most would not have been conceived in this way, even at the time. Berber societies have traditionally been organized around tribal lines, which can complicate other allegiances in particular circumstances. While tribal social structures primarily serve transhumant pastoral or agricultural economies, their typically segmentary lineage systems are flexible and can be mobilized as federated allegiances for strategic purposes. 3 Although periods of religious fervour or external colonization have episodically united large areas of what is now Algeria, a centripetal inclination towards the local has always been present. Even the largest precolonial co-option into a single jurisdiction (under the Ottoman and Roman regimes) failed to maintain control of the mountainous regions or the arid south.4 Local dynasties such as the Zianids in Tlemcen broke away from broader political institutions to control trade routes, and key oases became bases for local ethnic groups like the M’Zab of Ghardaia. Elsewhere in North Africa, the Sultan of Morocco had to constantly appease, distract and militarily overcome the diverse tribes in his sphere of control (Waterbury, 1970; Hourani, 1991; Willis, 2012). In Algeria, whose great distances and difficult terrain made it even harder to ‘pacify’ than Morocco, vast areas of territory were effectively autonomous even when technically part of an empire. The See Gellner (1969) for the ‘classic’ analysis of relationships between North African tribal organization and political movements. 4 North Africa has on many occasions been administered by foreign occupiers. What is now Algeria formed part of the Roman Empire from the beginning of the first century CE to the fourth. After the Reconquista, Spain held Oran from 1509 to 1792. The Algerian interior, generally not considered of strategic value, was the source of Berber rebellions whenever external control weakened. 3

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construction of ‘Algeria’ as it is currently imagined did not exist until the most recent colonial period. Given this historical background, full control of Algeria, and its political restructuring, was never going to be an easy prospect for French colonizers, as attested by the radical and often brutal lengths to which they went to achieve this end.5 Eventually it was believed that the only route to full control of the territory to be plantation on a grand scale. The occupation of land by Europeans – accustomed to neither the terrain nor the climate – was largely unsuccessful anywhere south of the High Plateau but, along with military conquest, served to upend traditional social organization, driving landless migrants to the cities (Horne, 2006; Hourani, 1991). Laws that limited rights of French citizenship to Europeans and Christians (and, with the Crémieux decree of 1870, indigenous Jews) resulted in separate ethnic quarters in cities, creating internal frontiers that were both tangible and conceptual (Langlois, 2015). The colonial appropriation of Algeria into the French polity disrupted a lengthy cultural connection with the mashriq nations (those to the east of Egypt), but began a new and enduring relationship with European culture. Alongside the modernist architecture of the emerging colonial cities and their ethnically cosmopolitan inhabitants, language, education, broadcast media and music influenced indigenous traditions. As Algerians were recruited in France for industrial work, so diasporic communities emerged, developing potent links across the Mediterranean. And as French political power extended to most of the Maghreb and the surrounding Sahel, vague ‘national’ borders became even more porous, especially in the ‘Deep South’ where flows of transhumant and nomadic tribes moved freely across them, much as they had before colonization. The consolidation of French control was still extending towards the ‘borders’ in the mid-1950s when Algeria’s war of independence began. To say that these southern borders in particular were neither firmly or legally resolved is an understatement, and today the frontiers with Niger and Mali are barely marked and largely uncontrolled. Most are not even a ‘line in the sand’ and are easily traversed by smugglers, people traffickers, migrants, preachers and fighters.6 It was these notional boundaries that were inherited Interestingly, Goodman (2005) argues that the French regime saw Kabyle Berbers as potentially easier to absorb into the colonial project than other, ‘Arab’ Algerians. Indeed, more effort was spent in encouraging western education in the Kabyle than in other regions. It is Goodman’s view that the stark difference Kabyles currently see between themselves and Arabs is partly due to this inherited colonial perspective. 6 According to the UNHCR, Algeria’s borders are largely open to the flow 5

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by the independent regime in 1962, complete with their ethnic, cultural and economic contradictions. Whether music is recorded, broadcast or simply memorized, it is almost impossible to repress and is certainly not limited by borders. However, although the geographic and cultural ‘footprint’ of a piece of music is never limited to place, its potential for arousing the most profound sentiments and a sense of identity have made it highly contested ideological material. Algerian music is so stylistically diverse that a chapter like this can only offer a handful of case studies, but it is important to note that every distinct linguistic variation in the country – in practice, almost every mountain range – will have an identifiable musical tradition that distinguishes its practitioners from their neighbours. I will limit this discussion to the broad ‘families’ of musics in order to relate them to wider discourses of national identity.

Nationalizing Andalus On all significant national anniversaries, and during the holy month of Ramadan, music from the Andalusian tradition, or andalus, is prominent. It is a genre which in many respects has a status equivalent to western ‘classical’ music. This is not coincidental, as andalus was groomed for esteem for decades. The years leading up to the war of independence saw a growth of interest in many areas of ‘high culture’ that were distinct from European alternatives. Arts and literature societies were established in important regional cities like Constantine and Tlemcen, their function being to rediscover and reclaim the national cultural heritage of Algeria, and in so doing supplant aesthetic values established by the colonial regime. Andalus was an ideal candidate for elevation to ‘classical’ status. It had been played in the region for over 500 years and its song texts were largely derived from medieval poetry. Under a strong Sufi influence, the explicit meanings of these poems were often veiled (Poché, 1995; Shannon, 2015) but were predominantly concerned with loss and love. Andalus has a sophisticated organizational structure, with suites of songs (nubat) performed in fixed modes moving from one rhythmical pattern to another in a standard sequence. Most importantly, Andalusian music, as its name suggests, is held to have its origins in al-Andalus or Islamic Spain (711–1492 of sub-Saharan migration to the Mediterranean. Human trafficking has also taken place through the Sahara without hindrance, although border security was tightened after 2013, when Mali entered a civil war. See United States Department of State (2014).

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CE) – considered to have been home to a lost ‘golden period’ of high Arab culture. As such, the genre not only bore the patina of antiquity but evoked nostalgia for past cultural glories. For a new nation seeking to shake off the cultural influence of Europe, andalus provided an instant ‘national heritage’ demonstrating that Algeria also possessed a centuries-old tradition of complex music worthy of support at a national level.7 Upon independence, andalus acquired the status and institutional support befitting a national treasure, and ensembles grew from relatively small groups (as described by Guettat, 1980) to large ensembles, more comparable in scale with European orchestras. National and international competitions were held to further define the ideal performance style. The elevation to national status required a selective appropriation of the history of andalus. In reality there were several schools with the Andalusian tradition, spread from Morocco to Libya, and by the twentieth century each had developed regional musical characteristics depending upon the prevailing musical influences and which fragments of the original repertoire had survived in each location.8 So andalus was never solely ‘Algerian’ but is in practice an umbrella term for several related traditions spread around the southern Mediterranean coast. For example, the andalus of the Algiers region is known as sana‘a, and is stylistically distinct from the ma’luf style of Constantine in the northeast of the country, which shares both its name and elements of its repertoire with the Tunisian school (Davis, 2004 and 1997; Ciantar, 2012). Likewise, the andalus of Tlemcen in the northwest, which is known as Tarab al Gharnati [Spirit of Granada], is identical to the repertoire played across the border in eastern Morocco. The cultural sphere of Tarab el Gharnati is centred on the city of Tlemcen, now much smaller than nearby Oran but once the seat of the powerful Ziyanid dynasty (1236–1556) and a refuge for Muslims and Jews fleeing persecution in The original Andalusian repertoire, comprised of 24 nubat (one for each hour of the day) is reputed to have been composed by a single author – Ziryab (789–857), who left Baghdad for Cordoba in the ninth century. The nubat structure suited the muwashshah and qasidah strophic forms of verse, which allowed the incorporation of classical Arabic poetry into the repertoire. See Guettat (1980), Poché (1995), Shannon (2015). 8 The music has traditionally been passed across generations through oral transmission, which over centuries has enabled local schools to develop their own style. In the 1920s Baron d’Erlanger, attempting to save the Tunisian genre (ma’luf ) from obliteration, notated the full repertoire for the first time (d’Erlanger, 2001). Although this did preserve the music, it also changed the way it was played and effectively prevented further natural mutation of the form. 7

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Granada. On visits to ensembles in both Tlemcen and Oujda (Morocco), I found identical photographs of deceased musicians mounted on the walls of rehearsal rooms.9 Even though this border has been closed for more than 20 years, the cross-border musical community, its repertoire, style and teaching methods remain identical. Such cross-border musical cultures reflect an older political orientation than that proposed by current nation states. Tlemcen retained its elevated cultural reputation under Ottoman and French domination and, as a musical centre, still has great influence well beyond the national frontier with Morocco.10 A comparable situation exists in the east of Algeria, where Constantine has been the regional capital since Roman times. Constantine’s cultural hinterland is closely linked to the Chaoui Berber communities of the Aurès Mountains and its economic influence extends well into Tunisia.11 Andalus, then, was always a collection of regional musics and never a singular ‘national’ genre. In time, each local variation had spawned variant sub-genres using the vernacular language (cha‘abi in Algiers, hawzi in Tlemcen) and shaped religious musical practices. The latter included both Sufi sama‘12 and Sephardic Jewish rituals (Zafrani, 2003). The significant involvement of Jewish musicians in the Andalusian tradition further complicates the nationalistic appropriation of the genre. It is not only clear that Jews were always part of andalus, but in the 1950s Jewish musicians dominated the popular music industry with songs that drew heavily upon malouf, hawzi and cha‘abi (Reynolds, 2015; Langlois, 2015). During the war of independence, culture became a battleground and those Jewish andalus musicians who did not flee Algeria risked losing their lives amidst the struggle.13 Many of these photographs were not only of celebrated ensemble leaders but also relatives of current musicians, showing a familial link that straddled the political border. 10 Tlemcen was the International Islamic Capital of Culture in 2011. 11 Inevitably, many of the economic links across this border are in the informal market. 12 Literally ‘listening’, sama‘ refers to the spiritual use of music in dhikr rituals. In these practices the musical structure is focused on the generation of a trance state, but melodies and performative style often closely resemble those of andalus. 13 Such musicians as Line Monty, Reinette L’Oranaise, Blond Blond, Lilli Boniche and Maurice El Medioni all moved to France. Cheikh Raymond Leyris, master of the ma’luf tradition, did not, and was shot in Constantine in 1961. The excellent Orchestre Andalou d’Israel has continued this Arabo-Judaic tradition, gathering expert Jewish musicians from all over North Africa. 9

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The nationalization of andalus after independence was made simpler by the mass departure of Algeria’s Jews. It also allowed the reclamation of the genre from the low-status associations it had acquired during the colonial period, when the music was performed in drinking establishments and nightclubs. Independence in 1962 allowed a redefinition of Algerian cultural heritage, and andalus played a significant role in this process of rediscovery. Masters of the tradition, such as Abdelkrim Dali, were given prominent roles in conservatories and since 1966 international andalus festivals, held in Algiers, have been recorded for albums and broadcast on national radio.14 State control of the professional music industry and broadcast media enabled the assumption of andalus into the category of ‘national music’ despite geographical and historical anomalies that may have contradicted such a project. Effective though the appropriation of the genre has been in many respects, it was nevertheless unable to dislocate andalus from its associations with social class. Generally, the genre continues to be regarded as a middle-class, urban music that is especially associated with the ‘old’ political centres of Tlemcen and Constantine. Just as a taste for opera in the west is considered the territory of elite social strata, so most Algerians are not andalus enthusiasts. In my experience, music lessons tend to be supported by middle-class families who regard musical education as an important cultural accomplishment. As a consequence, ensembles are generally made up of amateur musicians from the better-educated classes, who often consider andalus as their inheritance.15 Indeed, some Tlemceni musicians have suggested in conversation that they consider themselves to be direct descendants of Andalusi elites – that is, not directly of Arab or Berber origin. It seems that andalus remains firmly associated with middle-class communities from cities that were powerful long before French colonization. The andalus musical tradition as an expression of ‘national’ culture is a relatively new construction in its long and complex history. In many regards it serves the nation’s need for a high-status art music that suggests both continuity and precolonial antiquity. However, it is a highly diverse musical field with a cultural footprint that bears little relationship to the boundaries Interestingly, Jewish musicians are largely absent from ‘definitive’ compilations of Algerian music, though recordings of pre-independence Berber songs are often included. Today a large body of andalus-influenced ‘Arabo-Judaic’ popular music from the 1950s is widely available in France. 15 At one rehearsal I attended in the city of Oran, it transpired that nearly all the musicians were of middle-class families from Tlemcen, 170 km away. Rehearsals provided a social opportunity for young, professional Tlemcenis who enjoyed a shared cultural practice. 14

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of Algerian national territory. For much of its existence in North Africa the tradition has been linked to elite communities, Jewish musicians and Sufi practices, which fit uneasily within the model of a ‘modern’, Arabic, Algerian national identity.

Raï Rebels If the co-option of andalus into the nation-building project was never a neat fit, then raï, the notorious pop genre from Oran, became a source of national embarrassment in the late 1980s. Emerging from the sphere of nightclubs and wedding parties, raï combines a number of elements that are at variance with discourses of national culture. The genre drew upon the rhythmic dance forms of Oran’s rural hinterland but, dislocated from its traditional role in wedding festivities, found a home in the bars, cabarets and bordellos of the European quarter and along the city’s corniche. Songs were based upon Bedouin melodic forms and, though rarely explicit, sometimes contained sexual allusions.16 As distant from andalus as it is possible to imagine, raï songs from the 1950s referred, if obliquely, to alcohol and sensuality, and were frequently sung by women to entertain men. Many of these singers (including the famous Cheikha El Rimitti) were effectively outcasts who inhabited a musical demi-monde beyond the pale of acceptable society (Virolle-Souibes, 1995; Tenaille, 2002). A few Jewish musicians were involved in the raï scene during the 1950s17 but as the war of independence gathered momentum both sides in the conflict forbade such cross-cultural interaction. After independence – and the departure of the Jewish musicians who had dominated the country’s pop scene – the new genre of waharani18 music emerged, typified by the likes of Ahmed Wahbi. Wahbi specialized in combining local rhythms and poetic forms with the hugely popular Egyptian style of Um Kulthum and Mohammed Abd El Wahab.19 Wahbi was himself a veteran of the war, having entertained troops and composed many Suggestive song texts are not uncommon in single-sex pre-wedding events (the equivalent of ‘hen parties’) but were heavily disguised in metaphor. In performance, however, dance gestures reveal a more sensual interpretation of lyrics (Virolle-Souibes, 1995). 17 As explained by the contemporary Jewish musician Maurice el Medioni in interview, 2009. 18 That is, music from Waharan, the Arabic name for the city of Oran. 19 The most popular Egyptian music of the revolutionary period was a neo-classical Arabic form broadcast throughout the Mediterranean, featured in films and intimately associated with Nasser’s Arab nationalism. The singer 16

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patriotic songs, and his became the acceptable sound of Algerian popular music in the early 1960s. Others who critically raised social issues in their music (like Ahmed Saber) were heavily censored, and raï was kept well out of public earshot. As the initial Marxist Ben Bella epoch was replaced by the conservative Boumediene regime (1965–1978), permissive or ‘immoral’ musical expression remained in the shadow world of cabaret. By the 1980s the dissemination of raï was not so easy to control. The emergence of cassette production technology took control of the recording industry out of the hands of large state enterprises and allowed innovative musical approaches to develop. Singers recorded cassette albums very quickly, much of the music being added after the vocals using drum machines and cheap synthesizers (Langlois, 1996). These albums could not be censored, sold well on street corners and markets, and, like other black market goods, avoided government taxes. By the 1990s raï songs covered a wide range of themes, from adaptations of religious songs to mild expressions of frustration and sexual topics. Male singers had come to dominate the genre by this point, leading to wider public exposure at wedding parties in and around Oran. Equally problematically, raï was sung in local Arabic dialects, derja, and included a good deal of street slang. This cultural bastardization was considered almost as offensive as the topics of the songs, and the government attempted – ineffectively – to ban the raï industry. By the 1990s raï had become popular with young Algerians but was also in demand within diasporic North African communities in Europe (McMurray and Swedenburg, 1991). The music was also recorded in neighbouring eastern Morocco, an area that is musically contiguous with western Algeria. While raï was barred from broadcast on Algerian stations, radio stations like Medi 1, based in Tangiers, played the tapes back from over the border, making suppression all but impossible. This period also coincided with a shift in western tastes to include ‘world music’ and raï was quickly assimilated into this project under the banner of the rebellious ‘rock’n’roll’ of the Maghreb.20 The perception that raï was the voice of suppressed Algerian youth may have been exaggerated – most songs were simply romantic in nature and none were explicitly critical of the political status quo – but a growing Um  Kulthum was particularly involved in the shaping of this genre, which in Algeria is known as orientale. 20 The first internationally available raï albums were Cheb Khaled’s Hada Raikoum (1985), Cheb Mami’s Prince of Rai (1989) and the compilation of productions by Rachid Ahmed Baba, Raï Rebels (1988) on the world music Earthworks label.

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international focus on a few ‘bad boys’ of the genre, such as Cheb Khaled and Cheb Mami, afforded the music a notoriety which, alongside its immoral associations and problematic cultural hybridity, was a cause of anxiety to Algerian leaders. Youth unemployment in the 1980s led to riots, accusations of government corruption and the rise of the Islamist party FIS. The cancellation of the second round of the general election in December 1991, the military coup and the violence of the ‘black decade’ (Roberts, 2003; Langlois, 2009; Rahal, this volume) led to cultural polarization and a period in which expressions of liberal attitudes were considered highly provocative. In practice, a compromise was eventually reached regarding raï. In order for the music to be published legally, broadcast on national networks and public performances approved, musicians effectively ‘cleaned up’ the content of their songs. The long-term interests of professional musicians tend to be served by pragmatism rather than causing public offence. Nevertheless, raï continued to have negative associations, however innocuous its texts, and live versions of songs in cabarets were not subject to the same degree of censorship (Tenaille, 2002). By the mid-1990s, curfews imposed in most Algerian cities and the widespread threat of violence severely restricted the music industry. Many of the best-known musicians left the country to participate in the ‘world music’ boom, which soon changed the ‘sound’ of the genre considerably. Many of those who stayed were intimidated from public performance and, in some cases, killed.21 Since the 1980s, and despite enormous obstacles, raï has become the most popular form of music in Algeria and, arguably, throughout North Africa. Like the lived reality of Algerian society, it is complex and influenced by musics and cultures that are both traditional and modern, global and local. The role of new media in allowing this hybrid to be heard cannot be understated, nor the importance of North African markets in France, Belgium and the Netherlands. For these migrant communities, raï signifies something quite different to its home context. While to many Algerians raï sounds like a ‘westernized’ version of local music, European beurs22 hear it as a modern Maghrebi pop that distinguishes its consumer as not entirely European – and to many it is a means of encountering their cultural roots The most famous singer to be killed, in 1994, was Oran’s Cheb Hasni, ‘the king of sentimental raï’. Rachid Baba Ahmed from Tlemcen, the genre’s most renowned record producer, was assassinated the following year. It is generally assumed that radical Islamist groups were responsible for both deaths, though during this period extrajudicial killings were common. 22 Beur is a colloquial French term for those of a North African descent. It originated in the ‘back slang’ verlan’s reversal of arabe. 21

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(McMurray and Swedenbourg, 1991). Singers of North African descent, either born or raised in France (such as Rachid Taha and Faudel), use the genre to explore the dilemmas posed by their own ethnic hybridity. Raï in the west has become a signifier of the entire Maghreb, not simply Algeria, and musicians from Morocco and Tunisia have been quick to participate in this lucrative market. Today raï is a well-established and diverse genre. While raï producers in Algeria continue to blend such global influences as hip-hop and reggae with local language, its most renowned exponents from the 1980s on have tended to explore the music’s original Bedouin styles. Since the civil war years of the 1990s, raï has become (somewhat like jazz or blues) an international, cosmopolitan genre that can be found anywhere and has hybridized with other world music styles. While a generation of singers has emerged to whom raï has always been a ‘pop’ music, its traditional forms continue to exist in local wedding celebrations and nightclubs. More recently, the ‘bad boys’ of the 1980s, now in their fifties, have been subjected to criticism in social media for their apparent support for President Bouteflika. Raï remains a sphere of critical discourse, at both national and international levels, yet musicians are always highly exposed when they stray into overtly political territory.

Berber Music and Ethnic Diversity The stubborn perseverance of Berber cultures has been a persistent problem for any nation-building project that conflated Algerian identity with Arab ethnicity and language. ‘Official’ 1960s constructions of Algerian identity embraced a modernist concept of Arab nationalism and early regimes offered no concessions to what they saw as ‘antiquated’ berberitude in language or music.23 This aloof attitude towards cultural diversity provoked regular outbursts of unrest after independence as it effectively denied the self-identification of up to 29% of Algerian citizens.24 Berber identity is a complex affair. Several quite distinct linguistic and ethnic groups exist under this broad banner and, as they are geographically widely dispersed, many have little in common other than sharing linguistic Despite the fact that Berber culture clearly predated the Arab invasions of the seventh century, Algerians often refute the claim that they share common origins. Occasionally Berbers are dismissed as simply the remnants of the Roman (and therefore foreign) Empire. 24 Available at http://www.ethnologue.com/country/DZ/languages (consulted on 20 January 2016). 23

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roots in the Hamitic family of languages.25 Surviving invasions and cultural suppression over several centuries, many pockets of ‘Berber’ culture continue to exist in Algeria, from the sparse Tuareg communities of the deep Sahara to the northerly mountain enclaves of the Aures (Shawiya), Chenoua and Kabyle (Taqbaylit). Problematically for nation builders, Berber languages are not confined to borders but rather persist in geographical locations where they have proven to be difficult to erase. Consequently, though specific Berber communities may share cultural similarities, they also have economic relations and political allegiances with other non-Arabs in Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Mali and Niger. In recent years a new awareness of these connections has fostered a pan-Berber cultural movement that has been viewed with suspicion within the respective states. The tifinagh alphabet, for example, which was historically used by Tuareg tribes, has been appropriated into a wider cultural renaissance and can now be commonly found in the Kabyle region and on Berber cultural websites.26 To complicate matters, many Berber tribes speak colloquial Arabic, but still identify themselves as ethnically non-Arab through the expression, among other things, of traditional musical practices.27 Although the picture may be complex, by far the most vocal cultural activists come from the Kabyle region, to the east of Algiers. The towns and villages of this mountainous district constitute a tight cultural community which, being close to the capital, has better access to resources than more far-flung enclaves. The Kabyle community also boasts the largest and most established émigré population of Algeria. Generations of diasporic families have retained strong political and economic ties with their home villages, providing practical support as well as solidarity to the Berber cultural movement (Goodman, 2005; Silverstein, 2004; Slimani-Direche, 1997). The Kabyle has been politically at odds with the sole governing party since independence, despite playing an important role in the war of liberation, and Itself a somewhat controversial concept, it argues that Berber languages are more closely related to Sahelian forms rather than eastern Semitic patterns. This theory, championed by C.G. Seligman (1957) suggested that ‘Hamites’ had brought a civilizing influence from the north into sub-Saharan Africa. While this view has been disputed, linguistic similarities undoubtedly exist between disparate Berber groups in Algeria and well beyond its borders. 26 Since 2000, tifinagh has also been used by Berber activists in Morocco, demonstrating both the strategic value of marking cultural differences in a visible form and the mutual influence of Berber communities throughout North African states. 27 See Olsen (1997) and Lortat-Jacob (1980) for descriptions of traditional Moroccan Berber musics and dances. 25

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has been the centre of vociferous campaigns for language rights, representation and a degree of autonomy.28 Since independence, several flashpoints between Kabyle cultural activists and the state have led to rioting, police suppression and bloodshed. Although conflict with the national government began as early as 1963, the most violent outburst was the ‘Berber Spring’ of 1980, followed by further bloody riots in 2001 and 2011. Almost all of these events have arisen around issues of language and other cultural rights. After years of bitter conflict, some concessions have been made; the government gradually allowed more teaching of Berber languages in regional schools and its use in broadcasting. In 2016 Berber languages were finally afforded legal status as ‘official’ languages of the state.29 As song requires language, Berber musics have been political, whether or not they addressed explicit political issues. As the Kabyle Berbers are the most energetic advocates of their culture, their music exemplifies some of the key issues at stake in this chapter. In the first years after independence, Kabyle music was widely recorded and broadcast in the region, and was typified by female singers such as Cheikha Hanifa and particularly Na Chérifa (1926–2014), who had been singing in the folk idiom for decades. These songs would typically be accompanied by traditional instruments of bendir (frame drum) and ghraita (double-reed pipe). Such instrumentation is common throughout North Africa, but Chérifa employed particular rhythms and language that were clear indicators of her Kabyle provenance. When the Ben Bella and Boumediene regimes insisted that Chérifa sing in Standard Arabic in line with Arabization policies, she refused and as a consequence her music was banned from public broadcast. Chérifa remained silenced Hocine Aït Ahmed (1926–2015) was a prominent leader of the FLN during the war of independence. After liberation, he set up a party of opposition against the FLN’s exclusive control of the country and had to live most of his life in European exile. Although his party, the Front des Forces Socialistes (FFS, Socialist Forces Front), was by name committed to left-wing causes, it was identified in Algeria as a Kabyle-oriented group opposed to the Arabization policies of the first presidents, Ben Bella and Boumediene. The Rassemblement pour la culture et la démocratie (RCD, Rally for Culture and Democracy) party, also from the Kabyle region, was established in the late 1980s by Saïd Sadi. The RCD was widely considered to be a vehicle for Berber grievances and was politically marginalized by the ruling cadre. 29 The Arab Spring phenomenon of 2011 provoked protests by Berber cultural organizations in Morocco and Tunisia, raising the possibility of a pan-Berber movement across the Maghreb. Official ‘Berber’ political parties such as the FFS and RCD have since been eclipsed in popularity by organizations like Aroush and the MAK, which continue to make further demands upon the state. 28

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until the 1990s, when she was rediscovered by the international world music market (Parker, 1998). Influenced by the lush orchestrations of Egyptian orientale music, Cherif Kheddam (1927–2012) was another important Kabyle composer whose arrangements of local songs were popular in the early days of independence but, again falling foul of language restrictions, he concentrated on film scores for much of his active career. The early 1970s saw a wave of protest singers emerge from the Kabyle region, following the examples set in the west as well as by groups like Nas el Ghiwane of Morocco (El Medlaoui and Ragoug, 2013). Yet the big breakthrough for Kabyle music came in 1976 with the song ‘A Vava Inouva’ [My Father to Me] by Idir. As Goodman (2005) explains, ‘A Vava Inouva’ was a compilation song, ‘composed’ of segments of traditional lullabies and nursery rhymes. Although it didn’t make a great deal of sense in its own right, it was nevertheless highly evocative of childhood in Kabyle and was sung in the local Tamazight language. ‘A Vava Inouva’ has a simple melody performed on an acoustic guitar; not a traditional Berber instrument to be heard, nor an ‘Eastern’ quartertone note. This is a song that musically ignores Arabic tradition, and whether this choice was intended to resonate with Kabyles living in Europe or align with a western tradition of protest singing is unclear. As musically innocuous as it may sound, ‘A Vava Inouva’ became by far the most successful Berber song internationally, since recorded in several languages, and has simultaneously come to signify, to different listeners, Kabyle, Berber and Algerian identities. Ferhat Mehenni (who established the Mouvement pour l’Autodétermination de la Kabylie (MAK, Mouvement for Kabyle Self-Determination), Lounis Aït Menguellet and Lounès Matoub all used music to forward the Kabyle cause and, as in the case of raï, they benefited from the loosening of censorship facilitated by cassette technology and a large expatriate audience in Europe in the 1980s and 1990s. To Kabyle people themselves, even those who grew up in Europe, the most potent musical expressions of regional identity come from Aït Menguellet and Lounès Matoub. Like Idir, the soft-spoken Menguellet trades on themes of nostalgia and loss, subjects that speak particularly to diasporic communities, 30 but his songs have also been critical of ethnic discrimination and social injustice. Menguellet is known for his poignant songwriting in Tamazight, and his musical style draws upon the model of 1960s protest singers such as Joan Baez and Bob Dylan rather than the more ‘ethnically pure’ style of Cherifa. Beur music shops in Paris stock a number of videos of re-enactments of traditional Kabyle life, including domestic and agricultural activities, dance and dress. This suggests a widespread nostalgia for a simpler, imagined rurality. 30

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Even more political was Lounès Matoub (1956–1998), though musically he was closer to the popular cha‘abi style of Algiers and chose to play the mandole, which is closely associated with that genre. 31 From the outset of his career Matoub criticized politicians directly in his music, demanding cultural rights and greater regional autonomy. Some of his songs also spoke against the pervasive influence of Islam. Though considered a hero in the Kabyle, Matoub made enemies among the government, Islamists and Arabists at a dangerous juncture in Algerian politics. In October 1988 he was shot several times – allegedly by a police officer – while participating in a demonstration and, in 1992, was temporarily abducted by the Groupe Islamique Armée (GIA, Armed Islamic Group). This warning to silence his criticism was not heeded and in 1998 he was shot dead at a roadblock. 32 Berber musics from other parts of Algeria have not been as visible as those from Kabyle, despite nationally supported efforts in the late 2000s to include them in a more cosmopolitan construction of Algerian nationhood. Contemporary musicians such as Takfarinas and groups like Djurdjura tend to blend electronic instruments and musical forms with traditional styles and, like their predecessors, they effectively bridge ‘home’ and ‘European’ communities within a single Kabyle identity. While the absence of any obvious indicators of ‘Arabic’ music in popular Kabyle song can be explained by the need to appeal to a somewhat ‘westernized’ market in Europe, this was never the case with raï, which suggests that the musical construction of Berber identity continues to purposefully reject ‘oriental’ influences.

Some Cardinal Points The case studies presented here aim to shed light upon the difficult process of mapping music onto nationhood. Apart from the national anthem, there are few musical traditions that are not shared across borders, and many ‘Algerian’ genres are, in practice, mostly associated with particular regions, As its name suggests, the mandole is a larger cousin of the mandolin, usually strung with four doubled steel strings. In the 1930s it was augmented in Algiers with additional ‘quarter tone’ frets in order to play the cha‘abi repertoire, itself a popular descendent of the Andalusian tradition. While the gut-stringed, fretless ‘ud (lute) is the epitome of Arabic classical music, the mandole belongs to the popular, urban and contemporary. 32 It is not entirely clear who killed Matoub, though the government blamed the GIA. Two individuals were convicted, but his family maintains that they were innocent of the crime. Matoub was posthumously awarded free speech prizes by Canada, France and UNESCO. 31

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ethnic groups or social classes. Music, and attitudes towards it, has been an antagonistic field rather than an area of mutual recognition. Taking the broadest cultural perspective, while the most extreme Islamic perspective is that all secular music is unacceptable, in practice it is firmly ingrained in almost every social rite of passage, playing a significant role in the formation of individual and collective identity. The ‘nationalization’ of andalus required a subtle rewriting of its history, but this failed to erase the extraordinary diversity of its history. Raï’s political unacceptability in the 1990s, apart from its immoral associations, was due to its cultural hybridity which, like Algerians themselves, reflected a culture that looked north as well as east, embraced Serge Gainsbourg alongside Farid El Atrache, and sang of both sensuality and sanctity. Like the colloquial form of Arabic, raï was eclectic, witty and constantly shifting, which is not the ground upon which a reductive construction of national identity can be based. However, many who identify themselves as ‘Berber’ reject the concept of Algerian nationhood altogether and seek political autonomy. The Algerian economy and its political system have always been highly centralized and, until very recently, internal cultural diversity has tended to be seen as a threat rather than an asset. However, in the last decades, efforts have been made to change this. In 1995 a government Haut Commissariat à l’Amazighité (HCA, High Commission on Berber Affairs) was established to manage the issue and this resulted in greater recognition of linguistic and cultural diversity. For example, since 1999 an HCA-supported annual Berber film festival – Festival Culturel National Annuel du Film Amazigh (FCNAFA) has toured the country’s Berber regions, showcasing Berber musics, drama and involving round-table discussions relating to culture and identity. The threat to the existence of the state posed by political Islam during the 1990s – internationalized with the emergence of the al-Qaïda au Maghreb islamique (AQMI) organization33 – led some politicians to perceive Berber culture as a potential ‘third way’ between sharia orthodoxy and secular democracy. This tentative approach towards a more inclusive national culture has not yet borne the fruit that might have been hoped for. Partly this is because of the diversity of ‘Berber’ cultures themselves. Kabyle activists have dominated efforts to shape a national berberité and their experience of the last 50 years has differed from that of Berber activists elsewhere in the country who are geographically, politically and linguistically far from the Mediterranean. Secondly, there remains a suspicion of the HCA as an organ of national government, even in the Kabyle region, which is well represented in the organization. Such 33

Itself contesting the boundaries of Algerian statehood.

