Frantz Fanon: Unveiling Algeria and Transforming Gender Dynamics
Frantz Fanon, a psychiatrist, revolutionary, and theorist, delves into the complexities of Algerian society, particularly focusing on the significance of the veil as a signifier of Arab women and their societal roles. He explores the historical evolution of the veil in Algeria, challenging colonial perceptions of Algerian women and highlighting the transformative impact of the nationalist revolutionary movement on gender dynamics and women's agency.
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Frantz Fanon Unveiling Algeria
Fanon (1925-1961) psychiatrist, revolutionary, theorist
biography Born in Martinique, then a French colony Studied psychiatry in France; wrote Black Skin, White Masks (1952) Went to work in a psychiatric hospital in Algeria, a French colony 1954: Joined the Front de Liberation Nationale, the Algerian revolutionary group 1961: The Wretched of the Earth
Unveiling Algeria The veil: signifier of Arab society and its women: she who hides behind the veil (36) The colonial specialists fixated on the veil; women seen as victims of native patriarchy; a medieval and barbaric practice Native reaction: preserving a constructed tradition The essay traces the checkered history of the veil in Algeria- -its strategic adoption and repudiation, and a re-adoption in the final phase of the revolution--that, according to Fanon is entirely modern and evidence of the veil's "historical dynamism" (63), for the traditional sense of the veil had been exorcised through the medium of the revolution.
Transforming the rules of engagement Drawing critically on the traditional conceptual equation of femininity and space such that "both are charged with absence of politics" or "the inability to act politically", Fanon opens his description of the Arab city, soft, feminized, as surrounded and "immobilized" by the aggressive masculinized power of Europeans. This dynamic of sexualized territorialization leaves the Algerian woman "exposed". In response to this siege, the Arab town weaves a "protective mantle" and "organic curtain of safety" around the woman in the city who is firmly located at home (51). It is precisely and specifically the revolutionary nationalist upsurge that changes these terms of engagement.
Towards freedom What is unveiled in Fanon s text is neither an essence (native woman) nor a passage into freedom (native woman who is emancipated), but a demonstration of the uses that Algerian women make of their assignation as subjects lacking agency, thereby enabling them to evade the logic of their discursive determination as such.
Sadia Abbas, The Echo-Chamber of Freedom The language of individualism and freedom, secularism and modernity hegemonised by the West; used to mark boundaries The case of Turkey (as in Pamuk s novel Snow) state-enforced secularism, leading to a pan-Islamist reaction against secularism, associated with the decline of Islamic power
Engendering Islam The choice to wear the veil subjected to manipulation by both the state and the Islamists Women s suicides refusing the world: Self-extinction emerges as a refusal to surrender to extinction by someone else, as a tragically ironic form of self- assertion. ( 159) the veil as metonym: The Muslim woman is the object of imperial rescue, justification for imperial warfare, Orientalist cipher, target of jihadist violence, and, increasingly, the discursive site upon which the central preoccupation of our time how do you free yourself from freedom? is worked out.
Academic discourse Women as bearers of Muslim identity Anxieties generated by the veil: both philic and phobic Badiou, Scott, Le Carre, Puar, Mahmood adjudicating among Muslims an erasure of struggles over patriarchy and misogyny in Muslim contexts Scott: coercion reworked as tradition, religion into culture within the postsecularist universe, there can be no secular or anti-Islamist Muslims or Muslim reformers.14 There is, in other words, a recurrent invocation of the plurality of Islamicate cultures and yet a continuous subsumption of most Muslims to the most orthodox kinds. (p. 165)
Nawal el-Sadaawi, b. 1931 Egyptian doctor, writer, feminist
Woman at Point Zero (1975) Set in Egypt, under the rule of Pres. Sadat (1970-1981), succeeding Pres. Nasser who had come to power after the Egyptian revolution of 1952. Moved Egypt to the centre. Critique of the masculinist+capitalist nation state that manages and polices the cultural, economic and social spaces available to women Production of normative (domestic) femininity
Gender and class the structural implementation of this normative domestic femininity--the economic spaces available for specifically working and lower- middle class women are restricted to the domestic sphere. The limitation of discourses of normative femininity to the domestic sphere is not portrayed simply as cultural dogma, but the materialisation of a set of structural policies instituted by the state.
