• Jansen- Zina diali

What happened to Zina diali? Gender, politics and humor in Algeria.
Willy Jansen
Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands
Concept: please do not quote or reproduce
paper prepared for the conference The Everyday Functioning of Politics and Dissent in the
Maghreb. Yale University, MacMillian Center, 21-22 February 2009
Abstract
Cartoons or humoristic graphic novels provide an outlet for sentiments about an authoritarian
regime, but are at the same time expressions of and comments on the gender order.
Characteristic in this respect are the figures of Zina and Bouzid created by Slim, the artist
name of Menouar Merabtene. Within a single or multiple frames, cartoons condense historical
events, cultural core values and social relations. In this paper I will analyze the
representations of gender in Algerian cartoons by two generations of Algeria’s most famous
cartoonists such as Slim and Dilem from the 1980’s onward. I will show how the issues of
central concern to people in everyday life shift over time, and how ideas on gender or gender
inequality shift accordingly.
Prelude
Shortly after my arrival in Algeria for a year-long anthropological fieldwork in the early
1980s, I bought a graphic novel of Slim and a volume of cartoons by Haroun. These comics,
so I thought, would instruct me in a condensed and humorous form about the everyday
comments on and dissent with national politics and social structures in Algeria. But many
balloon texts were unintelligible to me, the used symbols were meaningless, and worst of all I
did not seem to get the pun. It was such a confusing and disappointing experience that I put
the books aside. There is an ambiguity in joking, as Driessen said. A joke can make sense
across cultures and across time, but “it may also change or lose its point as it moves between
cultures” (Driessen 2001: 7993). Humor both includes and excludes. Algerian cartoonists of
that time did not aim for universal understanding but were part of the identity building project
Jansen – Gender, politics and humor in Algeria -06 February 2009 1
of the new nation state and addressed themselves explicitly to an Algerian readerschip. Only
after a profound immersion in Algerian culture and with the explanatory help of patient
Algerian friends I became in the end what Algerians call a devoted ‘bouzidiste’,
understanding the sense of despair about Algeria’s future behind titles like ‘walou à l’horizon’
and sharing jokes about ‘la bombe dialou’. I soon learned to read multi-frame cartoons from
right to left, to decipher the Algerian Arabic words in the French texts and the Arabicized
French and colloquial words in the Arabic texts by reading them aloud, and the culturally
specific meaning of a variety of symbols and concepts. The weekly Algérie Actualité became
my favorite just for its cartoons.
In this paper I would like to introduce you to Algerian cartoons and the world behind
them.1 An analysis of cartoons can give insight in the everyday functioning of politics and
dissent in this Maghrebian society. But rather than concentrating on political critique in
general, I will focus on the representation of gender and gender politics. How has gender
functioned in Algerian cartoons in the past decades? How do women and men figure in the
cartoons? Has gender inequality in practice, laws and policies been an important issue? Is
gender being used to depict other social concerns and policies? I will do this in particular by
following the prototypical gendered strip characters Zina and Bouzid, created by Slim.
The meaning of a cartoon lies not only in the cartoon itself but is intertextual. In order
to interpret the cartoon, we need extra information from other texts to make full sense of the
image (Mirzoeff 2000:7). A collection of cartoons and political strips by two generations of
Algerian artists, as listed in the bibliography, is therefore approached with the insights of an
extensive anthropological research in Algeria in the nineteen eighties (Jansen 1987, 2001,
2004) as well as a range of secondary literature. I will first sketch the cartoon and strip scene
in Algeria and its political position, and place this in the context of the politics of humor in the
Middle East including the Maghreb. Next the different ways in which gender could be related
to humor will be discussed. This will provide the frame for the analysis of gender in the
persons of the cartoonists, in the cartoons, and in the dominant topics addressed in the
cartoons as well as changes therein over the past three decades. It will be argued that even in
1
The cartoons accompanying this paper will be shown during the presentation. Extended anthropological
research in Algeria was done in 1976, 1981, 1982 and 1984 (see Jansen 1987, 1989, 1998, 2001, 2004). As I
have not visited the country recently, and therefore lack recent field material, I have focused in this paper on the
visual and textual analysis of the cartoons in my possession or available abroad. I was not in the position to
check if Islamists are using the comic strip as well; nor do I include the cartoons and strips produced by Beurs –
people of Maghrebian origin living in France – when they only deal with migrants in France. As most sources
use a French transliteration system, I will do the same for the sake of consistency.
