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

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...