Franz Fanon: “Algeria Unveiled”, in: A Dying Colonialism, New York: Grove Press. , 1965, pp. 35-67.
The French administration in Algeria were ordered to destroy any hope of national identity for the Algerians, and so focused their efforts on the veil that Algerian women wore. After analysing Algerian society, the French realised the mothers, grandmothers and aunties played important parts in family structure. "This enabled the colonial administration to define a precise political doctrine: "If we want to destroy the structure of Algerian society, its capacity for resistance, we must first of all conquer the women" p.37-38
The French pictured the Algerian woman as being "inert, demonitized, indeed dehumanized" p.38 by the Algerian man. "The Algerian was very firmly denounced and described as medieval and barbaric." p. 38
"After it had been posited that the woman constituted the pivot of Algerian society, all efforts were made to obtain control over her." p.38
"Converting the woman, winning her over to the foreign values, wrenching her free from her status, was at the same time achieving a real power over the man and attaining a practical, effective means of destructuring Algerian culture." p.39
European's goad Algerian's into revealing their culture and religion - why does your wife wear a veil? Why do you not bring your wife to social events? To bring her is to give in to their prods, to not is to risk not assimilating.
It is more striking with the professional Algerian - if he is a doctor or lawyer, the rhetoric goes, "For all that he is a doctor, people will say, he still remains an Arab." p.40
The French believe the Algerian's should assimilate completely to Western values. "the occupier, smarting from his failures, presents in a simplified and pejorative way the system of values by means of which the colonized person resists his innumerable offensives. What is in fact the assertion of a distinct identity, concern with keeping intact a few shreds of national existence, is attributed to religious, magical, fanatical behavior." p.41
"the phenomena of counter-acculturation must be understood as the organic impossibility of a culture to modify any one of its customs without at the same time re-evaluating its deepest values, its most stable models." p.40-41
Why were the Europeans so obsessed with uncovering women's faces? "The dominant attitude appears to us to be a romantic exoticism, strongly tinged with sensuality. And to begin with, the veil hides a beauty." p.43
"Unveiling this woman is revealing her beauty; it is baring her secret, breaking her resistance, making her available for adventure. Hiding the face is also disguising a secret; it is also creating a world of mystery, of the hidden." p.43
"This woman who sees without being seen frustrates the colonizer. There is no reciprocity. She does not yield herself, does not give herself, does not offer herself." p.44
Fanon writes that the European women believe the veil covers ugliness, that it is a disguise, because in their society one enhances beauty, one doesn't hide it. p.45
Fanon goes on to write that the European man wants to rape the Algerian woman in his dream because "Her timidity and her reserve are transformed in accordance with the commonplace laws of conflictual psychology into their opposite, and the Algerian woman becomes hypocritical, perverse, and even a veritable nymphomaniac." p.46
"The decision to involve women as active elements of the Algerian Revolution was not reached lightly... the women had to show as much spirit of sacrifice as the men." p.48
"The leaders hesitated to involve the women, being perfectly aware of the ferocity of the colonizer." p.49
"The Algerian woman is not a secret agent. It is without apprenticeship, without briefing, without fuss, that she goes out into the street with three grenades in her handbag or the activity report of an area in her bodice." p.50
"the woman's duties as mother or spouse, the desire to limit to the minimum the possible consequences of her arrest and her death, and also the more and more numerous volunteering of unmarried girls, led the political leaders to make another leap, to remove all restrictions, to accept indiscriminately the support of all Algerian women." p.51
"Each time she ventures into the European city, the Algerian woman must achieve a victory over herself, over her childish fears. She must consider the image of the occupier lodged somewhere in her mind and in her body, remodel it, initiate the essential work of eroding it, make it inessential, remove something of the shame that is attached to it, devalidate it." p.52
The Algerian woman who is taking watch, unveiled and in the view of the public must avoid attention and grit her teeth. p.53
"A hundred meters ahead, a girl may be carrying a suitcase and behind her are two or three ordinary-looking men. This girl who is the group's lighthouse and barometer gives warning in case of danger." p.54
"During the French Resistance, terrorism was aimed at soldiers, at Germans of the Occupation, or at strategic enemy installations... The Algerian leaders who, in view of the intensity of the repression and the frenzied character of the oppression, thought they could answer the blows received without any serious problems of conscience, discovered that the most horrible crimes do not constitute a sufficient excuse for certain decisions." p.55
"Any Algerian man or woman in a given city could in fact name the torturers and murderers of the region." p.56
"The veil covers the body and disciplines it, tempers it, at the very time when it experiences its phase of greatest effervescence. The veil protects, reassures, isolated." p.59
"Without the veil she has an impression of her body being cut up into bits, put adrift; the limbs seem to lengthen indefinitely." p.59
"The Algerian woman who walks stark naked into the European city relearns her body, re-establishes it in a totally revolutionary fashion." p.59
"Involved in the struggle, the husband or the father learns to look upon the relations between the sexes in a new light." p.60 footnotes
"Removed and reassumed again and again, the veil has been manipulated, transformed into a technique of camouflage, into a means of struggle. The virtually taboo character assumed by the veil in the colonial situation disappeared almost entirely in the course of the liberating struggle." p.61
As the French realised European women as well as Algerian women not wearing the veil were participating in the resistance, the veil was once more donned and women continued to participate in the resistance. p.61
"It was not enough to be veiled. One had to look so much like a "fatma" that the soldier would be convinced that this woman was quite harmless." p.61