Jansen – Gender, politics and humor in Algeria -06 February 2009 2
women-friendly cartoons, the actual Algerian women disappear behind standard forms,
simple categorizations, and issues considered more important than women’s lives.
Cartoons and strips in Algeria
Three years after Algeria’s independence in 1962, three young Algerian artists, Mohamed
Mazari (Maz), Menouar Merabtene (Slim) and Hocine Omari started a production studio for
cartoons and comic strips or graphic novels. The latter are characterized by specifically
addressing local Algerian culture but predominantly using the French language. They are
therefore locally called bande dessinée or in short BD for strips, and dessin de presse or
caricature for cartoons. Together the group published M’quidech, the first strip album in
Algeria and Mohamed Aram and Slim soon started a series in the weekly Algérie Actualité.
This group of first generation Algerian cartoonists soon expanded and included Ahmed
Haroun, who made his debut in 1962 with illustrations for the journal Le Peuple/Echaâb and
published several volumes of cartoons, Rachid Aït Kaci, Mohamed Bouslah, and Nour-eddine
Hiahemzizou (Zoom 2004: 1).2 It was the beginning of a flourishing movement that was to be
suffocated and suppressed to near death towards the end of the century.
The best known cartoonist of this group was Menouar Merabtene, born in 1945 in Sidi
Ali Benyoub and trained in Poland and France. Under the artist name Slim he became the
most productive and well known Algerian cartoonist over time. Slim published his cartoons
and graphic novels in series in El Moudjahid, La République, African Revolution, Algérie
Actualité, El-Manchar, L’Humanité, Djazair News and DZ News as well as in more than ten
books. Moreover, he produced several short animation films. At present, Slim continues to
figure as the centre of a network of Algerian designers.3 Much about this network, its history
and the work of its members can be learned from Slim’s website, called Zid ya Bouzid, after
one of his main works featuring the proto-typical Algerian man Bouzid
(www.zidyabou.free.fr; Slim 1981; www.minouche.ifrance.com/bdalg.htm). For this sketch of
the cartoon scene of Algeria I have made ample use of this website and the links offered there.
In 1964 he created his two main characters, Bouzid, a prototypical Algerian man from a small
town but with progressive ideas, and Zina, his fiancée whom he dearly loves but will never
2
Mansour Abrous in his Dictionnaire des artistes algériens 1917-1999, lists 50 Algerian creators of political
comics and cartoons (minouche.ifrance.com/abrous, accessed 12.23.2008).
3
Slim’s network includes Mohamed Aram, Mohamed Mazari, Lounis Dahmani, Sid Ali Melouah, Mahfoud
Aider, Ahmed Haroun, Khalil Bendib, Nadjib Berber, Farid Boudjellal, Chawki Amari, Brahim Gueroui,
Mustapha Tenani, Redouane Assari, Riyadh, Malek, Tayebi, Ahmed Bouslah, Ammouri, Mohamed Hankour,
Abdou, El Bordji, Gyps, Rachid Ait-Kaci, Nedjmeddine Bendimerad and Masmoudi. Twelve of the above now
live outside Algeria and two have been killed (minouche.ifrance.com/desalg.htm );
Jansen – Gender, politics and humor in Algeria -06 February 2009 3
marry. His trademark is the cat M’digouti which has a critical presence in all designs. Many
Algerian visitors on Slim’s website fondly recall having read his books in their youth and they
thank him for his humor, his continued activity, and, as one contributor stated ‘having made
them laugh at a time that it was suspect to use your zygomatic muscles’. The Algerian press in
the early 1980s was serious, officially controlled and little informative. Most people who
really wanted to know what happened in Algeria read the imported journal Le Monde –
knowing that when Le Monde did not appear in the kiosks a serious political or social crisis
was going on – or read behind the lines by studying the cartoons.
