Remembering Bodies: Gender, Race, and Nationality in the French-Algerian War

151 Pages·2010·2.47 MB·English

by  Christine Quinan

UC Berkeley
UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Title
Remembering Bodies: Gender, Race, and Nationality in the French-Algerian War
Permalink
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/59s630rr
Author
Quinan, Christine
Publication Date
2010

Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation
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University of California
Remembering Bodies: Gender, Race, and Nationality in the French-Algerian War
by
Christine Lisa Quinan

A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the
requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in
French
and the Designated Emphasis
in
Women, Gender, and Sexuality
in the
Graduate Division
of the
University of California, Berkeley

Committee in charge:
Professor Michael Lucey, Chair
Professor Ann Smock
Professor Barbara Spackman
Professor Charis Thompson

Fall 2010

Abstract

Remembering Bodies: Gender, Race, and Nationality in the French-Algerian War
by
Christine Lisa Quinan
Doctor of Philosophy in French

University of California, Berkeley

Professor Michael Lucey, Chair

This dissertation interrogates images and narratives of the body during the French-
Algerian War, an eight-year conflict that began in 1954 and ended with Algerian
independence in 1962. Moving between Algeria and France in my analyses and
considering documents from the period in question and from later years that reflect back
on it, I analyze literary works, films, memoirs, and a legal case in order to consider how
physical violence and trauma produce a variety of forms of psychological and corporeal
dissonance and how the repression of personal and collective memories can impact bodies
and minds both destructively and productively. An investigation of the workings of the
social constructs of gender and sexuality is at the center of this project, and I consistently
take an approach that actively engages feminist theoretical perspectives, while also taking
into account how other categories like race, class, ethnicity, nationality, and citizenship
intersect with gender and sexuality to structure our understanding of embodiment and
memory during the French-Algerian War. Given the unique and gendered ways in which
bodies respond to violence and consequently hold memories, the French-Algerian War
proves to be a compelling case study regarding the transformative and agential power of
bodies during periods of resistance.

Drawing on disciplines such as cultural studies, feminist sociology, postcolonial studies,
social movement theory, and human rights studies, I situate my dissertation at the
intersection of theories of embodiment and of memory to investigate the myriad ways in
which this war of decolonization was literally and figuratively fought on the bodies of
Algerian women. Conversely, through the attention it caused to be paid to the Muslim
female body, the war placed the seemingly “neutral” and “unmarked” body of the French,
heterosexual, Christian, white, male body in question. In analyses of my primary archive, I
also uncover how the process of decolonization sparked a crisis in national identity, as
“Frenchness” (what it meant to be French) was constructed, deconstructed, and
reconstructed with every turn of the war, particularly as revelations of torture and brutality
emerged. Additionally, I propose that this moment posed a crisis in gender and sexuality,
as it became a period of reification of certain forms of masculinity and femininity and a
contestation and production of others. Finally, I turn to recent works and current events
1
in order to uncover some of the ways in which the French-Algerian War goes on having
an impact today.

2
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

INTRODUCTION iv

CHAPTER 1: Veiling Unveiled: Embodiment and Action in 1
Assia Djebar’s Les enfants du nouveau monde
and Les alouettes naïves

CHAPTER 2: Torture, Memory, and Film: Alain Resnais’ 41
Absent “Muriel”

CHAPTER 3: Technocrats and Tortured Bodies: 90
Simone de Beauvoir and the French-Algerian War

CHAPTER 4: Hidden Memories: Retracing October 17, 1961 137
in Michael Haneke’s Caché and
Leïla Sebbar’s La Seine était rouge

CONCLUSION 183

BIBLIOGRAPHY 196

i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This endeavor dates back many years, even decades, and I don’t know if I will ever be able
to name all the countless individuals whose feedback and guidance helped shape this
project, nor will I ever be able to name all the friends and family whose love provided me
with the support to make it through the arduous, yet always fulfilling, process of
completing a doctorate. First and foremost, I would not be here without the support of
my family and the encouragement of Prof. Mary Rice-DeFosse, my undergraduate advisor,
who first suggested I pursue a Ph.D. I will always strive to be the sort of thoughtful and
compassionate mentor she was to me.

