Propaganda, Nationalism, and Feminism: Algerian Women in the French-Algerian War
Abstract
The Algerian War of Independence (1954—1962), fought between the French colonial army and the nationalist Front de Libération Nationale (FLN), saw women participating in revolutionary activity on nearly all levels. That said, in the drive to mobilize the population, Algerian women became targets not only for wartime violence, but also directed propaganda campaigns from both major political players. The French colonial authority, on one hand, used media, visual propaganda, and social initiatives in order to promulgate the idea that the French colonial system was necessary in order to bring women into the arena of western-oriented progress. The FLN, on the other hand, utilized images of armed female militants, despite their minority in the overall female population, in order to promote a carefully controlled idea of ‘female warriors’ tied the breaking of gender confines with the needs of the nation. Neither narrative, however, accounts for the true diversity of experience for Algerian women, nor do they consist of analysis and consideration of the experiences of individual women. The collective struggle is substituted for the individual experience. This paper looks at the relationship between the presentation of narratives through literature, media, and personal accounts and how certain narratives can be used, or omitted, to reflect wider goals and ideals of the political apparatus. By taking the three-tiered approach of examining at the women’s experiences as presented by women themselves as well as presented by the aforementioned political actors, I argue that specific narratives misrepresent and silence women’s experiences so as not to contradict the ideals and goals of larger political apparatuses.
For my BPhil thesis, I wrote a qualitative analysis of the narratives built around Algerian women during the Algerian War for Independence and how these narratives are contested and complicated by the actual accounts of Algerian women, through oral interviews, literature, and autobiography, as explained in the above abstract. After deciding the topic of my thesis at the end of my Sophomore year, I spent the following summer creating a research plan for my Fall 2018 to Spring 2019 year abroad. Initially, I had planned the work to be a philosophical analysis of the differing conceptions of western feminist philosophy and North African feminist philosophy in tandem with the exploration of narratives created around women by the French colonial forces and Algerian nationalist movement, tying the two analyses together by comparing manners by which Algerian women were viewed by each movement. That said, upon my return to Pitt after my study abroad experience, the Capstone Course I took with Dr. Kat Lieder helped narrow and change the focus of my work. Thus, the thesis shifted to a three-tiered analysis of the narratives created around women during the war: the narratives propagated by the French Colonial Authority, the narratives crafted by the nationalist FLN, and an exploration of the diverse experiences of the women themselves that were released in the decades following independence. As such, my research questions became as follows:
- What narrative did each movement / group produce?
- How did each movement / group support this narrative and how did this narrative benefit them?
- How did each movement / group disseminate this narrative?
- What historical, political, and social factors contribute to the narratives produced by each movement / group?
- What were the short and long-term political and social consequences of the narrative propagated by each movement / group?
In consideration of these questions, I looked at each group individually to first answer how each group created a narrative and why—that is, question two. This starting point allowed me to analyze the actions and infrastructure of military forces involved with women in order to delimitate the purpose behind these military actions and maneuvers; in essence, looking at what was done in order to determine and analyze the purpose behind it. By considering the historical, political, and social factors that contributed to the narratives crafted by each group, a larger picture of social, colonial, and national belief was formed that upheld certain ideologies around women. For example, the historical progression of women in western European states, involving certain social advancements, religious beliefs, social norms, and so on, upheld particular narratives of women in France that were not cohesive to Algerian society. This contestation of the role of women during the war continued for decades after independence in 1962—even as France dispersed narratives of women subject to western prejudice and an “inferior” historical progression, the FLN was in political control of the country until the 1990’s. That said, the experiences of women were not fully considered until the slow trickle of publication released a much more diverse and complicated narrative that did not align with either movement.
I began my search for primary sources in the Archives Nationales at Pierrefitte-sur-Seine in Seine-Saint-Denis. From November 2018 to February 2019, I studied French documents pertaining to Algerian women spanning from the beginning of the colonization of Algeria to the time fo the war. That said, after compiling all my notes, upon returning to the United States and beginning my outline, I ran into my most pressing problem—the primary sources I had found no longer fit the new, three-tiered focus of my thesis, and many was at most orientalist background information. Thus, I began to look at media from the time period for more informative, holistic, and delightfully biased accounts to analyze the narratives. For the French Colonial Army, I looked at journalistic accounts by Christine Fournier, videos from the time propagating the usefulness of French women’s organizations in the mission to civilize the Algerian woman, speeches, and visual propaganda from the era. For the FLN, I looked primarily at the FLN newspaper El Moudjahid, created to inform resistance fighters and, after the war, propagate the ideology of the single-party FLN government. When looking at the works of women, I used various oral interviews, autobiographies, and one piece of literature written by famous Algerian author Assia Djebar in order to combine the experiences of women with a work of fiction that conveys both diversity of experience as well as experiences that are often taboo.
This thesis, an in-depth case of the contrasting narratives of various movements within one political and social conflict, looked at how truth and history were crafted by particular state actions, traditions, and ideologies in order to generate loyalty and support. That said, many of the themes utilized in this paper originated in the course I took in Spring 2018: Myth, Propaganda, and the State. Having decided the topic of my thesis at the end of that semester, I asked Dr. Andrew Lotz to be my thesis advisor in order to consider and comment of the propaganda narratives created by the FLN and French army and how they corresponded with reality.
A culmination of my interest in colonial and post-colonial relations with the west and North Africa and the Middle East as well as my interest in discourse analysis in politics, this thesis combined the various histories, philosophies, and political conflicts that I studied throughout my Global Studies track in order to write a specific case study that considered gender studies, colonial history, rebellion, and post-colonial relations.