Slim and cartoonists like Khiari B. or Ahmad Haroun touched upon many of the
everyday social and political criticisms of the nineteen seventies and eighties: They
humoristically pointed out the deficiencies of the state in providing affordable housing,
effective garbage collection, a dependable public transport system, or a working
infrastructure. Sharp is also their criticism of corruption and ‘piston’, the need for people to
have connections in order to get a job and assets connected with employment such as
subsidized housing, insurance or pensions. Yet, it is formulated on a very general level,
individual politicians or their opponents are never recognizably caricatured. At the same time,
they criticize the unsocial behavior of the Algerians themselves, who fight in the waiting
lines, carelessly throw waste around, prefer to consume rather than produce, are careless
about maintenance, disrespect public property, disobey non-smoking, parking or traffic signs,
depend too much on the state rather than taking personal responsibility, endanger the agrarian
revolution by their egoism, or lack self-confidence but adore all things foreign. Special
attention is given to the public and political concern for food: the images portray long waiting
lines for food, longing for unavailable foreign foodstuffs (like pineapples, bananas or
Camembert), sharp price hikes, a flourishing informal economy, the hoarding of sugar, eggs
or fish, and bribery with liquor or sweets. The malfunctioning of the food market and regular
shortages of consumables at that time made people anxious about their subsistence; but, as the
cartoonists point out, not only government policies but also cultural notions of identity,
hospitality and honor equally contribute to the problems on the market (Jansen 2001). The
social criticism in the visual arts (that passed the censor) however never targeted political
personalities directly, it supported larger political trends as the agrarian revolution, socialism
or the state’s critique on absent landowners and by taking local Algerian heroes or themes
reinforced the nascent Algerian national identity. The albums could therefore still be
published under the protection of the government by the SNED (Société National d’Édition et
de Diffusion) and ENAL (Entreprise Nationale du Livre)
Jansen – Gender, politics and humor in Algeria -06 February 2009 4
 A second and much reduced generation of cartoonists appeared in the 1990s. The mass
demonstrations in 1988 in Algiers had led to an opening up of the regime and to a
democratization process that included a legalisation of parties other than the FLN (National
Liberation Front) and a liberalization of the press. President Chadli Ben Djedid allowed the
press more open critique on the regime. New artistic talents came up and the strip designers
regrouped themselves around the very popular satirical journal Al Manchar, founded by Sidi
Ali Melouah in 1990 and Es-Sahafa. Others in this younger group are Elho (Hocine Boukella)
(fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hocine_Boukella, 12.23.2008), Gyps with his album Fis end love
(1995) and now working in France, and lesser known names such as Abdelhafid Saadi,
Chahine Seksaf and Daiffa.
The newly gained sense of freedom was short-lived as the political situation turned
violent after the FIS (Front Islamique du Salut) gained the elections on Dec. 27, 1991 with
44% of the votes. The second election round on January 16, 1992 was cancelled by the High
Council of Security. Armed Islamist groups (GIA) and GSPC (Groupe salafiste pour la
prédication et le combat), who saw their victory frustrated, started terrorist actions. The state
of emergency was declared in 1992 and the Algerian government tried to curtail the freedom
of expression. The cartoonists continued to laugh in the face of this very bloody period in
Algerian history, trying to make sense in the midst of insane bloodshed. In their images, they
visualize and criticize what is difficult to talk about otherwise: the attacks on journalists,
intellectuals, defendants of Berber culture, songwriters or cartoonists, numerous breaches of
human rights by all parties, the security forces, state armed militias and various armed
Islamist groups. In this generation in particular Ali Dilem, born in 1967 in Kayla, stands out.
He published caricatures in Alger républicain, Le Matin and Liberté, recollected in the album
Boutef président, and international newspapers. His caricatures of all the different actors in
the political field were not taken in grace. He had to face numerous lawsuits and prison terms,
for cartoons that were supposedly offensive to the head of state president Abdelaziz
Bouteflika, elected in 1999, whom he often depicts with donkey ears, or the military
institution. An amendment in the penal code was called after him ‘the amendment of Dilem’
because it was especially designed to silence him and to curtail the hard won freedom of
speech. This article 144 bis, adopted in 2001, allows for punishments of two to twelve months
of prison and fines of up to 250,000 dinars for verbally or visually injuring, insulting or
defaming the president of the republic, either chamber of parliament, or the national popular
army. Dilem was the first to suffer from it (Ali Dilem 2006: 102). Up to 2002 the Ministry of
Defense alone had already filed more than thirty lawsuits against the newspapers Liberté, El
Jansen – Gender, politics and humor in Algeria -06 February 2009 5
Watan and Le Matin (Amnesty International, 2003). But the threats to this generation of
cartoonists do not only come from the president, the government or the army, but also from
the Islamists. Melouah brings it all together in a cartoon in which an Islamist is angry about
having missed his shot at a journalist, to which another one answers: “Don’t worry; justice
will take care of him”.