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wariness may be inherited from generations of Kabyles (at home and abroad) who have had cause to distrust centralizing forms of authority. Other than international football competitions, one of the few phenomena that galvanizes the country against a common ‘other’ (see Dine, this volume), national identity remains a work in progress in Algeria. Given that the state is less than 60 years old and experienced what many consider a civil war in the 1990s, this is not surprising. However, increasingly, broadcast and online media render national boundaries less apparent; physical frontiers, even where they are clearly defined, are porous and difficult to police. Finally, there is the relationship to southern Algeria and beyond. Over 90% of the Algerian population live in cities on the country’s coastal strip – approximately 12% of its area (Algerian Office of Statistics). Consequently ‘the south’ is a distant and foreign space to most Algerians who in fact live closer to Paris than their own southern border. The south is often romantically imagined as the domain of Tuareg nomads and ethnic groups of sub-Saharan provenance. Traditional cures – such as dried lizards and amulets made of cowrie shells that offer protection from the evil eye – are found in many street markets, and all are associated with the deep south of the country. The musics of black southerners (bearing a stylistic resemblance to sub-Saharan traditions) have a niche in curative musical ceremonies. The Southern ‘otherness’ of both their music and physical appearance, lends these Saharoui an aura of authenticity. As much ‘black’ music is traditionally employed in folk religious practices (known as Diwan in Algeria), this tangibly authentic connection with the south undoubtedly contributes towards its ritual efficacy, whether it is played for ethnically Arabo-Berber or Sahraoui audiences. These communities of musicians may have been physically resident in the North of the country for generations, but have maintained a musical and religious niche which draws upon ethnic distinctions. Consequently, ‘the south’ constitutes a mythological space; a deep resource for the imagination when constructing notions of nationhood. Recent years have witnessed a growth of interest in sub-Saharan African music and a willingness to explore its creative potential in Algerian forms. As a relatively new phenomenon, this ‘African turn’ in Algerian music offers interesting new directions for the research community. 34 ‘The North’ on the other hand, is Europe; the big ‘other’ in cultural consciousness but one with which many are very familiar, whether through Algeria’s diasporic communities, international media or personal experience. Many Algerians express ambivalent attitudes towards their colonial past. On one hand, it is common for postcolonial countries to distance themselves from I am indebted to the research of ethnomusicologist Tamara Turner and our discussions about this ‘African turn’ in Algerian music. 34

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historical discourses that were once imposed upon them. Monuments and museums to the martyrs of the war of liberation are to be found throughout Algeria, yet infrastructural systems from architecture to education and legislation bear strong colonial imprints. In some cases, familial links across the Mediterranean have existed since the 1930s and so the ‘North’ is less alien for many than their own distant south. Attitudes towards European and American musics can also be contradictory. Although access to the music of the ‘North’ has always been easy, Algerians tend to be conservative in their tastes. Dance music like reggae and hip-hop fit well within modern raï and its social functions. While some foreign musics are easy to appropriate into existing local tastes and practices, others, especially ‘noisy’ rock, are not. Traditional Muslim views on music hold that it bears a strong moral force that can deeply affect the listener’s state of being (Rouget, 1985: 185) and perhaps as a consequence ‘happy’ pop is usually preferred over ‘angry’ rock, regardless of the music’s provenance. Music from ‘the East’ is equally diverse, and several important Algerian artists moved in this direction in the middle of the twentieth century, when Egypt and Lebanon were the powerhouses of Middle Eastern popular music. 35 Few of these were raï singers or from the Kabyle. Like the classical Arabic language, the art music of the mashriq (known as orientale in Algeria) has been considered a cultural and moral ideal in many Muslim countries. Both language and music were afforded high status, not only through their associations with precolonial cultural purity, but because they represented membership of a common international Arabic cultural sphere. After Algerian independence, such Arabization policies enhanced relations with other North African states and served to define national cultural aspirations. The following decades saw some disenchantment with this ideal – predictably, perhaps, among Berbers – and international relations with both neighbours and other Arab countries have rarely been smooth. While a broad empathy with other Muslim nations is often expressed, many of the aspirations of such organizations as the Union du Maghreb Arabe (UMA, Arab Maghreb Union) have fallen foul of rivalry, resentment and border disagreements over the years. The political instability that arose from the Arab Spring of 2010–2011 has brought about a wary diplomacy rather than closer cultural cohesion. ‘Eastern’ Arabic music is still popular in Algeria but typically it is that of the great stars of the 1950s and contemporary pan-Arab pop, consumed as videos rather than recordings. Perhaps surprisingly, it has relatively little influence upon the indigenous music industry. Warda el Djazairia, for example, was an Algerian who developed her career through the Egyptian and Lebanese music industries. 35

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To the west of Algeria is Morocco, a complex country with very many cultural similarities but, at the national level, a political competitor. Morocco was never colonized to the same extent as Algeria and has a less centralized and more rural economy (Stora, 2002). Citizens of both countries have spent decades listening to each other’s musics, many of which are structurally similar and share roots in Berber ethnicity and maraboutic folk religious practices. A growing interest in ‘pan-Berber identity’ is being fostered through online communication between historically marginal minorities. 36 The recent softening of attitudes towards Berber cultures by both Algerian and Moroccan governments could be considered a response to the threat of Salafist Islam that doesn’t recognize the legitimacy of nation states. Government support for Berber culture and Sufi music festivals in Morocco aims, in part, to redefine a ‘traditional’ national identity for both internal and external consumption. Given that the internet facilitates the expression of minority cultures at a regional level, such policies are likely to have repercussions across the border in Algeria. To conclude, the national boundaries of Algeria are amorphous at a conceptual level, in practice and even legally. As with any state, the construction of a coherent identity is a constant work in progress, involving the re-evaluation of the past and reimagining the present. Music is a core signifier of identity, and in the case of Algeria most genres are a poor fit for the ideological project of nationhood. Kabyle and other Berber musics have either very local associations or are linked to a pan-Berber community that extends into Europe and beyond. Most ignore, or have been actively resistant to, Algeria’s early Arabization policies. Raï was in every way a cultural hybrid with low moral associations. The media technologies that made raï difficult to suppress also linked it to markets outside Algeria. Andalus, the ideal candidate for nationalization in most respects, remains associated with elite regional communities, and each form of the music overlaps stylistically with genres in neighbouring states. In each of these brief case studies musicians have been killed, effectively because their presence or pronouncements contradicted an ideological position or were problematically cosmopolitan. There can be no doubt that countless others have been intimidated into silence or forced into migration over recent decades. While it is reckless to predict trends in cultural politics, perhaps especially in North Africa, it is clear that musics ‘in general’ retain an emotive symbolic force that serves as a focus for collective identification. An Algeria that can The mixed beur communities in Europe may have a stronger experience of this collective level of identity rather than ‘nationhood’. See Slimani-Direche (1997); Silverstein (2004). 36

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embrace its complexity rather than seek to reduce it is most likely to enthuse its population for the ongoing nation-building project.

Works Cited Algerian Office of Statistics. ‘Demographie’. Available at http://www.ons. dz/-Demographie-.html (consulted on 5 January 2016). Brower, Benjamin C. 2011. A Desert Named Peace: The Violence of France’s Empire in the Algerian Sahara, 1844–1902. New York: Columbia University Press. Ciantar, Philip. 2012. The ma’luf in Contemporary Libya: An Arab Andalusian Tradition. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing. Davis, Ruth. 1997. ‘Cultural Policy and the Tunisian Ma’lūf: Redefining a Tradition’. Ethnomusicology 41.1: 1–21. ——. 2004. Ma’lūf: Reflections on the Arab Andalusian Music of Tunisia. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. Donnan, Hastings, and Thomas M.  Wilson (eds). 1994. Border Approaches: Anthropological Perspectives of Frontiers. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. d’Erlanger, Rodolphe. 2001 [1930]. La Musique Arabe. Paris: Geuthner. Gellner, Ernest. 1969. The Saints of the Atlas. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Goodman, Jane E. 2005. Berber Culture on the World Stage: From Village to Video. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Guettat, Mahmoud. 1980. La Musique Classique du Maghreb. Paris: Sindbad. Horne, Alistair. 2006. A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954–1962. New York: NYRB. Hourani, Albert. 1991. A History of the Arab Peoples. London, Faber and Faber. Langlois, Tony. 1996. ‘The Local and the Global in North African Popular Music’. Popular Music 15.3: 259–74. ——. 2009. ‘Music and Politics in North Africa’. In Laudan Nooshin (ed.), Music and the Play of Power: Music, Politics and Ideology in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia. Farnham: Ashgate Press: 207–28. ——. 2015. ‘Jewish Musicians in the Musique Orientale of Oran’. In Ruth Davis (ed.), Musical Exodus: Al-Andalus and its Jewish Diasporas. Lanham, MD: Rowan and Littlefield: 141–65. Lortat-Jacob, Bernard. 1980. Musique et fêtes de Haut-Atlas. Paris: Cahiers de l’Homme. McMurray, David. 2000. In and Out of Morocco: Smuggling and Migration in a Frontier Boomtown. London: University of Minnesota Press. McMurray, David, and Ted Swedenburg. 1991. ‘Raï Tide Rising’. Middle East Report 169: 39–42. El Medlaoui, Mohammed, and Allal Ragoug. 2013. La Chanson protestataire au Maroc: l’héritage de Nass el Ghiwane. Rabat: Université Mohamed V.

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Parker Kitchell, Liza. 1998. The Development of Kabyle Song during the Twentieth Century. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin-Madison. Poché, Christian. 1995. La Musique Arabo-Andalouse. Paris: Cité de la Musique. Reynolds, Dwight F. 2015. ‘Jews, Muslims and Christians and the Formation of Medieval Andalusian Music’. In Ruth Davis (ed.), Musical Exodus: Al-Andalus and its Jewish Diasporas. Lanham, MD: Rowan and Littlefield: 1–25. Roberts, Hugh. 2003. The Battlefield: Algeria: Studies in a Broken Polity. London: Verso. Rouget, Gilbert. 1985. Music and Trance: A Theory of the Relations between Music and Possession. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Rovsing-Olsen, Miriam. 1997. Chants et danses de l’Atlas. Paris: Cité de la Musique/Actes Sud. Schade-Poulsen, Marc. 1999. The Social Significance of Raï – Men and Popular Music in Algeria. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Seligman, Charles G. 1957. The Races of Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Shannon, Jonathan Holt. 2015. Performing Al-Andalus: Music and Nostalgia across the Mediterranean. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Silverstein, Paul, A. 2004. Algeria in France: Transpolitics, Race and Nation. Bloomington, IN: University of Indiana Press. Slimani-Direche, Karina. 1997. Histoire de l’émigration kabyle en France au XXe siècle: réalités culturelles et politiques et réappropriations identitaires. Paris: Éditions L’Harmattan. Stora, Benjamin. 2001. Algeria 1830–2000: A Short History. New York: Cornell University Press. ——. 2002. Algérie, Maroc: Histoires Parallèles, Destins croisés. Paris: Zellige. Tenaille, Frank. 2002. Le Raï: de la bâtardise à la reconnaissance internationale. Paris: Cité de la Musique/Actes Sud. United States Department of State. (2014). 2014 Trafficking in Persons Report – Algeria. 20 June. Available at http://www.refworld.org/docid/53aaba3222.html (consulted on 15 December 2015). Virolle-Souibes, Marie. 1995. La Chanson raï: de l’Algérie profonde à la Scène internationale. Paris: Karthala. Waterbury, John. 1970. The Commander of the Faithful: The Moroccan Political Elite. A Study in Segmented Politics. New York: Columbia University Press. Willis, Michael J. 2012. Politics and Power in the Maghreb. London: Hurst and Company. Zafrani, Haïm. 2003. Le judaïsme maghrébin: le Maroc, terre des rencontres des cultures et des civilisations. Rabat: Éditions Marsam. Zartman, I. William. 1965. ‘The Politics of Boundaries in North and West Africa’. The Journal of Modern African Studies 3.2: 155–73.

Algerian Youth on the Move. Capoeira, Street Dance and Parkour: Between Integration and Contestation Britta Hecking

Algerian Youth on the Move

In 2011 the outbreak of revolts across the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA), which later became known as the ‘Arab Spring’, set Arab youth on the global stage: international media representations forged the image of a democracy-aspiring youth from the MENA region. In Algeria, young men took to the streets in January 2011 in several cities. While the spontaneous and violent protest ceased within a matter of days, many public demonstrations, made up of different occupational groups – such as doctors, students and auxiliary policemen – were recorded throughout 2011. Also, a protest movement – the Coordination nationale pour le changement et la démocratie (CNCD, National Coordination for Change and Democracy) – was established on 21 January by various actors from political parties and civil society. It sought to unify the different protesting groups under the banner of the call for ‘change’, but it did not succeed in transforming these disparate groups into a broader protest movement. Accordingly, Algeria was soon declared one of the ‘exceptions’ within the regional crisis. The majority of the youth did not follow the weekly call for protest by the CNCD despite the discontent of many: ‘Sorry for existing’ is a common refrain among young Algerians who feel marginalized. In public discourse and the Algerian media, les jeunes [the young] are often equated with social problems and violence. Tragically, the self-immolation of young Algerians in 184

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2011 pointed to the precarious situation of many young people, especially in economically deprived areas.1 The most pressing problems are the high youth unemployment rate in Algeria and the lack of housing for young people who, as a consequence, delay getting married. These issues are compounded by the moral regime of elders and religious authorities who fear youthful self-expression. There are signs of intergenerational tensions: instead of joining protests organized by older generations, a group of anonymous young people tried to initiate a youth movement.2 On 19 March 2011 – the anniversary of the ceasefire between France and Algeria (19 March 1962) – they protested against hogra (abuse of power), declared themselves independent of any political party or foreign influence and called for ‘another’ Algeria. The government reacted with powerful security measures to the call for demonstrations by the Facebook group ‘19 Mars 2011’. ‘La marche des jeunes’ [The Youth March] made its way from La Grande Poste [the General Post Office] to the presidential palace in El Mouradia but attracted few participants (Bouredji, 2011). While young people were important actors of resistance in the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions of 2011, Algerian youth had not protested in the streets in large numbers since the revolution of October 1988. Different explanations are offered: ‘Algeria already had a revolution in 1988’, ‘The young lost their interest in politics and trust in the possibilities of change after the failure of the democratization process in 1988’, or ‘Young people fear state repression’. It may also be an expression of changing forms of protests; from open to more subtle forms of contestation (Ouaissa, 2014). This chapter examines street dance, capoeira and parkour from this perspective and through a mobilization of the concept of youth ‘non-movements’ (Bayat, 2010). After a short introduction to youth (non-)movements in the cities of the global South and particularly in the MENA region, I will outline my definition of what I call the ‘arts of movement’, briefly review the literature on Algerian youth within the disciplines of social sciences and then present my empirical findings in three parts. The first part illustrates how capoeira, street dance and parkour emerge among youth in the deprived neighbourhoods of Algerian cities through the use of new media and the appropriation of ‘global’ See ‘Immolation: je brûle, donc je suis’. El Watan Week-end 21 January 2011: 2–3. 2 Bayat argues that a youth movement is not only characterized by the age of its members, or their affiliation to specific youth associations or political parties, but rather by claiming ‘youthfulness’ and rights which are related to youth-specific concerns, such as unemployment and paternalism (2010: 115–20). 1

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youth cultures. The second outlines how young Algerians use these practices to get by in everyday life. I then examine the performance of these arts of movement in urban outdoor spaces, demonstrating how the young resist socio-spatial exclusion and appropriate central urban places in ways that can alter their relationship to public space. The final part offers an analysis of how the creation of social networks, groups and even associations of capoeira, street dance and parkour foster civic education and can ‘connect’ youth to local as well as translocal youth movements.

Urban Youth and Non-Movements Within contemporary urban youth studies, the young from cities of the global South have been the subject of much attention. Thus far, urban research and city planning of the MENA region has been shaped by concepts of the ‘Arab’ or ‘Islamic’ city (Dris, 2001: 50–51). These concepts emphasize the meaning of tradition and heritage, and contribute to shaping the image of a rigid oriental city deprived of the influences of modernity and globalization (Elsheshtawy, 2004: 3–4; 2008: 19). In analysing the relationship between youth and the city, I want to avoid a static approach to Arab cities and focus instead on the circulation of cultures, styles and ideas, which shape all contemporary cities. Bayat (2010), Gertel and Ouaissa (2014) and Bonnefoy and Catusse (2013) shed light on the everyday life of young people in the MENA region. They analyse youth movements and non-movements in contemporary MENA cities and demonstrate the plurality of youth. ‘Youth’ is not only defined as a specific age group, but also by different ways and practices of being young and by what Bayat calls ‘youthfulness’, which ‘signifies a particular habitus or behavioural and cognitive dispositions that are associated with the fact of being “young” – that is, a distinct social location between childhood and adulthood, where the youngster in a relative autonomy, is neither totally dependent (on adults) nor independent, and is free from being responsible for others’ (2010: 116). Many young people are forced to live a prolonged youth. They are unable to become independent adults. They may be over 30 and still live with their families. Without access to the labour and housing market, they are unable to found a family of their own. Honwana (2012) describes them as youth in ‘waithood’. Her analysis is based on research on youth in Tunisia, Congo and Senegal. She argues that the differences between young people from different social backgrounds within the same country are more significant than compared to their peers of the same social background living in other countries or continents. Youth in waithood is a global phenomenon related to growing global inequalities. While many such youth place little trust

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in political parties and ‘politics’ more generally, they often seek to make their voices heard: ‘The waithood generation is actively asserting itself and contesting economic policies that exacerbate poverty, class inequalities, and uneven development, as well as government corruption and repression. They are raising their voices to demand a better future’ (Honwana, 2012: 168–69). Protest is not only expressed through open forms of resistance such as street riots, or in the formation of organized social movements. Bayat (2010) identifies a trend of what he calls ‘non-movements’ especially in countries where authoritarian regimes leave no space for open forms of protest. With the term ‘non-movements’ he identifies the everyday and dispersed practices of the subaltern – among them the youth – which enable one to avoid or resist constraints opposed by authoritarian regimes, neoliberal economies and moral regimes. These practices vary from the quiet appropriation of public outdoor spaces by street vendors and their informal economic practices to (sub)cultural practices of youth that give expression to a desire for participation and autonomy as well as offering a critique of unemployment and paternalism through artistic modes such as graffiti or rap music. Establishing alternative norms, non-movements can promote social change. Even though actors within non-movements do not necessarily call for political change, they ‘prepare’ the field for political action by altering, for example, gender relations in public spaces through the presence of women working or performing in the streets or young men and women training together in a dance group. ‘Even though youth (non) movements are by definition concerned with the claims of youthfulness, nevertheless they can and do act as a harbinger of social change and democratic transformation under those doctrinal regimes whose legitimizing ideologies are too narrow to accommodate youthful claims of Muslim youth’ (Bayat, 2010: 120). Members of non-movements may connect with broader social movements. In Senegal, for example, the Y’en a marre [We’ve had enough of this] movement was initiated and led by rappers and journalists in 2011. Their protest was initially directed against frequent power cuts in Dakar and later transformed into a larger youth movement against the government. Their main objective was to mobilize the young to vote (Cissokho, 2011: 28). Yet youthful claims can also adapt to existing political, economic and moral norms (Bayat, 2010: 120). Conceptualized in terms of a youth non-movement, the meaning of capoeira, street dance and parkour in Algiers can veer between ‘accommodating innovation’ and an emerging youth movement.

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Capoeira, Street Dance and Parkour Today one can be in Algiers physically but communicate and interact with peers around the globe via the internet. The social networks of the young are witness to the entanglements between near and far. Accelerated digitalization reconfigures urban boundaries: today’s cities are nodes in translocal and global networks. The study of global youth cultures such as capoeira, parkour and street dance shows how global cultural flows are woven into the spaces of the everyday life of Algerian youth and become incorporated into the cultural texture of the city. I describe these practices as urban ‘arts of movement’; to practise these arts of movement, one needs only one’s body – and music, in the cases of capoeira and street dance – but no technical equipment and no formal schooling. For teachers, one has one’s peers; both locally present and digitally available through Facebook and YouTube. Capoeira, street dance and parkour are practised in outdoor urban spaces mainly by young people. The youth present themselves and their cities in home-made videos, which they spread via new media channels such as Facebook and YouTube or on their own blogs (Braune, 2014). The performance of the arts of movement contributes to a new experience of the city for the practising artist as well as for the spectator (Fuggle, 2008: 205). Although of very different geographical and historical ‘origins’, capoeira, street dance and parkour can be linked to liberation or protest movements. Capoeira is a Brazilian martial art masked as a dance and practised with music. It was developed from different African dances by African slaves during their liberation struggle in colonial Brazil. Street dance developed within the hip-hop movement of the 1970s in the Bronx, ‘to answer back’ to processes of exclusion within the restructuring of New York (Rose, 1994). The rise of parkour in the banlieues [suburbs] of French cities in the 1990s is also related to processes of urban exclusion (Guss, 2011; Thomson, 2008). Today these practices form part of a global youth culture. In the cities of the MENA region, these cultures are widespread: in Algiers, but also in Moroccan cities (Braune, 2014) and Gaza (Thorpe and Ahmad, 2013). The free movement across urban spaces in parkour can be read as an expression of a desire for freedom. That said, it remains uncertain if the young aspire to individual freedom shaped by neoliberal ideologies or a more general political freedom within a democratic society. The practice of the arts of movement attracts the young above all because it promises fun: ‘The subversiveness of fun in the conduct of the young, the artists, and the musicians and their audiences evokes the notion of the “counterculture” – values and behaviour that challenge those of the social mainstream’ (Bayat, 2010: 156).

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The ‘body in motion’ can be interpreted as a subtle form of encroachment into urban spaces in the MENA region where many cities are characterized by high levels of policing and surveillance. Indeed, cities are controlled not only by the authoritarian state, but also by an authoritarian society in which the young have to obey their elders and where religious morality has a strong influence on everyday life. Fighting, dancing or jumping from roof to roof can therefore be understood as an expression of resistance against exclusion and paternalism. However, the social function of these urban youth practices – providing an outlet for frustrations and ennui – can be used as a tool of integration by the regimes in power. Before examining capoeira, street dance and parkour as inhabiting a space between contestation and integration in the everyday life of young people in Algiers, I want to offer a brief review of the literature on Algerian youth.

The Construction of Algerian Youth within Social Studies In A Dying Colonialism, Franz Fanon pointed to the challenge of youth for newly emerging nations (1981 [1961]: 171). Newly independent Algeria was aware of this. The development of the education system was made a priority (Rarrbo, 1995; Musette, 2004); school enrolment and the integration of the young in public associations, particularly the Union Nationale de la Jeunesse Algérienne (UNJA, National Union of Algerian Youth), were the principal goals of youth politics in the first decade of independence. However, these strategies failed to combat the marginalization of the young. During a period of socio-economic upheaval and political transformations in the late 1980s, Algerian youth entered the public sphere. The violent revolt of 5 October 1988 was not a sudden outbreak. Young people had sought to make their voices heard before: in graffiti and in football chants, Algerian youth accused the state of hogra, the abuse of power to oppress the people and to establish a corrupt system of maarifa (ma3rīfa) [literally ‘personal relations, who one knows’] which excluded the majority of youth from politics and public-sector jobs. Some social scientists consider the riots of October 1988 to be a symptom of the frustration of Algerian youth which led to the emergence of the Algerian youth as political actor: ‘Finalement, la jeunesse-acteur s’est imposée dans la rue et a signé elle-même son acte de naissance, avec son sang, en sanctionnant violemment le système du Parti-unique en Octobre 1988’ (Musette, 2004: 39). 3 ‘The youth-as-actor has finally asserted himself in the street and signed his own birth certificate in his own blood, violently punishing the one-party system in October 1988’. This and all subsequent quotations from French-language source are translated by the author of this chapter. 3

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Even if the October revolt is interpreted as a violent outbreak of marginalized youth, it is also seen as the beginning of a democratization process seeking to revitalize the promises of the Algerian revolution and to reappropriate the political public sphere. After the constitutional changes enacted in 1989, young people aspired to membership of associations, clubs and political parties. This period of a flourishing civil society appeared to come to a sudden end with the annulment of the elections on 11 January 1992 (see Introduction, this volume). The success of the Front Islamique du Salut (FIS, Islamic Salvation Front) among the young population in poor urban areas led to an interest in Algerian youth by social scientists such as Ali El-Kenz (1996), Meriem Vergès (1997), Luis Martinez (1998) and Omar Carlier (1995), who analysed the mobilization of the young by the FIS in the 1980s and 1990s. Since its ‘birth’ in October 1988, and its mobilization by the FIS, Algerian youth has been constructed mainly as ‘marginal’ (Rarrbo, 1995) and ‘in-between’: ‘there is an unstable group among the mobilized youth who alternate between cannabis and the mosque’ (Vergès, 1997: 299). The difficulty in conducting empirical research into this violent period of Algeria’s history has led to a knowledge gap regarding the everyday life spaces and activities of the young. Representations of youth are largely dominated by concepts of marginality and radicalism, and the knowledge gap has been filled with stereotypical images of the young corresponding either to hittistes [unemployed idlers] (Le Pape, 2013) or harraga [clandestine migrants]. While the first term describes immobile youth, the latter describes escape as the only choice. Yet neither the representations of a marginalized youth by social scientists nor the popular images of ‘desperate’ youth account for the plurality of what it means to be young in contemporary Algiers. Focusing on the meaning of the urban arts of movement in the everyday life of young people in Algiers (the Casbah and adjoining neighbourhoods), I want to draw upon my doctoral research, which combined historical and ethnographic methodologies. Titled ‘Youth and Resistance in Algiers’, my thesis was based on empirical research conducted between 2009 and 2012. After establishing a mind-map survey to identify the everyday life spaces of the young, I focused on three ‘activities’ linked to specific sites in order to investigate the relation between getting by and youth (non-)movements: street hawking, youth associations and urban arts of movement. I conducted 49 recorded interviews in the youth centre located in the lower Casbah, a kung fu school in Bab el-Oued, a youth association in Bologhine and in outdoor spaces near the Place des Martyrs.

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The Appropriation of Global Youth Cultures When Rebah saw the martial arts film Only the Strong,4 he did not realize the impact it would have on his life. He was fascinated by a story taking place far away in a US ghetto that had parallels to everyday life in his neighbourhood – the Casbah – in Algiers. The Casbah is akin to an inner-city periphery because of its physical degradation and social marginalization, even though it is a socially diverse area where ancient and new villas stand side by side with ruins, squats and even tents hosting people whose houses have tumbled down. Since the FIS’s mobilization of its youth in the 1990s, the Casbah has had a bad reputation and its ‘daily violence’ is described in the media as the ‘other terrorism’ (Tlemcani, 2011). In Only the Strong, capoeira is used to ‘save’ students from the violence of the street. Rebah was attracted by the message of the movie. Having previously trained in kung fu, he started to learn capoeira by watching videos on YouTube. He chose the beach to practise and encouraged friends to join him. Practising capoeira on the beach, he felt ‘free’ because, unlike at kung fu school, there were no teachers and no rules. Furthermore, he did not have to pay to learn. Rebah also learned street dance and was later employed by the Algerian National Ballet. For the French ‘Year of Algeria’ in 2008, a contemporary dance company from Lyon came to Algeria to develop a French-Algerian dance project. Rebah was asked to join. After a training period, the group toured Algeria and France. Rebah decided not to return to Algeria, and made his way to London. There he found work in a Spanish restaurant but was soon picked up by the police and deported to Algiers. Since then, he has been ‘navigating’5 in the streets to get by. He no longer dances professionally with the Algerian National Ballet company. Rebah’s trajectory as a male dancer is common. Often in response to a film, many young men start with martial arts, learn capoeira and then become dancers. As dancing is not reputable for men in Algerian society, they combine it with martial arts. The narrative of having being ‘saved’ from the streets and its vices through these practices is common. Martial arts, and sports in general, had been promoted during colonialism to foster the Only the Strong (US, 1993). Martial arts actor Marc Dacascos plays soldier Louis Stevens, who returns to his former high school in Miami to find it marked by drug-dealing and violence. He convinces a desperate teacher to introduce capoeira to the students in order to lead them away from violence through discipline and spiritual guidance. 5 The French term naviguer [to navigate] is used in colloquial Arabic (derja) by Algiers youth to describe practices of getting by and being on the move in outdoor spaces. 4

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mobilization of the young for the Algerian revolution through discipline and physical strength. In the 1990s the FIS used the same strategies to mobilize the youth, particularly in the poor urban neighbourhoods (Fates, 2009: 231–51). There are parallels between religious morality and the guiding ethos of martial arts: ‘Kung fu [helps me] to find a balance between my mind and my body and calm my soul. Kung fu brings light into my life. I fight against myself to overcome my problems. Kung fu is an art which guides you on the right way. You learn to treat others with respect’.6 In the Bab el-Oued kung fu school, you have to take off your shoes before entering the training space. The girls train behind the men and the trainer is called sheikh, a respectful form of address. When it is time for prayer, the training is interrupted and the men come together to pray while the girls take a break. Yet, despite the strict rules and discipline, there is also a sense of playfulness, of fun. Ratiba, 16, jokily beseeches the trainer during a difficult round of sit-ups: ‘That’s enough sheikh! It’s time for prayer! Please, call for prayer! Praying is more important than playing!’ Instead of a break, the girls have to do more exercises during prayer time that day (training, 28 March 2011). ‘Kung fu is suffering’, the trainer frequently reminds his students. Mehdi, another street dancer, tells a similar initiation story: ‘Many b-boys [dancers] had problems with violence. Me too. Only dancing helped me to calm down. We don’t work in clubs where alcohol is sold. Most dancers here are practising Muslims. We don’t drink, we dance!’ 7 Like Mehdi, the other young people I interviewed professed to being practising Muslims but rejected any political religious affiliations. Their desire for music and fun is accommodated within religious norms. Mehdi describes himself as having been a troublemaker before he discovered dance. The videos he saw fascinated him and he followed the ‘Zulu Nation’8 movement: no alcohol, no violence, just dance. Dance ‘battles’ are substitutes for street violence: the dancers develop the ability to overcome obstacles and to sidestep the ‘enemy’. Above all, dance and parkour allow them to develop self-confidence. They describe these ‘skills’ as helpful for everyday life: ‘Parkour is like life: there are many obstacles, but once you have incorporated the ethos of parkour, you can overcome any obstacle’.9 Mustafa, interview, Bab el-Oued, 24 February 2011. Mehdi, interview, 3 March 2011. 8 The ‘Universal Zulu Nation’ was founded in the 1970s by US hip-hop DJ Afrika Bambaataa. The members of the organization commit to abstaining from violence, drugs and alcohol. 9 Habib, interview, 11 March 2011. 6 7

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Like Rebah, Mehdi and Habib, most of the youth who practise capoeira, street dance or parkour are autodidactic artists. Their initiation stories show how they create links between their own experiences and the lives of peers around the world. Although they feel connected to imagined global communities, a sense of belonging to the ‘local’ continues to play an important role in the urban arts of movement: crew names often refer to local street names, city codes or linguistic shibboleths. Having one’s origins in, and belonging to, stigmatized neighbourhoods is used as a symbol of authenticity in urban youth cultures. Casbah Dance is a group of boys and girls combining traditional and contemporary dance. The dancer and choreographer Fares, who is from the Casbah, called his group Wesh10 [What’s up?]. A common characteristic is that global youth cultures are appropriated into the local context and vice versa – the local is set on a global stage through different forms of media.11

Making a Living as a Dancer in Algiers It is not only the disciplining function and the desire for fun that attracts youngsters in Algiers to these practices. There is also the dream of ‘success’ as defined by neoliberal ideologies: Work hard, play hard, suggests Adidas; Just do it, says Nike. Both companies run publicity campaigns with successful street artists.12 The ‘success stories’ of youth from the streets becoming superstars inspire the young to become ‘professional’. The biography of the Algerian dancer Sofia Boutella is one such story. The daughter of a jazz musician, she grew up in the working-class neighbourhood of Bab el-Oued, where she learned classical dance before moving to France with her family in 1992. She started a ‘crew’ of friends dancing in a Parisian metro station and in 2006, they won the street dance world championship. Today she is famous through her involvement in the movie Street Dance II, in TV commercials for Nike and Madonna’s Confessions Tour: ‘I suffered so much to become who Wesh has its roots in the Berber word ash meaning ‘what?’ and ‘wesh cho’ is a popular salutation among young Algerians and in the banlieues of France. 11 See for example the video of the parkour group Intik Parkour: https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtmIAziyt8g; a breakdancer at the port of Algiers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dD3A_o_ntI; and a Capoeirista in the city of Annaba: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nim6Jj4w6jI (all consulted on 12 February 2016). 12 The Adidas commercial is available at https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=5ggV58MqGgY and the Nike commercial at https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=6aukxGCkkoY (both consulted on 12 February 2016). 10

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I am today’ is her statement in Madonna’s dance and video performance ‘A life to tell’.13 In a similar way, the youth in Algiers seek to use their bodies as capital to empower themselves (Pál Pelbart, 2005). Mehdi was offered a traineeship in contemporary dance and yoga in France – organized through a French-Algerian cultural exchange programme – and since then has taught street dance and yoga in Algiers. As he does not earn enough to make a living, he saved money to buy a van and now also offers transport services. He is a volunteer with the youth association Vision Jeunes in Bologhine, a working-class neighbourhood close to Bab el-Oued. He teaches a group of young boys who hope to become professional dance careers: ‘I saw the videos of B-boy Lilou [a French dancer of Algerian descent] on YouTube. B-boy Lilou twice won the Red Bull world championships in break-dance. He is our idol’, says 16-year-old Tarik.14 B-boy Lilou is not only famous for his professional dance skills but also for expressing his religious and political beliefs. On his Red Bull profile we read: Among the many items that Lilou wears when battling to express his individuality, he sometimes puts on a ‘I’m Muslim Don’t Panic’ t-shirt, or keffiyeh, to express solidarity with his brothers and sisters who face adversity worldwide. He recognizes that there are many wars around the world for territory, money and more, but his battles are on the dance floor.15 Following the ‘black decade’, and in particular since 2002, many concerts, shows and festivals have been organized or funded by the Ministry of Culture, whose budget was greatly increased due to the rise in the price of oil and gas. This is especially true of festivals where the young have a chance to demonstrate their skills. ‘Dance is like the street. It is a way of making money now. There are so many festivals in Algeria’, Mehdi explains.16 By equating it with the street, Mehdi identifies dance, or culture in general, as a field beyond the public education system offering the young possibilities of navigating through ‘waithood’ (Honwana, 2012). Fayza, who has been trained in classical and contemporary dance, observes this trend: ‘The young queue up to audition. They come from everywhere in Algeria, even from the south. They drive the long journey to Algiers hoping for a job’.17 One of those Dancers confessions can be seen at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEqf Bldpw_g (consulted on 8 February 2016). 14 Tarik, interview, Bologhine, 5 March 2011. 15 See http://www.redbullbcone.com/en_INT/athlete/lilou (consulted on 8 February 2016). 16 Mehdi, interview, 5 March 2011. 17 Interview, 9 January 2011. 13

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coming from the south is Sadik, 26, from Djelfa: he was employed as a dancer in a show that formed part of Tlemcen, Capitale de la Culture Islamique 2011 [Tlemcen, Capital of Islamic Culture 2011]. He describes himself as self-taught. He makes short movies and produces music, but his main income comes from dancing.18 The Algerian government is keenly aware of the usefulness of culture. It is used as a tool of social integration and as a means of urban development in order to make Algiers more attractive. Despite their critique of the system of clientelism and paternalism, many of those interviewed were optimistic about the future of Algeria. In the streets of the capital, giant posters show the city of the future: Algiers is to be transformed into a vibrant Mediterranean metropolis and even a ‘world city’ by 2029. Cultural events are presented as tokens of this process and are perceived by some as signs of progress and prosperity. In 2009, the second edition of the Festival Panafricain d’Alger was held 40 years after the legendary first event in 1969. Since 2009, the Festival Culturel International de la Danse Contemporaine d’Alger [Algiers International Cultural Festival of Contemporary Dance] has been hosted in the Théâtre National d’Algérie Mahiedine Bachtarzi in the former French colonial opera house. In 2012, the musical Le Héros [The Hero] was organized for the fiftieth anniversary of the revolution. Such events provide employment opportunities to young artists. Some projects are co-organized with foreign dance companies, particularly French companies, which come to Algeria to look for ‘material which they can train and develop’, says female dancer Sana.19 For the contemporary dance company Nya [meaning ‘to have confidence’ in Arabic], which works with street dancers who have no formal dance training, French choreographer Abou Lagraa had to choose ten dancers out of 400: ‘Ces jeunes sont issus de milieux familiaux modestes, installés parfois dans des bidonvilles. Certains n’étaient jamais venus à Alger. Les niveaux scolaires varient entre la classe de 5e en collège et l’université. Tous expriment le besoin de trouver de l’argent et savent que les possibilités d’emploi sont précaires’ (Oussedik, 2011: 110).20 Even if the arts of movement are a form of diversion and fun, the need to make a living is also a spur. To Sadik, interview, 5 February 2011. Interview, 19 August 2011. 20 ‘These youngsters come from modest family backgrounds, some of them live in slums. Some have never been to the city of Algiers before. Their education level varies from primary school to university degrees. All of them talk about the need to earn money and are aware that the possibilities for employment are precarious’. 18 19

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succeed requires effort and sacrifice. The then Algerian Minister of Culture, Khalida Toumi, spoke about the dancers selected by Nya after their first show at the National Theatre on 18 September 2010: ‘Ces jeunes ont accepté les règles universelles de travail et de discipline. Je les adore parce qu’ils n’ont jamais fait de ballet. Ils ont démarré de zéro et accepté le sacrifice’ (cited in Oussedik, 2011: 115).21 The prospect of success shows the ‘integrating’ aspects of the urban arts of movement. Focusing now on the streets as spaces of performance, I want to consider urban arts of movements in terms of social contestation.

