minor transgressions that allow some small space for desire in the private sphere (no simple feat in itself) are not considered compromising. These transgressions follow a well-beaten path. However, recognizing these and expressing them in the social arena comes with great risk, a risk felt both in the imaginary and in the realm of the real. In light of this, as a process of exposing and recognizing deeply buried desires, fantasies, and dreams, psychoanalytic treatment represents a real danger and poses a unique threat. Fear spreads uncontrollably, reinforcing taboos and creating a permanent duplicity, as noted by Mohammed Dib: “Duplicity is rooted to our most private selves. Ridding ourselves of it would require completely disassembling, and then reassembling, the self.”19 In other words, the subject prefers the comfortable satisfaction afforded by voicing grievances over the violence of assuming responsibility for one’s decisions. And for good reason. In the social arena, it would be assuming that responsibility all alone.
If religion is an astonishing vehicle for morality, the specificity of the LRP bloc lies in its unique melding of the two. The two terms are almost interchangeable. The strong collusion between morality and religion serves multiple, and paradoxical, interests. Each individual works on behalf of the censors he or she is besieged by like an agent of a larger system. For this to work, the subject must benefit in some ways from the same situation that is responsible for its downfall. Putting this experience into words is a telling acknowledgment that exposes the subject and forces it to abandon irrevocably its secrecy. Insofar as it can break the social pact, whose terms the subject has implicitly agreed to, exposure of this sort raises serious threats and risks.
Abandoned citizenship and speech acts
The obstacle that every speaking being encounters is dealt with by religion rather than individual speaking beings themselves. This reflects a citizenship that, while still trying to find its bearings, is repeatedly undermined. Given the floundering state of institutions after years of internal war, the faithful are easily replacing citizens. This replacement is occurring at a time when various forms of corruption are staging countless performances designed to abuse [détourner] laws and other regulations.
Individuals dealing with institutions experience this on a daily basis. It can even be seen in their own speech as they distance themselves further and further from the private sphere. There remains a presumed citizenship, since that was the goal and purported achievement of Independence, but it can’t be exercised. To use the words of Frantz Fanon (1925–61), it is but a “hollow title.”20 Fanon, a psychiatrist and brilliant thinker, had already warned us well before Independence of the dangers of a hollowed-out citizenship and its relegation to a meaningless title stripped of its function.
The anthropologist Mohamed Mebtoul, whose research examines the relationship between individuals and institutions in Algeria, underscores the widespread feeling among individuals that not only is little offered them in terms of help, but that also their needs are routinely unmet or neglected altogether. Mebtoul relates this lack of care to the question of citizenship. He speaks of a “missing citizenship,” explaining that “a social system that aggressively opposes free and open debate with its own line of thinking and imposes its own suspect ideology as a means of indoctrination all but forbids citizenship.”21 He shares what a young despondent individual told him during an interview: “The only support we find comes from the wall.” This young individual is a “hittiste,” literally someone “held by the wall.” This is how young people without jobs are referred to (and refer to themselves). This bodily presence lining walls throughout big cities is less of a problem today. Resourcefulness (chtara and gfasa), the art of détournement, and economic hardship have forced this population to leave their position along the walls in major cities. Mebtoul concludes his study by claiming that “the zones of precarity are a product of a social modality that thrives on organizational confusion.”22 A hollow citizenship invites an endless and unlimited use of détournement while no longer being able to identify the stakes or actors at play. This perfectly illustrates how systemic corruption becomes law.
This sense of confusion spreads aggressively, affecting all levels of social organization. It has also been dramatically exacerbated by the Internal War, which has weaponized widely circulating signifiers and common war strategies. The cult of invisibility, along with its corollary, an excess of visibility, only accentuates this confusion. Among this hazy landscape, the way in is often confused with the way out. Is it a matter of finding a “way in” to liberate the individual in favor of a responsible subject or rather of seeking a way out of a particular narrative of liberation that, in its long and dramatic unfolding, has been taken for granted and gone entirely unquestioned?
In psychoanalysis, interpretation, which strives to offer a new subjective experience, is hindered by this “missing citizenship.” The history of Algerian Independence is re-enacted by depriving individuals of an inner revolution. The subject strives toward inner freedom, but never acts on it. Unbeknownst to it, the power of servitude holds it in place. These paradoxes plague psychoanalytic treatment.
Another inventive practice adopted by the subject confronting the LRP consists of creating its own internal separations by purging itself of the moralization of religion. It is hard to find a term for this singular discovery of a neutral, mediating space: can we say in this case that this is a form of private secularism?
Men and women try to carve out a neutral space as far from the LRP as possible. They accomplish this with language, knowledge, and culture. This form of secularism that begins as a conceptual exercise paradoxically takes shape only in the private sphere – it is entirely absent from public space. One might well object that the expression “private secularism” is an oxymoron. But this interior state is clearly observed among a certain number of individuals within the city. These individuals find themselves compelled to invent new modes of navigation in order to steer toward a wide-open horizon. Very often they pay for this with a staggering sense of solitude, which is difficult to cope with in the long run. In other words, some don’t ask for permission and live out their desires in defiance of the law. The realization of this fundamental transgression is not without risk. Many intellectuals have been murdered seemingly over this. More precisely, these political assassinations took advantage of the freedom of speech demanded by these intellectuals in order to sow doubt about who was behind them. The message couldn’t be clearer, spreading fear and distorting understanding. Self-censorship targets free thinking, difference, and unconventionality. This type of censorship is extremely refined. Its introjection has been so successful that its centers of operation (linguistic, political, religious, etc.) have become entirely unidentifiable. In contrast, in “regular” totalitarian states, censorship can be identified in its grand gestures such that action can be taken to prevent it from invading the private sphere. With the LRP bloc afflicting Algerian politics, the forms and levels of censorship at work in the subject become blurred. Thought and speech are undermined in favor of a literal form of discourse and language that are stripped of nuance and ambivalence. The only option left is “to speak by withdrawing from one’s self, to speak in isolation from one’s voice.”23
To understand and analyze the history of this fear on the level of individual subjectivity and in the context of widespread social decline requires a deeper look at the facts and effects of History. The traces of colonization are drowned out by a noisy conflict that leaves no mark. We will try to penetrate beyond the noise that rings like a case of tinnitus, troubling the “sleep of the just”24 in a crumbling world, in order to hear the faint voices reverberating without content, right there, at the beating heart of history, where writing fails to materialize.
Notes
1 1 Sarah Haider, Virgules en trombe (Algiers: APIC Éditions, 2013), p. 44.
2 2 Amin Maalouf, Les Désorientés (Paris: Grasset, 2012), p. 69.
3 3 In November 2001, a brutal