Cartoonists, like intellectuals, journalists, or raï singers were important targets for
death threats and murderous forces. Saïd Mekbel, Brahim Gueroui and Mohamed Dhorbem
were murdered. Sid Ali Melouah, who published albums with titles like Le secte des assassins
(Alger 1988) and who was one of the main illustrators of two satirical journals El-Manchar
and Baroud, escaped three attempted assassinations and sought refuge in France from where
he now comments on Algerian society. Also Slim, Assari, Daiffa and Gyps fled to France.
Others went underground. They continued their work however, but it often changed into a
sordid, pitch black humor focussed on the bloodshed. Slim stopped discussing the daily
concerns of Zina and Bouzid in the 1990s, but published two volumes filled with Islamists
who forbid just about everything and kill all kinds of people (Slim 1994; 1997). In one
cartoon, a woman finds between all the graves of assassinated persons one grave of someone
who died of cancer and comments ‘you lucky devil’. Slim and his colleagues also become
more critical of the political and military regime. In one image by Slim the people
demonstrate for more freedom and democracy, while a huge military leader winds up his
puppet the Islamist. The pressure of the regime’s censors and the Islamists forced the satirists
to be creative in finding new outlets. While in the early 1980’s the cartoons and strips could
still be published by mainstream newspapers and the national publishing house SNED, most
of the sharply critical volumes of the 1990s were published abroad or as private editions. But
some cartoons still continued to be placed in courageous newspapers, despite legal and social
risks for both the cartoonist and the editor. Others changed the orientation of their work. For
instance Ali Dilem has become famous outside Algeria, his cartoons have been translated, and
he now covers a wide range of international political issues. Those who have gone to France,
like Farid Boudjellal, focus more on the problems of Algerian minorities in France, such as
the violence against minorities, or the problem of mixed marriage.4 They started to address a
wider audience, and to do so, also the cartoons changed: international topics became more
prominent, the text was kept to a minimum and if needed translated, and graphic symbols
were used that were easily recognizable to any reader. A friend wrote on the back of Slim’s
4
E.g. Farid Boudjellal Ethnik ta Mère; Les Soirées d’Abdulah. Ratonnade. and Jambon-Beur. Les Couples
Mixtes.
Jansen – Gender, politics and humor in Algeria -06 February 2009 6
last book on Zina and Bouzid: “Today, Slim lives in France. Bouzid has stayed in Algeria.
When I ask Slim whether there is any news about him, he shakes his head. And we talk about
other things.” (Slim 2003, back cover). Yet, at the instigation of friends, he did publish this
new volume on Bouzid and Zina in 2003. Whereas the early work on Zina was difficult to
read for a cultural outsider, the later work of 2003, although clearly directed at the devoted
Bouzidiste, is far less so as it includes less Algerian dialect and abbreviations, and gives
humoristic translations of unfamiliar terms. Participating in the new media also changes both
the public and the content of the humor offered. Some of Slim’s contributions to the
Moroccan weekly L’hebdo économique de Casablanca and a Moroccan women’s magazine
are now accessible, both virtually and literally to a world-wide public on www.milooda.com.
