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EMASCULATING HUMOR FROM ALGERIA'S DARK DECADE, 1991–2002
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 March 2020
Abstract
This paper explores shifting notions of Algerian masculinities during the Dark Decade (approximately 1991–2002) as articulated through humor. Both in the period leading up to and during conflict, Algerian cartoonists and joke tellers played with socially accepted norms concerning male behavior. In the armed struggle, however, comedy reflected how the terrifying and random violence that characterized the conflict may have disturbed local gender relations and definitions. The conflict prevented men from practicing masculinity in preestablished ways, most notably through the protection of self, family, and community. The present article contributes to the broader literature on gender during the armed struggle as well as in the Middle East and North Africa more widely, to argue that humor, a critically under-considered aspect of the cultural lives of Algerians and men across the region, provided civilians with space to navigate changes in gender issues brought about by the harrowing circumstances of the Dark Decade.
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References
1 Military checkpoints were common in Algeria during the 1990s and continue to be so today. Armed insurgents sometimes disguised themselves as state soldiers at “fake checkpoints” that they used to trap, terrorize, and punish civilians according to their logic of the law.
2 Interview with Balladi, artist from Kouba, 8 December 2015. The cited individuals who provide jokes are not necessarily the creators behind them. During oral interviews I asked all narrators to recount any jokes from Algeria's Dark Decade that they could. They may not necessarily agree with the content of a particular joke.
3 In Algerian dialects of Arabic, rujūla is pronounced redjla. Abderrahmane Moussaoui, De la violence en Algérie: les lois du chaos (Paris: Actes Sud, 2006), 367–70.
4 Amar, Paul, “Middle East Masculinity Studies: Discourses of ‘Men in Crisis,’ Industries of Gender in Revolution,” Journal of Middle East Women's Studies 7, no. 3 (2011): 36–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Inhorn, Marcia C., The New Arab Man: Emergent Masculinities, Technologies, and Islam in the Middle East (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012)Google Scholar. Butler, Judith first recognized the performative nature of gender: see Gender Trouble (New York: Routledge, 1990)Google Scholar.
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7 For example, the works of Martin Evans and John Phillips, Hugh Roberts, and Luis Martinez suggest that masculine anger and frustration at being symbolically emasculated fueled Algerian men's political actions. Martinez also looks at wealth accumulation through illegal means as a response. See Evans, Martin and Phillips, John, Algeria: Anger of the Dispossessed (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007)Google Scholar, especially pages 133–34; Roberts, Hugh, The Battlefield: Algeria, 1988–2002 (New York: Verso, 2003)Google Scholar; and Martinez, Luis, La guerre civile en Algérie 1990–1998 (Paris: Karthala, 1998)Google Scholar. Earlier works that generally limit treatment of Algerian masculinities to the instauration and maintenance of patriarchy and silencing of women or response to colonial rule include Lazreg, Marnia, The Eloquence of Silence, 2nd ed., (New York: Routledge, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Knauss, Peter R., Persistence of Patriarchy (New York: Praeger, 1987)Google Scholar. Academics based outside of Algeria recently engaged in a fierce debate in Le Monde with Algerian writer Kamel Daoud over his claim that men in Muslim societies suffer from sexual frustration that can in turn lead them to lash out at women, as he believes was the case during the 2015–2016 New Year's Eve attack in Cologne, Germany. See “Nuit de Cologne: ‘Kamel Daoud recycle les clichés orientalistes les plus éculés,’” Le Monde, 10 February 2016, https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2016/02/11/les-fantasmes-de-kamel-daoud_4863096_3232.html. It is timely to recognize that stereotypes of Algerian men as controlling of women, sexually repressed, or “unevolved” figure into long-rooted discourses of Algerian violence, both at home as well as abroad. For more on clichés surrounding violence in Algeria, see McDougall, James, “Savage Wars? Codes of Violence in Algeria, 1830s to 1990s,” Third World Quarterly 26, no. 1 (2005): 117–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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11 Moussaoui, De la violence en Algérie, 367–370.
12 Dahmani, Lounis, Blagues Made in Algéria (France: Dahmani, 2007)Google Scholar.
13 Morsly, Dalila, “Humour d'Algériennes, Hanan-El-Maz'ouka et Daïffa,” in “Armées d'humour, rires au féminin,” ed. Stora, J. and Pillet, E., Humoresques 11 (2000): 187–208Google Scholar. See also some of the jokes contained in Dahmani's Blagues that feature predominantly female voices.
14 I employed a semi-structured questionnaire to interview seventy-two narrators between May 2013 and June 2016, mainly men now living in Algiers, about their lives and interactions with comedy in Algeria. Three of my narrators were foreign journalists and analysts who spent significant time in Algeria during the Dark Decade.
