In the second half of the 19th century, after the French took over Algiers, Tunisia became the scene of fierce rivalries between European and Ottoman imperial forces. This situation triggered increasing litigations between local populations and Europeans over land tenures, legal statuses, public and private funds (Clancy-Smith; Lewis). In this context, two prominent Tunisian dignitaries, Mahmud b. Ayyad and Nessim Scemama, in charge of the State finances, absconded to Paris with substantial portion of the state treasury respectively in 1853 and then 1864. The Tunisian state brought legal suits against these former officers before European courts. Their legal cases were labeled in French sources as “affaires Scemama” and “Ben Ayad,” in Italian as “affare” and translated into Arabic as “nawazîl.” As a consequence, the notion of “affair” which became prevalent in European newspapers and courts was spreading in North Africa as a legal and moral category in the hands of European officials to point out the so-called inabilities of Ottoman provincial authorities to manage the administration of the Ottoman provinces of Tunis and Tripoli. But more interestingly, what this paper will show is that the notion of “affairs” broke up in specific files and fields of knowledge a web of connected legal litigations through which North Africans were playing their own game. By the 1870s, while their own country has became the battle field of power struggles between French, Italian and British forces, the Tunisian state officials involved in these legal cases did not try in any way to put an end to the affairs. On the contrary, they complicated wittingly these affairs, by prompting other litigations in order to showcase their own moral vision, their own political agenda in European newspapers, courts and public opinions. More broadly, the blossoming of such affairs, controversies and litigations in an era of strong imperial rivalries had a second major effect. To be heard by European courts, newspapers and public opinions, Tunisian involved in these affairs produced an increasing number of written evidences, investigations and printed pamphlets. This profusion of such written documents contributed to the radical transformations of the uses of printing, literacy and legal culture in modern North Africa.

This paper studies the controversies surrounding Salah Bouakouir, the highest-ranking Algerian functionary in the colonial administration, who was killed under mysterious circumstances in 1961. After his death, one of the major throughways in Algiers was named the Boulevard Salah Bouakouir in his honor. Yet in 1992, Mohammed Boudiaf, the short-lived president, decided that the Kabyle planner was a traitor and changed the name of the street to the Boulevard Krim Belkacem, after one of the historical leaders of the Algerian War of Independence. The polemic surrounding Bouakouir continued in 2010, when the Algerian Minister of the Interior, Daho Ould Kablia, claimed that Bouakouir had been killed by the French secret services because he had been providing Algerian nationalists with sensitive information leading up to the Evian Accords. This paper studies scholarly accounts as well as the Algerian media in order to analyze the anxieties that underpin the relationship between official memory and economic development in Algeria. It also investigates Bouakouir’s key role in drafting Constantine Plan – a French developmental program introduced during the war of independence – which made him an ambiguous figure in Algeria’s nationalist pantheon. By analyzing the polemics surrounding his status as a “hero” or “traitor,” this paper uses controversy to interrogate a question that underpins the ongoing process of political legitimation in Algeria: to what extent did organisms and structures inherited from the colonial period influenced the post-colonial state? In other words, by studying the rumors and disagreements concerning Bouakouir, this paper shows how developmental efforts in Algeria continue to serve both as a symbol of nationalist pride as well as a reminder that economic planning has been a historically transnational discipline.

The “Black Decade” (1992-1999) in Algeria was marked by an overwhelming uncertainty in the face of a succession of assassinations and mass atrocities. The causes of the violence have been widely discussed in the media and among scholars. Yet no narrative has managed to create a dominant understanding of the conflict (Mundy, 2015). Using press articles and ethnographic material, this paper studies the public debates regarding the instigators of the mass violence of the 1990s and their relationship to political uncertainty after 1999. By analyzing these controversies, the paper argues that prevailing uncertainty has played a key role in shaping post-conflict Algeria as a “regime of simulacra,” where the ability to analyze concrete facts and produce a shared meaning is vanishing (Baudrillard, 1981). The first part of the paper studies the debates after the end of the Black Decade. It highlights the persistent discussions regarding the circumstances of the assassination of symbolic figures such as the former President Mohamed Boudiaf and the Kabyle singer and activist Lounes Matoub. While commentators have not been able to provide a definitive explanation of the causes of their deaths, the controversies associated with the generic term of “Qui tue qui?” (“who kills who?”) have allowed competing actors to defend their political narratives and values. Questioning the official truth has also become a way to promote a political agenda (Taïeb, 2010). Thus, these debates opposed fragmented counter-narratives to the governmental discourse of national reconciliation. The second part of the paper traces the evolution of debates on “Qui tue qui?” in post-conflict Algeria. Various conspiracy theories also feed a paranoid view of politics that justifies the widespread rejection of the institutional processes. Meanwhile, political actors are constantly accusing each other of implementing secret agendas. For example, the head of the ruling nationalist party (FLN) has been accused of being a French agent. As a consequence, the country is sometime portrayed by a disillusioned youth as  “Bled Miki” (“The Country of Mickey - Mouse -”). This term refers to the supposedly unreal nature of contemporary Algeria. As a new counter-narrative that describes a regime of simulacra where nothing is true, “Bled Miki” appears to carry a powerful critic of the achievements of the post-colonial elite.

In March 2012, two young Tunisians, Ghazi Beji and Jabeur Mejri were charged for “transgressing morality, defamation and disrupting public order” after they circulated caricatures of Mohamed on Facebook. While Ghazi Beji was tried in absentia as he had escaped to Europe, Jabeur Mejri was sentenced to 7 and a half years in prison by a court of first instance of Mahdia. The appeal was denied and the judgment confirmed in June 2012 by the appellate court of Monastir, and by the cassation court of Tunis on April 25, 2013. Mejri was freed in March 2014 after he was granted presidential pardon in February 2014. But he was arrested again in April 2014 and sentenced to 8 months of prison for insulting a clerk. He was granted presidential pardon, and freed once again on October 14, 2014. This legal saga has been at the center of a heated polemic that mobilized political officials, lawyers, human rights organizations, as well as the national and international public opinion. My paper will examine the development of this local trial into a national and international affair (qaziyya) about “blasphemy” and free speech. Through what mechanisms has an individual who was most famous for his involvement in petty embezzlement crimes become a hero of freedom of speech and conscience? This affair reveals essential fractures of the political and social scene of the Tunisian transition. It also transforms the boundaries within which moral norms can be politically renegotiated. It offers a productive site of analysis of how moral and political boundaries have been collectively redefined. While Arabic-speaking Salafists viewed Mejri’s cartoons as a scandalous form of “takfeer”, secularist organizations seized this opportunity to voice their fear and distaste for the Islamist led Troika government. The affair is made all the more complex by the elusiveness of its hero -who appeared as a petty criminal to some, and as a hero of free speech to others- and the versatility of the definition of the “cause”. While supporters of Mejri initially defined the “cause” to be defended as both a matter of free speech and right to be an atheist, the argument about atheism was quickly overshadowed by the argument about free speech.