ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the impact of the complex interaction among neocolonial, patriarchal and women’s movement discourses on representations of gendered experiences of political conflict in Papicha (Meddour 2019), an Algeria/France co-production. Papicha is set during the 1990s Algerian war, or ‘the Black Decade’, as the period is commonly known. The film depicts the daily acts of resistance of an 18-year-old female university student, Nedjma, and her group of friends. However, because Papicha’s narrative centres on the complex and controversial issue of Muslim women’s dress and makes the veil a symbol of women’s oppression, the film goes beyond local politics to include transnational identity politics shaped by colonial history. This chapter engages with representations of women as political investments in the ideological struggles between the Arab and Euro-American worlds. The chapter argues that Papicha relies on neocolonial discourses to challenge patriarchy at the expense of a more complex and contextualised exploration of Algerian women’s experiences during the war.