15 Dahmani, Lounis, Algérie: l'humour au temps du terrorisme (Paris: Bethy, 1998)Google Scholar.
16 Yelles, Mourad, “Les mésaventures du masculin postcolonial à travers le Texte maghrébin,” in Masculinités Maghrébines, ed. Gronemann, Claudia and Gebhard, Michael (Leiden: Brill Rodopi, 2018), 36Google Scholar.
17 I am identifying these values based on my survey of the content of approximately seventy jokes and thousands of cartoons dating to the 1990s. Yelles states that authority, courage, honor, and generosity comprise the key touchstones of masculine ideals in Algeria (ibid.).
18 Concerning punishment of women regarding clothing choices during the conflict, see Slyomovics, Susan, “‘Hassiba Ben Bouali, If You Could See Our Algeria:’ Women and Public Space in Algeria,” Middle East Report 192 (1995): 8–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I am citing statistics put forward by Moussaoui (De la violence, 94), based on reports by newspapers, the Algerian government, and local women's rights associations that Mundy likewise highlights (“National Reconciliation,” 48n1).
19 It is difficult to gauge the extent of women's participation in the armed insurgencies at this time. In the western Algerian regions of Tiaret, in the late 1990s, there was rumor of a woman leader of an armed group named Emira Yakout wreaking havoc on local communities; “De Rambo à Emira Yakout,” Liberté, 13 January 2000, 7. Even twenty years later, there was an important and rare account of a woman embedded in the armed groups named Nadia; Gacemi, Baya, Moi, Nadia, femme d'un émir du GIA (Paris: Seuil, 1998)Google Scholar.
20 Lawrence, “Algerian Youth,” particularly 186–203.
21 Willis, Michael, The Islamist Challenge in Algeria: A Political History (New York: New York University Press, 1996), 193Google Scholar.
22 See Evans and Phillips, Anger.
23 See the many gendered slogans contained in the oft-cited work of Naget Khadda and Monique Gadant, “Mots et choses de la révolte,” Peuples Méditerraneans 52 (July–December 1990). During the 22 March 1994 protests, feminists demanded that then president Liamine Zeroual not “pull down his pants,” an emasculating, shameful act suggestive of sex, when negotiating with the armed groups. See Lalami, Feriel, Les Algériennes contre la code de la famille (Paris: Les presses de Sciences Po, 2012)Google Scholar.
24 Hugh Roberts illuminates the connection between the acronym and the French word for “son” (Battlefield, 97). For an instance of a cartoonist recognizing the homonyms FIS and fils, see Ali Dilem, “Dilem du Jour,” Le Matin, 12 February 1992, 24.
25 See, for example, Samir Toumi, L'effacement (Algiers: Editions Barzakh, 2016).
26 McDougall, James, “Culture as a War by Other Means: Community, Conflict, and Cultural Revolution, 1967–1981,” in Algeria Revisited: History, Culture, and Identity, ed. Aissaoui, Rabah and Eldridge, Claire (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), 235–52Google Scholar.
27 For scholarship on masculine anger toward unscrupulous leaders in the late 1980s, see Evans and Phillips, Anger, 103.
28 Rahal, Malika, Ali Boumendjel: une affaire française, une histoire algérienne (Algiers: Editions Barzakh, 2011), 30–31Google Scholar.
29 See, for example, Mustapha Tenani, Les hommes du Djebel [The men of the mountain] (Algiers: ENAL, 1985).
30 Beyond portraying scenes of nationalist resistance against colonizing and colonial forces, some cartoonists created Algerian worlds in which characters represented idealized male behaviors. The artist Slim depicted an Algerian everyman named Zid who adhered for the most part to socially acceptable forms of masculinity. See, for example, Slim, Zid Ya Bouzid I (Algiers: ENAD, 1980). The 1976 comedic film Omar Gatlato [Omar: his masculinity killed him] revolved almost entirely around the titular character's struggles to perform locally accepted masculinities. See Omar Gatlato, directed by Merzak Allouache (Algeria: ONCIC, 1976), and Yelles, “Mésaventures,” 40–41.
31 MacMaster, Neil, Burning the Veil (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2012), 359–63Google Scholar. See case study reported in Fanon, Frantz, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Philcox, Richard (New York: Grove Press, 2004), 185–99Google Scholar.
32 See Schade-Poulsen, Marc, The Social Significance of Raï (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999)Google Scholar.
33 Moussaoui, De la violence, 109.
34 Interview with Amine Sidhoum, 3 February 2014.
35 Adlène Meddi, 1994 (Algiers: Editions Barzakh, 2017), 121.
36 See the press conference testimony of a survivor of state torture following the October 1988 events in Algérie: autopsie d'une tragédie by Malik Aït-Aoudia and Séverine Labat (France: Compagnie des Phares et Balises, 2003).
