Laughing at the Victims: The Function of Popular Jokes During Algeria's 'Dark Decade,' 1991-2002

Laughing at the Victims: The Function of Popular Jokes During Algeria's 'Dark Decade,' 1991-2002

Author: 
Perego, Elizabeth
Place: 
Oxon
Publisher: 
Taylor & Francis Group
Date published: 
2018
Record type: 
Journal Title: 
Journal of North African Studies
Source: 
Journal of North African Studies,Vol. 23, No. 1-2, Jan-Mar 2018, pp. 191-207
Abstract: 

A decade-long civil conflict that leaves an estimated 200,000 people dead is no laughing matter. Yet, throughout Algeria's 'dark decade' of the 1990s residents of the war-torn North African country told jokes. Previous scholarship on humour during this period has asserted that Algerians overwhelmingly used comedy to shore up resistance against the political agents, namely the military, government, and armed rebels whose actions arguably incited the violence. However, a survey of the nearly one hundred jokes in Algerian or Modern Standard Arabic, French, and Tamazight that circulated around the country during this period showed that Algerian civilians primarily used jokes to laugh at themselves, the victims of horrendous violence, and not the military or armed 'Islamist' groups responsible for the crisis. By portraying civilians as powerless these jokes inadvertently attributed a strength to the belligerents that often exceeded their actual prowess. This myth-propounding about the war's major actors was not without consequence. Paul Silverstein has asserted that Algerian conspiracy theories regarding which side of the conflict committed its worst atrocities served the purposes of both the military as well as the armed 'Islamist' organisations (Interview with Zineb Sedira). I argue that jokes did much the same, proving that humour in times of conflict can have devastating results. This finding challenges the notion of war-time humour in the context of 'the dark decade' operating mainly as a Scottsian 'weapon of the weak,' a tool of the disenfranchised and downtrodden to lambast powerful figures.

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CITATION: Perego, Elizabeth. Laughing at the Victims: The Function of Popular Jokes During Algeria's 'Dark Decade,' 1991-2002 . Oxon : Taylor & Francis Group , 2018. Journal of North African Studies,Vol. 23, No. 1-2, Jan-Mar 2018, pp. 191-207 - Available at: https://library.au.int/laughing-victims-function-popular-jokes-during-algerias-dark-decade-1991-2002