Algerian cartoonists are not the only ones in the Arab world that have to operate
within regimes of censorship and state control (Slyomovics 1993; Qassim 2007). To
caricature the king, the president and ministers, or the military leaders is in most Arab
countries punishable by fines or imprisonment. Yet, the level of censorship changes
depending on the political situation. In Jordan Abu Mahjoob forced a breakthrough by
caricaturing the king, but King Abdullah did not sue him but instead defended freedom of the
press (Qassim 2007: 23). In Morocco, censorship was somewhat relaxed by King Hassan II
(Slyomovics 2007; autografox,com/censored/morocco/morocco.html on Filali.). The long
present censorship, as well as the violent reaction in the Islamic world to the cartoons
depicting the Prophet published in Danish and other Western newspapers, have given rise to
the idea in the West that political cartoons are hardly known in the Middle East and North
Africa. Significant in this context is that Nilsen (1993), who gave an overview of humor
scholarship, covers different national styles of humor, but has left out a section on Arab
humor and ignores authors like Kishtainy (1985) in his very extensive bibliography. Yet,
satirical drawings have a long history in the Arab world. Göçek (1998a: 8-9) illustrated how
already Ottoman caricaturists creatively circumvented the limitations posed upon freedom of
press after 1909 to get their provocative drawings published, or drawing attention to banned
drawings by replacing them with a blank space plus an extensive description of what should
have been seen there. Elsewhere she discussed the appearance of women in these cartoons
(Göçek (1998b). Starting with the cartoons from the banned Ya’qub Sanu’a in the satirical
weekly called Abbu Naddara Zarqa smuggled in from abroad in the 1880s (Baron 2005: 58-
59), and further developing in the 1920’s in the context of the national struggle against the
occupation by the English, the caricature developed in particular in Egypt, with as the main
proponent Muhammad `Abd al-Mun’im Rakha whose style formed a typical Egyptian school
Jansen – Gender, politics and humor in Algeria -06 February 2009 7
that reached its apex in the 1950s and 1960s. A decline set in during the reign of Sadat who
did not hesitate to put anyone into prison who only dared to elicit a smile on Nasser. A
representative of this period is Bahgoory. The Libanese press took over and also in other Arab
countries cartoons are popular even in those countries where one would not expect it. The
unnamed author of Caricatures arabes speaks of a paradoxical vitality of the Arab caricature
when one knows the constraints under which the press has to work in the region (Caricatures
arabes, 4).
There is much discussion on the effects of political cartoons, whether they indeed are
an ‘important social force with the potential to generate change’ because they resist state
control (Qassim 2007: 23) or that ‘People joke about their oppressors, not to overthrow them
but to endure them, and the more durable and formidable the regime may be, the more resort
is made to humor’ (Kishtainy 1985: 7). Just as interesting as the question whether satirists
bring about change or only transmit endurance and hope, is how these drawings can inform
about the truths of the society that is behind them and that cannot be told in other ways, for
instance the prevailing ideas about gender.
Gender, humor and politics
Gender, the culturally specific and changeable ways of being and seeing women and men, can
play a role in political cartoons on different levels. A first level is the participation of men and
women in producing or appreciating satire. For this paper I will shortly discuss the male-
female ratio of the cartoonists and the difference between them, but I leave the discussion on
the relative humor of women versus men to others (see for instance Kotthof 2005; Nilsen
1993: 20-28; Mundorf et all 1988; Robinson & Smith-Lovin 2001; Stillion & White 1987;
Toth 1984; Walker 1985).
A second level is that of the cultural representation that is given of women and men,
the images, forms, style or symbols by which either sex is culturally expressed, and the ideas
about femininity and masculinity this conveys. Gender studies has shown that cartoons allow
for complex messages about women and gender (Meyer et al 2003: 21), and discerned trends
of gender dichotomization and hierarchization in forms of cultural expression, for instance by
the underrepresentation of women, attributing lower status occupations to women, or
presenting women as less knowledgeable (Thompson & Zerbinos 1995) and it should be
asked whether this is also present in the Algerian cartoons. At this level, not only issues of
representation (the relation between the reality and the representation) but also those of
Jansen – Gender, politics and humor in Algeria -06 February 2009 8
humoristic devices (the distortion of reality for the sake of satire and humor) play a role. For
example, exaggeration of gendered triggers –for instance high heels or big breasts for women,
huge moustaches for men—, or the use of gender-reversals –women beating up men, men
dressing like women—, have commonly been considered humoristic. In many Egyptian films
shown on Algerian television the transvestite functions as joker.
