Madah-Sartre

Last updated
Madah-Sartre: The Kidnapping, Trial, and Conver(sat/s)ion of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir
Written by Alek Baylee Toumi
CharactersMadah
Jean-Paul Sartre
Simone de Beauvoir
Mullahs
Psy-Mullahs
Chief Chador
Chadorettes
Cops
Taximan Hamid Lounar
Chauffeur Mmi Ali
Doctor
Surgeon Dr. Freeman
Artist
Doorman
Terrorist
Nurses
Presenter
Guard
Radio Announcer
Radio Reporters Veronique Lamesche and Liz Miller
Original languageFrench
SubjectIslamists kidnap Sartre and de Beauvoir, holding them captive while trying to convert them to Islam
GenreDrama
SettingAlgeria 1993, shortly after assassination of Tahar Djaout

Madah-Sartre is a seven-act play by Alek Baylee Toumi, first published in French in 1996 and published in English in 2007. It depicts a fictional abduction by Islamists of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir in Algeria in 1993, and attempts by these Islamists to convert their captives to Islam.

Contents

Characters

Main characters

Secondary characters

Plot

It is 1993 in Algeria and Islamists have just assassinated Tahar Djaout. Jean-Paul Sartre (died 1980) and Simone de Beauvoir (died 1986) return to earth from the afterlife to attend Djaout's funeral. While they are en route to the funeral, Islamists abduct them. The Islamists hold their intellectual guests captive and begin sessions of trying to convert Sartre and de Beauvoir to Islam.

Themes

Madah-Sartre was inspired by Peter Weiss's play Marat/Sade (1963). [1] The play includes characters who support intellectual freedom and who challenge ideas detrimental to human wellbeing with better ideas (rather than with violence). In the preface Toumi states, "In the case of the civil war in Algeria, the overwhelming majority of the assassinated people – journalists, intellectuals, school teachers, raped women – are Muslims. It means that: The victims are Muslims, while the killers, the assassins, the terrorists are Islamists... It is very important not to confuse the two and to learn to distinguish between victims and executioners. Madah-Sartre is not anti-Muslim; on the contrary, it defends Muslim victims and all Others who are victims of terrorism. That is why Madah-Sartre is, without a shadow of a doubt, antifundamentalist, antiterrorist, and anti-Islamist."

Notes

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jean-Paul Sartre</span> French Existentialist philosopher (1905–1980)

Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic, as well as a leading figure in 20th-century French philosophy and Marxism. Sartre was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism. His work has influenced sociology, critical theory, post-colonial theory, and literary studies, and continues to do so. He was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature despite attempting to refuse it, saying that he always declined official honors and that "a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Simone de Beauvoir</span> French philosopher, social theorist and activist (1908–1986)

Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir was a French existentialist philosopher, writer, social theorist, and feminist activist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, nor was she considered one at the time of her death, she had a significant influence on both feminist existentialism and feminist theory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Organisation armée secrète</span> 1961–1962 French far-right paramilitary organisation in the Algerian War

The Organisation Armée Secrète was a far-right French dissident paramilitary and terrorist organisation during the Algerian War. The OAS carried out terrorist attacks, including bombings and assassinations, in an attempt to prevent Algeria's independence from French colonial rule. Its motto was L’Algérie est française et le restera.

The Roads to Freedom is a series of novels by French author Jean-Paul Sartre. Intended as a tetralogy, it was left incomplete, with only three complete volumes and part one of the fourth volume of the planned four volumes published in his lifetime and the unfinished second part of the fourth volume was edited and published a year after his death.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lounès Matoub</span> Algerian musician (1956 - 1998)

Lounès Matoub was an Algerian Kabylian singer, poet, thinker who sparked an intellectual revolution, and mandole player who was an advocate of the Berber cause, human rights, and secularism in Algeria throughout his life.

