ABSTRACT

This chapter lays the groundwork for the author's analysis of contemporary feminist discourses by examining three examples of what she shall calls 'colonial-feminist' writing: writing by French women of colonial era that articulates a feminist agenda within a colonial frame. The three women writers are, Suzanne Voilquin, Hubertine Auclert, and Marie Bugéja. The chapter demonstrates the gradual merging of colonial and feminist discourses, and the developing interest in the figure of Muslim woman. Voilquin was a writer and activist who became involved in the Utopian socialist movement of Saint-Simonism. Auclert, founder of the French women's suffrage movement and editor of the feminist newspaper La Citoyenne, travelled to Algeria in 1888 where she studied the condition of Arab women. In her 1921 treatise on the necessity to educate Muslim women, Nos seems musulmaties, Bugéja argues that Algerian Muslim women must be taught the French way of life not only for their own sakes, but above all for the good of colony.