290 Mediated Publics
creates in the national public space by linking this space with other secu-
lar public spaces. To watch satellite television is to project other people’s
experiences onto one’s own. France is like the thread leading out of the
labyrinth; it represents the possibility of imagining a democratic future, a
future that Algerians glimpsed in a flash between 1988 and 1992.
I see France. It is an exemplary country for me. It is a country
that has strengthened itself through its democratic traditions.
It is a country where laws exist and no one—not even a general
or a president—can escape the law. We saw [on TV] ministers
placed in prison, we saw the police take a CEO into deten-
tion. That doesn’t happen in our country. Here it is might over
right. So France is a model in this domain. The law applies to
all equally.... Presently, the presidential advisor is the son of
a flen.^57 The minute those guys graduate from the ENA [Ecole
nationale d’administration] they are automatically sent abroad
as ambassadors whereas the sons of the losers who first of all
face a challenge to get into the ENA find themselves paper
pushers, in some corner of a regional bureaucracy, in a daira
or a wilāya. And the son of Ali Kafi is a government advisor!^58
What a wretched individual, straight out of university, first
degree in hand, all shiny and new, without any background,
without any experience, and lo, he becomes advisor to the
prime minister. The [Algerian] media picked up the story. We
found out thanks to the media, thanks to Liberté in particular.
(Hammoud)Conclusion
The massive adoption of satellite television in Algeria^59 corresponds
to what Bayet, in his study of social change movements in the Middle
East, calls the “quiet encroachment of the ordinary,” a movement that he
believes has a significant impact on the possibilities for social change:
“This quiet activism challenges many fundamental state prerogatives,
including the meaning of ‘order,’ control of public space, and the meaning