Algiers Contested: Performing Capoeira, Street Dance and Parkour in Urban Outdoor Spaces In cities where free movement is perceived as a danger, the ‘body in motion’ is a political issue. The state of emergency put in place in 1992 was officially abolished in 2011 in response to the brief stirrings of an Algerian ‘Arab Spring’ yet continues to shape everyday movement in the Algerian capital, which is controlled by many checkpoints. The movement and public gatherings of young people are seen as potentially threatening by the authorities. The ‘youth from the streets’ are stigmatized as perpetrators of violence. For example, it is said that over 50% of the criminals ‘straggling’ in Algiers are aged between 18 and 28 (Adryen, 2009). Because of moralizing disapproval, many young people prefer to meet in protected spaces such as youth associations or cybercafés. The young feel constrained by the control enforced by family members and neighbours, especially in the semi-public space of the houma [neighbourhood]. When the crew Intik Parkour, a member of the World Freerunning & Parkour Federation, wanted to make a video in the streets of the Casbah – ‘to show that we are not criminals. If people see you jumping over walls and rooftops, they will think that you’re a thief’22 – a resident accused them of offending his horma [honour]. Some women prefer to attend youth centres far from their residential areas, especially when they participate in mixed-gender activities like dancing or theatre. Female dancer Fayza was criticized by the security man in her youth centre for rehearsing during Ramadan. ‘I don’t know but we are only dancing. Dance is a sport. We don’t do striptease or anything like ‘These young people have accepted the universal rules of work and discipline. I admire them because they have never done ballet before. They started from zero and they accepted the sacrifice’. 22 Group interview with Intik Parkour, 11 March 2011. 21

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that. But the mentality here is like that’, she told me.23 In November 2010, I went for a walk in the centre of Algiers with a group of young women and men from a youth club. When they stopped to discuss their plan to form a dance association, a police officer wanted to know what they were doing and asked them to move on. There are, however, events such as the celebrations surrounding local or national football matches, the Algiers Marathon, Ramadan festivities or the Walk of 1 May in Oran (see Northey, this volume) where the youth can freely gather and mingle. There are signs of a new optimism among the young generation regarding their place in public spaces. In this respect, the practice of capoeira, street dance and parkour in urban outdoor spaces gives expression to the desire for fun, freedom and performance of the self in the public space. Despite being excluded – spatially and socially – the young are asserting their presence: ‘Ces jeunes, et ils commencent à se multiplier, dansent en tee-shirt et pantalon de survêtement, à la plage, dans la rue, sur une place … La danse contemporaine peut être une forme d’expression pour les catégories de jeunes les plus fragiles de la société, elle correspond à une forme d’appropriation des espaces urbains’ (Oussedik, 2010: 5).24 Public outdoor spaces are often used for training: ‘In Arika, close to the pavilion at Makam Shahid is where it all started in the 1980s. Every Friday b-boys from all over Algiers meet there’.25 Makam Shahid is the imposing monument for the martyrs of the Algerian revolution. It is part of Riadh el-Feth, a leisure complex housing a shopping mall, cultural centre and a museum dedicated to the war of independence. It can also be read as a symbol for the period of transition from socialism to liberalism in the 1980s. The appropriation of the pavilion by street dancers symbolizes youth’s demand for the ‘right to the city’.26 Dancing in this symbolic place is a statement made by young people who cannot afford to shop or eat in the restaurants of the leisure complex. They perform their existence and refuse Interview, 7 October 2011. ‘These young people, and there are more and more, dance in t-shirts and jogging pants, on the beach, in the street or on a square […] Contemporary dance can be a form of expression for the most vulnerable category of youth in society. It represents a way of appropriating urban spaces’. 25 Mehdi, interview, 5 March 2011. 26 The ‘right to the city’ is a notion introduced to social sciences by Henri Lefebvre in 1968. For Lefebvre it signified a radical participatory urbanism including a right to centrality, not only spatially but in a social sense (Lefebvre, 2009). Today the term is mainly used in the reduced sense of a right to affordable housing in city centres. 23 24

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the margins of the city, where they would remain ‘invisible’. As in the west, the youth in Algiers use hip-hop culture to ‘answer back’ (Rose, 1994: 78) to processes of exclusion and stigmatization. In a similar way, the performance of parkour can be interpreted as a desire for recognition and liberty. The traceur simply passes any obstacle and this body in movement symbolizes freedom (Ortuzar, 2009: 59). In an era of globalization where capital flows but people can move less freely, mobility has become almost synonymous with freedom (Cresswell, 2000). Many of those I interviewed emphasized that the practice of these arts of movement makes them ‘feel free’.27 Dancing in public spaces or jumping over obstacles is not an act of resistance in the narrow sense of the word (Raby, 2005), yet such performances in public are about self-assertion. In addition, many of these young people become involved with youth clubs and associations and this can lead to youth activism and organized youth movements.

From Performing Arts of Movement to Participating in Youth Movements The most important event for the street dancers is the ‘Bataille de Mezghenna’, the biggest battle in Algiers. Some of the b-boys travel more than 1,000 kilometres to participate. They will stay at a friend’s home. We, the Breakers, are like a big community. You meet someone the first time and suddenly you add him to your friends – like on Facebook. Like that. We help each other. Once I went with some friends to Oran. On the way we had a breakdown and no more money. By chance we met some breakdancers from Oran, they immediately helped us and let us stay with them. They even gave us money to return to Algiers. So now, when they come to Algiers, they stay with us.28 The young people who practise capoeira, street dance or parkour develop group identities and create communities. The networks of such communities can range from the local to the global: local crews, national and international competitions, translocal networks on social media, etc. Clothes, style, crew names and rituals strengthen the group ethos among dancers, traceurs or capoeiristas. Habib designed a logo for his crew, Intik Parkour, for their t-shirts. Such group activities can lead to the foundation of an association. Arts of movement are thus not only about performing in public spaces, but also 27 28

Group interview with Intik Parkour, 11 March 2011. Mehdi, interview, 5 March 2011.

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about participation. Habib and his friends from Intik Parkour, for example, became members of Vision Jeunes: ‘we want to learn how to organize an association. Our aim is to found an Algerian parkour federation’.29 Vision Jeunes is an independent youth association founded by a group of friends who wanted to do something about the lack of facilities for the young in the Bologhine neighbourhood of Algiers. ‘We are fed up with the moustaches [people in power]’, said Amine.30 They talked about the difficulties they faced to become a registered association and expressed their discontent with being dependent on the ministry of youth and sports. However, they distanced themselves from the opposition movement of 2011. Like many young people, they do not feel represented by any of the opposition groups: ‘We want real change – from youth for youth’. They believe that they can contribute to changing political and social norms by fostering youth participation. The example of Intik Parkour shows how networks may connect artists with sociopolitical activists and thus create a bridge between the ‘arts of movement’ as a youth non-movement and emerging youth movements in the city. These links may play an important role in spreading a movement’s objective, as happened in the case of the Senegalese Y’en a Marre movement cited above. As indicated above, the Algerian government has discovered the utility of popular youth cultures as an instrument of integration. Many state-run youth associations offer lessons in street dance, capoeira or parkour. Street dance is also incorporated into the national ballet, and many young artists were employed to stage the large production Le Héro to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the revolution. The popularity of capoeira, street dance and parkour among the young is used by the government to transmit patriotism and to integrate young people into society. The degree of political dissent, or of non-movement forms of mobilization, emerging from the urban arts of movement depends on the authorities’ ability to accommodate the youth’s claim to ‘youthfulness’.

Conclusions In establishing parallels with US ghettos, Brazilian favelas or French banlieues, we can say that exclusion in Algeria is not only caused by the authoritarian ‘Arab’, regime, but also by processes resulting from neoliberalism. Practising the arts of movement can have empowering, even cathartic, effects, can in some cases lead to a professional career and have an effect on one’s 29 30

Habib, interview, 11 March 2011. Interview, 2 March 2011.

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relationship to public space. The empowering functions of these practices can contribute to maintaining, or challenging, the status quo. That is to say that they may function as an outlet for frustration and rage, and thus be used as a tool of compensation and integration by the authorities. Yet they can also be considered a subtle form of protest (if read in terms of a non-movement) which in turn may connect to a broader social movement that combines a claim to youthfulness ‘with the struggle to obtain democratic ideals’ (Bayat, 2010: 120). By accessing central spaces within the Algerian capital, representing themselves globally via social media and embracing what could be seen as an ideology of self-responsibility, the young empower themselves and thus are able to resist socio-spatial exclusion as well as dominant representations. Whether put to an integrating or oppositional function, these practices contribute to staging Algerian youth as endowed with agency and a creative autonomy that goes beyond the stereotypical image of the hittiste and harraga. The extent to which an empowered and self-confident youth contributes to supporting or challenging those in power cannot be answered simply. Yet their everyday struggle to make a living and to assert themselves means that young people are constantly demanding answers from the existing economic, social and political order.

Works Cited Adryen, Hocine. 2009. ‘Entre le grand banditisme et la criminalité: Alger fait peur la nuit’. L’Expression 27 July 2009. Available at http://www.lexpressiondz.com/ actualite/67682-Alger-fait-peur-la-nuit.html (consulted on 3 March 2011). Bayat, Asef. 2010. Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Bonnefoy, Laurent, and Myriam Catusse (eds). 2013. Jeunesses arabes. Du Maroc au Yémen: loisirs, cultures et politiques. Paris: La Découverte. Bouredji, Fella. 2011. ‘Ces jeunes qui veulent le changement. Actifs sur internet, présents sur le terrain’. El Watan 2 March. Available at http://www.djazairess. com/fr/elwatan/314192 (consulted on 3 March 2011). Braune, Ines. 2014. ‘Parkour: Jugendbewegung im urbanen Raum’. In Jörg Gertel and Rachid Ouaissa (eds), Urbane Jugendbewegungen. Widerstand und Umbrüche in der arabischen Welt. Bielefeld: Transcript: 354–68. Carlier, Omar. 1995. Entre Nation et Jihad. Histoire sociale des radicalismes algériens. Paris: Presses de Sciences Po. Cissokho, Thiat, and Sidy Cissokho. 2011. ‘Y’en a marre. Rap et contestation au Sénégal’. Multitudes 3.46: 26–34. Cresswell, Tim. 2000. ‘Falling down. Resistance as diagnostic’. In Sharp, Joanne

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et al. (eds), Entanglements of Power. Geographies of Domination/Resistance. London: Routledge: 256–68. Dris, Nassima. 2001. La Ville mouvementée. Espace public, centralité, mémoire urbaine à Alger. Paris: L’Harmattan. El-Kenz, Ali. 1996. ‘Youth and Violence’. In Stephen Ellis (ed.), Africa Now: People, Policies and Institutions. London: James Currey: 42–57. Elsheshtawy, Yasser. 2004. ‘The Middle East City: Moving beyond the Narrative of Loss’. In Yasser Elsheshtawy (ed.), Planning Middle Eastern Cities: An Urban Kaleidoscope in a Globalizing World. London: Routledge: 1–21. Fates, Youcef. 2009. Sport et Politique en Algérie. Paris: Harmattan. Franz, Fanon. 1965 [1959]. A Dying Colonialism. New York: Grove Press. ——. 1992 [1961]. Die Verdammten dieser Erde. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp. Fuggle, Sophie. 2008. ‘Discourses of Subversion: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Capoeira and Parkour’. The Journal of the Society for Dance Research 26.2: 204–22. Gertel, Jörg, and Rachid Ouaissa (eds). 2014. Urbane Jugendbewegungen. Widerstand und Umbrüche in der arabischen Welt. Bielefeld: Transcript. Guss, Nathan. 2011. ‘Parkour and the Multitude: Politics of a Dangerous Arts’. French Cultural Studies 22.1: 73–85. Herrera, Linda, and Asef Bayat (eds). 2010. Being Young and Muslim: New Cultural Politics in the Global South and North. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Honwana, Alcinda. 2012. The Time of Youth. Work Social Change, and Politics in Africa. Boulder, CO: Kumarian Press. ‘Immolation: je brûle, donc je suis’. 2011. El Watan Week-end 21 January: 2–3. Lefebvre, Henri. 2009 [1968]. Le Droit à la ville. Paris: Anthropos. Le Pape, Loïc. 2013. ‘Histoire de voir le temps passer. Les Hittistes algériens’. In Laurent Bonnefoy and Myriam Catusse (eds), Jeunesses arabes. Du Maroc au Yémen: loisirs, cultures et politiques. Paris: La Découverte: 42–52. Martinez, Luis. 1998. La Guerre civile en Algérie, 1990–1998. Paris: Karthala. Musette, M.S. (ed.). 2004. Les Jeunes et la santé en Algérie. Algiers: CREAD. ——. 1991. ‘L’espace social, comme instrument d’analyse de la condition juvénile en Algérie’. Jeunesse et Société, les Cahiers du CREAD 26.4–6: 25–48. Ortuzar, Jimena. 2009. ‘Parkour or l’art du déplacement: A Kinetic Urban Utopia’. TDR: The Drama Review 53.3: 54–66. Ouaissa, Rachid. 2014. ‘Jugend Macht Revolution: Die Genealogie der Jugendproteste in Algerien’. In Jörg Gertel and Rachid Ouaissa (eds), Jugendbewegungen. Widerstand und Umbrüche in der arabischen Welt. Bielefeld: Transcript: 114–26. Oussedik, Fatma. 2011. ‘L’Evaluation. Synthèse de l’étude réalisée de juillet à décembre 2010’. In Bilan du Conseil Artistique de la Création. 110–15.

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——. 2010. ‘Hip hop en Algérie – Evaluation du Ballet Nya’. Evaluation Report, Le Conseil Français de l’Art, Paris. ——. 2009. ‘D’Alger à Casablanca: de quelques stratégies culturelles d’appropriation de l’espace urbain au Maghreb’. In Fatma Oussedik and M. Boukella (eds), Le Maghreb à Naples. Algiers: CREAD: 89–108. ——. 2008. ‘Alger, dans un contexte mondial d’urbanisation’. In Fatma Oussedik (ed.), Raconte-moi ta ville. Essai sur l’appropriation culturelle de la ville d’Alger. Algiers: ENAG Editions: 19–59. Pál Pelbart, P. 2005. ‘Agonistische Räume und kollektive Biomacht’. In M. Ott and E. Uhl (eds), Denken des Raums in Zeiten der Globalisierung. Münster: Lit Verlag: 39–49. Raby, Rebecca. 2005. ‘What is Resistance?’ Journal of Youth Studies 8.2: 151–71. Rarrbo, Kamel. 1995. L’Algérie et sa jeunesse. Marginalisation et désarroi culturel. Paris: L’Harmattan. Rose, Tricia. ‘A Style Nobody Can Deal with: Politics, Style and Post-industrial City in Hip Hop’. In Andrew Ross and Tricia Rose (eds), Microphone Fiends. Youth Music and Youth Culture. New York and London: Routledge: 71–88. Thomson, David. 2008. ‘Jump City: Parkour and the Traces’, South Atlantic Quarterly 107.2: 251–63. Thorpe, Holly, and Nida Ahmad. 2013. ‘Youth, Action Sports and Political Agency in the Middle East: Lessons from a Grassroots Parkour Group in Gaza’. International Review for the Sociology of Sport 50.6: 1–27. Tlemcani, Salima. 2011. ‘La criminalité ordinaire, l’autre terrorisme’. El Watan 25 August. Available at http://forumdesdemocrates.over-blog.com/articleinsecurite-urbaine-la-criminalite-ordinaire-l-autre-terrorisme-82438529.html (consulted on 28 August 2011). Vergès, Meriem. 1997. ‘Genesis of a Mobilization: The Young Activists on Algeria’s Islamic Salvation Front’. In Joel Beinin and Joe Stork (eds), Political Islam: Essays from Middle East Report. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press: 292–308.

Sport in Algeria – from National Self-assertion to Anti-state Contestation Philip Dine

Sport in Algeria

Introduction: Sport and the Transnational Research on sport has traditionally prioritized the linkage between ‘sportization’ – understood as ‘the competitive, regularized, rationalized, and gendered bodily exertions of achievement sport’ (Maguire, 2007) – and both social modernity and the spread of nationalism. However, the rise of modern games was also intrinsically transnational: The globalization of sport ‘took off’ from the 1870s onwards, as the ‘games revolution’ colonized British imperial outposts […], the ‘global game’ of football underwent mass diffusion along British trading and educational routes […], and distinctive indigenous sports were forged as part of the invention of national traditions in emerging modern societies. (Giulianotti and Robertson, 2007: 108) While the British Empire may have dominated this process of diffusion, French pioneers also contributed significantly as sporting evangelizers, most obviously through the creation of international bodies and competitions which still dominate today’s globalized ‘sportscape’. The Olympic Games were inaugurated in their modern form in 1896 by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, operating through the Comité Olympique International (COI), which he had established in Paris in 1894. The football World Cup was launched in 1930 by Jules Rimet, President of the Fédération Internationale de Football 203

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Association (FIFA), which had been founded in Paris in 1904. These quadrennial mega-events were thus authentically French contributions to the sporting invention of tradition, providing the organizational framework for much that is most visibly transnational in modern sport. As a committed imperialist, Coubertin was determined to use sport for colonial ends. He campaigned, unsuccessfully, for the establishment of an African Games, which he went so far as to schedule provisionally for Algiers in 1925 (Auger, 2000: 65–66). By this date, the quintessentially Olympic sport of athletics had been durably implanted in France’s North African colonies, particularly in the sphere of distance running. The international competitive advantage resulting from this successful dissemination was highlighted by the victory of the Algerian-born Ahmed Boughera El Ouafi in the marathon at the 1928 (Amsterdam) Olympic Games, who became Africa’s first gold medallist, albeit in French colours (Gastaut, 2003: 10–11). Athletics would continue to be exploited for the purposes of colonial consolidation and imperial promotion in the decades that followed, culminating in the glittering career of the resolutely pro-French runner Alain Mimoun (born Ali Mimoun Ould Kacha), who followed in El Ouafi’s footsteps to win the marathon at the 1956 Olympic Games (Belal, 2000). This result ensured that the XVI Olympiad became an enduring symbol of French sporting success, despite the fact that, in the wake of that year’s Suez Crisis, ‘Lebanon, Iraq and Egypt boycotted the Melbourne Olympics in protest against the tripartite British-French-Israeli attack on Egypt’ (Dorsey, 2016: 4). In contrast to the integrative influence of athletics, football would become the focus of nationalist mobilization from the 1920s onwards, climaxing at the height of the war of independence in the call issued by the Tunis-based Front de Libération Nationale (FLN, National Liberation Front) to Algerian professionals playing in France to return to North Africa and join the revolutionary struggle (Abderrahim, 2008; Nait-Challal, 2008). These contrasting narratives of colonial appropriation and anti-colonial contestation help to explain the complex posterity of both athletics and football in independent Algeria, where the FLN sought systematically to manipulate sport as a means of state legitimation and national self-assertion in the period 1962–1988. However, transnational forces were already making their presence felt in Algerian sport, and became increasingly important in the wake of the events of ‘Black October’ in 1988. This contextual chronology intersects with important developments in scholarly approaches to sport that occurred in the 1980s as a result of the so-called ‘postmodern turn’. This paradigm shift encouraged a move away from explanations based on concepts of national character and social

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development, allowing a new appreciation of the fact that ‘sports are boundary crossers in ways that few realms of social life are […]. By “rescuing sport from the nation” […], new approaches located sports in transnationalism and observed them as they “travelled” across boundaries, drawing attention to colonialism, globalization, sport mega-events, labour migration, and so on’ (Besnier and Brownell, 2012: 444). This anthropologically informed understanding of sporting practices, locations and representations will be adopted as the broad conceptual framework for our own case study of sport and the transnational in Algeria.

Algerian Sport 1962–1988: State Legitimation and National Self-assertion Independent Algeria moved quickly to appropriate the ex-colonial sports system as a means of fostering domestic legitimacy and international recognition, according it remarkable importance. The first president, Ahmed Ben Bella, had played professional football for Olympique de Marseille, and was in attendance at an Algeria-Brazil international match on the eve of his ousting by Colonel Houari Boumediene in 1965 (Amara, 2014: 5). It was thus under Ben Bella’s military-backed successor that the FLN’s determination to establish complete control over the sporting sphere became apparent (Fates, 2009: 39). While this transformation of sporting institutions, structures and symbols was part of a broader process of cultural reconfiguration, it also sought to exploit sport’s proven capacity to generate enthusiasm for the nation-building project. The fledgling state’s significant investment in sports personnel and infrastructure depended on revenues from the nationalized oil and gas industries. In 1977, this linkage was reinforced by an administrative reorganization that entrusted the management of leading football clubs to state-run companies: ‘The reforms […] also aimed to abolish regionalism and chauvinism by attaching the names of the clubs to the values and the organizational culture of the companies that sponsored them rather than to the old regional (pre-colonial) identities’ (Amara, 2012b: 38). Among the clubs to undergo this enforced rebranding was Jeunesse Sportive de Kabylie (JSK, Sporting Youth of Kabylia), which became Jeunesse Électronique de Tizi-Ouzou (JET, Electronic Youth of Tizi-Ouzou). Consistently Algeria’s most successful side, the club has additionally served as a focus for a resilient Berber cultural specificity (Fates, 2009: 297). Resourceful supporters responded to the imposition of its industrial nomenclature between 1977 and 1989 ‘by declaring that JET stood for Jugurtha existe toujours, conflating Jugurtha’s resistance to Rome with current Kabyle opposition to the Algerian state’ (Maddy-Weitzman,

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2011: 228 n. 45).1 Now among Africa’s richest clubs, JSK retains its combined prestige as a competitive force and a symbolic tribune, despite significant difficulties with spectator violence, to which we shall return. As both an avowedly socialist state and a leading light in the non-aligned movement (whose fourth summit was held in Algiers in 1973), independent Algeria was able to draw upon the state-managed sports systems of its allies in the Soviet Bloc throughout the 1960s and 1970s (Amara, 2012b: 39). Such technical and financial support proved its worth in Algeria’s successful hosting of the Mediterranean Games in 1975, where, in the perfect finale to the football competition, held in the capital’s 5 July Stadium (whose name refers to the day of independence), the hosts beat France 3–2 in front of a capacity crowd of 70,000 spectators, including the now firmly entrenched president, Houari Boumediene. In the years that followed, football would cement its popularity with politicians and the public alike as the Algerian side performed impressively in a series of international competitions. These included the 1978 African Games (which Algeria won), the 1979 Mediterranean Games, the 1980 (Moscow) Olympics and the 1982 African Nations Cup. All of these achievements were dwarfed by Algeria’s stunning 2–1 victory over West Germany in the country’s first ever appearance at the 1982 (Spain) World Cup finals. However, a suspiciously convenient result in the final group match between the Germans and Austria allowed both countries to proceed to the knock-out phase of the competition: ‘Algerian fans furiously waved banknotes through the perimeter fence at the players’ (Goldblatt, 2006: 654). Nevertheless, the valiant performance of the national side was perceived as the clearest possible vindication of the country’s continuing investment in elite sport. As Amara notes, the ‘historic victory against Germany in 1982 was of course important for the FLN-state to maintain its supremacy and to manage the economic crisis provoked by the steady fall of Algeria’s currency and price of oil in the international market’ (2014: 5). As well as maintaining the practical and symbolic link with the war of liberation – ‘several former FLN players [from the 1958–1963 side] were part of the coaching staff in 1982’ (Doyle, 2010) – the team’s heroics in Spain also reflected a new openness on the part of Algeria’s selectors to footballers based Jugurtha (c.160–104 BCE) was a ruler of Numidia, the ancient kingdom that stretched across the northern part of modern Algeria and into Tunisia and Libya. He led his people against the Roman conquest between 112 and 106 BCE, when he was defeated and paraded in chains through the streets of Rome. Jugurtha is remembered today as a legendary figure and a model of resistance to foreign invasion, especially by North Africa’s Berber population (see Kadra-Hadjaji, 2013). 1

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outside the country, most obviously those plying their trade in the European leagues (Frenkiel and Bancel, 2008). In addition, team managers now looked to professionals born in France of Algerian parents, such as Nordine Kourichi (Yahi, 2010). Born near Lille, a traditional football breeding ground, Kourichi became the Algerian team’s central defender (1980–1986) and would go on to serve as its assistant manager (2011–2014). In his study of the composition and performance of the 1982 squad, Jean-Charles Scagnetti characterizes this ‘golden generation’ as a reflection of societal challenges that include particularly the Algerian state’s conflicted attitude to emigration (2008: 56). The specific phenomenon of player migration will be returned to later in the discussion, both in its traditional direction (i.e. towards Europe) and the more recent phenomenon of ‘reverse’ migration. The promise shown by Algerian football in 1982 seemed to be confirmed by the national side’s qualification for the 1986 (Mexico) World Cup. This positive impression was reinforced by the international acclaim now accorded to the player who had scored the opening goal in the famous victory over West Germany, Rabah Madjer. Having joined the Paris-based Racing Club in 1983, Madjer was next sold to the Portuguese champions FC Porto, with whom he won the European Cup in 1987. These achievements saw Madjer named African Footballer of the Year in 1987 and Player of the Tournament at the 1990 African Cup of Nations, which the Algerian side won having narrowly failed to qualify for that year’s World Cup in Italy. However, the political and military forces unleashed in 1990–1991 ensured that, as part of the civil war and the profound social and cultural upheaval that resulted, Algerian football would be obliged to live through its own ‘black decade’ – or, more accurately, two decades – only re-emerging as a force on the world stage with qualification for the 2010 (South Africa) and 2014 (Brazil) World Cup competitions.

From Nationalism to Islamism: Algerian Sport under Fire Paradoxically, the early 1990s saw Algerian sport achieve unprecedented prominence. The central figures involved were two athletes specializing in the 1,500 metres, often regarded as the blue riband event of international athletics, which they dominated in both the men’s and women’s competitions between 1991 and 1996. Leading the way was Hassiba Boulmerka, who won the World Championships in 1991 (Tokyo) and again in 1995 (Gothenburg), also triumphing at the 1992 (Barcelona) Olympics. She thus became ‘the first-ever woman from an African or Arab nation to win a world track-andfield championship and [independent] Algeria’s first-ever Olympic champion’

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(Kilcline, 2008: 35). These outstanding achievements were closely matched by those of Noureddine Morceli, who won the World Championships three times in succession in 1991, 1993 (Stuttgart) and 1995, as well as taking the Olympic gold at the 1996 (Atlanta) Games. However, the gendered reception of the two runners’ international success revealed political Islam’s ideological challenge to sporting modernity in an increasingly polarized society: ‘Morceli was feted as a national hero in his homeland, while Boulmerka had to leave Algeria to escape the abuse to which she was subjected, because her appearance and athletic prowess were perceived by sections of the Algerian public as being unsuitable for a Muslim woman’ (Kilcline, 2008: 35). In the wake of the 1991 World Championships, the hostility shown to Boulmerka extended to death threats that were all too credible in a country on the brink of civil war, thereby explaining the athlete’s decision to move to Berlin in preparation for the 1992 Olympics. Her subsequent triumph in Barcelona, at an event which coincidentally symbolized the renaissance of post-Franco Spain, encouraged international observers to draw broader conclusions about the athlete’s significance: ‘Certain commentators thus perceived her victories as a political statement and a form of emancipation for Mediterranean women, a fact she recognised herself following her victory in the World Championships in Tokyo’ (Kilcline, 2008: 35). By dedicating her gold medal ‘à toutes les Algériennes, à toutes les femmes arabes’ [to all Algerian women, to all Arab women], the new Olympic champion guaranteed that she would be severely criticized by the Islamists, but appears to have accepted that eventuality as part of her personal negotiation of her identity as a modern Muslim woman. Boulmerka’s case ‘offers us a paradigmatic assertion of difference’ (Morgan, 1998: 349), in that the antagonistic voices raised against her athletic attire, activities and achievements are indicative of a long-standing tension in Algeria between fundamentally incompatible conceptions of society. Indeed, in sport as in other spheres, the Islamic body may fruitfully be regarded as a site of cultural resistance to dominant constructions of both time and space: ‘in the Arab world we are challenged by the powerful discourse of western modernity, which claims its uniqueness, as a master signifier, in defining the meaning, and therefore the history and the territoriality (those who are in and those outside) of modern sport’ (Amara, 2012b: 6). The growing influence of the Islamists’ opposition to sporting activity, as part of its broader mobilization against the secular FLN state, was strikingly revealed in the contrasting reactions to Algeria’s outstanding male and female athletes. In the process, the traditionalist Muslim conceptions of the body, of appropriate social interaction and, especially, of gender relations would all be mobilized in opposition to the perceived invasion of alien physical practices

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and their supporting systems of belief (Fates, 2009: 231–39). Such cultural cleavages had rarely been to the fore in the sporting domain, either during the colonial period or in the first three decades of independence, despite the political mobilization of football during the liberation war. It was only with the post-1988 emergence of a radical alternative to the FLN’s social model, and to its continuing monopoly on power (Roberts, 2003: 53), that questions would be asked about the fundamental values underpinning the Algerian sports system. On the one hand, the Islamist movement’s insistence on the pre-modern transnationalism of the ummah, or worldwide Muslim community, presented a powerful spiritual riposte to the secular modernism of international sport. On the other, the Front Islamique du Salut (FIS, Islamic Salvation Front) and its successors looked to mobilize alienated Algerian youth by appealing pragmatically to affective mechanisms hitherto associated with sport, and football fandom in particular, such as identification with the team, hero worship and supporter self-esteem (Wann et al., 2001). The traditional authority and modern organizational resources of the primary religion of the Maghreb would thus be mobilized simultaneously through and against the physical culture not infrequently considered to be its second. In the early years of the nationalist struggle, sports clubs had appealed to Islam as a marker of their Algerian specificity: ‘Invariably linked to the Ulema [religious scholars], these clubs […] expressed nationalism through their names, their symbols, and their shirt strips’ (Evans, 2012: 63–64). In the 1980s and 1990s, Algeria’s Islamists would in turn appeal to the so-called hittistes or ‘wall-leaners’, young unemployed men whom they sought to mobilize by transforming the popular appeal of football into a tool of religious conversion: ‘The FIS draws its ideas from three registers: political, religious, and football-related … Every indication suggests that we are dealing more with fans than with believers in a religious movement under the control of leaders and acting in accordance with a clear and precise doctrinal line’ (Tozy, 1994: 58; cited by Martinez, 2000: 193).

