UC Berkeley

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 in order to uncover some of the ways in which the French-Algerian War goes on having an impact today.