ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the theme of women’s (in)visibility in conjunction with representations of resistant voices and visions in work by Fettouma Touati, Malika Mokeddem, Assia Djebar, Leïla Sebbar, and Houria Niati, women affiliated by birth or family history to Algeria. Relatively extreme constraints placed upon women’s agency in the post-independence era and selective interpretations of the historical relationship between Algeria and France have inspired a substantial amount of work that attempts to expose and reconfigure discursive and scopic modes of apprehending Algerian women both at home and abroad. However, because Algeria is also unevenly incorporated in Anglophone postcolonial studies, the erosion of postcolonial women’s status and opportunities for self-expression and an ongoing legacy of women’s resistance tend to be inadequately appreciated. I will consider Réda Bensmaïa’s depiction of Algeria as ‘a limit case that may serve as an indicator of what the future holds for the former colonized countries’ particularly, he argues, as it can be seen as ‘an analytical operator in the large ideological movements that are shaking not only the countries of the Maghreb but also the Arab-Muslim world in its totality’ (1998: 4, original emphasis). It should not be seen as a ‘typical’ postcolonial Arab Muslim setting and it should be remembered that as a result of a mass exodus of intellectuals, writers, and artists in recent decades, representations of Algeria are often produced in exile, a factor rendered transparent to varying extents by the writers, filmmaker, and artist discussed here.