A third level dealt with here is the metaphorical use of gender. Baron (2005: 69-74),
for instance, showed how Egyptian cartoons during the interwar period generally depicted the
nation as a woman, first as a pharaonic woman, than gradually as a ‘new woman’ of the age,
educated and sophisticated, especially in comparison with other nations, but also as a weak
and vulnerable girl that needed protection, or as a motherly peasant woman that represented
the nation’s cultural traditions (Baron 2005: 69-74). Another common figure in political
cartoons that are employed as a medium of warfare (and duplicated in the photos of Abu
Ghraib) is to ridicule the enemy by depicting them as effeminate or sexually depraved.
A fourth level is the treatment of gender as a political issue. At this level it is asked
which issues of gender inequality, as well as political and legal efforts to maintain or change a
particular status quo, come to the fore. For instance the discussion and final acceptance of the
khul’ law in Egypt in 2000 gave rise to a host of cartoons and films reflecting on the public
reaction to this law (Sonneveld 2008). In Algeria, gender issues were in particularly dealt with
in the context of the formulation of the Family Code of 1984 and its reformulation in 2005
without a public debate but imposed by ordinance. Women’s organizations (a.o. Association
SOS femmes en détresse and the Association de défense et de promotion de la femme)
denounced in particular the continued inclusion of polygamy and male guardianship over
women. They repeated the argument that women have already proven their maturity during
the war of liberation, to which in 2005 they added women’s resistance against terrorism.
Islamist groups who support the government, such as the Mouvement de la société pour la
paix, as well as Islamists of the opposition are happy with the outcome as they campaigned
against the suppression of the guardianship rule and polygamy. El Islah, Islamists of the
opposition agree with the new version of the family code because it ‘conforms to the Islamic
tradition’ (Algérie. Code de la famille 2005; www.sos-femmesendetresse.org).5
5
The government tried to appease the women by saying, by mouth of Nouara Djaffarar, minister of women’s
affairs, in the daily Al-Khabar, that ‘the maintenance of guardianship is no longer an obligation to conclude a
marriage contract, as it was before. The woman herself can exercise her guardianship, or delegate it to one of her
family members.’ (Nouvel Observateur 26.2.2005). It is a complicated way of saying that a woman now can
contract her own marriage. A year later, Khalida Toumi, minister of Algerien culture, will mention again this
right of adult women to contract a marriage without a guardian, as well as the fact that divorced women and her
children no longer have to leave the house after a divorce, and that sexual harassment is now seen as a crime, as
Jansen – Gender, politics and humor in Algeria -06 February 2009 9
 On all these levels power is involved. First the limited power of women to become
respected cartoonists. Secondly, the power of representation in the sense of what symbols,
metaphors, and roles are selected by whom to refer to a specific sex. Thirdly, the relative
power culturally attributed to a specific gender, which makes it humoristic that men behave
like women, or enemies are depicted as effeminate. And lastly, the explicit recognition of and
reaction to the power differentials based on gender, and the perception of those who aim to
change them. The relation between humor and power is a complex one. Humor can be a tool
both for those in positions of power to maintain the status quo, as has often been argued by
gender analysts who find the sexualization of women in male jokes debilitating, and for
dissenters who criticize those in power, as in political jokes or feminist humor. It can serve
both the reproduction and conformation to specific power set-ups. Strips can educate people
in proper civil behavior, and many of the earlier cartoons had moralistic overtones. Moreover,
the style of Slim’s strips has been borrowed to inform the Algerian public how to be careful
with gas or to expose children regularly to some sun to prevent vitamin D deficiency and thus
rachitis. Yet, especially the later satirical cartoons clearly challenged the power holders, just
like feminist humor challenges cultural gender inequalities (Kaufman 1991).
Ceci n’est pas une femme 1 : the cartoonists
To what extend is the cartoonist, caricaturist or strip designer a woman? Drawing political
cartoons and comic strips seems predominantly a masculine art. Cassiau-Haurie mentions the
very limited presence of women among cartoonists and how difficult it was to find some
isolated examples in African countries. She notes that society is very unwilling to support
women in such creative activities, to let them follow the necessary studies or accept their
work as such. Moreover, the visibility of those who manage to succeed is very limited
(Cassiau-Haurie 2008: 1).
