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The man behind the curtain: theatrics of the state in Algeria

2013; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 18; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13629387.2013.849893

1743-9345

Jane Goodman,

Political and Social Issues

AbstractThis article examines the construction of state and regime in Algeria through performance and narrative. It is ethnographically centred around a series of events surrounding the demolition, relocation, and reconstitution of a local theatre. I argue that even as Algerians position themselves discursively outside the political regime and deny that they can impact its decisions, they also find pragmatic ways of working with it in order to shape their own futures. I show how narratives of regime omnipotence and citizen impotence simultaneously haunt and fuel various creative means for engaging with the state.Keywords: regime and statecitizen activismperformancenarrativeAlgeria AcknowledgementsThis research was generously funded by Fulbright-Hays, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Social Science Research Council, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Institute for Maghrib Studies, and the Indiana University New Frontiers Program. Earlier versions of this paper were delivered at the American Institute for Maghrib Studies annual meeting in Oran, Algeria in June 2010, the American Anthropological Association 2010 Annual Meeting, Bates College, Northwestern University, and Indiana University. I am grateful to participants in these events, as well as to Ilana Gershon and Susan Lepselter, for their comments and questions. I particularly thank Robert P. Parks and James McDougall for their astute guidance. My gratitude goes to the members and supporters of El Moudja Theatrical Association, who allowed me to witness these events. Any errors of fact or interpretation are entirely my own.Notes1. In derija (vernacular Arabic), the pronoun is expressed via a third-person plural case ending on the verb ja' (to come): ijaw (they are coming).2. On the distinction between state and regime see Camau and Geisser (Citation2003), and Leca and Vatin (Citation1975).3. I owe this point to Robert P. Parks.4. For related scholarship on the anthropology of the state, see Coronil (Citation1997), Ferguson and Gutpa (Citation2002), Gupta (Citation1995), Mitchell (Citation1990, Citation1991), and Scott (Citation1998), among others.5. A daira is an administrative district, corresponding to an arrondissement in France. Multiple dairat compose a wilaya.6. For a related study of local responses to a state relocation project, see Ghannam (Citation2002). For a comparable account of citizen participation in governmental decision-making, see Paley (Citation2004).7. On the way the post-independence Algerian state was structured, see Leca and Vatin (Citation1975, Citation1977) and Vatin (Citation1983).8. Leca and Vatin (Citation1975) trace the history of this phrase, which was allegedly first articulated at the Congress of the Soummam in 1956 and reiterated with the adoption of the first national charter in Tripoli in 1962. See Leca and Vatin (Citation1975, 9–45), on the way the state-party relationship was imagined. On the FLN during the war, see Harbi (Citation1980).9. See, for instance, Harbi (Citation1992), Leca and Vatin (Citation1975), and Stora (Citation1992), among others. Leca makes the important corollary point that the Algerian population was itself complicit with the regime's inability to publicly acknowledge the country's pluralism 'in the name of the community and the people' (Leca Citation1998, 15), for the only model of itself the population had language for was its presumed unity against a common exterior enemy.10. The events known as the dark decade crystallised around the cancellation of a parliamentary election in December 1991 that the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS, Front Islamique de Salut) was poised to win. The FIS, which had garnered considerable popular support, was subsequently made illegal, and many of its members were rounded up and interned in camps in the Sahara. This accelerated armed guerilla warfare that had already begun between government forces and various Islamist groups, created a climate of fear and instability throughout the country, and resulted in as many as 200,000 dead by the end of the decade. For more on this period, see, among others, Le Sueur (Citation2010), Martinez (Citation2000), Reporters sans Frontières (Citation1994, Citation2003), Roberts (Citation2003), Stora (Citation2001), and Zoubir (Citation1999).11. See, for example, selected essays in Camau (Citation1991), and Zoubir (Citation1999), and Zoubir and Amirah-Fernández (Citation2008), among others.12. The removal of the theatre and the surrounding three to four blocks of houses was part of a larger project that included building a new commercial port and developing a touristic boardwalk.13. What I am calling a 'bulldozer' was in fact a backhoe; I retain the term 'bulldozer' in the text because that is what my interlocutors called it ('le bulldozer').14. The intifada had been evoked during earlier street protests in Algeria; see Colonna (Citation1996b, 43). On political uses of the street in the Maghreb see also Gallissot (Citation1991). The intertextual, quotative nature of this brief stone-throwing moment immediately evoked mediatised possibilities for some actors, a few of whom approached me and asked if I knew how to post the videos I was making to YouTube; I did not.15. My interlocutors referred to this official as the 'Chef Daira'; in formal French, it would be written Chef de Daira.16. Colonna notes that the phrase 'man of the people' has served as a 'label that intellectuals often would adopt', echoing such official slogans as 'revolution by the people and for the people' or 'a single hero: the people' (Colonna Citation1996a, 8).17. On how populist discourse articulated with a wider strategy of power adopted by successive Algerian regimes, see Carlier (Citation1992).18. While code-switching between French and darija characterised the entire meeting, the Head of the Daira used a good deal more French than any other speaker (he was of a generation that would have been schooled in French).19. Darija refers to spoken Algerian Arabic, which differs significantly from the Modern Standard Arabic taught in schools and used by the media.20. On the role of cultural associations in Algeria, see Babadji (Citation1991), Derras (Citation2002), and Liverani (Citation2008), among others.21. On the construction of state authority through bureaucratic documents, see Hull (Citation2003, Citation2008) and Riles (Citation2006).22. Occupying empty property (biens vacants) without papers is common in Algeria. See Parks (Citation2011).23. On the importance of oral exchange for the organisation of local power relations in Algeria, see, among others, Mahé (Citation2001) (for the Kabyle region). On the organisation of power through dyadic relationships in the Maghreb, see Geertz, Geertz, and Rosen (Citation1979) and Rosen (Citation1984). On a similar dispute among Algerians in France about the relative merits of oral agreements and written contracts, see Goodman (Citation2005, Chap. 8).24. The Head of the Daira could not, in fact, guarantee property as he would have needed the Wali's approval. The Elected Representative of the APC did have the commune's own property under his jurisdiction. (I owe this distinction to Robert P. Parks.)25. On the ways identification with and opposition to the Algerian state are maintained in a fragile balance, see also Scheele (Citation2009), esp. Chap. 6.26. I am grateful to Robert P. Parks for helping me to formulate this point.