270 Mediated Publics
a satellite dish, even without a predetermined political will to organize
themselves collectively, they create new spaces and opportunities to rein-
terpret and to critique everyday practices and the political system. The
success of satellite television at its inception in the mid-1980s was based
on the repudiation of national television, which was deemed “obsolete”
and was perceived as the house organ of the ruling class. This is true all
over the Maghrib. In organizing themselves collectively, viewers create a
small public space that becomes a vital venture for revealing social forces
and for the capture of physical spaces.
us, thanks to satellite television in the mid-1980s, Algerians saw Th
members of the political opposition living in Europe as well as the lead-
ers of the Front Islamique du Salut [FIS, or Islamic Front of Salvation].
The FIS, which already had a popular power base, was denied access to
national television after October 1988,^18 and was thus pushed toward the
use of satellite television. However, in and of itself the broadcasting of
these oppositional voices would be politically insignificant if other means
of communication did not support and reinforce these moves. I here limit
my remarks to the FIS. Other opposition parties at the time had hardly
any grassroots support. In this battle over public space the FIS had access
to neither television nor radio. It turned its efforts toward mosques and
partially toward schools. The FIS used means already in place, such as
the amplified loudspeakers installed in the mosques during the period
of “specific socialism.” These devices had already reshaped the physical
boundaries of neighborhoods and had shifted focus to other places, such
as homes. The official imams’ preaching increasingly became linked to
the views of the FIS. At times they were even appropriated by the imams
whose theology was close to the FIS. During Friday afternoon prayer ser-
vices, sermons could be heard everywhere; they reached into even the
tiniest corners of cities and villages, and inside houses. Audio cassettes
also played an important role in the propagation of FIS ideology. These
cassette tapes, distributed by authorized dealers on market days, contained
prayers and sermons that came mostly from Egypt. The FIS also derived
a great deal of its support from charitable work that often operated out of
mosques. This appropriation of the technical apparatus of communication
which, in the past, had been the prerogative of the governing powers and
which constituted a means of “effecting the materialization of the power