Football and Youth-focused Contestation in Algerian Football The Islamists’ combination of ideological hostility to sport with a pragmatic appropriation of its affective force has been highlighted by influential cultural commentators. Thus, in his penetrating fictional account of the making of an Islamist assassin, A quoi rêvent les loups, Yasmina Khadra (Mohammed Moulessehoul) highlights the disillusionment of a former Olympic boxer as an indictment of a broader popular dissatisfaction with the corruption of the

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FLN-managed state, in sport as in other spheres (1999: 37–38). Such remarks constitute a sporting articulation of the prevailing sentiment of political, social and economic dispossession experienced by ‘Algerians in general and the young in particular’: ‘“Hogra”, “humiliation”, is the keyword that still sums up the existence of millions of Algerians’ (Evans and Phillips, 2007: 298). The varieties of sports-inflected violence generated in response to this collective sense of social injustice may productively be explored by considering football as a focus since 1988 for youth-focused anti-state mobilization. Having been endemic during the colonial period, violence was never far from Algerian football stadia throughout the 1960s and 1970s. It was to become ever more marked in the 1980s, when regular crowd disruption led to numerous injuries and even deaths, not infrequently spilling out of the stadium and on occasion requiring the intervention of the army to restore order. The 1987–1988 season was particularly troubled and may consequently be seen as a precursor of the riots to come (Fates, 2009: 280–81).2 Evans and Phillips thus note that ‘The football terraces, encapsulating as they did the huge chasm of unforgiving contempt between the rulers and the ruled, were the harbinger of October 1988’ (2007: 114; cited by Amara, 2012a: 45). In the wake of Black October, Islamists and other opponents of the regime would seek to mobilize football supporters, including both long-standing adversaries such as the Kabyle regionalists and the new political groupings legalized by President Chadli Bendjedid as part of his post-1988 democratic reforms, such as the Front des Forces Socialistes (FFS, Socialist Forces Front) and the Parti des Travailleurs (PT, Workers’ Party) (Amara, 2012a: 46). As Algeria moved inexorably towards civil war, sport was inevitably disrupted, and there was a sharp decline in competitive activity in the period 1993–1998, as well as in related travel by administrators, players and supporters, as the country became ever more dangerous. Notwithstanding the appeal of football to the FIS as a vector of radicalization, and in common with other areas of civil society, the sporting sphere would be subject to Islamist violence, which targeted both ordinary fans and public figures: Examples of prominent football personalities who became victims include Mr Rachid Haraigue, the president of the Algerian Football Federation assassinated on 23 January 1995, and before him the president of Bordj-Menaïel Football Club (eastern Algeria), Ali Tahanouti, murdered on 5 October 1994, and Dehimi Hocine ‘Yamaha’, a well-known fan of the The youth-led rioting of 5–11 October 1988 was the most serious challenge to the FLN-state since independence, resulting in serious disorder and some 500 deaths in Algiers and other urban centres. 2

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[Algiers-based] football team Chebab Belouizdad (CRB) on 11 June 1995. (Amara, 2012a: 47) The death of the CRB’s totemic supporter prompted a high-cultural intervention by novelist Rachid Boudjedra. Having previously celebrated the FLN’s use of football as an anti-colonial theatre of war in his novel Le Vainqueur de coupe (1981), Boudjedra defended sport as part of a broader cultural modernity in his polemical essay FIS de la haine: ‘Le FIS était prêt à éradiquer […] toute la culture contemporaine. Interdits la musique, le théâtre, la littérature, le sport, le cinéma, tout, quoi!’ (1992: 111). 3 This work’s critique of Islamism led to a fatwa calling for the author’s death in 1993, which was in turn reflected in his semi-autobiographical novel La Vie à l’endroit (1997), where football provides a counterpoint to the depiction of the protagonist (an abbreviation of Rachid) Rac’s life on the run. Boudjedra’s La Vie à l’endroit covers a two-month period, beginning with the victory celebrations of CR Belouizdad – formerly CR Belcourt and one of the country’s most successful clubs, despite having its roots in one of the capital’s poorest suburbs – following its triumph in the 1995 Algerian Cup Final. The ensuing celebrations are presented as authentically carnivalesque in their overturning of regulations and hierarchies, and are presided over by the aforementioned ‘Yamaha’. The club mascot is the incarnation of a festive spirit of rebellion unconsciously but effectively subverting the doubly repressive ideologies and apparatuses of the authoritarian FLN state and its aspiring Islamist replacement (Boudjedra, 1997: 14). Watching the festivities from behind the curtains of the apartment where he is hiding, or following them, dangerously but compulsively, in disguise in the street, Rac finds an antidote to his own fears, which are juxtaposed throughout with traumatic memories of the past, including the 1954–1962 conflict. When it comes, the fictionalized death of Dehimi Hocine, an unlikely sporting and political hero, is all the more tragic, and is perceived as such by the grieving local population (Boudjedra, 1997: 67). In such murderous circumstances, the only alternative for many young Algerians seeking escape from el hogra would appear to be el haraga, literally ‘the burning’ – of former identities along with identity papers – associated with clandestine migration and ensuing European exile. However individually and socially disruptive this relocation might be, if and when it is actually achieved, there can be little doubt of the intensity of Algerian football fans’ longing for the foreign territories associated with such celebrated clubs as ‘The FIS was ready to wipe out […] contemporary culture in its entirety. Music was banned, theatre, literature, sport, cinema, everything!’ 3

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Real Madrid and AC Milan. This is evidenced by the remarkably elegiac stadium songs collected and analysed by Mahfoud Amara, the titles of which underline the singers’ yearning for new lands and new lives: ‘L’espanya eddina ya al-bahri’ [Take us to Spain with you, sailor], ‘Ya al bahri ya al bahri’ [Oh sailor … oh sailor], ‘Fi al babor’ [In the boat], ‘Ya les jeunes ya les jeunes’ [Come on, young people], ‘Fi l’Algérie maranache aichiine’ [In Algeria we are not alive], ‘Maakaditch enniiche’ [I cannot live here … I cannot] (2012a: 51–54). It is consequently to the sporting manifestations of displacement and diaspora that we shall now turn.

Sport and the Diaspora The winner of the prize for the best album at the Festival International de la Bande Dessinée d’Angoulême in 1991 was Le Chemin de l’Amérique, illustrated by Baru (Hervé Barulea) and written by Jean-Marc Thévenet. Set during the latter years of the French presence in Algeria, this graphic novel tells the story of fictional boxer Saïd Boudiaf, from his first fights in his hometown of Philippeville (modern Skikda), via increasingly important bouts in Algiers and Paris, to his becoming European champion. Recognized as a rising star in the United States, Boudiaf is scheduled to fight there for the world championship, when he is caught up in the historic Algerian demonstration in the French capital of 17 October 1961, and may (or may not) have fallen victim to the savage police repression that ensued. Although a French production, this work underlines the importance of athletic migration throughout the colonial period and since, as part of a broader sporting reflection of the Algerian diaspora. Its narrative is particularly suggestive of the career of Chérif Hamia, a talented featherweight who won the 1953 Golden Gloves in Chicago before turning professional, going on to become champion of France in 1954 and to challenge unsuccessfully for the world title against the BritishNigerian champion Hogan Bassey in Paris in 1957 (Rauch, 1992: 243). While there can be no doubting the contemporary visibility of French competitors of Algerian heritage such as Mahiedine Mekhissi-Benabbad in athletics and Rabah Slimani in rugby union, the itineraries of professional footballers remain the clearest indicators of the workings of today’s globalized sports system. More specifically, the career choices of Franco-Algerian players reveal characteristic compromises between personal affiliation and professional pragmatism that serve to highlight their liminal situation, both as individuals and as representatives of their families and communities. The question of sporting nationality continues to be a vexed one for French footballers of Algerian heritage. By far the best-known example of such dual-qualified players is Zinedine Zidane, who was pivotal to the triumph

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of the host nation’s black-blanc-beur team in the 1998 (France) World Cup. As Laurent Dubois has rightly pointed out with regard to this competitive success, which has been extensively analysed in terms of its societal significance and its subsequent political appropriation, ‘it also represented the arrival of a global brand: Zidane’ (2010: 169). Coming out of retirement eight years later to take France to an unexpected World Cup decider against Italy, the eventual champions, the megastar would end his international career in violence and expulsion – what is more, in the racially charged setting of the 1936 (Berlin) Olympic Stadium – but would not, for all that, depart in disgrace. Hailed as a national treasure by President of the Republic Jacques Chirac on the team’s return to France, the player would be even more proudly paraded just a few months later by Chirac’s Algerian counterpart, Abdelaziz Bouteflika. While the footballer was officially there to support a local charity, and to accompany his parents on a return to their homeland, the trip took on all the trappings of a tour by a visiting head of state (Gastaut, 2008). Bouteflika had been elected to the presidency in 1999 and again in 2004, and had held successful referendums aimed at promoting civil concord and national reconciliation in 1999 and 2005 respectively (Amara, 2012a: 47). As a wily political operator, he now made use of the ‘soft power’ of sporting celebrity to underline Algeria’s emergence from the dark years of the civil war and the restoration of something approaching social and political normality. Following in Zidane’s giant footsteps, other Franco-Algerian footballers have sought individual solutions to the conflicts of identity posed by sporting globalization. This picture is further complicated by the continuing flow of African footballers, both Maghrebi and sub-Saharan, towards the professional leagues of Europe, especially those of France and Belgium. Commenting on this persistent pattern of migration, the Annual Review of the European Football Players’ Labour Market (2008) noted that ‘This result confirms the importance of the continuity of bonds inherited from the history of territories in the geographical configuration of flows, even within the context of globalization’ (cited by Poli, 2010: 1005–06). At the individual level, what such movements mean is significant choices for star players, as summed up by Karim Benzema, who was born in Lyon and played with distinction for that city’s leading club between 2004 and 2009, before moving to the Spanish giants Real Madrid. In an interview with Radio Monte Carlo in 2006, he explained his choice of sporting nationality: ‘L’Algérie c’est le pays de mes parents, c’est dans mon cœur, mais sportivement, je jouerai en équipe de France’ (cited by Bouchafra-Hennequin, 2008: 25).4 More recently, the case ‘Algeria is my parents’ country, it’s in my heart, but when it comes to sport, I will play for the French team’. 4

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of another lyonnais local hero generated considerable media and public interest, on both sides of the Mediterranean, when Nabil Fékir was named in the Algerian senior squad in 2015. However, Fékir withdrew in order to play for France instead, underlining the competitive and commercial realities of decision-making by such dual-qualified players. Nevertheless, enough French-born players of migrant heritage have opted to play for Algeria to allow the national team to re-establish itself on the world stage after the dark years of the civil war. Having performed creditably on their return to the World Cup finals in South Africa in 2010, Les Fennecs made history in the 2014 competition in Brazil, when they qualified for the knock-out stage for the first time.5 Managed by the inspirational former Yugoslavian star Vahid Halilhodžić, the Algerian side were only eliminated after extra time by Germany, the eventual winners. Had Algeria emerged victorious from this nerve-wracking encounter, they would have gone on to a quarter-final match against France, quite possibly with significant social consequences in both countries. As in 2010, the 2014 side was remarkable not only for its achievements, but also for its composition, which was characterized by reverse migration. In both cases, more than two-thirds of the Algerian team were French-born, including many who had represented France at youth level, leading Mustapha Kessous to ask, in Le  Monde, ‘L’Algérie, l’autre équipe de France?’ [Is Algeria France’s other team?] (2010). As we shall see in the final section, the issue of player mobility has also been marked by both disturbing continuities and destabilizing changes in ­contemporary Algerian football.

Back to the Future? Media Innovation and the Persistence of Supporter Violence Generating enthusiasm both in Algeria and France – and, indeed, around the footballing world – the 2014 Algerian team faced challenges that, through their mediatization, highlight the difficulties routinely encountered by elite athletes who seek to remain true to personal convictions and communal traditions. Thus, press attention at the team headquarters in Brazil focused not on playing matters, but rather on the fact that the World Cup coincided with the holy month of Ramadan, raising the thorny issue of fasting obligations for the Algerian players and their coach Vahid Halilhodžić: ‘The Bosnia-born Muslim listened to the question from an English-speaking journalist and then promptly exploded, threatening to walk out of his news conference, Algeria’s national football team is nicknamed El Khadra in Arabic or Les Verts in French, as well as Les Fennecs, after the desert foxes of the Sahara. 5

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calling the question disrespectful and claiming the Algerian media are trying to ruin his image and that of his family’ (Meeneghan, 2014). In the event, no straight answer would be forthcoming from the Algerian camp, although Halilhodžić’s surprise departure shortly after his team’s very successful World Cup campaign once again raised this ongoing feud. After being in the national hot seat between 2011 and 2014, the Bosnian left to pick up on a strikingly nomadic career that has taken him at various times from Raja Casablanca to Rennes, and from Jeddah to Japan. The Algerian leg of this transnational odyssey took place against the backdrop of the thoroughgoing transformation of the North Africa ‘mediascape’ that had begun in the early 1990s, through the combined impacts of satellite technology, the privatization of media ownership and political democratization (Ziyati and Akindes, 2014). Together, these innovations allowed transnational media corporations to gain access to the Maghreb’s airwaves, with companies broadcasting either in the language of the former colonial power (in the case of the French CanalSat Horizons company, from 1990 onwards) or in Arabic (in the case of the Qatari Al Jazeera Sports company, from 2003), thus enabling both accessibility and, thanks to their common foregrounding of football, wide popularity (Ziyati and Akindes, 2014: 39). The growing availability of these and other transnational satellite services would have significant implications in terms of cost, with the result that many North African sports fans had recourse to pirated European broadcasts, made possible by the region’s geographical proximity, including the output of French, German and Swiss broadcasters (Ziyati and Akindes, 2014: 43). Nevertheless, the power of today’s global media corporations is such that, as Ziyati and Akindes note: ‘It is Al Jazeera Sports that has the monopoly in the region. Al Jazeera has acquired rights to almost every football game beamed into North African homes. […] Piracy becomes a tactic for fans to evade the tight grip of Al Jazeera’ (2014: 46). In the global sports system, Algerian football fans must consequently pay (or evade) a commercial charge for following their local and national representatives, as well as such enthusiastically supported European proxies as Real Madrid and AC Milan, among the many European clubs which themselves now have significant links to media corporations. They must also pay a colonial linguistic price, if following matches in French, or a cultural one, if following them through Arabic-language broadcasts originating in the Gulf States rather than the Maghreb (Ziyati and Akindes, 2014: 39 and 47). In this way, television spectatorship may, in and of itself, serve to exacerbate feelings of alienation and dispossession. New technologies and new competitions – such as the intensively mediatized Confederation of African Football (CAF) and Union of European

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Football Associations (UEFA) Champions Leagues – have combined with new varieties of player and supporter mobility to encourage a reconfiguration of sporting fandom. The increasingly transnational character of Algerian football is consequently reflected not only in the international itineraries of leading players, but also in rapidly evolving supporter affiliations, both in the country itself and among the Algerian diaspora. These changing patterns of football-inflected identification were foregrounded in a particularly dramatic fashion at the Stade de France on 6 October 2001. On that night, former star Rabah Madjer, who had taken over the management of the national side in 1999, was in charge for Algeria’s historic first match against the full French side. With Les Bleus leading Les Verts by four goals to one, this highly charged encounter was abandoned following a pitch invasion by Algerian supporters, who were predominantly young French citizens of migrant heritage from the disadvantaged suburbs or banlieues of Paris and other major cities. While the disruption was effective, it was not actually violent, serving rather to highlight the frustrations of young Franco-Algerians in the face of their ongoing marginalization, as well as underscoring the limitations of sport as a solution to broader political failures of social cohesion (Amara, 2006). Meanwhile, in Algeria itself, even more fundamental questions were being asked of what was now, inescapably, an irreversibly globalized condition of sporting modernity. As James Dorsey has argued, ‘Soccer in North Africa is a high-stakes political contest between fans and autocrats for control of the pitch. Participants in the game bank on the fact that only soccer can capture a deep-seated emotion, passion, and commitment similar to that evoked by Islam among a majority of the population in the region’s post-revolt and autocratic states’ (Dorsey, 2014: 50). In the Algerian context, this ongoing struggle has exacerbated an entrenched tradition of violence, both on and off the pitch, which has essentially remained uninterrupted since the colonial period. This issue came to international prominence, at least in the sports pages, when the Algerian Football Federation took the decision to suspend its league championship indefinitely in the wake of the death, on 23 August 2014, of Albert Ebossé Bodjongo, a player with the iconic JS Kabylie club. While reports of the incident are not wholly consistent, it would seem that the Cameroonian striker was fatally injured by a stone thrown by a JSK supporter as the home fans protested against their side’s defeat by the visiting USM Algiers club. In a cruel twist, it was Bodjongo who had scored JSK’s only goal that day. Among other sanctions imposed on the club, its players and its supporters, the football authorities also ordered the indefinite closure of the Tizi Ouzou stadium, named after the 1 November 1954 uprising against the French (Randall, 2014; Mezahi, 2015).

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Although league matches were resumed three weeks later, the broader symbolism of this event was widely debated, both in Algeria and further afield: It would be facile to link one dreadful incident to disillusion among Algerians to [sic] the social and political malaise arising from 15 years of rule by Abdelaziz Bouteflika. […] Doubts about his capacity for office [nevertheless] chip away at the credibility of his instruments of state as they confront the sort of violence that ended Bodjongo’s life and cannot be written off as an isolated act. (Randall, 2014) Nor is such violence simply the preserve of disgruntled regionalists, as evidenced by the belligerent ultra-nationalism that has traditionally accompanied international matches between Algeria and the region’s other footballing powerhouse, Egypt. The qualifying matches for the 2010 (South Africa) World Cup, in which Algeria ultimately prevailed, are a particularly striking case in point. Commenting on the serious public disorder and major diplomatic incidents provoked by the encounters, James Dorsey suggests that ‘The nationalist fervour they whipped up brought the world to the brink of a soccer-inspired conflict for the first time since the 1969 football war between Honduras and El Salvador, with violent clashes erupting between Egyptian and Algerian fans on three continents’ (2014: 53; Dorsey, 2016: 18–19). This was transnational sport with a vengeance, reflecting among other things growing Algerian frustration at Egypt’s perceived dominance of the Arab cultural sphere, in fields ranging from the Arabic language – historically, Egyptian educators had played a leading role in Boumediene’s project of state-managed Arabization – to sport, exemplified by the commercial sponsorship of Algerian football teams by foreign mobile phone operators, led by Djezzy, a subsidiary of the Egyptian company Orascom. These and other expressions of what appeared to be Cairo-backed cultural imperialism ‘revived anti-colonial sentiments among Algerians, not against the traditional ex-coloniser (France) but against the new threat to “Algerian unity”, i.e., the Egyptian regime (President Mubarak’s family and the Egyptian business cartel)’ (Amara, 2011:  344).

Conclusion: Algeria in the Global Sports System In his groundbreaking postcolonial novel Things Fall Apart (1958), the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe placed sport, in the form of traditional wrestling, at the heart of his narration of the clash between colonialism and communal identities, social structures and belief systems. Following

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this inspirational model, our own discussion has sought to highlight some of the ways in which modern games contributed first to the French imperial project in the Maghreb and then to anti-colonial resistance. In Algeria, sport consequently played a role both in colonial consolidation from the 1840s and in nationalist mobilization from the 1920s. The FLN’s manipulation of sport during the war of liberation would be followed by its use post-1962 as a means of state legitimation and national self-assertion. Since 1988, football has additionally been a focus for continuing Kabyle self-assertion and more recent youth-focused contestation. This follows a pattern established as early as 1976, when JSK supporters at the Algerian Cup Final greeted the head of state with cries of ‘À bas Boumediene’ [down with Boumediene] and then booed the national anthem, in what has been seen a harbinger of the Berber Spring of 1980 (Lagarde, 2011: 40). Such developments have both important diasporic elements and some striking cultural reflections. The international mobility of Algerian professional players, including the phenomenon of reverse migration, is another significant aspect of the broader globalization of sport in the country. In fact, the most accurate representation of contemporary Algeria’s sportscape is suggested by what David Andrews and Andrew Grainger have called ‘organic sporting glocalization’. They define this phenomenon as ‘the process whereby either globalized or internationalized sport practices (depending on their spatial reach) become incorporated into local (communal, regional, but primarily national) sporting cultures and experienced as authentic or natural (hence organic) signs of cultural collectivity’ (Andrews and Grainger, 2007: 485; see also Ritzer, 2007: 141–42). While football has undoubtedly provided the primary focus for such locally specific identity construction and self-affirmation, athletics has also been important in the period since 1988, most obviously as regards the abiding legacy of the country’s contrasting – and multiply gendered – reception of the Olympic and World Championship victories of Hassiba Boulmerka and Nourredine Morceli. Indeed, it is on the running track that sporting modernity has intersected in the most obviously distinctive ways with both older and more contemporary varieties of the transnational. Thus, in today’s Algeria, sport remains one of the primary expressions of collective identity, both as a traditional and state-endorsed manifestation of nationalism and, increasingly, as a vector of contestation for the diverse anti-government forces released by the bloody events of October 1988.

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Doyle, Paul. 2010. ‘The Day in 1982 When the World Wept for Algeria’. Guardian 13 June. Dubois, Laurent. 2010. Soccer Empire: The World Cup and the Future of France. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Evans, Martin. 2012. Algeria: France’s Undeclared War. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Evans, Martin, and John Phillips. 2007. Algeria: Anger of the Dispossessed. London: Yale University Press. Fates, Youcef. 2009. Sport et politique en Algérie. Paris: L’Harmattan. Frenkiel, Stanislas, and Nicolas Bancel. 2008. ‘The Migration of Professional Algerian Footballers to the French Championship, 1956–82: The “Desire for France” and the Prevailing National Contexts’. International Journal of the History of Sport 25.8: 1031–50. Gastaut, Yvan. 2003. ‘Ahmed Bouguera El Ouafi (1899–1959)’, Migrance 22: 10–11. ——. 2008. ‘Le “voyage officiel” de Zinedine Zidane en Algérie ou le retour du fils prodige’. Migrance 29: 60–72. Giulianotti, Richard, and Roland Robertson. 2007. ‘Recovering the Social: Globalization, Football and Transnationalism’. Global Networks 7.2: 166–86. Goldblatt, David. 2006. The Ball is Round: A Global History of Football. London: Penguin. Kadra-Hadjaji, Haouaria. 2013. Jugurtha, un Berbère contre Rome. Algiers: Barzakh. Kessous, Mustapha. 2010. ‘L’Algérie, l’autre équipe de France’. Le Monde 18 June. Khadra, Yasmina (Mohammed Moulessehoul). 1999. A quoi rêvent les loups. Paris: Julliard. Kilcline, Cathal. 2008. ‘The Mediterranean Games: Olympic Event, Olympic Values?’ Journal of Olympic History 16.2: 33–40. ——. 2013. ‘Constructing and Contesting the (Post-)National Sporting Hero: Media, Money, Mobility and Marie-José Pérec’. French Cultural Studies 25.1: 82–100. Lagarde, Dominique, with Akram Belkaïd and Benjamin Stora. 2011. Algérie, la désillusion: 50 ans d’indépendance. Paris: L’Express. Martinez, Luis. 2000. The Algerian Civil War, 1990–1998. New York: Columbia University Press. Maddy-Weitzman, Bruce. 2011. The Berber Identity Movement and the Challenge to North African States. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Maguire, Joseph. 2007. ‘Sportization’. In George Ritzer, Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology (online edition). http://www.blackwellreference.com/public/ tocnode?id=g9781405124331_chunk_g978140512433125_ss1-242 (consulted on 8 May 2017).

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Meeneghan, Gary. 2014. ‘World Cup Diary Day 19: Ramadan off the agenda for Algeria’. The National (Abu Dhabi) 1 July. http://www.thenational.ae/blogs/kitbag/world-cup-diary-day-19-ramadan-off-the-agenda-for-algeria (consulted on 8 May 2017). Mezahi, Maher. 2015. ‘JS Kabylie’s Return after Albert Ebossé’s Death Shows Lessons Have Not Been Learned’. Guardian 26 February. https://www.theguardian. com/football/2015/feb/26/albert-ebosse-js-kabylie-alegria-nothing-changed (consulted on 8 May 2017). Morgan, William J. 1998. ‘Hassiba Boulmerka and Islamic Green: International Sports, Cultural Differences, and the Postmodern Interpretation’. In Geneviève Rail, Sport and Postmodern Times. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press: 345–66. Nait-Challal, Michel. 2008. Dribbleurs de l’indépendance: l’incroyable histoire de l’équipe de football du FLN algérien. Paris: Prolongations. Poli, Raffaele. 2010. ‘African Migrants in Asian and European Football: Hopes and Realities’. Sport in Society 13.6: 1005–06. Randall, Colin. 2014. ‘All across North Africa, the Beautiful Game Turns Ugly’. The National (Abu Dhabi) 31 August. http://www.thenational.ae/opinion/ comment/all-across-north-africa-the-beautiful-game-turns-ugly (consulted on 8 May 2017). Rauch, André. 1992. Boxe, violence du XXe siècle. Paris: Aubier. Ritzer, George. 2007. The Globalization of Nothing 2. London: Sage. Roberts, Hugh. 2003. The Battlefield: Algeria, 1988–2002 – Studies in a Broken Polity. London: Verso. Scagnetti, Jean-Charles. 2008. ‘Coupe du monde 1982: les internationaux algériens et leur équipe nationale’. Migrance 29: 45–58. Tozy, Mohammed. 1994. ‘Les tendances de l’islamisme en Algérie’. Confluences Méditerranée 12: 51–54. Wann, Daniel et al. 2001. Sport Fans: The Psychology and Social Impact of Spectators. New York: Routledge. Yahi, Naïma. 2010. ‘Nordine Kourichi, international algérien’. In Claude Boli, Yvan Gastaut and Fabrice Grognet, Allez la France: Football et Immigration. Paris: Gallimard / Cité Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration / Musée National du Sport: 109. Ziyati, Ali, and Gerard Akindes. 2014. ‘It’s All About the Beautiful Game of Football, or Is It? On Television and Football in North Africa’. In Chuka Onwumechili and Gerard Akindes, Identity and Nation in African Football: Fans, Community and Clubs. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan: 36–49.

Beyond France-Algeria: The Algerian Novel and the Transcolonial Imagination1 Olivia C. Harrison

Beyond France-Algeria

The Postcolonial Algerian Novel Reading through studies of Francophone Algerian literature published in the last 30 years, one might be forgiven for thinking that the colonization of Algeria by France remains the defining feature of the Algerian imagination, decades after Albert Memmi and Malek Haddad first theorized the predicament of the Francophone Maghrebi writer, inextricably caught in the ‘colonial relation’ by virtue of his or her language of expression (Memmi, 1985: 157).2 More than any other genre the Algerian novel has been read as a response to Algeria’s colonial past and as a proving ground for the articulation of a postcolonial national identity. As early as 1966, the Moroccan poet Abdellatif Laâbi wrote in the pages of the decolonial journal Souffles that ‘a large part of this literature has remained […] a literature of Sections of this chapter originally appeared under the title ‘For a Transcolonial Reading of the Contemporary Algerian Novel’ (Contemporary French and Francophone Studies 20.1: 102–10). I am grateful to the editors of CFFS for allowing me to expand on that article here. 2 I prefer the term ‘colonial relation’ to ‘colonial relationship’, Howard Greenfeld’s more idiomatic rendering of ‘relation coloniale’ (Memmi 1965: 145), because it better emphasizes the dialectical nature of the bind tying the colonizer to the colonized. All translations are my own unless otherwise noted. 1

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colonized subjects, in spite of its revolutionary character’ (2016: 71). More generous with his elders, Laâbi’s contemporary Abdelkebir Khatibi read the Algerian novel in particular as a vehicle for ‘national construction’ (1968: 17).3 Contemporary critics have therefore focused on the ways in which the Algerian novel has represented, engaged with or subverted Algeria’s colonial past and negotiated the legacies of colonial rule, most notably the central role that the French language and French publication and distribution networks continue to play in the Algerian field of letters, pace Memmi’s claim that ‘la littérature colonisée de langue européenne semble condamnée à mourir jeune’ (1985: 130).4 The rich archive of Algerian novels written in French in the twentieth and early twenty-first century apparently confirms the centrality of the colonizer/ colonized dyad analysed by Memmi in the 1950s. From Kateb Yacine’s anticolonial allegory Nedjma (1956) to Kamel Daoud’s acclaimed riposte to Albert Camus’s L’Étranger (1957), Meursault, contre-enquête (2013), the Algerian novel seems to be caught in a dialectical relationship with the former colonizer, France. In this sense, it is symptomatic of what we might call the postcolonial relation, updating Memmi’s terms to include the postcolonial present. Most evident in the case of novels that directly grapple with Algeria’s colonial history – Tahar Djaout’s Les Chercheurs d’os (1984) or Yasmina Khadra’s Ce que le jour doit à la nuit (2008) – the colonial past also weighs heavily on the literature of la décennie noire, the ‘black decade’ that followed the popular revolts of the late 1980s. Assia Djebar’s Le Blanc de l’Algérie (1995) is exemplary in this regard, splicing memories of the Algerian war of independence into a tribute to murdered writers that implicates colonial violence in the exactions of the postcolonial era. Why revisit the violence of the past ‘dans une nuit algérienne qui n’est plus coloniale’,5 Djebar rhetorically asks of the reader (1985: 235)? Because this war, too, demands that the writer speak up for a ‘civil peace’, as did ‘Camus le premier qui a senti la fissure étrange, au cœur même d’une guerre pourtant coloniale, de vivre celle-ci comme une guerre civile!’ (121).6 ‘Peut-être, d’ailleurs’, she adds: Though Laâbi and Khatibi were writing about Maghrebi literature and the Maghrebi novel, respectively, the Algerian novel is emblematic of the colonial relation in their studies. See for example Chapter 6 of Khatibi’s Le Roman maghrébin, which is devoted to the Algerian novel and the war of independence. 4 ‘Colonized literature in European languages appears condemned to die young’ (Memmi, 1965: 111). To cite only a few titles that privilege postcolonial readings of the Algerian novel, see Bonn (1985); Woodhull (1993); Bensmaïa (2003). 5 ‘In an Algerian night that is no longer colonial’ (Djebar, 2000: 221). 6 ‘Camus the first to feel the strange fissure, at the very heart of what was 3

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me vois-je plongée, enfoncée dans un passé de presque quarante ans, parce que dans la ville d’Alger qui va aborder l’année 57, la mécanique de la violence et du carnage s’exerce sensiblement selon le même schéma qu’aujourd’hui: d’un côté comme de l’autre, des déclencheurs de la mort – les uns au nom de la légalité, mais avec mercenaires et stipendiaires, les autres, au nom de la justice historique – ou anhistorique, transcendantale et donc avec à la fois, des illuminés et des ‘démons’. Entre ces deux bords, d’où claquent les armes, d’où sortent les poignards, un champ est ouvert à l’infini où tombent des innocents, beaucoup trop d’humbles gens et un certain nombre d’intellectuels. (122)7 Recent novels such as Anouar Benmalek’s Le Rapt (2009) and Rachid Boudjedra’s Le Printemps (2014) – a novel to which I return in the concluding section of this chapter – are similarly built as a house of mirrors, refracting the black decade of the 1990s upon the Algerian revolution in a multilayered and multidirectional excavation of the colonial past.8 If the Algerian novel no longer occupies the frontlines of ‘cultural combat’ against French colonialism, it remains one of the most productive sites for thinking through the legacies of colonial rule.9 Put simply, the Algerian novel is postcolonial, not in the simple sense that it follows Algerian independence chronologically, but because it is pre-eminently concerned with ‘Francenevertheless a colonial war, of experiencing it as if it were a civil war.’ (Djebar, 2000: 114). This translation fails to emphasize that what Camus was the first to see was the ‘civil’ (that is internal) nature of colonial warfare. The following translation better renders Djebar’s intended emphasis: ‘Camus was the first to feel the strange fissure, at the very heart of what was nevertheless a colonial war, of experiencing it as if it were a civil war.’ 7 ‘Besides which, perhaps if I see myself plunging deeply into a past forty years old, it’s because in the town of Algiers at the start of the year ’57 the mechanics of violence and carnage correspond very largely to the schema practiced today: on one side as on the other, unleashers of death – on one side in the name of the law, but using mercenaries and hirelings, on the other in the name of a historical justice which is often ahistorical and transcendental, and thus incorporating both its illuminati and its “demons.” Between these two extremes, from where the clash of arms is born, from where the daggers are drawn, there opens onto infinity a field on which the innocent fall – far too many ordinary people and a certain number of intellectuals’ (Djebar, 2000: 115). 8 My use of the term ‘multidirectional’ is indebted to Rothberg’s influential study of ‘multidirectional memory’, with which I engage at some length below (2009). 9 I adapt the phrase ‘cultural combat’ from Frantz Fanon’s writings on national culture (2002: 233).

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Algeria’, the fractal composite so productively – and provocatively – analysed by scholars such as Etienne Balibar (1999), Mireille Rosello (2001) and Todd Shepard (2006), who in different ways have critiqued ‘the invention of decolonization’ on both shores of the Mediterranean (Shepard, 2006). Notwithstanding the important critiques that were almost immediately brought to bear upon the term postcolonial after it appeared in Anglophone academic discourse (Shohat, 1992; McClintock, 1992; Dirlik, 1994), no other expression adequately captures the persistence, transformation and legacies of colonialism in the present.10 As my title suggests, however, I would like to argue that the critical focus on the postcolonial Algerian novel – postcolonial in this more sharply critical, rather than chronological, sense – hides from view concerns that take us beyond France-Algeria, concerns that were present already in the immediate aftermath of colonial rule and have only grown in importance over the last few decades. Zooming out to cast a sweeping gaze upon Algerian literature written in the decades following independence, it becomes clear that the vectors of postcolonial critique are not limited to a south–north axis. They are, rather, multiple, multidirectional and ‘transcolonial’, establishing solidarity with heterogeneous struggles across the colonized and formerly colonized world in a crossed critique of colonialism.11 The example of Kateb Yacine is particularly instructive in this regard. If the cycle de Nedjma exemplifies the centrality of the colonial relation in Algerian literature, Kateb has also testified to the importance of Vietnam and Palestine in the genesis of his œuvre, from his earliest writings to the popular plays he staged in the 1970s and ’80s, which sketch a fresco of world revolutions spanning the Amazigh resistance of the eighth century and the Vietnamese, Algerian and Palestinian revolutions of the twentieth.12 More recently, writers as diverse as Ahlam Mosteghanemi, Anouar Benmalek, Yasmina Khadra, Salim Bachi and In their introduction to the edited volume Francophone Postcolonial Studies: A Critical Introduction, Charles Forsdick and David Murphy defend the usefulness of the term ‘postcolonial’ in similar terms, citing the case of France and Algeria as paradigmatic: ‘Although both countries were henceforth chronologically “post-colonial”, their relationship remained a “postcolonial” one, influenced by continuing demographic displacement, by the pressures of neocolonial politics, by the troubled legacy of the French language, by a reluctantly shared history repressed and yet constantly threatening to return’ (2003: 3). 11 I borrow the term ‘transcolonial’ from Françoise Lionnet and Shu Mei Shih, who define ‘transcolonialism’ as ‘the shared, though differentiated, experience of colonialism and neocolonialism (by the same colonizer or by different colonizers)’ (2005: 11). 12 See the plays included in Kateb’s Boucherie de l’espérance (1999). 10

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Rachid Boudjedra have cast the Palestinian question, the Jewish genocide, 9/11, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the 2010–2011 uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and beyond within a multidirectional and palimpsestic history of the ‘colonial situation’ (Memmi, 1985: 158), writ large to include European colonialism and ‘internal’ or neocolonial rule, from the Americas, Europe, North Africa and Palestine to Vietnam and the Pacific. This chapter examines a representative sample of contemporary Algerian novels that activate what I call the ‘transcolonial imagination’, connecting heterogeneous (post)colonial sites in a critical and comparative exploration of coloniality. I focus on the extreme contemporary (the 2000s and 2010s) not because the transcolonial imagination is a new phenomenon – Kateb’s popular plays of the 1970s and ’80s are a prime example of transcolonial critique in the period immediately following independence – but because this form of imagination has taken on distinctive forms in the past 15 years, moving further away from the project of ‘national construction’ that characterized Algerian literature – and particularly the Algerian novel – in the anti- and immediately postcolonial era (Khatibi, 1968: 17). Before I move to my primary examples – novels written by Benmalek, Khadra, Bachi and Boudjedra in the 2000s and 2010s – I turn to Ahlam Mosteghanemi’s Algerian trilogy, published at the height of the black decade, and show that her self-conscious critique of the postcolonial Algerian novel sets the stage for the transcolonial Algerian novel of the new millennium.

