Humor and Power in Algeria, 1920 to 2021

Laughter in the face of terrorism? Algeria’s civil war of the 1990s was certainly one of the most brutal conflicts of the last decades in the Arab world, so laughter might be the last thing we associate with this “Black Decade”—and yet, Elizabeth Perego has devoted a book to the history of humor during this dark period. Perego, a professor of Middle Eastern and North African history at Appalachian State University in North Carolina, has chosen the more general Humor and Power in Algeria, 1920 to 2021 as the title of her work. However, her focus is clearly the period of civil unrest of the long 1990s, starting with the riots and the political opening of 1988 and ending with the referendum on national reconciliation in 2005. In fact, the title is a bit misleading, since it is only the first chapter which covers, in rather broad strokes, the time from 1914 into the 1980s, that is, from the height of French colonial rule, through the anticolonial movement and the war of independence up to the different postcolonial regimes of Ahmed Ben Bella, Houari Boumedienne, and Chadli Bendjedid. The following four chapters, as well as the conclusion, are all concerned with the role of humor during the conflict between 1988 and 2005, which Perego subdivides into three phases: “Rebellion and Uncertain Times” from 1988 to 1992, a period of “Terror” from 1992 to 1997, and the time of “Reconciliation” from 1997 to 2005. In between sits, a little uneasily, a chapter without a clear temporal demarcation beyond the reference to the “Black Decade.”The first chapter gives a concise overview of the colonial situation in Algeria. It briefly introduces traditional forms of humorous oral genres as well as theatrical performances and goes on to describe the renaissance of indigenous music and theater from the interwar period, which was linked to prominent figures such as Rachid Ksentini or Mahieddine Bachetarzi. Perego equally points to the emergence of cartoons in the press that mushroomed all over the country in the first half of the twentieth century. The author then makes a case for the “nationalizing” function of humor in the process of decolonization (51): according to her, jokes and satire were among the means to create an Algerian national community on the subpolitical level toward the end of French colonial rule. After independence, this nationalization took on a new meaning, as the new authoritarian state tried to curb the subversive potential of humorous expression, for example, by promoting a first collection of Algerian cartoon strips (bandes dessinées) with aspiring artists like Slim and others. The chapter concludes by highlighting the subversive side again, also referencing the parallels to other socialist states of the era, and focuses on popular jokes on political leaders, especially the genre of the “Chadli joke” about President Chadli Bendjedid who governed the country from 1979 to 1992 (66).Chapter 2 deals with the period of political liberalization from the riots of October 1988 until the military coup of January 1992. These years, when diverse political parties and independent newspapers were springing up at a fast pace, were also a time of “flourishing” political humor, according to Perego (78). For the author, the “Chadli jokes” and similar expressions helped pave the way for the challenge to single-party rule in 1988 by measuring the regime’s socialist propaganda against a reality of corruption, nepotism, and a rising cost of living. As for the period following the democratic opening (1988–91), she views the potential of humor as allowing citizens to come together and create new and varied political communities, in contrast to the earlier, more monolithic nationalizing function. Her analysis also reveals early critical attitudes of ordinary people toward the Islamist movement, which ran parallel to the stunning electoral successes of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS).The next chapter focuses on orally recounted jokes during the civil conflict that began in 1992. Here, Perego points to the fact that the dark humor of the time often targeted civilian victims in an act of seemingly helpless self-derision in the face of terror and repression. She contends, however, that those jokes actually worked as “touchstones of resistance to the terror, significant elements that permitted Algerians to survive during an unprecedented period of carnage.” As she puts it, “jokes also allowed citizen-victims to have the last word, deliver punchlines, and express ideas surrounding the violence” (121–22). In this context, Perego inserts a section on theoretical approaches to humor and power and stresses humor’s ambivalence beyond an often assumed subversive potential only.The fourth chapter concentrates on cartoons and caricatures in the Arabic and French-language press during the height of fighting between Islamist militias and government forces from 1992 to 1997. Even though not completely uncritical of the regime, artists like Ali Dilem and others were mainly attacking the Islamist insurgents, after the coup and the ensuing conflict had brought a halt to the open fora of public expression that had developed after 1988. Accordingly, they became prime targets—together with other journalists—of assassinations perpetrated by armed rebels. One prominent example, with which Perego actually opens her book (1–4), was Saïd Mekbel, who worked for the major newspaper Le Matin and was finally shot and killed in Algiers in late 1994. For Perego, the cartoonists’ achievement consisted primarily in giving the “war without a face” graphic perceptibility and offering visual interpretations to events surrounded by opaqueness and conspiracy theories (154).The last chapter continues the analysis into the period of “reconciliation” from 1997, including the passing of the 1999 Law of Civil Concord and up to the referendum on the Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation in 2005. For this period, Perego emphasizes the heightened criticism toward the policies of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika who took office in 1999 and aimed at ending the conflict, particularly by way of amnesty laws. The author shows how cartoonists went on to draw pieces in line with earlier stereotypically negative depictions of Islamists to discredit the amnesty that was being offered to them. Dilem also used