tajine

Episode 296

with Sarah Ghabrial

hosted by Edna Bonhomme and Sam Dolbee

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In French Algeria, the colonial imperatives of assimilation and difference gave birth to legal pluralism. In this episode, Dr. Sarah Ghabrial explains what it meant for Algerian women to have different legal structures operating at the same time. The ability to argue one's case in an Islamic court and also appeal it in French common law provided openings for women in matters of personal status. But it also had limits. They may have ultimately been able to divorce their husbands, but divorcing themselves from patriarchal structures of power proved more difficult, if not impossible. At the same time as legal codes changed, so, too, did medicine. As in much of the world, a state-sponsored scientific medicine, mostly practiced by men, began to crowd out local healing practices and knowledge of bodies, in many cases performed and possessed by women such as midwives. But it would have a particularly racialized impact in French Algeria. We also examine the impact of this change in court, where the latter form of medicine came to be an arbiter of truth, particularly in divorce cases. We close by shifting from matters of impotence to questions of agency, and how useful of a concept it is for this history.

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Pre-Saharan Morocco is a transitional space between the Atlas Mountains in the north and the Sahara in the south, and the oases of pre-Saharan Morocco have long been marked by local autonomy, diversity, and particularities of agriculture, property ownership, class, and race. In this episode, we talk to Karen Rignall about her research on land, labor, and social life in a Moroccan oasis and discuss socioeconomic change in rural morocco through the lens of agricultural production in the transitional environments and political economies of the pre-Sahara.

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Between December 1991 and February 2002, Algeria experienced a protracted civil war, which earned the period the designation of the "dark decade." In this episode, we explore how Algerians experienced and coped with the violence and trepidation of the civil war through the lens of humor. Our guest Elizabeth Perego has studied to role of humor, jokes, and caricatures in the politics of Algeria since the struggle against French colonialism in the 1950s. In our conversation, we focus on the dark humor of the dark decade, retelling some of the most widespread jokes of the period in a discussion of how humor provided a source of relief and platform for commentary on the unsettling realities of the war.

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The French military struggle to maintain control over Algeria throughout the war period (1954-1962) is remembered for its violent and destructive impacts. But during the war, the French administration also sought to maintain control over Algeria by attempting to build the rural economy and deepening the structures of colonial rule in the countryside. In this episode, we talk to Muriam Haleh Davis about the Constantine Plan, a project of social and economic development carried out within the context of the Algerian War and the rise of Cold War developmentalism. In our conversion, we explore the understandings of race embedded in French development in Algeria and situate the context of the Algerian War within the broader history of decolonization, the rise of the social sciences, and the making of the European Community.

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The Algerian War is perhaps the most recognizable national and anti-colonial movement of the 20th century. From the iconic film “The Battle of Algiers” to Frantz Fanon's influential book The Wretched of the Earth, the violence of the Algerian fight for independence and the French reaction has marked depictions of not only the war but representations of Algerian history on the whole. In this podcast, however, we explore another battlefield of contention during the Algerian War: medicine and humanitarian relief. As our guest Jennifer Johnson demonstrates in her new monograph The Battle for Algeria (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), both the French government and the Algerian National Liberation Front used medicine and public health as a tactic, and the presence of humanitarian organizations in Algeria as well rendered the war not just a national struggle but in fact an international affair.

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L’histoire de l’Algérie coloniale est souvent abordée du point de vue des bouleversements économiques et politiques engendrés par l’occupation française. Mais cette dernière entraîna un remaniement dans la sphère de l’intime qui fut tout aussi significatif, bien que peu étudié.  Dans cet épisode, Aurélie Perrier se penche sur la question de l’évolution des formes de sexualités illicites en Algérie, particulièrement de la prostitution.  Organisée et mise en place par les autorités françaises dès l’arrivée des premières troupes en 1830, la régulation de la prostitution apparait rapidement comme un enjeu médical et social majeur pour les français : il s’agit à la fois d’enrayer le péril vénérien qui sévit au XIXe siècle et d’assurer la pureté de la race « blanche » en limitant les contacts sexuels entre les deux communautés (européenne et autochtone) au cadre prostitutionnel.

