Hadj-Moussa 263263Seeking Liberty and Constructing Identities:
Algerian Publics and Satellite Television
Ratiba Hadj-Moussa
Questions and contexts
After three decades of “monumental history” in Algeria, during which
dissension was concealed and silenced by the signs of the unanimous
republican brotherhood of “specific socialism,”^1 Algerians have become
conscious of social divisions and of the powerlessness of the rentier state.^2
They have lost their fa(r)ther orientation and do not know whether to
mourn or celebrate the loss of a far-reaching vision of a paternalistic state.
For a long time, television played the role of reinforcing an ideological
discourse stressing unanimity. It was an easy task as long as no competing
structures existed. However, state television has become more and more
inept at ensuring hegemony. Satellite television made its appearance in
the 1980s during a wave of economic liberalization measures prior to sig-
nificant budget cuts imposed by the World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund during the 1990s. This research project, which I began in
the mid-1990s in Algeria, was generated by a desire to understand how
satellite television served as a means of resistance to both the dictates
of the Islamists and the authoritarianism of the state. Algeria was in the
middle of a bloody civil war. I was awed by the quiet courage of people
who faced death at any moment, who were terrified but continued to live,
and to watch satellite television.^3 To me, however naïve it might sound,
this act seemed to represent the idea that life continues, no matter what