In the network of designers on Slim’s website not one woman is mentioned. In
Mansour’s list only one female strip designer, Fatiha Hadiouche, is mentioned, but little
information is given about her. The average Algerian cartoonist is not a woman. But there is
an exception: Daiffa. Very little is known about her, with most sources repeating the same
great advancements in the rights of women brought about by president Abdelaziz Bouteflika. This in defense
against accusations that she gave up her earlier struggle against the Islamists and now, in the name of a national
reconciliation, sees the establishment of a secular state as a lost cause. She says: the rights of women have
improved but ‘la laïcité a perdu’ (secularity has lost). Earlier she had been heavily disappointed by her own
secular opposition party RCD (Rassemblement pour la culture et la démocratie) of which she was vice-president
for their misogynous treatment of women politicians like her (Khedoud 2006).
Jansen – Gender, politics and humor in Algeria -06 February 2009 10
information and with little indication of how trustworthy this information is. Originating from
Southern Algeria, she is said to have started to draw from an early age on, but this was not
looked upon favorably by her conservative family who considered it a waste of time. Yet, she
continued drawing next to her housework, and took lessons and passed her exams without her
family knowing it in order to escape her destiny as a housewife (Cassiau-Hauri 2008: 3). She
managed to become a teacher and later she combined her drawing with being a journalist. For
a long time, her drawings only concerned women. For instance, an article on the problems of
forced marriage is illustrated with several of her cartoons. Women are chained by the O of the
word force or by a wedding ring in the form of a prisoner’s chain, and in a third cartoon a
young girl is pushed towards an elderly man (Réflexion 2005). Daiffa was given an
opportunity by the action group Women Living under Muslim Laws to bring out a collection
of her work (Daiffa 1994) and some of these cartoons are reproduced elsewhere (e.g. Laws &
Hélie-Lucas 2002). In Morsly’s article a cartoon of Daiffa is reproduced in which the sad
sitting position of the mother is repeated by her daughter ((Morsly 2000). Later on Daiffa
diversified her interests and treated other themes like poverty, demography, oppression, the
environment and North-South relations. In March 2004 her work was exhibited in the cultural
center La Clef in Paris. Moreover, she participated in a joint volume Vive la démocratie with
Slim, Gyps, Elho and Fathy (fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daiffa; Morsly 2000). Daiffa shares her
fame with only a few other female talents in the Arab world, such as the Palestinian Omeyya
Joha who works in Gaza, and Hanaa Hajjar who had her first exposition in Jeddah. In the
Arab world women constitute a very small minority in professional humor.
When comparing Daiffa’s work with that of the male artists, it is clear that women
figure far more often in her cartoons than in theirs, that gender inequality and injustices
towards women are more frequently an issue, and that she hardly draws veiled women but
that she personalizes her female figures and gives them expressive faces. Moreover, she also
reveals women’s complicity in the oppression of women (see appendix). It thus seems that
when the author is a woman, women and their concerns have a greater chance to be given
attention in a more complex way. Moreover, it shows that feminism is not incompatible with
humor.
Ceci n’est pas une femme 2: the reduction of gender
When René Magritte painted a pipe with the words ‘Ceci n’est pas une pipe’ (this is not a
pipe) underneath it in 1928-1929, and titled the painting La trahison des images (the treachery
Jansen – Gender, politics and humor in Algeria -06 February 2009 11
of images), he played upon the difference between the representation of an object and the
object itself. When considering the drawings of Algerian women, as in the figure of Zina, we
have to ask about the difference between the representation, the idea that exists in the artists
and viewers’ minds, and the actual persons that are supposed to be represented or imagined.
An extra complication is that this difference also has to evoke a smile. As Nilsen said ‘Art is a
way of depicting reality, but seldom in a realistic way. (…) In fact, one of the most significant
features of art may be distortion, and one of the defining characteristics of various art genres
is the nature of the distortion. Humor in the field of art, therefore, like humor in music or
humor in literature is mainly determined by relationships between a particular piece and the
reality which it represents, and the nature of the distortion in terms of how this reality is
represented.’ (Nilsen 1993: 243). Cartoonists explicitly play with various forms of distortion:
minimalism, exaggeration, literalization, grotesqueness, incongruity, irony, or metaphorical
extensions.