Palestine as Horizon of Thinking In his 1968 study of the Maghrebi novel, Abdelkebir Khatibi exhorts his fellow writers to look beyond the Europe that had colonized them and ‘multiply contacts with the outside world’: Une des conditions de l’édification d’une culture nationale décolonisée est de faire justement éclater les rapports unilatéraux unissant la métropole à ses anciennes colonies, de multiplier les contacts avec le monde extérieur, de faire jouer d’autres circuits et de promouvoir la collaboration effective entre pays du Tiers-Monde. (1968: 14)13 Figured as the ‘outside’ of a stifling and exclusive relationship with France, the Third World is to be the Maghrebi writer’s ‘horizon of thinking’, to borrow ‘One of the conditions of a decolonized national culture is precisely to break apart the unilateral relation tying the metropole to its former colonies, to multiply contacts with the outside world, to bring into play other circuits and promote real collaboration between the countries of the Third World’. 13

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a phrase Khatibi coined in his subsequent writings.14 Khatibi’s critique of a postcolonial frame of analysis is implicit in his study of a form – the novel – that was still beholden to European models. That the quest for interlocutors outside the colonial dyad is meant as a critique of the postcolonial Algerian novel – in the sense I have given the term here, which foregrounds Algeria’s relation to France – becomes palpably evident in Ahlam Mosteghanemi’s Algerian trilogy. Set in Paris and Constantine in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Dhakirat al-jasad [Memory of the Flesh] (1993), Fawda’ al-hawas [Chaos of the Senses] (1997) and ‘Abir sarir [Bed Hopper] (2003) explicitly subvert the genre of national allegory – exemplified, in the novels, by Kateb Yacine’s Nedjma – in a triangulated critique of the (post)colonial relation. Kateb is both a character in the novels – he is the role model of the male protagonist, a painter named Khaled who met Kateb in prison in 1945 – and the central intertext of the trilogy, which brings national allegory tumbling down on the ashes of Algeria’s failed revolution. At first glance, Dhakirat al-jasad reads like an homage to Kateb’s allegorical Nedjma. Infatuated with the daughter of his commandant, whom he meets by chance in Paris 20 years after the war, Khaled embarks on an impossible attempt to recover the promises of the Algerian revolution during a time of bitter postcolonial disillusionment. The allegorical function of Ahlam – whose name means ‘dreams’ in Arabic – is evident from the moment Khaled first sees her, fixing his gaze on the heavy miqiass bracelet that adorns her wrist, just like his mother’s, and the tender Constantine dialect of his hometown. In a feeble attempt to recreate his homeland, Khaled obsessively paints the bridges of his native Constantine all the while imagining that he is painting his beloved, whom he repeatedly calls his ‘shooting star’ (Mosteghanemi, 2013: 46), in a barely veiled allusion to Kateb’s elusive heroine. Yet it is evident from the first pages of the novel that Khaled’s attempts to recover the Algeria of his dreams are doomed. The novel, a retrospective retelling of Khaled’s aborted affair with Ahlam – she ends up marrying a corrupt general – begins and ends with the brutally repressed popular demonstrations of 1988, at the cusp of the period that would come to be known as the black decade, which forms the backdrop of the novel’s sequels. Intradiegetically, Khaled’s allegorical quest is further compromised by the appearance of a third character, halfway through his retrospective account: Khaled’s friend Ziyad, a Palestinian writer and feda’i [guerrilla fighter] who unwittingly subverts Khaled’s naïve national allegory. Reunited after a ‘Le Maghreb comme horizon de pensée’ is the title of an early version of Khatibi’s seminal essay ‘Pensée autre’, the first in the collection published in 1983 under the title Maghreb pluriel. 14

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summer apart, Ahlam and Khaled meet again in their favourite café, this time with Ziyad, who is in Paris on an unspecified mission. Khaled is eager to tell Ahlam that he has painted her in the guise of the bridges of Constantine, but is forced to acknowledge that his muse is more attracted to the aspirational allegories offered by the young poet and feda’i than to his unhealthy nostalgia for a lost homeland and glories past. Rebuffing Khaled’s unhealthy allegorical desires – ‘Please no! I beg you, don’t talk any more about Constantine. […] When are you going to be cured of that city?’ (Mosteghanemi, 2013: 145) – Ahlam begins reciting one of Ziyad’s poems. Entranced, Ziyad finishes the rendition with the following verses: I have no nation but you No memento for the soil, a bullet of desire the colour of shroud I have nothing but you Plans for love, in a short life! (147) In a transparent critique of national nostalgia, the ageing hero of a failed revolution is eclipsed by the youthful martyr of a struggle still full of promise, supplanting a pale imitation of Kateb’s national allegory (Algeria) with Ziyad’s virile transnational allegory (Palestine). Ziyad is killed on the battlefield when he returns to Lebanon, becoming the martyr of his prophetic poem. In Fawda’ al-hawas, the sequel to Dhakirat al-jasad, Ahlam, who is, it turns out, the author of the first novel, confesses that she invented Ziyad as a figure of revolution and turned him into a martyr to keep the promise of revolution alive. If Algeria was ‘once a nation that exported revolution and dreams to the world’, Palestine has replaced it as allegory of revolution in the postcolonial era (Mosteghanemi, 2004: 90). Whether or not the character Ahlam is a stand-in for the eponymous author – and I would surmise that she is, given Mosteghanemi’s predilection for blurring the lines between fiction and autobiography – this passage functions as a transparent mise en abyme, and perhaps an auto-critique, of the author’s allegorical use of Palestine. Given the FLN state’s recourse to this same allegory to placate the disenfranchised masses, this meta-fictional moment is highly marked. Mosteghanemi, whose father was a mujahid [freedom fighter] and who lives and publishes in Beirut, need not fear censorship by the Algerian state – indeed her mass following in the Arabic-speaking world makes her virtually untouchable15 – but her transparent critiques of governAs evidenced, for example, on her Facebook page, which has more than half a million ‘likes’. Available at https://www.facebook.com/ahlammosteghanemi/ timeline?ref=page_internal (consulted on 7 June 2016). See also her website http:// www.ahlammosteghanemi.com/#!home-english/c1xxr (consulted on 7 June 2016). 15

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mental and military corruption in other passages of the trilogy confirm that Palestine functions, in her writing, as a vehicle for anti-neocolonial critique. What at first appears to be a remake of Kateb’s celebrated allegorical novel becomes, through a self-conscious transnational Palestinian allegory, a scathing critique of the FLN state and of the armed Islamist movements that would cause so much bloodshed in the 1990s. Mosteghanemi’s satire of national allegory grossly oversimplifies Kateb’s complex use of this figure, which has been read as a prescient critique of monist conceptions of Algeria as an Arab and Muslim state (Hayes, 2000: 148–61). Barring the fact that Mosteghanemi makes no mention of Kateb’s popular plays, which similarly stage a critique of the Algerian state via Palestine, her heavy-handed satire of national allegory at least has the virtue of making crystal clear the stakes of transcolonial critique in the purportedly postcolonial present. In the remainder of this chapter I sketch out the broad strokes of the contemporary transcolonial imagination through a comparative reading of six novels published in the 2000s and 2010s by Anouar Benmalek, Yasmina Khadra, Salim Bachi and Rachid Boudjedra. Rather than attempt an exhaustive inventory of transcolonial Algerian novels, I focus on texts that are representative of three genres that have gained traction in the past 15 years: the Holocaust novel, the 9/11 novel and the Arab Spring novel.

The Transcolonial Algerian Novel The Algerian novel provides a particularly intriguing perspective on political and aesthetic relations across the formerly and still colonized world. More than its immediate neighbours, Algeria is intricately enmeshed in the recent history of the rise of Islamism (in both its political and military guises); it has been beholden for decades to the corrupt military rule that recently swayed under the pressure of popular revolts in countries like Egypt and Tunisia; and, like the latter, it is also imbricated in France’s sombre Vichy past. It is no surprise, then, that Algerian novelists in particular have ‘multiplied contacts with the outside world’ (Khatibi, 1968: 17), exploring topics ranging from the Holocaust to 9/11 and the war on terror and, more recently, the Arab Spring. The few studies that offer a synthetic view of the contemporary Algerian novel tend to group this literary production thematically into categories that betray its internationalization without commenting explicitly on the shift away from domestic or postcolonial concerns. Carine Bourget, for example, devotes a chapter of her book on Francophone literature of the Arab world to Algerian 9/11 novels, focusing on Slimane Benaïssa’s La Dernière Nuit d’un damné and Salim Bachi’s Tuez-les tous, both narrated from the perspective of a 9/11 hijacker (2010). Anglophone critics Suman

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Gupta (2011), Robin Goodman (2009) and Jacqueline O’Rourke (2012) turn to Yasmina Khadra’s trilogy about Afghanistan, Palestine and Iraq to analyse the discourse of terror post-9/11, while the Moroccan critic Youssef Abouali adopts an Algerian perspective, illuminating connections between Khadra’s ‘Middle East’ and black decade novels (2013). Similarly, the new genre of the Algerian Holocaust novel, from Boualem Sansal’s critically acclaimed Le Village de l’Allemand (2008) to Salim Bachi’s Le Consul (2015) and Anouar Benmalek’s Fils du Shéol (2015), has benefited from unprecedented international attention, in a welcome departure from Maghrebi literature’s long-standing isolation from the translation reading market. Certainly one can interpret the recent effervescence of an internationalist Algerian literature – and its newfound global marketability – as an outcome of recent historical events, from 9/11, which gave unprecedented visibility to the Middle East in the US, and the subsequent war on terror, to the recent explosion of popular revolts and counter-revolutions across the Arab world. The proliferation of Algerian novels dealing with the Holocaust – a taboo topic in many Arab countries – can likewise be read as an attempt to undermine the clash of civilizations discourse that has again reared its ugly head in the post 9/11 era. Yet the critical reception of this new body of work is, I argue, too presentist in its approach. What if we were to think of Algerian novels dealing with 9/11, the war on terror or the Holocaust as iterations of the transcolonial novel? Closer scrutiny of the above-mentioned works reveals that the representation of 9/11 and its aftermath, the Arab Spring, or indeed the Second World War is rooted in the Algerian experience of (neo)colonization, up to and including the not-quite-finished black decade. Put another way, though the novels I discuss below are certainly in synch with the public’s literary appetites, they also participate in a decades-long conversation about the legacies of the colonial past and the persistence of (neo)colonialism in the present.

Transcolonial Comparisons and the Algerian Holocaust Novel I begin with Anouar Benmalek’s L’Enfant du peuple ancien, a novel that powerfully illustrates the stakes of transcolonial representation as a comparative and critical practice, though it does not fall into any of the categories listed above. As I will show in my reading of Benmalek’s most recent novel, Fils du Shéol, the overlapping and intersecting imperial histories sketched in the first novel set the stage for the unexpected transcolonial solidarities of the second, which brings together the Jewish Holocaust and the Herero genocide of the early twentieth century in a multidirectional

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critique of European racial policies. Though my focus is on transcolonial critique rather than ‘multidirectional memory’, Michael Rothberg’s recent insights on the co-constitutive nature of Holocaust studies and anticolonial and antiracist discourses serves as my model in this section, in particular his analysis of Aimé Césaire’s 1950 essay Discours sur le colonialisme, which ‘situat[es] Nazism as the return of colonial violence’ (Rothberg, 2009: 74). If the Algerian Holocaust novel constitutes an attempt to grapple with Algeria’s Vichy past – it is in this sense concerned with the (post)colonial relation – Fils du Shéol reveals that it is also concerned with a global European history of genocide, one that includes its colonial avatars. Published in 2000 and set in the 1870s, L’Enfant du peuple ancien weaves the destinies of an Algerian mujahid, an Alsatian-French woman accused of being a communarde and the last surviving Tasmanian, Tridarir, orphaned and captured by Australian bounty hunters. Apprehended in Algeria, Kader is sent to France and shipped to New Caledonia with a boatload of political and common law prisoners. Thrown together by chance, he and Lislei discover Tridarir as they undertake their haphazard escape from New Caledonia to Australia and vow to protect him from his colonial predators. Stretching from Kader’s native Sahara, Syria and the métropole to the Pacific colonies of New Caledonia, Tasmania and Australia, L’Enfant du peuple ancien weaves the conquest of Algeria, the French defeat of 1870, the brutal repression of the French commune and the British genocide of indigenous Tasmanians and Australians in a multifaceted portrait of colonialism spanning two empires and 50 years, showing that the colonial continues to be of central – if now refracted and multifaceted – importance in contemporary Algerian literature. Written in the language of the French empire, L’Enfant du peuple ancien translates colonial and racial terminologies across imperial borders, sketching an overlapping and intersecting map of nineteenth-century colonial discourse and anticolonial lexicons. Thus the ‘voleurs de terre’ (Benmalek, 2000: 312) [‘land-snatchers’ (Benmalek, 2003: 231)], as the Australian settlers are dubbed, admonish Kader and Lislei that if they want to stay in Australia they should ‘calquer leur conduite sur celle des vrais colons, des Britanniques en particulier’ (Benmalek, 2000: 244)16 rather than shelter their ‘Negro’ domestic (the pair have Tridarir pass for their servant), revealing the racialization of indigeneity in colonial discourse while implicitly vaunting the British model of association (or segregation) over the French model of assimilation (Benmalek, 2000: 120).17 Not that the French ‘Model their conduct on that of the true settlers, particularly the British’ (Benmalek, 2003: 178). 17 I should note that Andrew Riemer translates ‘Négro’ as ‘Nigger’ even though 16

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fare better in the novel, which can be read as an inventory of French colonial violence, from the brutal methods of the French general Lamoricière, charged with the bloody pacification of Algeria, to the ordinary racism of otherwise sympathetic French bakers who leave Damascus for a new life in Algeria, thereby ‘taking the place’ of the Algerians (Benmalek, 2000: 47; Benmalek, 2003: 29), and the soldiers guarding ‘les compères de Mahomet’ (Benmalek, 2000: 70) [‘mates of Mohamed’ (Benmalek, 2003: 45] and ‘les Arbis’18 en route to New Caledonia (Benmalek, 2000: 70). In the telescoped geographies of Benmalek’s characteristically fast-paced prose, it is barely surprising that the Australian sea captain who accepts to take Lislei and Kader as stowaways in exchange for a hefty fee calls the latter ‘singe d’Allah’ [‘one of Allah’s apes’] and ‘bougnoule’,19 even though these are quintessentially French racial slurs (Benmalek, 2000: 132; Benmalek, 2003: 94). L’Enfant du peuple ancien exposes France’s practices of ‘internal colonialism’ against the communards, connecting them to French and British imperialism and racism against the natives of Africa and the Pacific (Laâbi, 1982: 8). Published 15 years later, Fils du Shéol extends this multidirectional anticolonial critique to Nazi-ruled Europe, giving narrative form to Césaire’s oft-cited claim that Nazism is but the ‘choc en retour’ (Césaire, 1955: 11) [‘boomerang effect’ (Césaire, 2000: 36)] of colonial ‘barbarism’ applied to Europe. Focalized through the perspective of Karl, a teenager who is killed in a death camp and proceeds, in short numbered sections titled ‘Shéol’,20 to summon the memory of his decimated family in a wordless exchange with his guardian angel, the narrative plunges backwards through the many circles of earthly hell that culminate in the present of the Holocaust. ‘Part zero’, set in Poland in 1943, tells the sudden death of the narrator and the slow degradation of his father, a kapo who is forced to funnel his wife’s body into the oven, and forms the narrative pretext for the multigenerational stories that follow in ‘Part minus one’ (set in Berlin in 1941–1942), ‘Part minus two’ (Algiers, 1929) and ‘Part minus three’ (South-West Africa, 1904). During this slow descent Benmalek uses the Anglicized Latin term rather than nègre, presumably to make explicit the pejorative nature of the term in this context (Benmalek, 2003: 85). 18 Andrew Riemer uses the phrase ‘these Ali Babas’ to translate ‘les Arbis’, a deformation of ‘les arabes’, ‘the Arabs’, itself already a pejorative expression in colonial discourse (Benmalek, 2003: 45). 19 One of the many racist terms designating ‘Arabs’ in French-ruled North Africa. Andrew Riemer simply translates bougnoule as the markedly less pejorative ‘Arab’ (Benmalek, 2003: 94). 20 A Hebrew term for ‘underworld’, roughly equivalent to the Muslim notion of barzakh or the Christian limbo.

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into memory and time, we meet the boy’s father, Manfred, who marries an Algerian Jew, Elisa, as well as his grandfather, Ludwig, a German Jew who is posted to German South-West Africa and falls in love with a Herero woman who will be forced to flee ‘ce pogrom élargi à l’ensemble du peuple Héréro’ [‘this pogrom extended to the entire Herero people’] (Benmalek, 2015: 337). Ludwig’s self-conscious use of the term pogrom to describe the genocide of the Herero – ‘il raidit de stupeur devant l’évidence du terme à utiliser, le mot tueur tant redouté des Juifs d’Europe’ (337)21 – echoes Césaire’s wry observation that the Nazi Holocaust is but an extension to Europe of the colonial genocides of centuries past, turning a novel propelled backwards towards the imperial past into a multisited archaeology of fascism. Reading back from the beginning of the narrative, one finds a series of clues pointing to this transcolonial genealogy. In the death camp we notice a hand of Fatma tattooed on Karl’s arm as he enters the gas chamber – ‘ma mère croit à la chance’ [‘my mother believes in luck’] (33) – and understand, without any explanation, that the most wretched prisoners of the camps are called ‘Muslims’ (57). In Hitler’s Berlin, the narrator’s Algerian mother learns that les Juifs d’Algérie, sur ordre des autorités locales, venaient d’être déchus de leur nationalité française, ravalés d’un seul trait de plume au rang de vulgaires indigènes – à l’instar d’Arabes sans droits, prend-elle conscience soudain avec un sentiment de répulsion effrayée. (161)22 This is a comparison already made by her father-in-law more than a decade earlier during his visit to Algeria: ‘les Européens d’ici n’aiment pas beaucoup leurs Juifs et […] n’ont pas digéré que ces Juifs, qu’ils appellent des Arabes déguisés, soient devenus français d’un coup de baguette législative’ (269).23 As for the Arabs, they are ‘des indigènes, c’est-à-dire pas grand-chose, comme partout ailleurs sur ce continent’ (269).24 Ludwig is in a position to know this well, having seen the ‘concentration camps’ for rebel Hereros during his military service (305). His lover Hitjirverwe, who refuses to be called ‘He froze from the shock of this self-evident word choice, that killer word so feared by the Jews of Europe’. 22 ‘The local authorities had just revoked the Algerian Jews’ French citizenship, returning them with one stroke of the pen to the status of vulgar natives – like Arabs deprived of rights, she realizes all of sudden with fear and revulsion’. 23 ‘The Europeans here don’t much like their Jews and […] have not accepted the fact that these Jews, whom they call “disguised Arabs”, became French with a wave of the legislative wand’. 24 ‘Natives, which is to say not much, like everywhere else on this continent’. 21

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Hottentot, a moniker she compares to the racial slur ‘youpin’ (317), will be caught in the grips of German colonial racism in the Herero concentration camp, where she is deemed ‘Arbeitsfähige (‘apte au travail’)’ [‘Arbeitsfähige (‘capable of work’)’] (383) and assigned to the preparation of native skulls for scientific experiments in the capital, having lost her emaciated baby to the flippant cruelty of a German guard. At the end of ‘cette escalade à reculons’ [‘this backwards ascent’] (394), Karl, abandoned by his first companion in the underworld, becomes the host of Ludwig’s and Hitjirverwe’s murdered baby, turning the victim of one genocide into the guardian of another. In this ‘course de relais à l’envers’ [‘reverse relay race’] (395), the ethnocide committed by the Kaiser’s forces against the Hereros in the early twentieth century offers a reverse foreshadowing of the industrial killing of ‘youpins’ with which the novel begins, in a chilling critique of colonial-fascist violence in its most extreme and iconic form, genocide.

The 9/11 Novel If Benmalek uses the conquest of Algeria as the starting point for a transcolonial investigation into late nineteenth- and twentieth-century imperialism and fascism, Khadra and Bachi bring the recent Algerian past to bear on the concerns of a globalized present, including the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the aftermath of 9/11. I use the expression ‘9/11 novel’ not because it adequately describes these novels’ thematic content (of the novels I discuss here, only Bachi’s Tuez-les tous would fit within this category) but as a metonymic placeholder for novels that are concerned with imperialist warfare waged in the name of counter-terrorism: the US-led invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, and Israeli assaults on Palestinians. Though the category ‘9/11 novel’ fails neatly to capture the most important dimension of these novels, namely transcolonial critique, it nevertheless eschews the pitfalls of regionalist expressions – such as ‘Middle East trilogy’, applied to Khadra’s novels on Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine – which naturalize and neutralize what are in fact politically motivated modes of representation of (neo)colonial rule. As critics have noted, Khadra’s 9/11 trilogy is deeply informed by Algeria’s black decade, until then the setting and object of most of his novels (Gupta, 2011; Abouali, 2013). But it is also traversed by allusions to the Algerian war of independence and other colonial conflicts, revealing a distinctively transcolonial approach to the war on terror. A captivating account of the protagonist’s attempt to understand what led his wife Sihem to blow herself up in a restaurant in Tel Aviv, where they led the relatively privileged lives of ‘assimilated’ Palestinians, L’Attentat deploys well-known tropes of the

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Algerian war, from the moniker ‘bougnoule de service’25 attributed to the narrator, a successful surgeon who lives in a posh, all-Jewish neighbourhood, to his accidental killing in an IDF (Israel Defence Forces) missile attack on Jenin, which underscores the deeply unequal nature of a conflict whose victims are overwhelmingly Palestinian civilians (Khadra, 2005: 89). The ambiguity of the novel’s title, which refers to both Sihem’s act of terror and the attack that kills the narrator, succinctly captures the polyvalence of the term ‘terror’, which denotes both acts of resistance targeting civilians and the far more formidable use of state terror, as made clear by the twin examples of Algeria and, more recently, Iraq.26 Narrated by a young, peaceful Iraqi who ends up being recruited to commit a deadly terrorist attack in London, Les Sirènes de Baghdad is even more comparative in its scope. To the vocabulary of French colonial rule in Algeria – ‘bougnoule de service’,27 (Khadra, 2006: 285); ‘indigène’ (Khadra, 2006: 289) [‘native’] (Khadra, 2007: 278) – the novel adds American racial slurs (‘sand nigger’, 126), implicitly connecting French and American imperialism. Euro-American colonial practices, including ethnic cleansing and racial exclusion, provide rhetorical fuel for anti(neo)colonial critique: Pourquoi crois-tu qu’ils sont là, les Américains? […] Si les Américains avaient un gramme de bonté, ils ne traiteraient pas leurs Noirs et leurs Latinos en troglodytes. Au lieu de traverser les âges et les océans pour prêter main-forte à de pauvres bougnoules émasculés, ils feraient mieux de balayer devant leur porte et de s’occuper de leurs Indiens qui se décomposent dans des réserves, à l’abri des curiosités, semblables à des maladies honteuses. (Khadra, 2006: 41–42)28 An approximate translation of this expression might be ‘house Arab’, in the sense of the ‘house Negro’ who serves the white slave master and thereby confers legitimacy to the slaveholding system to which he is an auxiliary. This expression is still used in France to condemn perceived complicity with Islamophobic discourses, for example. John Cullen translates ‘bougnoule de service’ as ‘wog handyman’, an equivalent expression that doesn’t satisfactorily render the idiomatic nature of the French (Khadra, 2006: 82). 26 It is unfortunate that the double valence of the title disappears in the film adaptation of Khadra’s novel, which completely eliminates the frame narrative – the death of the protagonist – from the silver screen (The Attack). 27 Here John Cullen uses the more idiomatic, if somewhat heavy-handed, translation ‘Arab Uncle Tom’ (Khadra, 2007: 274). 28 ‘Why do you think they’re here, the Americans? […] If the Americans had an ounce of human kindness, they wouldn’t treat their blacks and Latinos like sub-humans. Instead of crossing oceans to come to the aid of some poor, 25

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Like Sihem’s decision to enlist in the armed resistance, the narrator’s radicalization is portrayed as a product of imperial rule and military atrocities – the killing of a mentally impaired boy; a drone strike on a wedding; a humiliating nocturnal raid on the narrator’s family home, which yields only bitter resentment and a desire for revenge – rather than bloodlust and senseless cruelty. Published the same year as Les Sirènes de Baghdad, Salim Bachi’s hauntingly beautiful récit of the final hours of an Algerian recruit for the 9/11 hijackings is structured by a recurring transcolonial image that similarly contextualizes anti-American violence without naturalizing or justifying it. Preparing to erase all traces of his presence in a Portland hotel, the protagonist of Tuez-les tous flushes the cut-up pieces of his credit card down the toilet and imagines that they are the leaves of his last Indian summer, an expression that evokes the first victims of European imperialism in the Americas: ‘les Indes occidentales et leurs habitants disparus dans la cuvette des toilettes en un tourbillon automnal’29 (Bachi, 2006: 106). In Bachi’s telling, even the most indiscriminate forms of violence – the 9/11 attacks – are inextricably caught up in a centuries-long history of colonial warfare beginning with the conquest of the Americas.

The Arab Spring Novel Rachid Boudjedra’s 2014 novel Printemps connects the multidirectional histories of colonization captured in Benmalek’s novels and Khadra’s and Bachi’s critiques of twenty-first-century imperialism to a yet more recent transcolonial phenomenon: the uprisings of 2010–2011. Entirely focalized through a female protagonist whose name, Teldj (‘snow’), gives the lie to the promise of the ‘Arab Spring’, as these uprisings were dubbed in western media, Boudjedra’s novel is a scathing indictment of both classic and new forms of colonialism, from the ‘extermination’ of indigenous peoples and the European conquest of Africa and Asia to the American invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan and the counter-revolutions of the twenty-teens, including the rise of Islamist parties in Tunisia and Egypt (Boudjedra, 2014: 149). Algeria is the focal point of Boudjedra’s dizzying inventory of colonial wars in ‘ce siècle terrifiant (1914–2014)’ [‘this terrifying century (1914–2014)’] (238), emasculated ragheads, they’d do better to put their own house in order. They could do something about the Indians they’ve got rotting away on their reservations, kept out of sight like people with some shameful disease’ (Khadra, 2007: 33). 29 ‘The West Indies and their inhabitants disappearing in the toilet bowl in an autumnal whirlwind’.

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with the war of independence and the black decade serving as filters for Teldj’s stream-of-consciousness commentary on the events unfolding from Tunisia to Syria and beyond. The 1988 popular demonstrations in Algiers, violently repressed by the state and then co-opted by Islamist parties, form a counterpoint to the 2010–2011 uprisings in the novel, both thematically and formally. Teldj’s breathless narrative, which is constantly interrupted by news headlines about the revolts – ‘MASSACRE ET CARNAGE EN EGYPTE. / L’ARMEE INVESTIT LES VILLES ET FAIT / DES MILLIERS DE MORTS ET DE BLESSES / (14 AOUT 2013)’, 6130 – abruptly gives way to a series of news flashes about an altogether different conflict: GENOCIDE AU VILLAGE DE BENTALHA A L’EST D’ALGER. TOUTE LA POPULATION DECIMEE. BILAN MACABRE: 800 VILLAGEOIS EGORGES. (JUIN 1997). (96)31 The textual juxtaposition of these massacres gives visual form to what Teldj, writing to a Tunisian friend, describes as a repetition of le scénario algérien, c’est à dire: “Octobre 1988: émeutes populaires. […] Mai 1989: les islamistes s’engouffrent dans la sphère désertée de l’Etat. Janvier 1991: ils gagnent les élections législatives. Mars 1991: coup d’État de l’armée algérienne sous la pression de manifestations de masses […] contre les islamistes. Janvier 1992: les islamistes déclenchent la guerre terroriste qui va durer huit ans et faire 200,000 morts. Voilà le scenario algérien! (39)32 A scenario, or script, that she describes as evidence of the ‘malédiction post-coloniale’ [‘postcolonial curse’] afflicting her country (104). The continuum of torture traversing Algeria’s modern history – ‘MAURICE ‘MASSACRE AND CARNAGE IN EGYPT. / THE ARMY MARCHES INTO THE CITIES LEADING TO / THOUSANDS OF DEAD AND WOUNDED / (14 AUGUST 2013)’. 31 ‘GENOCIDE / IN THE VILLAGE OF BENTALHA EAST OF ALGIERS / ENTIRE POPULATION DECIMATED. / GRISLY TOLL: 800 VILLAGERS HAVE THEIR THROATS SLIT. (JUNE 1997)’. 32 ‘The Algerian script, namely: “October 1988: popular riots. […] May 1989: the Islamists occupy the sphere deserted by the State. January 1991: they win the legislative elections. March 1991: faced with mass demonstrations […] against the Islamists the Algerian army seizes power. January 1992: the Islamists unleash a terrorist war that will last eight years and cause 200,000 deaths. That’s the Algerian script!’ 30

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AUDIN ASSASSINE PAR LES PARAS A ALGER’ [‘MAURICE AUDIN ASSASSINATED BY THE PARACHUTISTS IN ALGIERS’], runs a headline, as if in anticipatory echo to the torture of Teldj’s father in 1988 (148) – viscerally connects Algeria to the revolts of 2011: Et lui (Ali l’Algérien des émeutes d’octobre 1988, dit Visage de cauchemar) le visage tuméfié comme une tomate mûre, à l’instar des jeunes algériens, des jeunes tunisiens, des jeunes égyptiens, des jeunes libyens, des jeunes bahreïnis, des jeunes syriens […] (les rescapés des massacres perpétrés par leurs armées respectives avec des visages tuméfiés comme des tomates, les testicules écrabouillés …) […] à cette différence près que lui, Ali Visage de cauchemar avait vécu toute cette horreur vingt-trois ans avant eux (octobre 1988 à Alger) et eux vingt-trois ans après lui (janvier 2011 à Tunis, mars 2011 au Caire, décembre 2011 à Manama, à Sanaa idem, etc.). (222)33 In Boudjedra’s novel, the 2010–2011 uprisings are the pretext for a transcolonial investigation into (neo)colonial violence, from the indigenous genocides of the sixteenth and seventeenth century to the prisons of the autocratic postcolonial state.

Conclusion Writing in the years following Algeria’s spectacular war of independence, Laâbi and Khatibi held that Maghrebi writers had to cut their ties to France and ‘multiply contacts with the outside world’ (Khatibi, 1968: 14) if they were to achieve ‘cultural decolonization’ (Laâbi, 2016: 62). As my survey of postcolonial Algerian literature and in particular the contemporary Algerian novel makes clear, cultural decolonization thus defined has been in the works for at least a half century. ‘And him (Ali the Algerian of the October 1988 riots, dubbed Nightmare Face), his face beaten to a pulp like a ripe tomato, like the young Algerians, the young Tunisians, the young Egyptians, the young Bahrainis, the young Syrians […] (survivors of the massacres perpetrated by their respective armies with faces beaten to a pulp like tomatoes, testicles crushed …) […] the only difference being that he, Ali Nightmare Face, lived this horror twenty-three years before them (October 1988 in Algiers) and they twenty-three years after him (January 2011 in Tunis, March 2011 in Cairo, December 2011 in Manama, same thing in Sana’a, etc.)’. The nickname ‘Visage de cauchemar’ echoes one of Kateb’s numerous satirical characters, Visage de Prison, who serves in his plays to critique both colonial and postcolonial violence, metonymically captured in the French prisons that served as torture chambers before and after independence. See the short plays included in L’Œuvre en fragments. 33

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Though I have focused on novels of the 2000s and 2010s, it bears repeating in conclusion that the transcolonial turn is not a new phenomenon in the field of Maghrebi letters. On the contrary, the contemporary Algerian novel is exemplary of transcolonial concerns that predate the postcolonial era, concerns that were convincingly identified as ‘Third Worldist’ (Shohat, 1992: 111) or ‘tricontinental’ (Young, 2001: 4–5) in early critiques of the postcolonial as a critical lens that privileges the colonial relation at the expense of horizontal relations across the decolonizing world. Indeed, my argument in favour of a transcolonial approach to the Algerian novel owes much to earlier Third Worldist critiques of the postcolonial as privileging vertical rather than horizontal relations (see especially Shohat, 1992). Why, then, use a new term, transcolonial, rather than expressions such as ‘Third World’ or ‘tricontinent’? This is not merely a question of updating our critical lexicon for the twenty-first century, at a time when once-powerful ideas such as the Third World seem a distant memory. Indeed the transcolonial ‘works’, I contend, as a lens through which to analyse points of contact and exchange across the formerly and still colonized world before the heyday of Third Worldism and into the neocolonial present. As Benmalek’s and Khadra’s catachrestic use of the terms of French colonial discourse (e.g. indigène, Arabe de service, bougnoule) to describe widely disparate forms of racial and imperial rule makes clear, moving beyond France-Algeria does not entail leaving anticolonial critique behind. On the contrary, my readings show that the transcolonial imagination deploys the tools of anticolonial discourse in a multidirectional critique of colonialism past and present, extending from French Algeria to German Africa, Israeli colonialism and US imperialism to the ‘choc en retour’ of the Jewish Holocaust (Césaire, 1955: 11). In this relational imaginary, Boudjedra’s ‘scénario algérien’ becomes the starting point for a comparative investigation of the colonial across time and space (Boudjedra, 2014: 36), replacing the colonial relation with a transcolonial one better suited to the task of cultural decolonization in the twenty-first century.