Structural limits Firdaus early history is situated as typical for a girl of her class the only economically viable, and therefore available space for a rural, working class girl, is in the domestic sphere. As a poor peasant farmer , her father s decision to sell his virgin daughter for a dowry is portrayed as being as economically necessary as knowing how to grow crops (10). Indeed, as she is unable to inherit money or participate in waged labour, it is only through marriage that Firdaus body can be economically sustained. This structural limitation is re-emphasised when Firdaus brief time in education, which allows her to temporarily occupy a space outside the private sphere, comes to an end, as it is no longer economically viable for her to continue. The inability of Firdaus uncle, as a government official whose salary only rises by a few millimes (37) amidst increasing living costs determines the choices available to Firdaus.
The exchange of bodies a powerful critique of the structural reduction of the female body to a productive and reproductive role under capitalism, through the recurring motif of prostitution as a metaphor for womanhood. Having illustrated the fundamentally economic necessity of marriage, El-Saadawi uses Firdaus, who has lived both as a wife and a prostitute, to demonstrate how the political economy of the female body is consistent in both roles. As Firdaus states, under a capitalist economy, women are forced to sell their bodies at a price as they give up sexual autonomy in exchange for economic security.
The sexual economy marital sex is exclusively portrayed as marital rape, or as sex in which the wife is entirely passive. This is because the economic necessity of marriage for women renders them powerless sexually.Whilst married to Sheikh Mahmoud, Firdaus surrenders her body to his body like a piece of dead wood (47). Things are no different for her uncle and his wife, despite her endorsement of marriage; in response to her refusal of him, he tells her, you woman, you , to submit as I m your husband and you re my wife (40).
Body as instrument This sexual dynamic is mirrored by Firdaus experience as a prostitute, where she too would passively lay on the bed, crucified as every hour a man would come in (61). In light of this, Firdaus circumcision at the beginning of her narrative becomes more than a cultural practice. It is also an economic one, as by removing her ability to experience sexual pleasure, her body is prepared for its place within the capitalist economy; that is, an instrumentalised body exchanged for economic security. the capitalist nation-state creates a structural situation in which, particularly poor women, cannot escape a singular, commodified political economy of the female body. The state s economic structure--a key force in the production of a narrowly defined notion of normative, alienated femininity.
Limits of solidarity the structural limitation of women to the home impedes the possibility of spaces in which female bonds can be formed. Firdaus moves from home to home, in which she is economically dependent on a male breadwinner and isolated from other women. When this is not the case, she is largely living alone as a prostitute. El-Saadawi portrays some contexts in which Firdaus is able to interact with other women, such as at school and in her brief time working as a secretary. Indeed, El-Saadawi uses these moments to demonstrate the importance of female relationships; the ability of women in these spaces to reveal their depths to one another (24) are emphasised as highlights within an otherwise bleak narrative.
Solidarity, contd. In particular, her experience at the school allows Firdaus to gain some political consciousness in solidarity with her female colleagues; she finds herself riding high up on the shoulders of girls at a protest shouting down with the government (24). In the context of state monopolisation of feminist culture, this is a subversive moment. However, Firdaus access to these spaces is either not sustainable or limited by the patriarchal context in which they exist. Education is not economically viable, and the office is still ultimately a misogynistic space in which women are expected to trade sexual favours with their male bosses in return for promotions. In this way, El-Saadawi demonstrates the importance of female bonds, and yet their impossibility within the context she is signifying.
Representation Whilst El-Saadawi situates the first-person narrative as the story of a real woman (1) whom she met as a psychiatrist at Qanatir Prison, the framed narrative structure precludes the interpretation of the novel as a direct representation of Firdaus life. Firdaus story is preceded and followed by El-Saadawi s story of meeting her; indeed, the novel charts the development of both Firdaus and the fictionalised representation of El-Saadawi. In this way, El-Saadawi as a novelist clearly exercises creative control. The novel must therefore be read as her artistic re- presentation of Firdaus story.