I will forever be grateful to the Department of French and to the Department of Gender
and Women’s Studies for their generous support. My committee has provided me with
invaluable guidance that has truly made me a better scholar and teacher. Michael Lucey
has always offered me tremendously insightful comments and forced me to push my
analysis further. I feel so fortunate to have had such an intellectual role model, and I
consistently aspire to be the kind of scholar that Michael is. Ann Smock’s kindness and
rigor has been profoundly inspirational, and I will forever appreciate her creative spirit, her
modesty, and her generosity. Barbara Spackman’s longtime support and consistent
presence has been a comfort to me throughout the ups and downs of graduate school.
Charis Thompson’s encouragement, compliments (often undeserved!), and big heart have
always kept me going. I could not think of a better group of scholars to work with
throughout this project.

Additional thanks goes to all professors with whom I have had the fortune of taking
classes, including Trinh Minh-ha, Seda Chavdarian, Thomas Kavanagh, Debarati Sanyal,
Minoo Moallem, Timothy Hampton, David Hult, Françoise Sorgen-Goldschmidt,
Suzanne Guerlac, Susan Maslan, and Karl Britto.

Special thanks goes to members of both GWS 220 Seminars I attended, especially Robin
Mitchell, Laurel Westbrook, Monica Stufft, and Kelly Rafferty, as well as colleagues from
the Dartmouth Institute of French Cultural Studies, particularly Caroline Gates, Michael
Hoyer, and the inimitable Lawrence Kritzman.

Johnny George, my first Berkeley friend who would subsequently become one of my
absolute closest friends, deserves special thanks. What would I do without his loyalty,
unflinching support, generosity, and always-welcome humor? Robin Mitchell, too, has
been there for me in so many countless ways. It’s not easy to find someone that can help
me make sense of my dissertation and make me laugh so hard I forget all worries. She is
an amazing friend, scholar, and teacher. Anastasia Kayiatos is truly a force to be reckoned
with, and I look forward to our future of friendship and intellectual exchange. Heartfelt
thanks goes to Pamela Reaves. Sometimes I really didn’t know what I would do without
Pamela, who has always believed in me and has provided me with unconditional support
throughout my entire graduate career. Wherever my life leads me, I will take her with me
in spirit.

ii
My life would feel empty without the close friends I have made during my time at
Berkeley. Ellen VandenBerg, Jennifer Daubenmier, Lowry Martin, Araceli Hernández,
Stephanie Green, Grégory Briegel, and Sarah Schoellkopf are gifts that I will forever
cherish. I also owe a huge thank you to friends from all over the country, particularly
Alicia DiPietro, Jenn Garlin, and Michael Meere, for the years and years of love and
support they have given me.

Many of us are in this profession for a higher calling: teaching students. When I walk into
the classroom, somehow everything makes sense. I cannot thank enough the many
students I have had over the years – they have truly taught me. A special thank you goes to
my students in French R1A: “The Living Archive” and GWS 111: “Fractured Bodies.”
These courses allowed me the opportunity to teach many of the texts in this dissertation,
and the enthusiasm that these students brought to class everyday was one of the most
stimulating forces in working through this project.

Finally, to Tara Daly, my greatest love and my favorite paradox, you inspire me everyday.
I could not ask for a better life than one I can share with you.

iii
INTRODUCTION

I. Overview

My dissertation interrogates images and narratives of the body during the French-
Algerian War,1 an eight-year conflict that began in 1954 and ended in with Algerian
independence in 1962. Moving between Algeria and France in my analyses and
considering documents from the period in question and from later years that reflect back
on it, I analyze literary works, films, memoirs, and a legal case in order to consider how
physical violence and trauma produce a variety of forms of psychological and corporeal
dissonance and how the repression of personal and collective memories can impact bodies
and minds both destructively and productively. An investigation of the workings of the
social constructs of gender and sexuality is at the center of this project, and I consistently
take an approach that actively engages feminist theoretical perspectives, while also taking
into account how other categories like race, class, ethnicity, nationality, and citizenship
intersect with gender and sexuality to structure our understanding of embodiment and
memory during the French-Algerian War. Given the unique and gendered ways in which
bodies respond to violence and consequently hold memories, the French-Algerian War
proves to be a compelling case study regarding the transformative and agential power of
bodies during periods of resistance.
Drawing on disciplines such as cultural studies, feminist sociology, postcolonial
studies, social movement theory, and human rights studies, I situate my dissertation at the
intersection of theories of embodiment and of memory to investigate the myriad ways in
which this war of decolonization was literally and figuratively fought on the bodies of
Algerian women. Conversely, through the attention it caused to be paid to the Muslim
female body, the war seemed to place the seemingly “neutral” and “unmarked” body of
the French, heterosexual, Christian, white, male body in question. In analyses of my
primary archive, I also uncover how the process of decolonization sparked a crisis in
national identity, as “Frenchness” (what it meant to be French) was constructed,
deconstructed, and reconstructed with every turn of the war, particularly as revelations of
torture and brutality emerged. Additionally, I propose that this moment posed a crisis in
gender and sexuality, as it became a period of reification of certain forms of masculinity
and femininity and a contestation and production of others. Anne Donadey highlights the
importance of studying gender in the postcolonial context: “Gender, rather than being
peripheral to postcolonial literature, is indeed one of its crucial components… the