his popular “Madame Algeria” figure, which, as a traditionally dressed woman, represented the regular citizen, especially the female one who had suffered tremendously under the violence, to convey the message that normal Algerians were not content with the president’s project of simply drawing a line under the conflict. With this, the artist targeted Bouteflika’s approach to present amnesty as well as amnesia (also a common basis for a play on words) as the solution. In that way, Perego says: “Cartoons may have helped preserve Algerian social memories of the Black Decade in the face of official amnesia” (200).The conclusion picks up on the theme of amnesia and points to the way in which the Algerian regime has liked to position itself as a champion of freedom of the press, with reference to the media workers killed by Islamist militants in the 1990s, while, at the same time, keeping a tight grip on public expression in the country. Perego finishes by linking her research with the 2019 hirak protest movement that has succeeded in ousting Bouteflika after twenty years in power but not in bringing about thorough regime change.The major problem with Perego’s study is the question of scope: while she connects the Black Decade to earlier and later developments, but not in a way the general title would suggest, she remains vague with respect to the actual continuities and changes in the binary of humor and power in Algeria. A more restricted perspective, which makes clear from the outset that this is a work on cartoonists and popular jokes during Algeria’s long 1990s, would certainly have been more to the point.1 In fact, the somewhat incongruous structure makes it at times a little hard to follow the author’s overall argument. To be sure, she presents the reader with interesting and hitherto barely analyzed material regarding Algerian humor, including theatrical plays and sketches, cartoons, and orally transmitted jokes. She also definitely has a point in questioning one-dimensional existing scholarship on humor, which has tended to interpret jokes mainly in their subversive or carnivalesque (in the Bakhtian sense)2 potential with respect to power. By contrast, Perego points to the role of humor in the Algerian press of the Black Decade, in particular, which was often subservient to regime narratives, in its uncompromising attacks on Islamist opposition groups. In this context, we encounter a marked difference to the oral jokes she has examined, in that they seem more ambiguous as to the question of who was to blame for the violence that engulfed Algeria during the 1990s.It is here where the strength of Perego’s study lies: she actually manages to shed new light on the still notoriously contested history of the Algerian civil conflict. As the author herself demonstrates in the conclusion, the reconciliation policies of President Bouteflika, which brought an end to the violence in the early 2000s, have equally imposed a public silence on the country, which has rendered a thorough reappraisal and remembrance of the Black Decade all but impossible. In fact, this has to do with power, the opposing term to humor in the work’s title—Algerians usually refer to their regime made up of the military, the long-term single party FLN (National Liberation Front), and state bureaucracies simply as le pouvoir, “the power.” The lens of humor offers Perego “a pathway,” as she puts it, into “competing visions of what exactly was taking place whenever circumstances were murky” (235). That allows the researcher to establish, at least partially, a perspective from below on the conflict and give the reader insights into the lived experience of ordinary Algerians during this violent period. As the author describes it: “Jokes and cartoons hold critically needed glimpses into the stories of how some civilians lived or responded to events during the political crisis of the 1990s” (235). A prominent example in Perego’s study are the “fake checkpoint jokes”—civilians are stopped at a checkpoint and have no way of knowing whether the armed men holding them up are Islamist insurgents or government soldiers—which attest to the widespread feeling of the civilian population of being caught in the middle of a horrible conflict between two equally brutal sides. Another case of humorous expressions critical toward the regime can be found in cartoons attacking Bouteflika’s reconciliation project. However, those instances show a criticism toward specific policies of the president, rather than against le pouvoir per se, insofar as they echoed earlier anti-Islamist state narratives.Perego’s work, from the point of view of cultural history, allows new insights into Algeria’s civil conflict of the long 1990s, a conflict that has still not been satisfactorily studied. The perspective from below can give at least glimpses into an understanding of civilian populations’ experiences, apart from the dominant state narrative or the study of Islamist actors. However, another critical point—apart from the question of scope discussed earlier—pertains to Perego’s use of sources: for her research into Black Decade humor, she focuses almost exclusively on the press and oral jokes, whereas theatrical performances and comedy sketches as well as longer cartoon strips (bandes dessinées), alluded to for earlier periods, fade from view. Other genres, which have already proven their potential for the study of the social and cultural history of the Middle East, such as movies, radio, and TV shows, remain completely absent from her work.3 Regarding the twenty-first century, comedy and jokes transmitted online could equally have been interesting, as well as the use of songs and caricaturesque posters in the football supporters culture that played a great role in the hirak movement.4 The concentration on cartoons in political papers finally occludes dimensions of humor and power not directly linked to the perception of the regime, of parties, or militias. As other studies on comedy have demonstrated, humorous expressions can also give us insights into negotiations of gender relations or social and regional divisions within the national community, for instance.5 Having said that, Perego’s Humor and Power in Algeria will certainly be an important contribution to the history of Algeria’s Black Decade, but it has missed some of its potential with regard to broader issues this fruitful lens might have offered.