Si les courtisanes existaient bien à l’époque ottomane, leur statut était très différent. Nombre d’entre elles étaient musiciennes ou poètes, ce qui leur permettait de contribuer à la vie sociale et culturelle de leur société.  Après 1830, la courtisane devient simple prostituée. Par ailleurs, les autorités françaises mettent en place de nouveaux espaces et modalités de contrôle des « filles soumises ».  Le bordel et le quartier réservé, jusque là inconnus en Algérie,  apparaissent dans une majorité de villes algériennes tandis que médecins et police des mœurs élaborent des règles rigoureuses visant à discipliner ces filles dont la sexualité et le mode de vie sont considérés comme dangereux.

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In many countries of the Middle East and North Africa, European colonial rule lasted only for a matter of decades, and yet its influence in the realms of politics and economy have been profound. In this episode, we talk to Jonathan Wyrtzen about the legacy of colonialism in Morocco for the politics of identity, which is the subject of his new book entitled Making Morocco. As Dr. Wyrzten explains, colonial rule shaped understandings of issues such as territoriality, religion, ethnicity, and gender that remain relevant to this day.

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“Hrig,” the Moroccan Arabic term for “illegal” immigration, translates to “burning.” In the latest episode of Tajine, Isabella Alexander discusses the dramatic rise in sub-Saharan migrants attempting to enter the E.U. from Morocco - now the primary entry point for all African migrations north. As Spanish officials start exploring their border controls further south in response,  hundreds of thousands of sub-Saharans now find themselves trapped in Morocco. Their act of “burning” signifies the literal burning of their identification papers to avoid repatriation when arrested by European authorities, but also the symbolic burning of their pasts in hopes of a better future abroad. They wait in sprawling slums outside of Moroccan cities, scraping together enough money to attempt the journey into Spain by boat or by land once again. But, what happens when their position in this liminal space—Morocco—becomes a permanent one?

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Moroccan folk literature has drawn the attention of researchers for over a century, beginning with the earliest French colonial ethnographers' exhaustive studies of Moroccan dialects through recordings of poems, folktales, and proverbs. The influence of these stories can also be found in the work of some of Morocco's most internationally acclaimed authors such as Mohammed Mrabet. On this podcast, Yelins Mahtat recounts a folktale from the region of Oulmès in the present-day province of Khemisset. Afterwards, Yelins takes us into the process of collecting and translating Amazigh folktales from the foothills of the Middle Atlas Mountains of Morocco. His research records folktales from storytellers in his family and from the villages near where he grew up. We discuss the politics of authorship and performance as well as the utility of folktales for understanding social and cultural dynamics of the Middle Atlas (cross-listed from tajine).

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This episode is part of a series on Women, Gender, and Sex in Ottoman history

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The association of Algeria with sex figured prominently in the artwork and literature that was critiqued so famously by Edward Said in Orientalism. In this episode, Dr. Aurelie Perrier discusses the practical backdrop of this argument beyond the level of discourse by exploring illicit sex in 19th century Algeria under both Ottoman and French rule. Beginning with the fluid boundaries of Ottoman-administered sex work, she describes the transformations that accompanied French colonialism beginning in 1830. Contextualizing the sex trade in both eras with flows of labor migration, Perrier also illuminates the spatial dynamics of the French approach to prostitution, namely the birth of red-light districts and brothels. At once centralizing and segregating sex work, this new politics of space was intimately connected to the boundaries of race and class that were the premise of colonialism in the first place. Yet it appears in many cases these boundaries were transgressed, undermining the credibility of the colonial state. Moreover, even as the state claimed unprecedented control over the intimate lives of its citizens/subjects, people still managed to use the system for their own purposes, or evade it altogether. Still, the undeniable encroachment of the state left an indelible mark on Algeria's history with distinctly gendered implications.

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