1 Throughout the dissertation, I have chosen to refer to the conflict as the “French-Algerian
War,” rather than the more conventional “Algerian War,” “Algerian War of Independence,”
or “Algerian Revolution” for the same reason that James Le Sueur cites. The term “Algerian
war” is Franco-centric, as “Algeria has fought many wars without France. Hence, leaving
aside the question of whether an undeclared colonial war can be called anything other than a
civil war, I have settled on the more specific and neutral name French-Algerian War” (2006,
328, n. 1). As I will also discuss below, the French government would not call it a “war” at
the time, yielding a whole other set of euphemisms.
iv
question of gender disrupts Manichean dichotomies” (2001, xxix) of master/slave while
questioning figurations of women as “objects to be protected… as stakes in the struggle…
[or] as metaphors for the nation” (2001, xxx). While viewing gender as a central lens to
study literary and cinematic production around the French-Algerian War, I simultaneously
take an intersectional approach that looks at how gender, race, religion, and citizenship
inform one another in studies of the war, as well as in subsequent memories of the
conflict.
The relationship between embodiment and gender is more or less evident. Bodies
are often immediately seen as fitting into one of the two accepted genders (and bodies that
are not may be seen as disruptive and non-normative). Thanks to the work of feminist
scholars and gender theorists, we can take as given the idea that gender, itself a reiterative
series of bodily performative acts, is often experienced as “organic, ingrained, ‘real,’
invisible, and immutable” while also being a primary mode of oppression that sorts human
bodies into binary categories” (Halberstam, 118). Less obvious might be the relationship
between memory and gender. Marianne Hirsch and Valerie Smith elucidate the notion of
memory as gendered: “…the technologies of memory, the frames of interpretation, and
the acts of transfer they enable are in themselves gendered… [E]xperience, as well as its
recollection and transmission, is subject to gendered paradigms” (7). Following this line of
thought, later in this dissertation I will show how memories of a woman tortured would
shape the masculinities of soldiers involved in her death. In another chapter, I will
examine how women function as the guardians and protectors of memories of forgotten
events, thereby allowing for the creation of their own memory legacy that counters and/or
fills in “official history.”
Embodiment and memory, my two vectors of analysis throughout this study,
converge to allow us to talk about a host of other issues. Regarding memory, I concur
with Michael Rothberg’s statement that it “captures simultaneously the individual,
embodied, and lived side and the collective, social, and constructed side of our relations to
the past” (4). While emphasizing the effectiveness in studying memory, Rothberg also
gestures towards the interconnectedness of memory and embodiment. In the obvious
sense, bodies are the containers of minds that hold memories. But I take as a point of
departure that bodies, too, hold memories, in both the individual and collective sense.
Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus helps me think of the body as a site of inscription of
culture, habit, custom, History, and past experience, while also exploring how
representations of the body allow us not only to determine how history is inscribed in the
body but also how the body is inscribed in history.
My approach to embodiment is also informed by Elizabeth Grosz’s theoretical
work on the body. I draw upon her assertion that “the body, or rather, bodies, cannot be
adequately understood as ahistorical, precultural, or natural objects in any simple way; they
are not only inscribed, marked, engraved, by social pressures external to them but are the
products, the direct effects, of the very social construction of nature itself” (1994, x). In
Space, Time, and Perversion, Grosz summarizes several philosophical approaches to
embodiment, ultimately dividing them into two categories. The first she identifies as the
“inscriptive” model, which she uses to describe the work of Nietzsche, Kafka, Foucault,
and Deleuze. She writes that this framework “conceives of the body as a surface on which
social law, morality, and values are inscribed” (1995, 33). She terms the second approach,
which is more prevalent in psychology, psychoanalysis, and phenomenology, the “lived
v