Spaces to play: football as political protest in Kaouther Adimi's Les petits de Décembre

Abstract

ABSTRACT Critical reception of Kaouther Adimi’s 2019 novel Les petits de Décembre has focused on elements of the story about a youth-led protest that seemed to anticipate the hirak movement of 2019. This article argues that the novel is in fact in dialogue with a much broader historical narrative around the use of football, and other playful techniques of resistance, as a means of political protest in Algeria. From the famous FLN team of the 1950s and 60s, to the stadium chants of the 1980s and 1990s, and up to the present day, the sport has loomed large in the country's histories of political resistance. Adimi's novel focuses on a less-expected kind of football narrative, however: the story of three small children who stage football matches as pacifist resistance to the planned takeover of their neighbourhood empty lot. The novel posits sports and play as a tool for the most disenfranchised to impose themselves on the Algerian political landscape and disrupt state control of public space, while also exploring how a global sport operates within a local landscape. As such, Adimi's work represents the possibility of a revolutionary approach to writing resistance in Algeria: via the history of hyper-local informal play and sport practice. The novel's style of writing, with its playful and entertaining prose, also invites readers to consider how a new generation is shaping the diffusion of Algerian narratives of football and resistance.