Status Of Women In Colonial Society: A Review Of Frantz Fanon’s ‘Algeria Unveiled’
Aden Libax
Frantz Fanon, a leader of the Algerian National Front, in his 1959 book A Dying Colonialism, wrote a chapter on “Algeria Unveiled”, an analysis on the politicisation of the veil as a battleground between colonial and native ideology, and the role of women in the liberation struggle. Fanon’s essay seeks to illuminate the cultural hegemony weaponized by imperialist powers and the methods colonized people use to defy this domination.
Investigating the French obsession with the veil, Fanon begins the book by quickly identifying the Algerian garb as the “bone of contention in a grandiose battle”. Occupying powers set to immediately indict the perceived medieval values of Algerian society and denounce the veil as a physical symbol of patriarchal subjugation, with public unveiling ceremonies heralded as part of benevolent French emancipation campaigns. With each successful unveiling, the European society of Algeria greet their newfound assimilated ‘sisters’ with excitement; evidence of successful penetration of western values into the native society encouraged intensified aggression, restarting the same predatory cycle. In part, the malignant stereotype of the passive Algerian woman and the domineering primitive Algerian man are justification for colonialism under French patronage. Efforts to conquer Maghreb society and nullify their capacity for resistance under the name of Western enlightenment were a barely concealed farce to steal the natural resources of Algeria and to keep the colonised people docile for further exploitation as ‘natural subordinates’ under the occupier.
In hindsight, the production of eroticized photographs of veiled women exposing their naked bodies, rapidly circulating around Europe, undermines the excuse of championship of women’s liberation. Fanon writes that “The dominant attitude appears to us to be a romantic exoticism, strongly tinged with sensuality. And, to begin with, the veil hides a beauty,” exploring the male gaze as an imperialist tool of humiliation, describing the rape of the Algerian women as always heralded by the forced removal of the veil. The concealment of this strange beauty was an affront to colonial entitlement over what they thought ought to be exhibited and paraded. This crude arrogant objectification provokes a deep suspicion in European psyche; unveiling the women serves to salve curiosity as well as to break down national resistance. Hidden from colonial administration, the Maghrebi woman cannot be surveilled, her subservience and compliance cannot be assured.
Defying imperialist obsession with order and surveillance, the veil quickly transforms into a symbol of insurgency. The Maghrebi women and girls introduced into active national resistance are tasked with trafficking grenades through checkpoints, concealing activity reports of an area, bearing complicated verbal messages, standing as watch guards, and transporting money and medicines belonging to the Revolution all under the stifling monitoring atmosphere of the settler. Partaking in the revolutionary project of their national liberation, the Algerian women cement their position in Algerian society. Eroding the patriarchal sensibilities of their native people and confronting the taught respectable passivity that holds them psychologically captive; the women achieve their autonomy and mobilize for their collective freedom. The white haik (veil) allows the women to use invisibility as a weapon and simultaneously ensure national existence.
Once the French military detected this technique, the Maghrebi women don European dress to imitate the perfect Westerner. Kept armed and vigilant, the women exhibit what Fanon recognises as one of the “laws of the psychology of colonization”; the parameters the occupier sets determine the centres of resistance around which the colonized organise national defiance. Smiling and genially interacting with police officers and colonialist leaders they have been tasked to assassinate, the French fantasy of the domesticated and exposed native woman is subverted to plot their own undoing.
The Algerian women, whether unveiled or veiled, “constituted the pivot of Algerian society, all efforts were made to obtain control over her”. From the male colonial sensual exotified fantasy, to the condescending and jealous European woman, and even the Algerian man’s authoritarianism; the women relearned themselves and established a “new dialectic of the body” through opposition, and it is through them new societal dimensions were achieved. The Algerian girl’s male relatives cast aside fears of soiled reputation and instead were inspired and followed her in the struggle for new Algeria. The French authorities then looked at the Europeanised Algerian women with suspicions of sabotage and even mistakenly arrested settler women, ruining the system of Western misogynistic paternalism.
Readers may think that such attitudes are a relic of the colonial past, but these battles are still being fought every day around the world. Consider how in Australia - the vile anti-Muslim rhetoric of Fraser Anning and the crude stunts of Pauline Hanson, are all allowed to take place in our highest political offices with no repercussions. The assimilation of immigrant and indigenous women is as essential to the settler project now as it was during the colonial era. White Australian women are not spared subjugation either. The white supremacist claim of the extinction of European people and the demand for accelerated reproduction necessitates the subordination of women in setter society. Our current political system places an onerous weight on women - to be a mother, a “quiet Australian”, a full-time worker, unquestioning and conservative in their ambitions and scope of life.
Our situation is not the same as the one faced by the women of Algeria under French occupation. However, by studying their history of anticolonial resistance, we can expand our worldview, learn from their experiences, and attempt to implement tactics of self-actualization. The liberation of all women can only be achieved through organic self-organization and the undisputed equal participation in class struggle.