Re-Configurations by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783658311605
Publisher: Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden

Drinking Incorrectly

Like Duchesne, many French authors were of the opinion that Muslims in the Maghreb favored strong spirits over wine. One doctor P. Remlinger, for example, wrote a 1912 article about the spread of alcoholism in Morocco, in which he claimed that “Arabs display a preference for absinthe, cognac, whisky and gin.” According to him, this penchant for strong liquors was due to Europeans drinking “in general for the pleasure of drinking, despite the intoxication which may result from it,” while “the Arab never or almost never drinks by taste. It is drunkenness that he looks for. The more easily it is obtained, the more satisfied he is. […] The ideal, evidently, would be for him to be drunk without drinking” (Remlinger 1912, p. 750). However, it was not just this preference towards particularly strong drinks that was seen to be problematic and deeply immature: in the eyes of the French observers, colonized Muslims also drank too much altogether. The French doctors and psychiatrists described the colonized as lacking rationality and moderation in all aspects of their lives, which led to the claim that the colonized were incapable of a normal, reasonable level of alcohol consumption as allegedly practiced by French adults.11 Directly after the passage cited above, Remlinger simply stated that “the Arab does not know any moderation in the consumption of alcoholic beverages.” According to Remlinger, this fact made it easy to spot alcohol drinkers among the colonized Muslims. “He [the Moroccan Muslim] drinks or he does not, and if he drinks, he is drunk” (Remlinger 1912, p. 750).

A very similar sentiment about the lack of moderation in the colonized can be found in Pierre Pinaud’s 1933 medical dissertation on alcoholism in Algeria. He explained this connection between excessive consumption and, so to speak, excessive non-consumption of alcohol, by writing that, upon starting the research for his dissertation, he was immediately struck by the “immoderation” of consumption among Algerian Muslims. He claimed: “With him [the Algerian Muslim], there are no half-measures: either he respects the wise precepts of the Qur’an and will abstain all his life from lifting any fermented beverage to his lips; or, if he starts drinking, he will soon exceed fair and reasonable measures. There are only very few Arabs who follow a rational and moderate consumption of alcohol akin to that of many Europeans” (Pinaud 1933, p. 11). Although they are not comparing the colonized to children in these passages, both Remlinger and Pinaud clearly interpret rationality and moderation as adult characteristics that Muslims lacked. The implicit conclusion of such statements is that, in the minds of these French commentators, colonized adults’ alcohol consumption proved they were “not quite” adults.

Finally, the vocabulary used to describe this notion of the spread of alcohol being not an act of adult self-determination, but a mere consequence of the growing influence of France in the region, provides further insight into how colonial publications both infantilized and dehumanized the colonized. In 1907, for example, the psychiatrist Camille-Charles Gervais stated

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