These devices also seem to be applied in the way Slim depicts Zina and Bouzid. Slim
shows an extreme minimalism of the female form in a short motion picture on his website
about how easy Zina can be drawn: Zina, the representative of the average Algerian woman is
reduced to two circles, a large one and a smaller one, connected to each other by a veil. Add a
triangle as a nose-veil and two legs, and all readers recognize her as an Algerian woman.
What is humorous is the realization of how little it takes to represent a woman, as well as the
exaggeration of the chosen details (Nilsen 1993:244). Salient features, like her veil, are
highlighted, while others, like her breasts or her facial features, are diminished. The woman is
reduced to three items: a sirwal (baggy underpants), a white haïk (the sheet-like wrap with
which women cover their body), and a little nose-veil. Also Bouzid’s nose (representing his
great nif or sense of honor, is grotesquely highlighted, but not to the detriment of his
personality. Others have adopted the basic female form and it has become rather characteristic
for Algerian cartoons; while it refuses individual women’s identity, it constructs collective
national identity as it distinguishes Algerian women from Moroccan or Egyptian women. This
can be most clearly seen in the difference between Zina and Milooda, the much more
emancipated modern Moroccan woman Slim created for the women’s magazine Femmes du
Maroc (see www.milooda.com ).
Humor is produced by the use of the device of synecdoche in which an important part
of something stands for the whole. In these cartoons this is the veil for a woman, a heart
above her head for her devotion to her friend Bouzid, Bouzid’s stick for his being an ordinary
countryman rather than belonging to the elite, the beard for the Islamist, oversized moustache
Jansen – Gender, politics and humor in Algeria -06 February 2009 12
for the military leader, the glasses for the intellectual and the stop sign or lock for all that has
been forbidden. These metaphorical extensions, grotesquely exaggerated, have as first effect a
consistent dichotomization of the genders. A sense of structural difference between men and
women is created in most cartoons. It comes most clearly to the fore in the materialist dreams
of the Algerians depicted in the cartoons of Haroun. While women dream of clothes, washing
machines and home furnishings, men dream of beer, cars or scantily dressed women (Haroun
n.d., 1981, 1984). A similar dichotomization is found in a cartoon of Kaci, in which a man on
a donkey dreams of a car, while his wife walking behind him, dreams of shoes.
The result of applying these techniques to produce humor is that the individual variety,
the other characteristics, and part of the agency of women are being lost. That the mentioned
dress items are so recognizable does not mean that they are general. There is far more
individual variety. The sirwal was considered a peasant outfit that very few Algerian women
still wore in the nineteen eighties, and if they did it was underneath a long dress; the white
haïk was still quite standard at the time, but in reality dropped much further down the body
and was black in other parts of the country. The little nose-veil was mainly worn by the
women from Algiers and a few elite-women in other towns, but ladies from Oran, and women
from the Tuareg or other Berber tribes would leave their face open, while women in the South
covered themselves totally but for one eye. Slim does recognize this reduction and makes fun
of it when, in one scene in Chkoune kidnapali Zina diali, Bouzid accidentally hugs the wrong
woman whom he takes for Zina because she wears a veil and black dotted sirwal like her. But
it does not lead him to introduce more variation.
Opposite to the decently dressed woman figured another stereotype, that of the high
heeled, short skirted, time-glass shaped and overly lipsticked woman. This figure does not
represent the modern, educated women in western dress doing paid work for a living that can
be seen in Algerian factories and offices, but the caricatured sex object out on the street to
draw masculine stares and who clearly enjoyed the men’s attention. This libertarian woman,
in everyday conception often considered as a divorcée or widow prostituting herself (Jansen
1987), seems not to be subjected to the moral code of proper behavior for women and in Slim
(1981) she passes by in the background as play-girl hanging on the arm of powerful men.
Haroun has drawn many cartoons in which men show off their masculinity while devouring
mini-skirted women with their eyes. Bendimerad, now living in Switzerland, plays with the
double meaning of the word ‘bomb’ in this terror-plagued environment. In his cartoon, a man
yells “a bomb!” to which many policemen come running only to find out that it is a sexy
woman (Bendimerad minouche.ifrance.com/bendim/bombte.html). Also Zina