Works Cited Abouali, Youssef. 2013. Yasmina Khadra ou la recherche de la vérité: étude de la trilogie sur le malentendu entre l’Orient et l’Occident. Paris: L’Harmattan. The Attack. 2013. Dir. Ziad Doueiri. Bachi, Salim. 2006. Tuez-les tous. Paris: Gallimard. ——. 2015. Le Consul. Paris: Gallimard. Balibar, Etienne. 1999. ‘Algeria, France: One Nation or Two?’ Trans. by Adele Parker. In Joan Copjec and Michael Sorkin (eds), Giving Ground: The Politics of Propinquity. New York: Verso: 162–72.

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Benaïssa, Slimane. 2003. La Dernière nuit d’un damné. Paris: Plon. Benmalek, Anouar. 2000. L’Enfant du peuple ancien. Paris: Pauvert. ——. 2003. The Child of an Ancient People. Trans. by Andrew Riemer. London: Harvill. ——. 2009. Le Rapt. Paris: Fayard. ——. 2015. Fils du shéol. Paris: Calmann-Lévy. Bensmaïa, Réda. 2003. Experimental Nations, or, The Invention of the Maghreb. Trans. by Alyson Waters. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Bonn, Charles. 1985. Le Roman algérien de langue française: vers un espace de communication littéraire décolonisé? Paris: L’Harmattan. Boudjedra, Rachid. 2014. Printemps. Paris: Grasset. Bourget, Carine. 2010. The Star, the Cross, and the Crescent: Religions and Conflicts in Francophone Literature from the Arab World. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Camus, Albert. 1957. L’Étranger. Paris: Gallimard. Césaire, Aimé. 1955. Discours sur le colonialisme. Paris: Présence Africaine. ——. 2000. Discourse on Colonialism. Trans. by Joan Pinckham. New York: Monthly Review Press. Daoud, Kamel. 2013. Meursault, contre-enquête. Algiers: Barzakh. Dirlik, Arif. 1994. ‘The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism’. Critical Inquiry 20.2: 328–56. Djaout, Tahar. 1984. Les Chercheurs d’os. Paris: Seuil. Djebar, Assia. 1985. L’Amour, la fantasia. Paris: Jean-Claude Lattès. ——. 1995. Le Blanc de l’Algérie. Paris: Albin Michel. ——. 2000. Algerian White. Trans. by David Kelly and Marjolijn de Jager. New York: Seven Stories Press. Fanon, Frantz. 2002. Les Damnés de la terre. Paris: La Découverte. Forsdick, Charles, and David Murphy (eds). 2003. Francophone Postcolonial Studies: A Critical Introduction. London: Arnold. Haddad, Malek. 1961. Écoute et je t’appelle, précédé de Les zéros tournent en rond. Paris: Maspero. Hayes, Jarrod. 2000. Queer Nations: Marginal Sexualities in the Maghreb. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Goodman, Robin. 2009. Policing Narratives and the State of Terror. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Gupta, Suman. 2011. Imagining Iraq: Literature in English and the Iraq Invasion. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Kateb, Yacine. 1956. Nedjma. Paris: Seuil. ——. 1986. L’Œuvre en fragments: inédits littéraires et textes retrouvés, rassemblés et présentés par Jacqueline Arnaud. Paris: Sindbad. ——. 1999. Boucherie de l’espérance: œuvres théâtrales. Paris: Seuil.

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Khadra, Yasmina. 2002. Les Hirondelles de Kaboul. Paris: Julliard. ——. 2005. L’Attentat. Paris: Julliard. ——. 2006. The Attack. Trans. by John Cullen. New York: Doubleday. ——. 2006. Les Sirènes de Baghdad. Paris: Julliard. ——. 2007. The Sirens of Baghdad. Trans. by John Cullen. New York: Doubleday. ——. 2008. Ce que le jour doit à la nuit. Paris: Julliard. Khatibi, Abdelkebir. 1968. Le Roman maghrébin. Paris: Maspero. ——. 1983. Maghreb pluriel. Paris: Denoël. Laâbi, Abdellatif. 1982. L’Œil et la nuit. Rabat: SMER. ——. 2016. ‘Realities and Dilemmas of National Culture’, Trans. by Olivia C. Harrison and Teresa Villa-Ignacio. In Olivia C. Harrison and Teresa Villa-Ignacio (eds), Souffles-Anfas: A Critical Anthology from the Moroccan Journal of Culture and Politics. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press: 61–73. Lionnet, Françoise, and Shu Mei Shih (eds). 2005. Minor Transnationalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. McClintock, Anne. 1992. ‘The Angel of Progress: Pitfalls of the Term “Post-Colonialism”’. Social Text 31–32: 84–98. Memmi, Albert. 1965. The Colonizer and the Colonized. Trans. by Howard Greenfeld. New York: Orion Press. ——. 1985. Portrait du colonisé, précédé de Portrait du colonisateur. Paris: Gallimard. Mosteghanemi, Ahlam. 1993. Dhakirat al-jasad. Beirut: Dar Al-Adab. ——. 2003. ‘Abir sarir. Beirut: Dar Al-Adab. ——. 2004. Chaos of the Senses. Trans. by Baria Ahmar. Cairo: American University of Cairo Press. ——. 2013. The Bridges of Constantine. Trans. by Raphael Cohen. London: Bloomsbury. O’Rourke, Jacqueline. 2012. Representing Jihad: The Appearing and Disappearing Radical. London: Zed Books. Rothberg, Michael. 2009. Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Sansal, Boualem. 2008. Le Village de l’Allemand. Paris: Gallimard. Shohat, Ella. 1992. ‘Notes on the “Post-Colonial”’. Social Text 31–32: 99–113. Woodhull, Winifred. 1993. Transfigurations of the Maghreb: Feminism, Decolonization, and Literatures. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Young, Robert J.C. 2001. Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell.

Afterword Performing Algerianness: The National and Transnational Construction of Algeria’s ‘Culture Wars’ Walid Benkhaled and Natalya Vince

Afterword

Post-independence Algeria, particularly since 1988, has tended to be read through two dominant narratives. These narratives are widely reproduced in the Algerian and international media, in formal and informal political discussion, and indeed its tropes have seeped into much of the academic literature. The first narrative is that of the authoritarian ‘system’ (a nebulous fusion of state and regime) versus the downtrodden ‘people’. The second narrative is that of the perpetual identity crisis, pitching Arabophones against Francophones, Berberophones against Arabophones, Islamists against secularists, and social and cultural conservatives (‘tradition’) against progressives (‘modernity’), in a zero-sum struggle to define the language and culture of Algeria. These two narratives intersect, with ‘the system’ depicted as imposing its version of Arabo-Islamic identity and, in doing so, steamrollering over both citizens promoting greater pluralism and more strident Islamist actors. These narratives are also gendered, and often expressed in generational terms, with ‘women’ and the ‘post-1988 generation’ placed squarely in the camp of political and cultural outsiders. This is a black-and-white language of perpetrators versus victims and totalizing, mutually exclusive identities. It is a language which is underpinned by a selective, teleological reading of history. In official history, the legitimacy of the political system comes not through being democratically elected, but rather from being issued from ‘the revolutionary family’, those mujahidin who fought to free Algeria from the yoke of colonial rule. Those seeking 243

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to delegitimize ‘the system’ argue the opposite – those in power are false veterans, indeed agents of French colonialism, using Algeria’s oil wealth to buy off opponents as their veneer of historical legitimacy slowly peels away. In this language of moral, religious and historical absolutes, ‘the other’ can never belong to the nation because they are traitors, apostates and fakes. Such a characterization of politics and culture in Algeria reinforces another key way in which Algeria has been understood – as locked in an inevitable and interminable cycle of violence, the violence of colonial conquest from 1830 onwards engendering the violence of the war of independence 1954–1962, which in turn gave birth to the violence of the 1990s. Taken together, these ways of reading Algeria are also paradoxical, with ‘the people’ presented as united, legitimate and morally righteous, while Algerian society is simultaneously depicted as collapsing under the weight of its internal identity fractures. Recent academic work has started to chip away at characterizations of the Algerian state as a homogenous, opaque bloc. Local case studies have begun to reveal the interactions, negotiations and compromises which take place on the ground between representatives of the state and local communities (Dahou and Sidi Moussa, 2015; Hachemaoui, 2013). Nevertheless, it is unlikely that the language of ‘the system’ versus ‘the people’ will fade from media or popular discourse any time soon, because it is so politically useful for all concerned. As Jane Goodman argues, ‘Algerians creatively negotiate with the regime to secure resources for themselves’, thus maintaining ‘a fragile balance between opposing and engaging with the regime’ (2013: 792). The image of Algeria as locked in a permanent struggle to define its language and culture is even more tenacious. This chapter focuses on the national and transnational construction of this ‘identity crisis’ in academic literature as well as media and popular discourse. In particular, it explores the construction of three rival groups – one Arab/Muslim/FLNist, a second radical Islamist and a third composed of cultural pluralists/progressives (into which are subsumed Berbers and feminists) – which are depicted as engaged in a battle to the death to impose their version of ‘Algerianness’. The idea that academic frameworks are enmeshed in political ones is of course not new, and important work has been already done to analyse the ways in which some of these cultural categories have been constructed – and then reimagined at different points in history – for political ends. Notably, there have been a number of significant publications on the construction of the category of ‘Berbers’ (Temlali, 2015; Hoffman and Miller, 2010; Scheele, 2009, to cite only the more recent examples). The contribution of this chapter is to focus on the interactions between these three different categories of Algerianness. Our core argument is that we need to move away from a focus

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on how different groups define Algerianness, and towards a study of how, taken together, these different groups collectively perform Algerianness. This chapter is divided into three chronological parts, unequal in length: 1830–1988, 1988–2005 and 2005–2015. Part one begins by briefly sketching out why cultural categories have been so important in shaping the Algerian political landscape, from the colonial invasion of 1830 to the end of the single-party state in 1988. It seeks to highlight not only the politicization of culture, but also the ‘culturalization’ of politics – that is to say, political debate after independence in 1962 was largely only possible through debates about culture.34 Part two explores how mutually exclusive categories were crystallized during the 1990s. It analyses how the impossibility of politics and the violence of the ‘black decade’ created an urgent need to understand and classify, and both Algerian and foreign observers did so with the tools they had available to them: psychoanalysis, journalism, history, literature and film. The limitations of the ways in which these tools were used reinforced rather than deconstructed essentializing categories. Part three demonstrates how these cultural categories have been entrenched in the past decade, despite Algeria experiencing relative peace and stability, because of their enduring political expediency.

The Politicization of Culture, the Culturalization of Politics and Imagining Communities through Types, 1830–1988 Colonial rule was based to a large extent on using constructed cultural categories to determine – or deny – access to political rights and to justify occupation. The creation of the ‘ethnopolitical’ category of ‘Muslim’ from 1865 onwards (Weil, 2004: 355) excluded the vast majority of the population of Algeria from the benefits of full citizenship on the grounds that Muslim family law (personal status) was incompatible with the French civil code. French ethnographers, historians and archaeologists produced a narrative of Algerian history as a succession of invasions, leaving behind a patchwork We are using the term ‘culturalization of politics’ in a somewhat different sense to how Slavoj Žižek (2008) uses it, in that he discusses this culturalization of politics as a symptom of the failure of the ‘post-political liberal project’ (and he also highlights that it was Samuel Huntington who proposed the most potent version of the ‘culturalization of politics’, with his view of the ‘clash of civilisations’ replacing Cold War ideological divisions). Algeria is of course not a liberal state, and we argue here that the culturalization of politics began long before the end of the Cold War, and that it was the product of finding a way to talk about politics in a political system which was neither totalitarian nor democratic. 34

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of different ‘races’ as opposed to a nation with a territorial claim. ‘Berbers’ – which tended to be used interchangeably with ‘Kabyles’ to describe the population of the region of Kabylia – and ‘Arabs’ were declared distinct races. ‘Berbers’ were characterized as blue eyed and fair skinned, supposedly of European and Christian origin, thus less ‘Islamized’ and more susceptible to collaboration compared to their conniving, lazy, thieving Arab counterparts (Lorcin, 1995). By the late nineteenth century, Islam became, in the words of Jacques Berque (cited in Meynier, 2009: 249), a ‘bastion de repli’ [a bastion of withdrawal] for the colonized population. The lack of political space in colonial Algeria, as a result of repression and censorship, also explains why the realm of culture – music, sport, theatre, literature – played a key role in the nationalist movements that began to take shape in the 1930s and 1940s. In the 1930s, the founder of the Association des Oulémas [‘Ulama] Musulmans Algériens (AUMA, Association of Algerian Muslim Scholars) Abdelhamid Ben Badis (1889–1940) coined the oft-cited phrase ‘Islam is our religion, Algeria is our homeland, Arabic is our language’, while his fellow ‘alim [scholar, learned one, plural ‘ulama] Ahmad Tawfiq al-Madani (1889–1983) produced extensive historical writings in Arabic celebrating the glorious Muslim and Arab ancestors of Algeria, as well as ‘reappropriat[ing] from colonial knowledge and dangerous assimilationist fantasies’ the figure of ‘the Berber’ and sacralizing him ‘in unity with “the Arab”’ (McDougall, 2006: 191). As James McDougall underlines, despite having played a relatively marginal role in the war of independence, the ‘ulama had the pre-existing narrative and ready-made language which allowed them to occupy a prominent place in the writing of official nationalist history and the definition of ‘authentic’ Algerianness after independence. Rather than remaining at the level of discourse, constructed categories can shape political and social realities, as revealed in a telling anecdote recounting the arrival in Tunis in spring 1962 of the man who would become Algeria’s first president, Ahmed Ben Bella. Ben Bella declared, ‘We are Arabs, we are Arabs, we are Arabs!’ – allegedly prompting a member of his entourage to mutter, ‘That will end up coming true’ (Roberts, 2003: 139). The 1963 Nationality Law automatically accorded Algerian nationality only to those who could demonstrate that their father and grandfather had Muslim personal status in the colonial period. Islam was declared the religion of state, and Algeria began to embark on a series of programmes of Arabization. After independence, in the context of an authoritarian, single-party regime, culture continued to be a privileged location for political debate because it provided a less obviously ‘political’ space for different visions of post-independence Algeria to be put forward. Writing in the newspaper

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Révolution africaine in 1964, psychiatrist Khaled Benmiloud declared: ‘Nous ne sommes plus ce que nous étions, nous sommes quelque chose d’autre. Nous n’en avons pas une conscience claire et complète’.35 And yet Algerians had a whole range of markers of identity – local, regional, linguistic, religious and national (including the war of independence and omnipresent symbols of the new nation, such as the flag) – which provided powerful points of reference. Benmiloud’s article was part of a long tradition, stretching back to colonial science, but also with obvious links to the more recent, anti-colonial works of Frantz Fanon (1925–1961), in which the quest to define collective identity was framed in the language of psychiatry. In this context, it is hardly surprising that Algeria’s political leaders took up the debate through the language of locating the Algerian ‘personality’ (personnalité in French, shakhsiyya or haouya in Arabic). Straddling an individual sense of self and national character, ‘personality’ was understood as part inherited, part the product of acculturation, but always authentic. Yet, ‘Whilst public debate might have been couched in terms of “who are we”?, evoking a kind of psycho-anthropological journey of (re)discovery, the question really was “who do we want to be?” – and this was a profoundly political question’ (Vince, 2015: 145). Nevertheless, while there were many potential models for Algeria in the 1960s and 1970s – developmentalist, socialist, pan-African, pan-Arab – political debate was largely restricted to taking place through proxy discussions about authentic personality and culture. One of the paradoxes of the first two decades of independence is that politicians, writers and artists were constantly referring to culture but culture was seldom the subject of sustained analysis. Fanny Colonna describes ‘the very rare, unfinished or invisible academic works dealing with culture(s)’ in this period (2003: 157–58). In the absence of ‘voices from below’, she explores the ‘culture(s) of being Algerian’ by focusing on three intellectuals. These are Mostefa Lacheraf (1917–2007), briefly Minister for Education under Houari Boumediene, who published a number of works on Algerian culture in French, including L’Algérie: nation et société (1965); novelist Mouloud Mammeri (1917–1989), who penned an epic novel about the war of independence, L’Opium et le Bâton (1965, made into a film in 1969), as well as authoring the first grammar in Berber (Tamazight dialect); and Abu’ l-Qasim Sa‘adallah (1930–2013), post-independence Algeria’s most influential Arabic-language historian, whose version of Algerian history and culture was largely inspired by the ‘ulama (for one example of his many publications, ‘We are no longer what we were, we’re something else. We don’t yet have a full and clear idea of what this is’. This and all subsequent quotations from Francophone sources were translated by the authors of this article. 35

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see Tarikh al-Jazair al-thaqafi [The Cultural History of Algeria], 1981). The cancellation by regional administrators of a planned conference on Kabyle poetry by Mammeri at the University of Tizi Ouzou was the spark which set off the Berber Spring of 1980, the first popular opposition movement against the state, in which socio-economic exclusion and linguistic and cultural oppression magnified each other. Although Colonna argues that, taken together, Lacheraf, Mammeri and Sa‘adallah demonstrate ‘an “Algerianness” more “thickly” constituted, more tangible than that proclaimed and prescribed by the discourse of the state’ (2003: 158), she does not see their works as having resulted in ‘a shared patrimony, a truly Algerian patrimony common to francophones, berberophones and arabophones’ – because they are working in different sets of codes (Colonna, 2003: 163; emphasis original). Colonna borrows an expression from Jacques Rancière, ‘the unknowing other’, to describe this situation: ‘s/ he who speaks “the other” language and does not know mine, who has a geographical, historical, vernacular location other than mine’ (2003: 164).

Categorizing to Understand, the Production of Knowledge and the Ossifying of Politico-cultural Types, 1988–2005 The Impossibility of Politics and the Imperative to Classify Lacheraf, Mammeri and Sa‘adallah are in many ways men of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s (although Lacheraf did serve on a parliamentary body in 1992 and Sa‘adallah continued teaching and publishing, Mammeri died in a car crash in 1989). Extricating politics from culture, or culture from politics, or questioning whether Algeria was actually made up of competing ‘unknowing others’ became increasingly impossible over the course of the 1990s. The window of political pluralism inaugurated by the adoption of the new constitution in February 1989 was abruptly closed in January 1992. However, even during this brief period, the possibility of politics was limited. Firstly, the plethora of political parties, associations and newspapers created after February 1989 had the effect not of encouraging debate, but rather stifling it. On the eve of the municipal elections of June 1990, there were around 60 political parties. For Lahouari Addi (2006), this was a deliberate ploy by the state to maintain the status quo: ‘Pour fragmenter l’opposition, l’administration les encourageait et la presse leur ouvrait ses colonnes généreusement’. 36 In December 1991, 49 of the 64 legalized political parties participated in the legislative elections (Tahi, 1995: 199). ‘To fragment the opposition, the administration encouraged [party after party to form] and the press generously opened up their columns to them’. 36

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In order to try and make sense of these 60 or so parties, academics working within and outside of Algeria – as well as the press – tend to organize them into types. Addi (2006), for example, distinguishes parties of the administration (FLN and RND), 37 Islamist parties (FIS, MSP, MNR)38 and non-Islamists (FFS, RCD, PT). 39 Underscoring that these politicoideological categories are to a very significant extent understood in terms of culture, and situating the 1990s within the longue durée, Malika Rahal describes three categories of ‘entre-soi’ – or versions of Algerianness – structuring Algerian colonial and postcolonial history. These are the FLN Arab and socialist definition (although socialism was abandoned with the end of the single-party state), the Islamists’ theocratic one and the democrats’ pluralistic one. She argues that ‘Each one entailed a different form of polity, as well as a definition of who should – or should not – be Algerian, by defining the fundamental characteristics of a shared identity and the basic rules of society, by distinguishing “us” from the “other”’ (2012b: 128). Over the course of the 1990s, the category an Algerian was perceived to belong to could be a matter of life and death, with Islamists targeting Francophones, or the administration targeting Islamists. As Rahal puts it when discussing the reluctance of many left-wing, democratic, anti-torture activists in the 1990s to contemplate applying human rights to Islamists: ‘all three of these forms of entre-soi [….] share a strong urge to suppress and negate the other’ (2012b: 132). Yet while these categories very powerfully shaped lived experiences during the 1990s, they were also very fluid and it was impossible to neatly classify the whole population within one of the three. The fact that 42% of Algerians did not go out to vote in December 1991 (Stora, 1994: 95) suggests that the ideological dividing lines set up by this typology did not necessarily find a wider echo across Algerian society. Hugh Roberts (2003) is one of a number of commentators who have underlined that it was the party of the FLN which was defeated in the first round of the 1991 legislative elections, not its substance – and that the FIS was the extension of an Islamist strand which Front de Libération Nationale (FLN, National Liberation Front), Rassemblement National Démocratique (RND, National Democratic Rally). 38 Front Islamique du Salut (FIS, Islamic Salvation Front), Mouvement pour la Société et la Paix (MSP, Movement for Society and Peace, formerly Hamas), Mouvement National pour la Renaissance (MNR, National Movement for Renaissance). 39 Front des Forces Socialistes (FFS, Front of Socialist Forces), Rassemblement pour la Culture et la Démocratie (RCD, Rally for Culture and Democracy), Parti des Travailleurs (PT, Workers’ Party). 37

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already existed within the single-party FLN or, as a popular saying has it, ‘Le FIS est le fils naturel du FLN’ [the FIS is the biological son of the FLN].40 The three-part categorization was also rendered more complex by Algerian politicians’ rapid gravitation towards one of two camps: the ‘eradicators’ (the parties of the administration and the non-Islamists, including many feminists and those in favour of cultural pluralism), for whom the Islamists needed to be annihilated before they annihilated everyone else, and the ‘conciliators’, who promoted a negotiated solution, including the unsuccessful Sant’Egidio platform in 1995 which sought to find a peaceful political exit from the crisis. The Sant’Egidio platform included representatives of the FLN; Hocine Aït Ahmed’s FFS; The PT, represented by left-wing feminist Louisa Hanoune; and the FIS. The eradicator/conciliator dichotomy thus cut across the tripartite categorization of parties as being of the administration, Islamists or pluralists. Despite its contradictions, however, the tripartite categorization would have lasting influence on shaping the way that Algeria is seen – and sees itself – beyond the end of the violence. The Interpretative Toolkit: Psychoanalysis, Journalism, History, Literature and Film The shock and disarray provoked by the violence of the ‘black decade’ is palpable across the work of academics, artists and journalists produced during this period. Daho Djerbal describes the 1990s as ‘a serious crisis that is expressed in the emergence of violent movements, forms of expression and counterpowers that seem to be, at the very least, paradoxical, and in the worst-case scenario, irrational and incomprehensible. No one, in any event, saw them coming’ (2013: 249). The sense of failing to see events coming prompted an urgent search for their origins. A common trope used to talk about Algeria in the 1990s was that of schizophrenia. Journalist Sid Ahmed Semiane (2005) writes: ‘être Algérien n’est pas une nationalité. Ce n’est même pas une identité. C’est un travail à temps plein pour lequel nous ne sommes pas encore payés. C’est une maladie dangereuse dont personne ne s’est jamais relevé’.41 If the 1960s and 1970s were the era of ‘personality’, the 1990s was that of ‘personality disorders’. The vision of Algeria as fractured into competing identity-based groups and the idea of an Algeria in which This rationale is why we disagree with labelling the 1990s a ‘civil war’, preferring instead the term ‘war against civilians’ as more accurately reflecting the lack of clear ideological dividing lines. 41 ‘To be Algerian is not a nationality. It’s not even an identity. It’s a full-time job for which we are not yet paid. It’s a dangerous illness that no-one has ever recovered from’. 40

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each Algerian carries inside him/her the three versions of ‘Algerianness’ both put the emphasis on identity. This identity-based interpretative framework, which emerged both within and outside of Algeria, was in many ways a product of the tools available to those seeking to explain the violence. In terms of immediate causes, journalists and political commentators identified socio-economic inequalities and the political failings of ‘the system’. Some Algerian, French and British journalists (for example, Lounis Aggoun, Jean-Baptiste Rivoire and John Phillips) also became fascinated by the question of who was killing who (qui tue qui?). With the exile of a small number of former members of the Algerian army, such as Habib Souaïdia, the theory that the Algerian security services had infiltrated Islamist groups and acted as agents provocateurs in the perpetration of massacres in order to discredit their opponents domestically and internationally gained some ground (Souaïdia, 2001; Aggoun and Rivoire, 2005). More broadly, the state’s overall lack of communication contributed to extensive conspiracy theorizing, fed by snippets from the media, local rumour and personal contacts within ‘the system’ (Silverstein, 2002). In terms of longer-term, more deep-rooted causes, culture – fiction, films, cartoons, art – was a key source to which academics from all disciplines looked in order to explain ‘how we got here’. In part, there was a very practical reason for this: the dangers of doing fieldwork in Algeria in the 1990s. It was also because Algerian writers and artists were so prolific during the 1990s. For Charles Bonn, this led to powerful works of literature, but also ‘une sorte de double répétition amnésique: ces témoignages se ressemblent tous désespérément’ (1999: 16).42 Bonn argues that Algerian writers and artists adopted a ‘prise en charge directe de la lourdeur du réel’ (1999: 11),43 blurring boundaries between literature and the everyday. For example, Rachid Boudjedra (b. 1941) abandoned both the complex writing style of his early French-language novels, such as La Répudiation (1969), and his 1980s decision to write exclusively in Arabic, in order to produce documentary-like works in French, including FIS de la haine (1994) and Lettres algériennes (1995). But it is problematic to take these works in a straightforward way as documentary evidence or to reproduce their analytical lenses to understand the 1990s. As Boudjedra states in FIS de la haine, the act of writing is ‘très personnelle […] écrire n’est pas voir, mais percevoir’ (1994: 24).44 Literary works of the 1990s were produced in a very specific context by a very specific group ‘A kind of amnesiac double repetition: these accounts were all desperately similar’. 43 ‘direct assumption of responsibility [to recount] the gravity of reality’. 44 ‘Very personal […] to write is not to see, but to perceive’. 42

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of people (which perhaps also explains the remarkable thematic similarity across literary texts in this period): these were artists in mourning, who felt directly threatened by Islamist violence because of who they were. Death was all around them: their colleagues and friends were being assassinated, supposedly for having promoted ‘un-Islamic’ intellectual traditions, many were living under death threats or had been forced into exile. It is thus hardly surprising that a common reading emerging from literary works produced in the 1990s is the idea of Algeria at war with itself as a result of irreconcilable cultural differences. If a constant of Algerian literature – not limited to the 1990s, but thrown into sharp relief by writers’ responses to the violence of this period – is a blurring of authorial voice with the role of spokesperson for ‘the Algerian people’ or ‘the Algerian experience’, this ambiguity has been reinforced by the way in which these novels have tended to be studied. In much of the academic literature, there is slippage between analyzing works of fiction – both esthetically and in terms of the conditions of their production – and making wider generalizations about Algerian society. As such, cultural actors have mediated the 1990s to the rest of the world to a significant degree. Assia Djebar (1936–2015) is arguably Algeria’s best-known writer internationally, translated into numerous languages and the subject of a large number of theses, monographs, journal articles and edited collections.45 Much of her work in the 1990s – and in the 2000s – was about exploring the roots of Algeria’s contemporary crisis through unearthing its past and exploring the historical, religious, linguistic and cultural dimensions of what it meant to be ‘Algerian’. As Jane Hiddleston underlines, Djebar, who lived in France from 1980 and in the United States from the mid-1990s, was ‘At once preoccupied with and severed from her native land’: ‘her writing becomes an artifice disconnected from the land she sought to create’ (2006: 1–2). At the same time, the vast majority of academics who refer to Djebar also use her to say something about Algeria as a whole: ‘Caught between conflicting cultures, languages and epochs, [Algeria] harbours spectres and shadows belonging to the world of neither the living nor the dead, neither the past not the present, living on in defiance of the artifice and amnesia of French, Islamic and indeed governmental ideologies of the postcolonial state’ (Hiddleston, 2006: 181–82). Djebar herself regularly repeats the idea of mutually exclusive versions of Algerianness. In La Femme sans sépulture (2001), frustrated by the constant repetition of the 1930s ‘ulama-inspired See the Limag website for a very extensive inventory of academic works on Djebar: http://www.limag.refer.org/new/index.php?inc=iframe&file=Volumes/ DossiersDAuteurs.html (consulted on 20 December 2015). 45

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chant, ‘Algeria is our country, Islam is our religion, Arabic is our language’, the character Mina begins multiplying each of these dimensions by three – three languages (Arabic, French, Berber), three religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) and three heroes who resist three foreign invasions – Roman, Arab, French. However, one triptych is replaced by another – Algerian identity is (still) divided into threes (Green, 2013: 51). This triptych of Arab/Muslim/FLNist ‘system’, radical Islamists and progressive pluralists is also reproduced in films – even if some characters are positioned as making strategic connections across these categories in the context of the ‘black decade’ – and in academic work about these films. The main characters in Djamila Sahraoui’s (b. 1950) Barakat! (France/Tunisia/ Algeria,46 2005) are Amel, a young doctor whose journalist husband has been kidnapped, presumably by Islamists; Khadidja, a veteran of the war of independence who helps Amel in her search for her husband; and the Islamists, represented by Hadj Slimane, who is also a veteran of the war of independence but has developed very different ideological sympathies to those of Khadidja. In Nadir Moknèche’s (b. 1965) Viva LAldjérie (France/ Belgium/Algeria, 2004), there is the state (represented by its agents, notably the police), the Islamists and three women – a mother, her daughter and a neighbour who is a prostitute – who are depicted as representing liberty and femininity (i.e. the progressives). The vast majority of films produced about the ‘black decade’ have been financed with money from European – and particularly French – funders, and they have decoded the 1990s for primarily European audiences. This has led to the reproduction of a certain number of themes, notably women’s oppression/emancipation and generational tensions, played out across the triptych of the Arabo-Muslim FLNist ‘system’, Islamists and pluralists (see Benkhaled, 2016). Bonn suggests that there are similar commercial pressures from publishing houses largely based in Europe (most notably France) and the US to produce issue-based work. Discussing the abundance of (Francophone) literature about the ‘black decade’, he critiques ‘l’éditeur collant à l’actualité’ [the publisher glued to current affairs] (1999: 17) and editors’ particular obsession with anything written by or about women – presented as victims or heroic resisters of Islamists par excellence despite the fact that in 1992 an estimated 800,000 of the FIS’s two million members were women (Allouache and Colonna, 1992: 157). For Bonn, these editors’ sole reference is ‘le contexte politique duquel le texte est présenté comme Producers are listed in descending order of financial contribution; the small contribution of Algerian producers usually reduces them to the role of local fixers (Benkhaled, 2016). 46

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le reflet fidèle, à travers un quotidien le moins distancié possible’.47 In this way, the triptych has been reinforced from within and without since the 1990s. It has been a tool for many artists to make sense of a deeply troubling present. Yet the more the same interpretative frames and themes are reproduced, the more they set the expectations of publishers and film funders – and the more these latter – notably in Europe – expect a version of this triptych from Algerian artists, the greater the extent to which alternative frameworks are edited out of public space. History as a Series of Chain Reactions The drive to categorize Algeria’s ‘identity crisis’ went hand in hand with a return to Algeria’s history to find an explanatory framework for the ‘black decade’ and, more precisely, the identification of the ‘original sin’ which provoked the chain reaction leading to the events of the 1990s. The idea of the 1990s as a ‘Second Algerian War’ became commonplace in both Algerian and French media reporting. This parallel appeared all the more tempting as one of the rhetorical registers used by different actors in the conflict was borrowed from the war of independence. Radical Islamists accused ‘the system’ of being hizb fransa [the party of France], while the politico-military administration retorted that terrorists were ‘sons of harkis’ trying to mask their fathers’ betrayal of the Algerian nation (Pervillé, 1997: 325). At a meeting of the women’s association Femmes Algériennes Unies pour l’Egalité des Droits (FAUED, Algerian Women United for Equal Rights) in Algiers in April 1995, Léïla, a war veteran, stated: ‘Nous assistons en ce moment au retour de l’OAS48 issue de nous-mêmes’.49 Léïla rejected both the corruption of the regime in place – ‘la mafia financière’ [the financial mafia] – and ‘les intégristes’ [the fundamentalists], and declared her defiance in the name of a revolutionary generation who would resist such violence (Passevant, 1998: 113). Here we see again the delineation of three categories – ‘the system’, the Islamists and the progressives (and Léïla appropriates historical legitimacy for the latter). ‘the political context, which the text is presented as faithfully reflecting, through an everyday made as immediate as possible’. 48 The Organisation de l’armée secrète (OAS, Secret Armed Organisation) was created in 1961 by a group of hard-line European settlers and disillusioned army generals to oppose Algerian independence. In spring 1962, the OAS conducted a ‘scorched earth’ campaign with the aim of leaving no infrastructure behind for the new Algerian administration. 49 ‘What we’re seeing at present is the return of the OAS which has come from within us’. 47

