Boutheina Cheriet (Published: September 1996)

A call for state intervention to halt the Islamist upsurge in Algeria.

Women in Algeria must negotiate their access to the public sphere in a society torn between the residual patriarchal reflexes of the modern state and Islamist revivalism. Feminists in Algeria, while critical of the patriarchal nature of the state, continue to call for its intervention to halt the Islamist upsurge and to implement social policies based on a model of universal citizenry.

In 1993, I attended a ceremony of trance dancing called "Benga", organized by the only group still performing in the town of Tebessa where I then lived.The Tidjania group of Tebessa is a residual branch of the larger African Islamic sect that has practiced trance dancing for healing purposes, in particular as therapy in exorcising "bad spirits". The Benga dance relies on a highly organized drumming team, accompanying religious litanies celebrating the prophet Muhammad, which leads the dancer to fall into a "liberating faint". Most striking about the Benga performance was that attendance was mixed: men and women, young and old together, faced the drummers, whose leaders included a veteran elderly woman reciter of the religious litanies. The men and women dancers performed in turn, falling into trances in front of the assembly. The position of their bodies expressed total abandonment (although women's and girl's thighs were promptly covered), unusual in such a predominantly patriarchal local society with strong Bedouin underpinnings …

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