<i>Marat/Sade</i> 1964 play by Peter Weiss

The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade, usually shortened to Marat/Sade, is a 1963 play by Peter Weiss. The work was first published in German.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tahar Djaout</span> Algerian writer (1954–1993)

Tahar Djaout was an Algerian journalist, poet, and fiction writer. He was assassinated in 1993 by the Armed Islamic Group.

The Flies is a play by Jean-Paul Sartre, produced in 1943. It is an adaptation of the Electra myth, previously used by the Greek playwrights Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripides. The play recounts the story of Orestes and his sister Electra in their quest to avenge the death of their father Agamemnon, king of Argos, by killing their mother Clytemnestra and her husband Aegisthus, who had deposed and killed him.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Annie Cohen-Solal</span> French academic (born 1948)

Annie Cohen-Solal is a French historian and writer. Her work investigates the interactions between art, literature and society, including intercultural aspects. After Sartre : A Life (1987) became an international success, she was the French cultural counselor in the US from 1989 to 1992. Working in the disciplinary fields of social and artistic history, she focuses on the agents responsible for modern symbolic circulations.

Les Temps Modernes is a French journal, founded by Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Its first issue was published in October 1945. It was named after the 1936 film by Charlie Chaplin.

<i>The Mandarins</i>

The Mandarins is a 1954 roman à clef by Simone de Beauvoir, for which she won the Prix Goncourt, awarded to the best and most imaginative prose work of the year, in 1954. The Mandarins was first published in English in 1956.

The Jeanson network was a group of French leftwing militants led by Francis Jeanson who helped Algerian National Liberation Front agents operating in the French metropolitan territory during the Algerian War. They were mainly involved in carrying money and papers for the Algerians and were sometimes called "the suitcase carriers", a notion from the French resistance movement during World War II. The famous communist anticolonialist activist Henri Curiel participated in the network, as did the forger Adolfo Kaminsky. The philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and writer Simone de Beauvoir were supportive of the Jeanson network. Photojournalist and author Dominique Darbois was another intellectual in Jeanson's network.

Bianca Lamblin was a French writer who had affairs with philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir for a number of years. In her book Mémoires d'une jeune fille dérangée, she wrote that, while a student at Lycée Molière, she was sexually exploited by her teacher Beauvoir, who was in her 30s. In correspondence between Sartre and Beauvoir, the pseudonym Louise Védrine was used when referring to Bianca in Lettres au Castor and Lettres à Sartre.

Major General Smain Lamari was the head of an Algerian intelligence service, the Department of Counter-Espionage and Internal Security.

Fernand Iveton was the only pied noir among the 198 supporters of the FLN who were executed during the Algerian War.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ma Bourgogne</span>

Ma Bourgogne is a bistro in Place des Vosges in the Le Marais district of Paris. It is on the North-West point and is a café in the traditional French style. It has been around for many years and it has been spoken of as one of the best bistros in Paris.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Montparnasse Cemetery</span> Cemetery in Paris, France

Montparnasse Cemetery is a cemetery in the Montparnasse quarter of Paris, in the city's 14th arrondissement. The cemetery is roughly 47 acres and is the second largest cemetery in Paris. The cemetery has over 35,000 graves and approximately a thousand people are buried here each year.

Pierre-Lucien Claverie, OP was a French Catholic prelate who was a professed member from the Order of Preachers and served as the Bishop of Oran from 1981 until his murder in 1996 by Islamic extremists.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Djamila Boupacha</span>

Djamila Boupacha is a former militant from the Algerian National Liberation Front. She was arrested in 1960 for attempting to bomb a cafe in Algiers. Her confession, which was obtained by means of torture and rape, and her subsequent trial affected French public opinion about the methods used by the French army in Algeria after publicity by Simone de Beauvoir and Gisèle Halimi. Boupacha was sentenced to death on June 29, 1961, but was given amnesty under the Evian Accords and later freed on 21 April 1962.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arezki Metref</span> Algerian writer, poet and journalist

Arezki Metref, is an Algerian writer, poet and journalist.

References