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Benjamin Stora (2001) rejects the term ‘Second Algerian War’, criticizing it as an unhistorical parallel which foregrounds similarities while conveniently ignoring significant differences. And yet, since the publication of his seminal work La Gangrène et l’oubli: la mémoire de la guerre d’Algérie in 1991, his view of Algeria (and France) as haunted by repressed memories of the violence of conquest, the humiliation of colonial material and cultural dispossession, and a seven-and-a-half-year-long war of independence has been one of the greatest influences on how academics of all disciplines have interpreted the 1990s. For Stora, the ‘black decade’ might not be a ‘Second Algerian War’ but it was, at least in part, a consequence of failing to work through the trauma of the war of independence, and to produce a history of it which goes beyond the sacralization of violence and the denigration of the political. The idea of 1990s Algeria as haunted by the war of independence is a theme found in both literature and film, as well as in academic writing based on these works. In Merzak Allouache’s (b. 1944) Bab el Oued City (France/ Algeria/Germany/Switzerland, 1994), the shift-working young baker Boualem takes down the loudspeaker of the local mosque, which is preventing him sleeping, and in doing so provokes the ire of local Islamists. Guy Austin makes a parallel between the loudspeaker taken down by Boualem and the loudspeaker belonging to colonial troops stolen by le Petit Omar in Gillo Pontecorvo’s La Bataille d’Alger (1966): ‘One could say that if the FLN stole the voice of power from the French, this resulted in a drowning-out of the voices of the dispossessed, and that the rival, equally patriarchal voice of the FIS has a similar function’ (2011: 206). In this reading we have the three categories of analysis: ‘the system’/FLNists, Islamists and youth/outsiders, as well as a parallel made with the war of independence. Yasmina Khadra’s (b. 1955) search for the origins of the 1990s is perhaps no more explicitly evident than in his adoption of the detective genre. One of the characters in Les Agneaux du Seigneur, an old man rendered confused by the excess of violence around him, is given the lines: ‘Je vous disais bien qu’ils allaient revenir. De Gaulle a la rancune tenace’ (Khadra, 1998: 51). 50 Even a much younger author, born long after independence, such as Salim Bachi (b.  1971) – who in 1991 was only 20 years old – describes himself as searching for the roots of the ‘black decade’ in the falsification of the history of the war of independence which has made that conflict return in a new form:

‘I told you that they were going to come back. De Gaulle holds a grudge for a long time’. 50

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On sortait à peine de la guerre d’Algérie, la première, et voilà qu’on s’engouffrait dans un ‘remake’, une réplique, mais cette fois sans aide extérieure, comme des grands. […] J’ai donc cherché à comprendre comment nous en étions arrivés là. La seule explication, à mon sens, c’est la construction d’une histoire falsifiée, depuis les origines, pour servir les intérêts de quelques-uns. Seulement, on ne joue pas impunément avec la mémoire d’un peuple. (quoted in Temlali, 2011: 98–99)51 Bachi’s statement that we ‘sortait à peine’ [were only just coming out of] the war of independence is striking in the way it concertinas nearly 30 years of history. Such a juxtaposition of 1954–1962 with the 1990s contributes to the essentializing view of Algeria as condemned to cycle upon cycle of atavistic violence – a view which began to be critiqued, notably by Algerian historians and anthropologists, from 1998 onwards (Carlier, 1998; Remaoun, 2000; Moussaoui, 2006). We need to be similarly critical of the way in which the history of colonialism and the war of independence is used as an explanatory framework for the 1990s. While history provides essential context, we must be wary of what Frederick Cooper has termed ‘leapfrogging legacies’ (2005: 19–20), whereby the repressive nature and divide-and-rule tactics of colonialism (and, in this case, the violence of anti-colonial struggle) are neatly transposed to explain political oppression and ethnic, religious and linguistic conflict in postcolonial states, with little attention paid to the intervening period. In the field of memory studies, significant critiques have emerged of trauma theory: ‘even when (and if) memory travels, it is only ever instantiated locally, in a specific place and at a particular time’ (Radstone, 2011: 117; emphasis original). As Wulf Kansteiner argues, although individual memories cannot be separated from the social context in which they emerge, this does not mean that individuals’ memories constitute the collective ‘We had only just come out of the Algerian War, the first one, and here we were throwing ourselves into a “remake”, an aftershock, but this time without help from outside, like grown-ups. […] So I sought to understand how we got here. The only explanation, to my mind, was the construction of a falsified history, right from the start, to serve the interests of a few. Only, you cannot play with the memory of a people without consequences’. The idea that the 1990s signalled the ‘return’ of violence because of the loss of ‘true’ history, which would give a greater sense of national culture and identity, is also a key theme for a new generation of Arabic-language writers, such as Waciny Laredj (b. 1954), notably the author of Harisat al-Dhilal, Don Quishotte fi’l Jaza’ir [La Gardienne des ombres. Don Quichotte à Alger] in 1999 (Chaalal, 2005), although the language barrier means that his works and those of others have had less influence in shaping European and American academic frameworks. 51

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memory, nor that collective memory functions in the same way as individual memory: ‘Nations can repress with psychological impunity’ (2002: 185–86; emphasis original). The Search for the Original Sin, Combatting Essentialism with Essentialism and the Culturalization of Past Politics Nevertheless, blaming the construction of a ‘false history’, which taunts the ‘memory of the people’, for the 1990s became a common theme, alongside the argument that ‘good’ history (i.e. ‘the truth’) can save us. To schematize, ‘bad history’ was the idea that Algeria was Muslim and Arab to the exclusion of all other identities, and the sacralization of violence as the only means of effective action, to the detriment of the political. But how does one combat such forms of cultural essentialism and atavistic views of violence? In Algeria in the 1990s, the answer seemed to be through a different version of cultural essentialism and the search for a non-Muslim (or different kind of Muslim), less Arab, supposedly more authentic version of Algerianness. The publication of memoirs by veterans of the war of independence grew exponentially in the 1990s. This was the result of many veterans reaching retirement age and thus having the time, and the inclination, to write their memoirs, the opening up of the publishing industry to private enterprise, the increasing discrediting of ‘the system’ and the desire to ‘take back’ from official history their memories of the war – and the shock of the violence of the 1990s. Most of these memoirs nevertheless reproduce a ‘histoire officielle; une histoire conformiste et hagiographique’52 (Guenoun, 2004). What is interesting, however, is that those rare examples which step outside the usual norms of idealizing and glorifying the war do not escape the desire to define the ‘true culture’ of Algeria and to bring moral judgement to bear on those seen as not conforming to it. For example, Louisette Ighilahriz (b. 1936) uses the final pages of Algérienne (2001) to attack the ‘Islamization’ of Algerian society, unfavourably comparing contemporary society with a – fairly idealized – view of the liberalism of the cultural practices of the Islam of her parents’ generation. She fustigates an Algerian education system which has only transmitted an ascepticized and truncated version of the war to young people, who, disillusioned, she argues, reach out to ‘foreign’ forms of identification from the Middle East. Mohamed Benyahia, a former officer in the FLN’s Armée de Libération Nationale (ALN, National Liberation Army) in the region of Kabylia who became an opponent of the political system after 1962, declares that the violence and discrimination which women in Algeria were facing in the 1990s was not a concern 52

‘an official history; a conformist and hagiographic history’.

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for Kabyles: ‘le Kabyle n’a jamais considéré la femme comme un être inférieur […] Alors qu’actuellement, une campagne bat son plein pour les droits de la femme, la kabyle ne se sent pas concernée, depuis les temps les plus reculés, elle a toujours été associée à la vue du village et de plein droit’ (1999: 224).53 Like Ighilahriz’s view of the ‘Islam of her parents’, this view of the ‘Kabyle woman’ as more ‘liberated’ than her ‘Arab counterpart’ is historically problematic (Vince, 2015: 20, 226). Ighilahriz and Benyahia confront salafiyya and Arab versions of Algerianness with a different set of essentializations. This search for counter-versions of Algerianness also had an impact on how political history before the war of independence was (re)visited in the 1990s – this time positing the hegemony of the FLN explicitly or implicitly as the original sin. The ‘black decade’ corresponded with the opening in France of many archives dating from the colonial period, and from the 1980s onwards, the FLN version of its nationalist genealogy (ENA to PPA to MTLD to OS to FLN)54 came under significant scrutiny, and notably ‘alternative’ versions of Algerian nationalism which had been silenced in official history – such as those of Messali Hadj (1898–1974) and Ferhat Abbas (1899–1985) – were rehabilitated. And yet while politics was rehabilitated, it was also ‘culturized’, that is to say, the cultural rather than the political visions put forward by those who at different points diverged from the mainstream nationalist line tended to be foregrounded. Ferhat Abbas was founder of the Union Démocratique du Manifeste Algérien (UDMA, Democratic Union of the Algerian Manifesto) in 1946 before joining the FLN in 1956. He was the first president of the National Assembly after independence before being politically marginalized and dismissed in official history as a bourgeois, Francophone assimilationist. ‘The Kabyle man has never considered women as inferior beings […] While at present a campaign for women’s rights is rapidly gaining momentum, Kabyle women do not feel concerned. From the beginning of time, they have always had full rights and been part of village life’. 54 The Etoile Nord Africaine (ENA, North African Star) was created in 1926 and definitively banned in 1937. After this, it reformed as the Parti du Peuple Algérien (PPA, Algerian People’s Party), which was banned in 1939 and replaced, after the Second World War, by the Mouvement pour le Triomphe des Libertés Démocratiques (MTLD, Movement for the Triumph of Democratic Liberties) in 1946. The Organisation Spéciale (OS, Special Organisation) was the clandestine wing of the MTLD, and advocated revolutionary insurrection; some of its members would go on to create the FLN in 1954. Messali Hadj was the founder of the ENA, PPA and MTLD, but was not involved in the creation of the FLN – creating instead his own rival nationalist movement – and this is why he was subsequently written out of official history for many decades. 53

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In 1995, Ferhat Abbas became the subject of a biography written by Stora and Zakya Daoud, who in their introduction describe his life as having the potential to ‘apporter quelques points de repère’ [offer some benchmarks], given that his attachment to both republicanism and Islam created a ‘paradoxe personnifié’ [personified paradox] (1995: 9): that is to say, his personality is seen as representing an alternative, evolutionary route to independence which did not involve violent rupture (and indeed the subtitle of the book is Une Utopie algérienne). In many media representations of Abbas from the 1990s onwards, he is presented as a political pluralist but also, and especially, as a cultural pluralist – the accusations of being a bourgeois, Francophone assimilationist are reinvented as a positive alternative to a narrow Arabized, Islamized version of Algerian identity. And yet this is something of a distortion of Abbas’s position in the 1930s. As Malika Rahal reminds us, the ‘assimilation’ which Abbas was demanding in the interwar period was first and foremost political (full citizenship rights regardless of Muslim personal status): in 1926 he wrote: ‘L’islam est resté notre foi sûre, la croyance qui donne sens à notre vie, notre patrie spirituelle, le statut personnel musulman est notre pays réel’ (2012a: 444).55 We see a similar process – of reappropriating a pejorative cultural label created by the official historical narrative in order to create an alternative nationalist history – in the case of the ‘Berber crisis’. In 1949, national leaders of the MTLD accused members of the student wing of the organization of being ‘Berberists’, that is to say, of threatening the unity of the nationalist movement by promoting a ‘Berber’ cultural particularism. For one of the students involved, Sadek Hadjères (b. 1928), this was a caricature employed to dismiss a serious political debate about the goals and methods of the MTLD. He describes those who challenged the direction of the MTLD leadership not as ‘Berbers’ but ‘contestataires démocrates’ [democratic dissenters] (2014: 279) – there were Arabophones who supported their campaigns and Berberophones who did not. Hadjères’s view is atypical – instead, the label ‘Berber crisis’ has been reappropriated by activists within or close to the Berber movement which emerged in Algeria from the 1980s onwards as a positive label. For Amar Ouderdane, ‘Principaux initiateurs du courant nationaliste radical, les Kabyles ont tenté à deux reprises dans les premières phases de son développement (1926–1937 et 1937–1949) de lui donner une orientation démocratique et laïque avant de le propulser dans la lutte anti-coloniale ouverte’ (1987: 45). 56 Abdennour Ali Yahia refers to a ‘Islam remains our immovable faith, the belief which gives sense to our lives, our spiritual motherland, the Muslim personal status is our true country’. 56 ‘Principal initiators of the radical nationalist strand, Kabyles twice tried 55

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‘crise anti-berbériste’ [anti-Berberist crisis] which deprived ‘les Algériens de leur algérianité’ [Algerians of their Algerianness] (M.M., 2014). Implicit in both Ouderdane and Ali Yahia’s arguments is that the Berbers/Kabyles (as a homogeneous group) were the precursors in understanding that Algerian identity needed to be plural and the state needed to be secular from the 1920s onwards, and the fact that they were not listened to resulted in the crisis of the 1990s. The dominant frames of reference used to ‘read’ Algeria thus remain cultural. Cultural categories are both imposed from the outside and reinforced from within. This is not just a colonial continuation – the categories are (re)activated in different moments and contexts, and take on new meanings. Various other ‘moments’ are presented as part of the chain reaction leading to the 1990s, such as the summer of 1962, when independence was ‘stolen’ by ‘false mujahidin’ who betrayed the project of democracy and plurality (or who failed to fulfil true cultural decolonization, depending on one’s perspective), and the Arabization policies of the 1970s. The latter attract the particular ire of authors such as Boualem Sansal (b. 1949) and Kamel Daoud (b. 1970) (Daoud, 2013). While each of these moments merits sustained analysis and critique, what interests us here is the way in which they have become ideological markers: mere mention of them immediately positions you within one of the versions of Algerianness. Indeed, Arabization has given rise to some of the most potent allegories of perceived foreign cultural imposition and the denigration of authentic, Algerian culture. These include the oft-repeated anecdote about the Egyptian plumber who came to teach Arabic in Algeria because not enough Algerians were literate in the language, and the trope of the Arabic teacher beating students and making them dislike Arabic for life, as opposed to the pedagogical French teacher. As Khadra put it in one interview: ‘I wanted to be an Arab poet […] but I was not encouraged by my Arabic teachers who had no indulgence for a teenager who dared to write poems … On the other hand, I was very bad at French, but my teachers went all the way to help me improve my style’ (Kutschera, 2010: 62). A common feature of progressive discourse is that the hijab worn by young women today is a foreign, post-Iranian revolution import as opposed to the authentic Algerian hayk. While progressives might denounce Algerian Islamists as ‘Afghans’, an Islamist retort would be that Algeria was undergoing a Western cultural invasion through satellite TV – although much of the in the first phases of [the nationalist movement’s] development (1926–1937 and 1937–1949) to give it a democratic and secular direction before pushing it forward into the open anti-colonial struggle’.

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materialism they denounce is actually the result of consumerism boosted by cheap products made in (nominally) communist China. All of these original sins and foreign invasions work as shortcuts, instantly locating the speaker within the three versions of ‘Algerianness’ – even if no one fits neatly into any one of these ideological bundles. This shorthand is reinforced by a series of even more lapidary shortcuts which have emerged from the 1990s onwards and which conflate politics and culture, often reducing culture (and ideological affiliation) to physical appearance: chouyou’iyoune [‘communist’, generally used to dismiss a ‘progressive’ as an atheist], moultazima [literally, ‘conforming’, used to describe a woman wearing Islamic dress], moutabaridja [‘loose’, or indeed ‘slutty’, used to describe a non-veiled woman], barbu/boulayhia [‘bearded’ – used to describe an Islamist]. Indeed, the idea that you wear your politico-cultural identity on your skin is not a new one in Algerian dialect – in the interwar colonial period, the term m’tourni [turncoat] gained common usage to critique those who had become too ‘acculturated’ to France, while in the 1960s and 1970s, civilisi [‘civilized’, an Arabicized throwback to colonial terminology] was commonly used, usually in a neutral way, to describe women who had unveiled in order to go to university.

Fixed Definitions, Porous Frontiers and Political Expediency, 2005–2015 The ideas that one’s political position can be determined through culture, and that one’s culture can be determined through physical appearance, reinforce the view that Algeria can be divided into mutually exclusive groups, while simultaneously creating a shared framework and language which undermines such proclaimed divisions. To return to Fanny Colonna’s argument about a lack of a shared cultural patrimony, we would instead argue that debating ‘Algerianness’ along well-worn lines is the shared Algerian patrimony today. To revisit Rahal’s concept of ‘entre-sois’: competing ‘entre-sois’, taken together, form an ‘entre-nous’. Indeed, the past decade has provided evidence that representatives of each version of ‘Algerianness’ do know the codes of ‘the other’, and that they use them strategically all the time. The prime example of this is perhaps Khalida Messaoudi-Toumi (b. 1958). In the 1980s and early 1990s, she embodied the anti-administration, anti-Islamist progressive – she was a feminist activist, human rights campaigner and RCD member condemned to death by the FIS in 1993. In 1995, with French journalist Elisabeth Schemla, she published a series of interviews with the title Une Algérienne debout, subsequently translated into English as Unbowed: An Algerian Woman Confronts Islamic Fundamentalism. In 2002, however,

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she was one of five women appointed to a cabinet position by President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, becoming Minister for Culture and Communication (a post she held until April 2014). Opponents in the progressive camp complain about her having ‘sold out’, and conservatives sporadically post videos of her on YouTube engaged in ‘scandalous’ activities such as dancing.57 Yet what is perhaps more significant is the fact that Toumi can play on all the different ‘codes’. In addition to the feminist, Berberist, human rights activist, she can also speak in the voice of the ‘administration’ and its language of official Islam, Arabism and wartime legitimacy (and since Tamazight became a national language in 2002, a dose of linguistic plurality also fits this official line). She was instrumental in Tlemcen being designated the Capital of Islamic Culture for 2011, oversaw the selection of 100 politically acceptable films to celebrate 50 years of Algerian independence in 2012 and was successful in having Constantine named the Arab League and UNESCO’s Capital of Arab Culture for 2015. Toumi is also able to play the card of religious authenticity. In summer 2005, she participated in the reality TV show El wadjh el akhar [The Other Face], taking her daughter to a zaouïa [brotherhood] for a spiritual blessing – President Bouteflika had also toured the zaouïat before his election in 1999, thus associating himself with what was perceived to be a different kind of Islam to that of the FIS and its ideological sympathizers. In the violence and dislocation of the 1990s, it is easy to understand why the Algerian identity triptych ossified as an explanatory matrix and why its mutually exclusive categories seemed to make sense. But why do these categories continue to persist, more than a decade after the return of relative peace to Algeria and the passing of the (albeit contested) Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation in 2005, and when there are obvious examples of politicians, cultural actors and ordinary people who cannot be neatly classified? The answer lies in the continuing political expediency of these categories: using them will provoke an instant reaction from one of the two ‘others’ and allows for easier access to the public stage. Two recent examples, briefly played out in the press and social media for a few weeks before fading into oblivion, illustrate this point. They are both ephemeral and familiar, minor incidents which immediately took on a much greater political significance because they were uploaded into debates for which all Algerians already know the terms of reference. The first is the outraged reaction of religious conservative Cheikh Chemseddine to Lyès Salem’s (b. 1973) film L’Oranais/El Wahrani [The Oranian] (France/Algeria, 2014). Chemseddine is something of a media Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_CkZDKEXXc (consulted on 20 December 2015). 57

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star on Arabophone TV in Algeria. Dressed in a gandoura on top of a qamis and with an araguia on his head,58 and, of course, bearded, speaking in a vernacular algerois dialect, he convivially delivers unforgiving moral judgement on Algerian society. He is sometimes referred to as Cheikh Chemseddine el-Djazaïri, but ‘the Algerian’ is an appropriation, not actually his real name. Chemseddine is a regular contributor to Echorouk TV, but it was an invitation to Ennahar TV’s chat show ‘Coffee and Newspaper’, during which he discussed El Wahrani, that attracted particular attention.59 Despite not having seen the film, Chemseddine was outraged that Salem’s fresco of the destiny of a mujahid in Oran after independence showed him and his fellow former combatants drinking: ‘No one has the right to touch the sacred image of the Algerian mujahid and to destroy it, depicting him as a drunk. The mujahid that I know, he carried arms, and in El Wahrani he’s carrying a bottle of whiskey!’ Chemseddine argued that depicting mujahidin drinking alcohol was an attack on Algerian collective memory and damaging to the well-being of Algerian society, equating it to Holocaust denial in Europe. He criticized the Ministry for Culture for not banning the film, but also denied that he had issued a fatwa to kill the director, a claim made by Frenchlanguage journalist Fayçal Métaoui. Instead, Chemseddine argued, he just wanted to talk to Salem: ‘maybe because he’s Franco-Algerian he made a mistake’.60 Chemseddine easily leaps across cultural codes and references – nationalist, Islamist, transnational and – with a later claim that the film is an insult to the whole of the west of Algeria – regionalist. Although they appear to be polar opposites, like Khalida Toumi, Chemseddine knows exactly which category he is put in by his opponents, and he plays with this category and its boundaries. A second example of the ‘performance’ of Algerianness comes from a group of artists who sing in Tamazight and who refused to perform as This kind of dress is commonly seen as the classic ‘Islamist outfit’, but Chemseddine is mixing up codes in his sartorial choices: the gandoura is a loose traditional North African gown, usually without sleeves, whereas the closerfitting qamis is a type of gown associated with Saudi Arabia. The araguia is a prayer cap. 59 Both the Arabic-language channels Ennahar TV and Echorouk TV, which might be labelled conservative-populist, film and edit much of their material in Algeria, but transmit from abroad to circumvent national restrictions on private TV channels. They are both linked to Arabic-language Algerian national newspapers of the same name, but the sources of finance or ownership are not clear. The same applies to El Khabar TV. 60 Available at https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Er71UZQU1Zo&feature=share (consulted on 7 May 2017). 58

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part of the celebrations surrounding Constantine Capital of Arab Culture, arguing that the festivities were a denial of the city’s long heritage pre-dating the Arab conquest. Many of the singers who refused to perform stated that they had been put on an official list of participants without their knowledge or consent – whether this was due to disorganization, a political ploy or whether perhaps some of these singers had agreed to sing and then withdrew when it was made public, is not clear (Azzoudi, 2015). Around the same time, an alternative version of the history of Constantine – or rather, the ancient Numidian city of Cirta – was circulating on YouTube, uploaded by the user Oulahlou to the Berbère Télévision channel (a satellite station based in Paris), using various aerial shots of modern-day Constantine (rather like the official video for the Capital of Arab Culture), but in this case accompanied by a folk song sung in Tamazight, with subtitles in French and Tamazight (transliterated in Latin script rather than using Tifinagh script), which referred to Roman ruins, Massinissa (the second-century BCE Berber king) and 2,000 years of history, with a chorus of ‘Cirta, Cirta’.61 As Mokhtar Ghambou underlines in his discussion of Berber activists’ use of ancient Greek and Roman texts, ‘the Berber narrative, still in its formative stage, cannot draw attention to itself without practicing some kind of strategic essentialism’ (2010: 155–56). This group of Kabyle singers may not have performed in Constantine as part of the international festivities surrounding the Capital of Arab Culture, but they performed Algerianness on the national and – among Algeria’s diaspora – the transnational stage. Their refusal was widely reported in the national media: El Khabar TV (KBC) produced a report in fusha (Classical Arabic), showing a press conference with the music stars Lounis Aït Menguellet (b. 1950) and Idir (b. 1949) at the state-owned Office National des Droits d’Auteur [National Copyright Office], in which the two singers denounced, in French, the ‘idéologie sous-jacente’ [underlying ideology] of the festival.62 The report from El Khabar TV was then reproduced on kabylie-news.com. Here we see in action the way in which supposedly mutually exclusive identities rely upon, and feed each other.

Available at https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Er71UZQU1Zo&feature=share (consulted on 5 June 2017). 62 Available at http://www.kabylie-news.com/2015/10/video-idir-et-ait-menguelletnon-nous-ne-sommes-pas-des-arabes.html?m=1 (consulted on 16 December 2015). 61

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Conclusion In ‘Provisional Notes on the Postcolony’, Achille Mbembe argues that the relationship between ruler and ruled is not, primarily, one of resistance or collaboration, but rather ‘can best be characterised as illicit cohabitation’ in which a ‘necessary familiarity and domesticity’ transforms power play into a performance (1992: 4). To support his argument, Mbembe – who is one of the relatively few influential postcolonial theorists in both French and Algerian academic contexts63 – presents a case study of the shared use of the grotesque and the obscene by both ruler and ruled in Cameroon, thus questioning the commonly held view of humour as a means of resisting dominant culture. For Mbembe, ‘What defines the postcolonised subject is the ability to engage in baroque practices which are fundamentally ambiguous, fluid and modifiable even in instances where there are clear, written and precise rules’ (1992: 25). Although the subject of this chapter is somewhat different to that of Mbembe’s article, the way in which he characterizes a shared language of power is useful in thinking about how to move beyond a vision of Algeria as being at war with itself, divided into three mutually exclusive identities. Exploring points of connection and mutual dependency across versions of Algerianness at different points in time enables us to un-nest academic analytical frames from the political languages we seek to study. In contemporary Algeria, participating in debates, wearing the well-worn costumes of ‘opposing types’ and following long-rehearsed lines represents both a political strategy and a way of being together: if you do not speak your part you cannot get on stage, and once you are on stage, you are part of the play. The importance of the power relations underpinning this performance clearly must not be forgotten – not all parts have equal weight. Nevertheless, the collective performance is indicative of a social cohesiveness that, when taken at face value, the actual content of the debates denies. Algerian history, politics and society have often been presented in dramatic terms. The 1990s are frequently referred to as the ‘Algerian drama’ or the ‘Algerian tragedy’, conjuring up the three acts of classical theatre. Indeed, Algeria’s entire history is often periodized into three parts – in the words of Donald Holsinger, reviewing Michael Willis’s The Islamist Challenge in Algeria (1997), the story of Algeria is a ‘three-part tragedy – colonialism, war for independence, 1990’s [sic] civil war’ (2002: 243). In this chapter, we have argued for a post-dramatic analysis of Algeria – post-dramatic in the colloquial Mohamed Harbi describes Mbembe as occupying ‘une place de choix parmi les intellectuels africains’ [a privileged place amongst African intellectuals] (2013: 15). 63

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sense of going beyond seeing Algeria as locked in a series of violent confrontations. But also post-dramatic in the way that the term is used in theatre studies (Lehmann, 2006: 25): deconstructing a linear narrative, multiplying perspectives and recognising that actors are both ‘theme and protagonist’.

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Khadra, Yasmina. 1998. Les Agneaux du seigneur. Paris: Juillard. Kutschera, Chris. 2010. ‘Yasmina Khadra: The Algerian Conundrum’. The Middle East January: 62–63. Lehmann, Hans-Thies. 2006. Postdramatic Theatre. Trans. by Karen Jürs-Munby. London and New York: Routledge. Lorcin, Patricia. 1995. Imperial Identities: Stereotyping, Prejudice and Race in Colonial Algeria. London: I.B. Tauris. M.M. 2014. ‘Ali-Yahia Abdennour raconte la crise anti-berbériste de 1949’. Liberté 14 January. Available at http://www.liberte-algerie.com/actualite/ali-yahiaabdennour-raconte-la-crise-anti-berberiste-de-1949-199945 (consulted on 12 February 2016). Mbembe, Achille. 1992. ‘Provisional Notes on the Postcolony’. Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 62.1: 3–37. McDougall, James. 2006. History and the Culture of Nationalism in Algeria. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Messaoudi, Khalida, and Elisabeth Schemla. 1995. Une Algérienne debout. Paris: Flammarion. Meynier, Gilbert. 2009. ‘L’Algérie, la nation et l’islam: le FLN, 1954–1962’. In Dominique Borne and Benoit Falaize (eds), Religion et colonisation: Afrique-Asie; Océanie-Amériques XVIe–XXe siècle. Paris: Les Éditions de l’Atelier: 241–55. Moussaoui, Abderrahmane. 2006. De la violence en Algérie: les lois du chaos. Arles: Actes Sud/MMSH. Ouderdane, Amar. 1987. ‘La “crise berbériste” de 1949, un conflit à plusieurs faces’. Revue de l’Occident musulman et de la Méditerranée 44: 35–47. Passevant, Christine. 1998. ‘Cinéma de résistance’. L’Homme et la Société 127–28: 113–19. Pervillé, Guy. 1997. ‘Histoire de l’Algérie et mythes politiques algériens: du “parti de la France” aux “anciens et nouveau harkis”’. In Charles-Robert Ageron (ed.), La Guerre d’Algérie et les Algériens, 1954–1962. Paris: Armand Colin CNRS: 323–31. Radstone, Susannah. 2011. ‘What Place Is This? Transcultural Memory and the Locations of Memory Studies’. Parallax 17.4: 109–23. Rahal, Malika. 2012a. ‘Ferhat Abbas, de l’assimilationnisme au nationalisme’. In Abderrahmane Bouchène, Jean-Pierre Peyroulou, Ouanassa Siari Tengour and Sylvie Thénault, Histoire de l’Algérie à la période coloniale. Paris and Alger: La Découverte and Barzakh: 443–46. ——. 2012b. ‘Fused Together and Torn Apart: Stories and Violence in Contemporary Algeria’. History and Memory 24.1: 118–51. Remaoun, Hassan, 2000. ‘La question de l’histoire dans le débat sur la violence en Algérie’. Insaniyat 10: 31–43.

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Roberts, Hugh. 2003. The Battlefield: Algeria 1988–2002: Studies in a Broken Polity. London and New York: Verso. Scheele, Judith. 2009. Village Matters: Knowledge, Politics and Community in Kabylia, Algeria. Woodbridge: James Currey. Semiane, Sid Ahmed. 2005. Au refuge des balles perdues: chronique des deux Algérie. Paris: La Découverte. Silverstein, Paul A. 2002. ‘An Excess of Truth: Violence, Conspiracy Theorizing and the Algerian Civil War’. Anthropological Quarterly 75:4: 643–74. Souaïdia, Habib. 2001. La Sale Guerre. Paris: La Découverte. Stora, Benjamin. 1991. La Gangrène et l’oubli: la mémoire de la guerre d’Algérie. Paris: La Découverte. ——. 1994. Histoire de l’Algérie depuis l’indépendance. Paris: La Découverte. ——. 2001. La Guerre invisible: Algérie, années 90. Paris: Presses Sciences Po. Stora, Benjamin, and Zakya Daoud. 1995. Ferhat Abbas: une utopie algérienne. Paris: Denoël. Tahi, Mohamed Salah. 1995. ‘Algeria’s Democratisation Process: A Frustrated Hope’. Third World Quarterly 16.2: 197–220. Temlali, Yassin. 2011. Algérie, chroniques ciné-littéraires de deux guerres. Algiers: Barzakh. ——. 2015. La Genèse de la Kabylie: aux origines de l’affirmation berbère en Algérie (1930–1962). Algiers: Barzakh. Vince, Natalya. 2015. Our Fighting Sisters: Nation, Memory and Gender in Algeria, 1954–2012. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Weil, Patrick. 2004. Qu’est-ce qu’un Français? Paris: Folio. Žižek, Slavoj. 2008. ‘Tolerance as an Ideological Category’. Critical Inquiry 34.4: 660–82.

Notes on Contributors

Notes on Contributors

Walid Benkhaled is Production Manager in the School of Media and Performing Arts at the University of Portsmouth, UK. He is a member of the Francophone Africa cluster in the Centre for European and International Studies Research (CEISR). His research interests lie in post-1962 Algerian history, Algerian cinema and, more broadly, artistic production in post-independence Algeria. He is particularly interested in the relationships between cinema and history, and language and cinema. Patrick Crowley is Senior Lecturer in Francophone Literatures at University College Cork. His published work includes three co-edited volumes: Formless (Peter Lang, 2005), Mediterranean Travels (Maney, 2011) and Postcolonial Poetics: Genre and Form (Liverpool University Press, 2011). His scholarly edition of L’Exotisme: la littérature coloniale (Louis Cario et Charles Régismanset, 1911) was published in 2016 and he co-edited, with Megan MacDonald, a thematic issue of Contemporary French and Francophone Studies on the North African novel (2016). Philip Dine is Personal Professor and Head of French at the National University of Ireland, Galway. He is the author of Images of the Algerian War: French Fiction and Film, 1954–1992 (Clarendon/Oxford University Press, 1994) and has published widely on representations of the French colonial empire, including particularly decolonization, in fields ranging 271

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from children’s literature to professional sport. His other published research includes French Rugby Football: A Cultural History (Berg/Bloomsbury, 2001), Sport and Identity in France: Practices, Locations, Representations (Peter Lang, 2012) and, with Seán Crosson, the edited volume Sport, Representation and Evolving Identities in Europe (Peter Lang, 2010). Samuel Sami Everett (Sami) received his PhD from SOAS, University of London in 2014. His thesis was an historical and ethnographic examination of the passage of North African culture between generations among Jews in Île de France (greater Paris). He is currently a Junior Research Fellow at the Woolf Institute, Research Associate at St Edmunds College, Cambridge and a postdoctoral researcher at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris, where he conducts research on a European project about trust between faith communities. He continues to work on Jewish Maghrebi culture, its changes and continuities in France. Fanny Gillet is completing a doctoral thesis at the University of Geneva on the relationship between art and politics in post-independence Algeria (1962–2012). She is a founding member of a research group on the visual arts in the Middle East and North Africa from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century (http://arvimm.hypotheses.org/) and is co-chair, since 2013, of the seminar series ‘Histoires de l’art dans les pays du monde musulman’ at the Institut d’Études de l’Islam et des Sociétés du Monde Musulman (IEISMM) based at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris. Olivia C. Harrison is Associate Professor of French and Middle East Studies at the University of Southern California. Her research focuses on postcolonial North African, Middle Eastern and French literature and film, with a particular emphasis on transcolonial affiliations between writers and intellectuals from the Global South. She is the author of Transcolonial Maghreb: Imagining Palestine in the Era of Decolonization (Stanford University Press, 2016) and, with Teresa Villa-Ignacio, co-editor of Souffles-Anfas: A Critical Anthology from the Moroccan Journal of Culture and Politics (Stanford University Press, 2016) and ‘Translating the Maghreb’, a special issue of Expressions Maghrébines. Britta Elena Hecking received her PhD from the Institute of Oriental Studies, University of Leipzig. In her dissertation on ‘Youth and Resistance in Algiers’ she combines a historical and ethnographic approach to understanding how the socio-spatially ‘divided’ city is not only the location but also a trigger and reason for youth unrest. She is currently coordinating a research project led by Prof. Jörg Gertel on the impact of youth on the making of Marseille at the

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Institute of Geography, University of Leipzig. Her research areas are youth and urban development within the city viewed in terms of profit-orientated city planning and concepts of integrated urban development. Tony Langlois is an ethnomusicologist based in Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, where he lectures in the Department of Media and Communications. Since the 1990s his core research field has been the musics and cultures of Morocco and Algeria, and more recently Jewish musicians and the chanson oranaise of Algeria. His current research, on the Sufi traditions of diasporic North Africans, is based on fieldwork conducted in the Maghreb and the UK. He is editor of Ethnomusicology Ireland, the online journal of the Irish chapter of the International Council on Traditional Music, and is a founder member of the IndieCork film and music festival. Further details available at: tonylanglois.ie Ed McAllister holds a PhD in history from the University of Oxford (2015) and an MA in contemporary Arab studies from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (2011). His research areas include memory and constructions of temporality and their relationship to political change in contemporary North Africa. His recent publications include ‘Youth, Cynicism and Social Justice in Bab el-Oued’, in Algeria Modern: From Opacity to Complexity (Hurst, 2016); ‘Postsocialist Algeria and the Politics of the Future’, International Journal of Mediterranean Studies 18 (2015); and ‘Algeria’s Non-Uprising: Urban Space and Fragmentation in Bab el-Oued’, in Beyond the Square: Urbanism and the Arab Uprisings (Urban Research, 2016). James McDougall is a fellow and tutor in modern history at Trinity College, University of Oxford. He previously taught at Princeton and at SOAS, London. His publications include History and the Culture of Nationalism in Algeria (Cambridge University Press, 2006), Saharan Frontiers: Space and Mobility in Northwest Africa (Indiana University Press, 2012) and A History of Algeria (Cambridge University Press, 2017). He is currently writing a history of the everyday life and legacies of the French empire in Africa. Jessica Ayesha Northey is a research associate with the Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations at the University of Coventry. She holds a PhD in social and political sciences from the European University Institute in Florence. She has previously worked with the European Union in different African countries including Algeria between 2007 and 2009. Her publications focus on civic engagement and the role of civil society in political change in Africa.