37 Jokes about the sexual aggression of women proved far fewer. In some ways, by using humor and incongruity to set up unexpected assaults on men, joke tellers seem to take women's suffering as given.
38 See, for instance, Bergson, Henri, Le rire, 273rd ed. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1969)Google Scholar; and Oring, Elliott, “Parsing the Joke,” Humor 24, no. 2 (2011): 203–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
39 Interview with Zineb Sedira, 29 March 2015. A variation of this joke also appeared in Dahmani, Blagues.
40 Mundy, “National Reconciliation,” 41.
41 In Algerian comedy from the last years of the Dark Decade until the present, Oranais jokes about the neighboring town of Mascara have become staples and widespread across the country. The man from Mascara has evolved into the boilerplate rural bumpkin, but also an Algerian everyman. See Yelles, Mourad, “Figure du trickster maghrébin,” in L'humour dans le bassin méditerranéan, ed. Farhat, Mokhtar and Lacoste, Francis (Tunisia: Nouha Editions, 2015), 61–74Google Scholar.
42 Indeed, one of three central theories of humor and its functions in humor scholarship is “relief theory,” which posits that humor exists to play with taboos and lighten tension surrounding them.
43 Dahmani, Algérie.
44 Even today, the sexual victimization of boys and men remains a taboo, according to journalists covering the topic. See Meriam Sadat, “Viol des hommes en Algérie: l'horreur souvent conjuguée à l'impunité, http://www.dziri-dz.com/?p=787, accessed 30 April 2018.
45 Moussaoui, De la violence, 368.
46 Ibid.
47 Mundy, Jacob, Imaginative Geographies of Algerian Violence: Conflict Science, Conflict Management, and Antipolitics (Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press, 2015), 6Google Scholar.
48 Mundy, “National Reconciliation,” 36.
49 Pierre Bourdieu noticed a connection between the possession of arms and manliness in his ethnographic fieldwork in Kabylia communities during the 1950s. Bourdieu, La domination masculine, 2nd ed. (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1998).
50 Interview with anonymous.
51 I am indebted to one of the three anonymous peer reviewers for the reminder that humor often reinforces taboos by playing with the expectations of the audience.
52 A. A., “Femmes-courage à Tousnina (Tiaret): elles ridiculisent des terrorists,” Liberté, 19–20 June 1998, 3.
53 See Dilem, “Dilem du Jour,” Le Matin, 1992. Dilem also admitted in an interview to Mustapha Benfodil that, “This woman with the haik (a white headscarf worn in the Algiers region), it's Algeria in short”; Mustapha Benfodil, Dilem Président: Biographie d'un émeutier (INAS Editions, 2008), 79, http://www.argotheme.com/dilempres%5B1%5D.pdf.
54 See Amrane, Djamila, Des femmes dans la guerre d'Algérie: entretiens (Paris: Karthala, 1994)Google Scholar.
55 See Jacob Mundy, Imaginative Geographies, 6.
56 Morsly, “Humour d'Algériennes,” 187.
57 Interview with Djamel Boukrine, 19 August 2015.
58 I heard two versions of this joke: one in which the woman turns out to be a male terrorist with a Kalashnikov, and another in which she remains female. I paraphrased the joke here, in which the veiled figure emerges as a woman rebel. Interview with anonymous, 21 September 2014; interview with Adlène Meddi, 21 September 2014.
59 This joke may allude to the famous scene of nationalist fighters running through the Casbah from French paratroopers and bearing arms under women's haiks found in Gillo Pontecorvo's Battle of Algiers (Santa Monica, CA: Rhino, 1993).
60 Groupe Aïcha, Agenda: Droits des Femmes en Algérie (Algiers: ENAG, UGR, and Réghaia, 1991).
61 I am using Julija Sukys's translation here. See Sukys, Julija, Silence is Death: The Life and Work of Tahar Djaout (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 119CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
62 Bourdieu, Domination masculine, 23.
63 See, for example, Yacine, Tassadit, “Presentation: The Editorial Project,” in Bourdieu, Pierre, Algerian Sketches, ed. Yacine, Tassadit, trans. Fernbach, David, 2nd ed. (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2013), 1–34Google Scholar.
64 I am indebted to one of the anonymous reviewers for informing me of this connection.
65 Interviews with Hichem Baba Ahmed, Mustapha Tenani, Mohamed Mazari, and Mahfoud Aïder, 18 June 2013.
66 See Morsly, “Humour d'Algériennes.”
67 Willis's translation, possibly from the French. See Willis, Islamist Challenge, 185n50. He is citing a statement from Jeune Afrique, 27 January 1994.