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Malika Rahal is a historian at the Institut d’histoire du temps présent (CNRS-Université de Paris VIII). She is a specialist of contemporary North Africa, with a focus on Algeria in the post-independence period. Her publications include Ali Boumendjel. Une affaire française. Une histoire algérienne (Les Belles Lettres, 2010). Her forthcoming publication, L’UDMA et les Udmistes, focuses on the nationalist party in the pre-independence period and is to be published with Éditions Barzakh. She is also preparing a publication on the Algerian left and is part of a collective research project titled ‘1979 – Migrations of hope’. Corbin Treacy (PhD, University of Minnesota) is Assistant Professor of French at Florida State University. His research focuses on the interplay of aesthetics, history and politics in contemporary Maghrebi literature and film. His work has appeared in Contemporary French & Francophone Studies, French Forum, Research in African Literatures, The Journal of North African Studies, The French Review, Modernism and Modernity, Foreign Language Annals and Human Rights Review. His book, Aesthetics and Aftermath: Algerian Literature and Film in the Twenty-First Century, is forthcoming with Liverpool University Press. He is co-editing with Megan MacDonald an upcoming issue of Expressions maghrébines dedicated to the work of Tahar Djaout. Natalya Vince is Reader in North African and French Studies in the School of Languages and Area Studies at the University of Portsmouth, UK. She is a member of the Francophone Africa cluster in the Centre for European and International Studies Research (CEISR). Her monograph Our Fighting Sisters: Nation, Memory and Gender in Algeria, 1954–2012 (Manchester University Press, 2015) was winner of the 2016 Women’s History Network Book Prize. She is currently the holder of a European Commission Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Global Fellowship and is based at the University of Algiers 2, working on a project entitled ‘Students, social change and the construction of the post-independence Algerian state, 1962–1978’ (705763/ STUSOCSTA).

Index

Index

Abbas, Ferhat 68, 72, 258 Abdelkader, Emir 111, 113 Abdelmoumene, Noureddine 85–88 Abderrahim, Kader 204 Abitbol, Michel 66 Abouali, Youssef 230, 234 Aboud, Hichem 30n8 Achebe, Chinua 217 AC Milan 212, 215 Addi, Lahouari 101, 248–89 Adidas 193 Adimi, Kaouther 126 Adryen, Hocine 196 Afghanistan 226, 230, 234, 236 Aggoun, Lounis 251 Ahmad, Nida 188 Aïssat, Sadek 91, 96–97 Aït Ahmed, Hocine 18, 19, 98, 175n28, 250 Aït-Aoudia, Myriam 84, 87, 89, 98 Aït Saadi Bouras, Lydia 9n9 Aït Menguellet, Lounis 176, 264 Akindes, Gerard 215

Akli Hadibi, Mohand 37 Al-Ahnaf, Mustafa 90n7 Alfonsi, Philippe 153 Algerian revolution (1954–62) see Algerian war of independence 1954–62 Algerian war of independence (1954–62) 5, 8–10, 18–19, 29, 32, 37, 40, 42, 59, 63–65, 70, 75–76, 101, 113, 117, 140–42, 149–54, 156–57, 165–66, 168, 170, 175n28, 195, 197–99, 204, 223–24, 227–28, 234, 237–38, 243–44, 246–47, 253–58 Alim, Yacine 32 Ali Yahia, Abdennour 259–60 allegory national allegory 14–15, 129, 134, 227–28 transnational allegory 228–29 Allouache, Merzak 2, 16, 253, 255 Allouche-Benayoun, Joëlle 67 al-Madani, Ahmad Tawfiq 246

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al-Qaïda au Maghreb islamique (AQMI) 178 Amara, Mahfoud 205–06, 208, 210–13, 216–17 Amari, Chawki 126, 133 Amazigh 1, 247, 262, 264 Amellal, Fawzi 112 Ameur-Zaïmeche, Rabah 2 Ammour, Sihem 116 amnesty 3, 8n7, 9, 17, 125, 148 Amselle, Jean-Loup 67 Anderson, Benedict 3n3 Andrews, David 218 APPAT (association) 109n11, 112, 113–14, 118 Arabization 5, 50, 101, 175, 180–81, 217, 246, 260 Arab Spring 10, 32, 82, 99, 175n29, 180, 184, 196, 229–30, 236 Association Abou Ishak Ibrahim Tefayech pour le Service du Patrimoine 105–06 Association Archéologique (Ténès) 109n11 Association Castellum 109n11 Association des Oulémas [‘Ulama] Musulmans Algériens (AUMA) 246 Association des recherches et études historiques de la région d’Adrar 115 Association Rostomid Artisanat 110 Association Salaam el Akbar 110 Auger, Fabrice 204 Austin, Guy 255 Ayoun, Richard 67, 71 Ayrault, Jean-Marc 123 Azdaou, Rachida 143–44 Azoulay, Ariella 156 Azzoudi, Hafid 264 Bachi, Salim 2, 15, 225–26, 229–30, 234, 236, 255–56 Bachir-Chouikh, Yamina 2 Badjadja, Abdelkrim 144

Baez, Joan 176 Bakhtaoui, El-Hadj 94 Balibar, Etienne 225 Balta, Paul 50 Bambaataa, Afrika 192n8 Bancel, Nicolas 207 Barthès, Yann 123 Baru (Hervé Barulea) 212 Bassey, Hogan 212 Batty, Peter 152 Bayat, Asef 185–88, 200 Beaud, Stéphane 141n4 Belakhdar, Taïeb 85 Belal, Karim 204 Belgium 108n7, 153n25, 172, 213, 253 Belhadj, Ali 36, 98 Bel Horizon (association) 107–11, 117–18 Belkheir, Larbi 34 Belkacem, Krim 50n6, 150 Benaïssa, Slimane 229 Ben Ali, Zine el-Abidine 31–32, 36, 124 Benameur, Mourad 114 Benazzouz, Hacène 85 Ben Badis, Abdelhamid 72, 246 Bendjedid, Chadli 6, 83–85, 99, 210 see Chadli, Bendjedid Benflis, Ali 33n12 Benfodil, Mustapha 2, 15, 17, 125–27, 129, 131–33, 138 Benhaj, Ali see Belhadj, Ali Benkhaled, Walid 11–12, 16, 100 Benmalek, Anouar 2, 15, 85, 224–26, 229–34, 236, 239 Ben M’Hidi, Larbi 150 Benmiloud, Khaled 247 Ben Nefissa, Sarah 106 Bennoune, Mahfoud 49, 51–52 Bensalah, Abdelkader 35 Bensimon, Doris 67 Bensmaïl, Malek 2, 17 Bensmaïa, Réda 223n4

Index Bentounes, Sheikh Khaled 106 Benyahia, Mohamed 257–58 Ben Youcef Ben Aissa Tefayech, M’Hammed 116 Benzema, Karim 213 Berber Chaoui 168 Colonial period 246 History 111, 114 Identity 63, 115, 243–44 Kabyle 165n5 Languages and Culture 1, 9, 68, 70, 108, 115, 163, 169, 205–06, 247–48, 253, 264 Movement 7, 14 Peoples and Society 12, 102, 104, 164, 173–81 Politics 37, 259–60, 262, Spring 6, 218, 248 Berger, Anne-Emmanuelle 1, 101 Berlin Wall 83 Besnier, Niko 205 Betchine, Mohammed 86 Bey, Maïssa 2, 17 Bezzzef 17, 133 Bitat, Rabah 150 ‘black decade’ 2, 7, 9, 18, 33, 47, 64, 68, 70, 72, 76, 81–83, 88–90, 95–97, 99–100, 102, 124, 126–27, 134, 140–41, 146–52, 154–56, 158, 172–73, 179, 194, 207–08, 210, 213–14, 223–24, 226–27, 230, 234, 237, 245, 250, 253–55, 258, 265 Black, Ian 29 Blümlinger, Christa 150 Blond Blond 168n13 Bogart, Humphrey 129 Boissier, Annabelle 142 Boniche, Lili 75–76, 168n13 Botiveau, Bernard 90n7 Bouazizi, Mohamed 31 Boucebci, Dr Mahfoud 7 Bouchafra-Hennequin, Ismaël 213

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Boudiaf, Mohamed 6, 8, 82, 124n2, 148, 150, 154–56, 158 Boudjedra, Rachid 15, 211, 224, 226, 229, 236, 238–39, 251 Boughera El Ouafi, Ahmed 204 Bouhali, Larbi 92 Boulaïd, Mostefa Ben 150 Boulmerka, Hassiba 18, 207–08, 218 Boumediene, Houari 5, 6, 10, 28–30, 41, 48–50, 52, 54, 57–58, 61, 82–83, 85, 171, 175, 205–06, 217–18, 247 Bourget, Carine 229 Boutella, Sofia 193 Bonn, Charles 7, 125, 138, 223n4, 251, 253 Bonnefoy, Laurent 186 Borges, Jorge Luis 131 Bouras, Ammar 8, 146–48, 155 Bourdieu, Pierre 48, 151 Bouredji, Fella 185 Bouteflika, Abdelaziz 9–10, 15, 18n20, 27–29, 32–36, 54, 69, 102, 123–27, 155, 173, 213, 217, 262 Bouteflika, Saïd 28n1, 29n5, 30n8 Bousbia, Safinez 75–77 Bozonnet, Charlotte 19 Bozzo, Anna 101 Bratton, Michael 82 Braune, Ines 188 Brazil 188, 205, 207, 214 Brennan, Timothy 126 Brower, Benjamin C. 164 Brownell, Susan 205 Buck-Morss, Susan 48 Byrne, Jeffrey James 29n6 Camus, Albert 133, 223–24 Canada 83, 177n32 Carlier, Omar 75, 151, 190, 256 Carroll, David 1, 11 Catusse, Myriam 186 Cavatorta, Francesco 106 Certeau (de), Michel 158

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Césaire, Aimé 231–33, 239 Chaalal, Ahmed 256n51 Chadli, Bendjedid 6, 30, 34, 83–85, 99, 210 Chafaâ, Fatima 156 Charef, Abed 84–85 Charef Eddine, A. 91 Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation 8, 17, 125, 149, 262 Chauvin, Luc 2 Chebab Belouizdad (CRB) 211 Chemseddine, Cheikh 262–63 Cherfaoui, Zine 33 Cherif, Hachemi 89, 91–94 Chérifa, Na 175 Chergou, Abderrahmane 91, 93–94 China 52, 261 Chirac, Jacques 69, 213 Chominot, Marie 150 Chouraqui, André 67, 71 Chrisafis, Angelique 29n4 Ciantar, Philip 167 Cissokho, Sidy 187 Cissokho, Thiat 187 civil war (Algeria 1990s) see ‘black decade’ Cixous, Hélène 64n3, 65 Clavin, Patricia 2 Cohen, Bernard 67 Cohen, Erik H. 67n8 Cohen, Joseph D. 65 Collingwood, R. G. 3 Collyer, Michael 117 Colonna, Fanny 247–48, 261 Colonna, Vincent 253 Comité National Contre la Torture 84–85 Comité National pour la Sauvegarde de l’Algérie (CNSA) 98 Comité Olympique International (COI) 203 Connelly, Matthew C. 29n6 Cooper, Frederick 256

Coordination nationale pour le changement et la démocratie (CNCD) 14, 35–37, 106, 184 Coubertin (de), Pierre 203–04 Crémieux decree (1870) 66, 165 Cresswell, Tim 198 Cullen, John 235n25 Culler, Jonathan 3 Dahou, Tarik 244 Dali, Abdelkrim 169 Dalléas Bouzar, Dalila 8, 155n33, 156 Daoud, Ahmed 112–13 Daoud, Kamel 2, 15, 17, 124, 126, 133–38, 223, 260 Daoud, Omar 156 Daoud, Zakya 68, 259 Daum, Pierre 66 Davis, Muriam Haleh 10 Davis, Ruth 167 décennie noire see ‘black decade’ Dehimi, Hocine ‘Yamaha’ 210–11 Delacourt, Sandra 157 Denis, Sébastien 150 Département du Renseignement et de la Sécurité (DRS) 27–30, 33–34, 50, 152n24, 155n32 derja 1, 2, 171, 191 d’Erlanger, Rodolphe 167 Derras, Omar 104–05 Derrida, Jacques 65, 71, 141, 146n13 Dib, Mohammed 126, 137–38 Didi-Huberman, Georges 149–50 Didouche, Mourad 150 Dilmi, El Houari 112 Dine, Philip 5, 14, 19, 179 Dirlik, Arif 225 Djabi, Nacer 33 Djaout, Tahar 7, 223 Djazaïrouna (association) 156 Djerbal, Daho 37n17, 250 Djebar, Assia 7–8, 11, 12n10, 18–19, 223–24, 252

Index Djurdjura 177 Dobie, Madeleine 1 Donnan, Hastings 162n1 Dorsey, James 204, 206, 216–17 Downey, Anthony 141, 151, 158 Doyle, Paul 206 Drif, Zohra 63–64 Dris, Nassima 186 Dubois, Laurent 213 Dylan, Bob 176 Eastern Bloc 82, 99 Ebossé Bodjongo, Albert 216 Egypt 31–32, 36, 81, 124, 165, 170, 176, 180, 185, 204, 217, 226, 229, 236, 238, 260 El Anka, Hadj Si Mohamed 76 El Anka junior 76 El Atrache, Farid 178 El-Kenz, Ali 190 El Medioni, Maurice 168n13 El Medlaoui, Mohammed 176 El Rimitti, Cheikha 170 El Watan 12, 15, 17–19, 69n12, 108 Elananza, Azzam 106 Elsheshtawy, Yasser 186 Entelis, John P. 6 Enwezor, Okwui 156 Étienne, Bruno 49n4, 55, 151 Etoile Nord Africaine (ENA) 258 Ettahaddi (political party) 95 European Union 107–11, 117–18 Evans, Martin 7, 124n2, 209–10 Everett, Samuel Sami 6 Facebook 185, 188, 198, 228n15 Fanon, Franz 189, 224n9, 247 Fates, Youcef 192, 205, 209–10 Faudel 173 Favre, Bernard 153 Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) 203–04 Fékir, Nabil 214

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Feldman, Hannah 150 Femmes Algériennes Unies pour l’Egalité des Droits (FAUED) 254 Ferial Selhab, Assia 113 Fisher, Dominique 7 Fitzpatrick, Sheila 55n9 Forde, Joseph 7 Forsdick, Charles 225n10 Foster, Hal 146n13 Foucault, Michel 141 France 1n1, 2, 6–7, 12, 15–17, 48–49, 64–77, 82–83, 95, 106, 108n7, 110, 117, 123, 140–42, 144, 150n22, 152–53, 155n33, 165, 168n13, 169n4, 172–73, 185, 191, 193–94, 204, 206–07, 212–14, 216–17, 222–27, 229, 233, 235, 238–39, 252–55, 258, 261–62 Fraternité Algérienne en France (FAF) 153 Frégosi, Franck 90n7 Frenkiel, Stanislas 207 Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) 6, 12, 18, 28n1, 29–30, 33n12, 37, 40, 41–42, 50n6, 60, 63, 66n7, 68, 70, 72, 82–85, 88–89, 98–99, 124n2, 134, 150, 175n28, 204–06, 208–11, 218, 228–29, 244, 249–50, 255, 257–58 Front des Forces Socialistes (FFS) 18, 98–99, 175n28, 210, 249–50 Front Islamique du Salut (FIS) 6, 34n13, 36, 40, 81–83, 87–99, 148–49, 153, 172, 181, 190–92, 209–11, 249–51, 253, 255, 261–62 Fuggle, Sophie 188 Gaddafi, Muammar 32 Gafaiti, Hafid 102 Gainsbourg, Serge 178 Gastaut, Yvan 204, 213 Gaza 77, 188

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Gellner, Ernest 164n3 Gertel, Jörg 186 Ghezali, Salima 140 Ghozali, Sid Ahmed 98 Gikandi, Simon 126 Gillet, Fanny 8, 14 Giulianotti, Richard 203 Godfrey, Mark 158 Goldblatt, David 206 Goodman, Jane E. 37n17, 165n5, 174, 176, 244 Goodman, Robin 230 Grainger, Andrew D. 218 Green, Mary Jane 253 Greenfeld, Howard 222n2 Groupe d’études sur l’histoire des mathématiques à Béjaïa (GEHIMAB) 115 Groupe Islamique Armée (GIA) 148–49, 177 Groupement d’Intervention Spécial (GI S) 155 Guenaïzia, Abdelmalek 34 Guenoun, Ali 257 Guettat, Mahmoud 167 Gueydan-Turek, Alexandra 125 Gulf War (1990–1991) 98 Gunthert, André 156 Gupta, Suman 230, 234 Guss, Nathan 188 Habermas, Jürgen 11 Hachemaoui, Mohammed 10, 37n17, 244 Haddad, Malek 222 Hadj, Messali 72, 258 Hadj-Moussa, Ratiba 13 Hadjadj, Sofiane 15 Hadjerès, Sadek 91–96, 259 Halilhodžić, Vahid 214 Hamas 12, 93–95, 249 Hamia, Chérif 212 Hamouda, Mohamed 106n5

Hamrouche, Mouloud 85, 97–98 Hanifa, Cheikha 175 Hannoun, Hubert 66 Hanoune, Louisa 250 Haraigue, Rachid 210 Harbi, Mohamed 68, 74, 265n63 Hargreaves, Alec G. 2, 12, 67, 246 harraga 190, 200 Harrison, Nicholas 3–4 Harrison, Olivia C. 15 Hasni, Cheb 7, 172n21 Haut Comité d’Etat (HCE) 6, 34, 124n2 Haut Commissariat à l’Amazighité (HCA) 9, 178 Hayes, Jarrod 229 Hecking, Britta 9, 13, 19 Hellal, Selma 15 Hibou, Béatrice 149 Hiddleston, Jane 8, 15, 252 Hill, J. N. C. 6, 9 hittistes 190, 209 Hoffman, Katherine E. 244 hogra 59, 149, 185, 189, 210, 211 Holsinger, Donald 265 Honwana, Alcinda 186–87, 194 Horne, Alistair 165 Hourani, Albert 164–65 Huntington, Samuel 245n34 Hussein, Saddam 90n7, 98 Hyman, Paula E. 74 Ibn Khaldun 111 Idir (Hamid Cheriet) 176, 264 Ighilahriz, Louisette 257–58 imagined community 1, 3, 10, 193 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 6, 85 Iranian Revolution 95, 99, 260 Iraq 98, 204, 226, 230, 234–36 Islam 19, 67, 73, 75, 87, 114, 116, 131, 177–78, 181, 208–09, 216, 246, 253, 257–58, 262

Index Islamism 6–7, 15, 40–41, 73, 81–83, 93–96, 99–100, 150, 207, 211, 229 Issiakhem, M’hamed 92, 144–46 Jeunesse Électronique de Tizi-Ouzou (JET) see Jeunesse Sportive de Kabylie (JSK) Jeunesse Sportive de Kabylie (JSK) 205–06, 216, 218 Joyce, James 128–29 Judet, Pierre 49 Jugurtha 205, 206n1 Kahn, Jean-François 63 Kansteiner, Wulf 256 Kapil, Arun 84 Kassim, Mouloud 56 Kateb, Kamel 84 Kateb, Yacine 7, 17, 126, 151, 223, 225, 227, 238n33 Kessab, Amar 101, 103 Kessous, Mustapha 214 Kessous, Naaman 2 Khadda, Mohammed 92 Khadra, Yasmina 2, 15, 209, 223, 225–26, 229–30, 234–36, 239, 255, 260 Khaled, Cheb 171n20, 172 Khatibi, Abdelkebir 4, 223, 226 Khaznadar, Ismaël-Sélim 17 Kheddam, Cherif 176 Khelil, Chekib 34n12 Khider, Mohamed 50n6 Kilcline, Cathal 208 Kiser, John W. 111 Koselleck, Reinhardt 60 Kourichi, Nordine 207 Kundera, Milan 128–29 kung fu 13, 190–92 Kutschera, Chris 260 Laâbi, Abdellatif 4n4, 222 Labassi, Lili 76

281

Labidi, Djamel 91 Lacheraf, Mostefa 247–48 Lagarde, Dominique 218 Laggoune, Nadira 141 Lagraa, Abou 195 Lamari, Ismail ‘Smain’ 34 Lamari, Mohamed 33n12, 34 Landowski, Paul 144–46 Langlois, Tony 5, 7, 14, 19n21, 71, 76 Laporte, Jean-Pierre 114 Laredj, Waciny 2, 256n51 Layish, Aharon 106 Lebanon 15, 180, 204, 228 Leca, Jean 50 Le Foll-Luciani, Pierre-Jean 64n2, 66, 68, 71 Le Pape, Loïc 190 Le Sueur, James D. 9n8, 124–25 Lefebvre, Henri 197n26 Lehmann, Hans-Thies 266 Levtzion, Nehemia 114 Lévy, Bernard-Henri 63–64 Leyris, Cheikh Raymond 168n13 Ligue des Droits de l’Homme 17 Lilou, B-boy 194 Lionnet, Françoise 2, 225n11 Lloyd, Catherine 117 Lorcin, Patricia 2, 66 Lortat-Jacob, Bernard 175n25 McAllister, Edward 5, 10, 19, 38n18, 40, 158 McDougall, James 9–10, 12, 18, 47, 50, 58, 111, 117, 151, 246 McClintock, Anne 225 McGonagle, Joseph 2, 147n15 McGuigan, Jim 11 McMurray, David 163n1, 171, 173 Madani, Abbasi 36, 87, 90n7, 98 Maddy-Weitzman, Bruce 205 Madjer, Rabah 207 Madonna (Louise Ciccone) 193–94

282

Algeria: Nation, Culture and Transnationalism

Maghreb 1, 4, 6, 15n14, 42, 111, 165, 171–73, 175, 178, 180, 209, 213, 215, 218 Maghrebi literature 222, 223n3, 226–27, 230, 238 Maghrib see Maghreb Maguire, Joseph 203 Malley, Robert 48 Mallinder, Louise 9n8 Mammeri, Mouloud 247–48 Mami, Cheb 171n20, 172 Martinez, Luis 9, 103, 141n3, 190, 209 Marzouki, Nadia 19 Maschino, Maurice 49n4 Matoub, Lounès 7, 176–77 Mattelart, Tristan 12 Mbembe, Achille 265 Meddi, Adlène 33, 126, 133, 144n9 Mediène, Mohamed ‘Toufik’ 27 Mediterranean 19, 49, 55, 110, 117, 165–67, 170n19, 178, 180, 195, 206, 208, 214, 225 Meeneghan, Gary 215 Mefti, Bachir 2 Mehenni, Ferhat 176 Mehri, Abd al-Hamid 41 Mekhissi-Benabbad, Mahiedine 212 Memmi, Albert 222–23, 226 Menia, Amina 144–46 Mesbah, Salim 28 Metair, Kouidair 108 Métaoui, Fayçal 263 Meynier, Gilbert 246 Mezahi, Maher 216 Miller, Susan Gilson 244 Milligan, Jennifer S. 144 Mimoun, Alain (Ali Mimoun Ould Kacha) 204 Mokhtari, Rachid 7, 125, 133, 138 Moknèche, Nadir 2, 16, 253 Monty, Line 168n13 Morceli, Nourredine 208, 218 Morgan, William J. 208

Morocco 31, 34, 124n2, 162, 164, 167–68, 171, 173–76, 181 Mosteghanemi, Ahlam 2, 15, 225–29 Mouffok, Ghania 39 Moulessehoul, Mohammed see Khadra, Yasmina Moussaoui, Abderrahmane 151, 256 Mouvement pour l’Autodétermination de la Kabylie (MAK) 175n29, 176 Mouvement National pour la Renaissance (MNR) 249 Mouvement pour la Société et la Paix (MSP) see Hamas Mouvement pour le Triomphe des Libertés Démocratiques (MTLD) 258–59 M’rabet, Fadela 49n4 Mubarak, Hosni 32, 36, 124, 217 Murphy, David 225n10 Musette, M. S. 189 Nadkarni, Maya 52 Nahnah, Mahfoud 87, 93 Nait-Challal, Michel 204 Nas el Ghiwane 176 nation-building 1, 40, 47–50, 55, 60, 142, 170, 173, 182, 205 Netherlands 172 Nezzar, Khaled 34, 84 Niemeyer, Oscar 92 Nike 193 Northey, Jessica 9, 13, 16, 197 Nya (dance company) 195 October 1988 6, 18, 40, 58, 81–86, 156, 158, 177, 185, 189–90, 210, 218, 237n32, 238n33 O’Rourke, Jacqueline 230 Organisation Armée Secrète (OAS) 254 Organisation Spéciale (OS) 258 Ortuzar, Jimena 198 Ouahab, Khider 32

Index Ouaissa, Rachid 185–86 Ouali, Hacen 28 Ouami, Akila 91 Ouderdane, Amar 259–60 Oultache, Chouaib 33n12 Oussedik, Fatma 195–97 Palestine 64, 66, 225–26, 228–30, 234 Pál Pelbart, P. 194 Parker Kitchell, Liza 176 Parks, Robert 37n17, 39n20, 40n21 Parti Communiste Algérien (PCA) 82, 92 Parti de l’avant-garde socialiste (PAGS) 6–7, 14, 81–100 Parti des Travailleurs (PT) 210, 249n39 Parti du Peuple Algérien (PPA) 258 Passevant, Christine 254 Pervillé, Guy 254 Pesnot, Patrick 153 Phillips, John 7, 124n2, 210, 251 Plenel, Edwy 72–73 Poché, Christian 166, 167n7 Poli, Raffaele 213 Pontecorvo, Gillo 255 Puchot, Pierre 133 Quotidien d’Oran 17, 69n12 Rabia, Said 30 Raby, Rebecca 198 Radstone, Susannah 256 Rahal, Malika 6, 12n11, 14, 41, 125, 172, 249, 259, 261 Rancière, Jacques 248 Randall, Colin 216–17 Rarrbo, Kamel 189–90 Rassemblement National Démocratique (RND) 37, 249 Rassemblement pour la culture et la démocratie (RCD) 36–37, 87–88, 90, 98, 175n28, 249, 261

283

Rauch, André 212 Real Madrid 212–13, 215 Rebbah, Abdelatif 91 Reinette l’Oranaise 76, 168n13 Remaoun, Hassan 256 Reynolds, Dwight F. 168 Riemer 231n17, 231n18 Rimet, Jules 203 Ritzer, George 218 Rivoire, Jean-Baptiste 251 Roberts, Hugh 10, 37n17, 50, 55, 85, 98, 172, 209, 246, 249 Robertson, Roland 203 Rose, Tricia 188, 198 Rosello, Mireille 2, 225 Rothberg, Michael 224n8, 231 Rouget, Gilbert 180 Rovsing-Olsen, Miriam 175n25 Ruedy, John 49, 52 Sa‘adallah, Abu’l-Qasim 247–48 Saber, Ahmed 171 Sadi, Nabila 2 Sadi, Said 36 Sahnoun, Ahmed 87 Sahraoui, Djamila 253 Saïd, Amina 152 Saïdani, Amar 28n1 Salem, Lyès 262–63 Salhi, Mohand Akli 2 Samraoui, Mohamed 30n8 Sansal, Boualem 2, 230, 260 Santé Sidi el Houari (association) 109 Saout ach-Chaab 83, 89, 91 Sari, Mohamed 2 Sarkozy, Nicolas 72 Saudi Arabia 90, 263n58 Savarese, Eric 66 Sawt ash-Sha‘b 83, 88, 94, 97 Sayad, Abdelmalek 48 Sécurité Militaire 24, 34n13, 50, 86 Sedjal, Mustapha 150–53

284

Algeria: Nation, Culture and Transnationalism

Seligman, Charles G. 174n25 Sellal, Abdelmalek 123 Semiane, Sid Ahmed 250 Senegal 186–87 Scagnetti, Jean-Charles 207 Scheele, Judith 13–14, 101, 114–16, 244 Schemla, Elisabeth 261 Schnapper, Dominique 67 Schneller, Katia 157 Schreier, Joshua 66 Scott, James C. 158 Serres, Thomas 10 Shami, Seteney 11, 17, 19 Shannon, Jonathan Holt 166, 167n7 Shepard, Todd 2, 66, 142, 144n8, 225 Shevchenko, Olga 52 Shih, Shu Mei 2, 225n11 Shohat, Ella 225, 239 Sidhoum, Salah-Eddine 28 Sidi Moussa, Nedjib 244 Silverstein, Paul A. 2, 174, 181, 251 Slimani, Rabah 212 Slimani-Direche, Karina 174, 181n36 Souaïdia, Habib 251 Soufi, Fouad 142 Souiah, Farida 19 Spain 12, 110, 164n4, 166, 206, 208, 212 Stein, Sarah Abrevaya 77 Stora, Benjamin 64n3, 68, 72–75, 77, 140, 144n8, 153, 181, 249, 255, 259 Stora, Brigitte 64n3, 65, 68, 70 sub-Saharan Africa 19, 82, 166n6, 174n25, 179, 213 Sufism 10, 106, 114–15, 166, 168, 170, 181, 273 Swedenburg, Ted 171 Syndicat Islamique du Travail (SIT) 90 Syria 31–32, 36, 231, 237–38 Szafran, Maurice 63

Taha, Rachid 173 Tahanouti, Ali 210 Tahi, Mohamed Salah 248 Takfarinas 177 Taleb-Ibrahimi, Khaoula 115 Tamalet Talbayev, Edwige 15n14 Tamazight see Amazigh Tartag, Athmane ‘Bachir’ 28–29 Tebbani, Lynda-Nawel 2 Teguia, Tariq 2 Temlali, Yassin 134, 244, 256 Tenaille, Frank 170, 172 Théodoropoulou, Vanessa 157 Thévenet, Jean-Marc 212 Thorpe, Holly 188 Timsit, Daniel 66n7, 68, 75–76 Tin, Mohamed 91 Tlemcani, Rachid 49n4 Tlemcani, Salima 191 Thomson, David 188 Tighilt, Kouceila 32 Touati, Mohamed ‘El-Mokh’ 34 Toumi, Khalida 69, 102, 196, 261–63 Toumi, Samir 126 Tounsi, Ali 33n12 Tozy, Mohammed 209 transnational 2, 4, 11–13, 15, 19, 64, 66–67, 77, 83, 99, 117, 126, 203–05, 209, 215–18, 228–29, 244, 263–64 Treacy, Corbin 15 Trigano, Shmuel 64n4, 65, 69, 72–75 Tunisia 29n6, 31–32, 36–37, 81, 124, 152, 167–68, 173–75, 185–86, 206n1, 226, 229, 236–38, 253 Turner, Tamara 179n34 Um Kulthum 170 Union Démocratique du Manifeste Algérien (UDMA) 258 Union du Maghreb Arabe (UMA) 180 Union Générale des Travailleurs Algériens (UGTA) 82, 85

Index Union Nationale de la Jeunesse Algérienne (UNJA) 82, 189 Vatin, Jean-Claude 50 Vince, Natalya 6, 11–13, 16, 18n20, 100, 247 Virolle-Souibes, Marie 170 Vision Jeunes (association) 194, 199 Volpi, Frédéric 103 Wahbi, Ahmed 170 Walle, Nicholas van de 82 Wann, Daniel 209 Waterbury, John 164 Weil, Patrick 66, 245 Welch, Edward 2 Werenfels, Isabelle 35n16 Williams, Raymond 129, 138 Willis, Michael 56, 164, 265 Wilson, Thomas M. 162n1 Woodhull, Winifred 223n4 World Bank 6, 34n12

285

Yafil, Cheikh Edmond 76 Yahi, Naïma 207 Y’en a Marre 187, 199 Young, Robert 239 YouTube 13, 154, 188, 191, 194, 262, 264 Vergès, Meriem 190 Vietnam 225–26 Zafrani, Haïm 168 Zagury-Orly, Raphael 65 Zartman, I. William 163n2, 164 Zenine, Noureddine 93, 97 Zerhouni, Noureddine ‘Yezid’ 34n12 Zerrouky, Hassane 90 Zidane, Zinedine 212–13 Ziyati, Ali 215 Žižek, Slavoj 245n34 Zouggar, Sofiane 153–54, 156 Zytnicki, Colette 67