The Algerian people began to be treated with such contempt, where women were dragged into public spaces and publicly unveiled, that women began to don the veil as a form of protest. p.62
"Colonialism wants everything to come from it. But the dominant psychological feature of the colonized is to withdraw before any invitation of the conqueror's." p.63
"There is not occupation of territory, on the one hand, and independence of persons on the other. It is the country as a whole, its history, its daily pulsation that are contested, disfigured, in the hope of a final destruction. Under these conditions, the individual's breathing is an observed, an occupied breathing. It is a combat breathing." p.65
"The home is the basis of the truth of society, but society authenticates and legitimizes the family. The colonial structure is the very negation of this reciprocal justification. The Algerian woman, in imposing such a restriction on herself, in choosing a form of existence limited in scope, was deepening her consciousness of struggle and preparing for combat." p.66
The French administration in Algeria were ordered to destroy any hope of national identity for the Algerians, and so focused their efforts on the veil that Algerian women wore. After analysing Algerian society, the French realised the mothers, grandmothers and aunties played important parts in family structure. "This enabled the colonial administration to define a precise political doctrine: "If we want to destroy the structure of Algerian society, its capacity for resistance, we must first of all conquer the women" p.37-38
The French pictured the Algerian woman as being "inert, demonitized, indeed dehumanized" p.38 by the Algerian man. "The Algerian was very firmly denounced and described as medieval and barbaric." p. 38
"After it had been posited that the woman constituted the pivot of Algerian society, all efforts were made to obtain control over her." p.38
"Converting the woman, winning her over to the foreign values, wrenching her free from her status, was at the same time achieving a real power over the man and attaining a practical, effective means of destructuring Algerian culture." p.39
European's goad Algerian's into revealing their culture and religion - why does your wife wear a veil? Why do you not bring your wife to social events? To bring her is to give in to their prods, to not is to risk not assimilating.
It is more striking with the professional Algerian - if he is a doctor or lawyer, the rhetoric goes, "For all that he is a doctor, people will say, he still remains an Arab." p.40
The French believe the Algerian's should assimilate completely to Western values. "the occupier, smarting from his failures, presents in a simplified and pejorative way the system of values by means of which the colonized person resists his innumerable offensives. What is in fact the assertion of a distinct identity, concern with keeping intact a few shreds of national existence, is attributed to religious, magical, fanatical behavior." p.41
"the phenomena of counter-acculturation must be understood as the organic impossibility of a culture to modify any one of its customs without at the same time re-evaluating its deepest values, its most stable models." p.40-41
Why were the Europeans so obsessed with uncovering women's faces? "The dominant attitude appears to us to be a romantic exoticism, strongly tinged with sensuality. And to begin with, the veil hides a beauty." p.43
"Unveiling this woman is revealing her beauty; it is baring her secret, breaking her resistance, making her available for adventure. Hiding the face is also disguising a secret; it is also creating a world of mystery, of the hidden." p.43
"This woman who sees without being seen frustrates the colonizer. There is no reciprocity. She does not yield herself, does not give herself, does not offer herself." p.44
Fanon writes that the European women believe the veil covers ugliness, that it is a disguise, because in their society one enhances beauty, one doesn't hide it. p.45
Fanon goes on to write that the European man wants to rape the Algerian woman in his dream because "Her timidity and her reserve are transformed in accordance with the commonplace laws of conflictual psychology into their opposite, and the Algerian woman becomes hypocritical, perverse, and even a veritable nymphomaniac." p.46
"The decision to involve women as active elements of the Algerian Revolution was not reached lightly... the women had to show as much spirit of sacrifice as the men." p.48
"The leaders hesitated to involve the women, being perfectly aware of the ferocity of the colonizer." p.49
"The Algerian woman is not a secret agent. It is without apprenticeship, without briefing, without fuss, that she goes out into the street with three grenades in her handbag or the activity report of an area in her bodice." p.50
"the woman's duties as mother or spouse, the desire to limit to the minimum the possible consequences of her arrest and her death, and also the more and more numerous volunteering of unmarried girls, led the political leaders to make another leap, to remove all restrictions, to accept indiscriminately the support of all Algerian women." p.51
"Each time she ventures into the European city, the Algerian woman must achieve a victory over herself, over her childish fears. She must consider the image of the occupier lodged somewhere in her mind and in her body, remodel it, initiate the essential work of eroding it, make it inessential, remove something of the shame that is attached to it, devalidate it." p.52
The Algerian woman who is taking watch, unveiled and in the view of the public must avoid attention and grit her teeth. p.53
"A hundred meters ahead, a girl may be carrying a suitcase and behind her are two or three ordinary-looking men. This girl who is the group's lighthouse and barometer gives warning in case of danger." p.54
"During the French Resistance, terrorism was aimed at soldiers, at Germans of the Occupation, or at strategic enemy installations... The Algerian leaders who, in view of the intensity of the repression and the frenzied character of the oppression, thought they could answer the blows received without any serious problems of conscience, discovered that the most horrible crimes do not constitute a sufficient excuse for certain decisions." p.55
"Any Algerian man or woman in a given city could in fact name the torturers and murderers of the region." p.56
"The veil covers the body and disciplines it, tempers it, at the very time when it experiences its phase of greatest effervescence. The veil protects, reassures, isolated." p.59
"Without the veil she has an impression of her body being cut up into bits, put adrift; the limbs seem to lengthen indefinitely." p.59
"The Algerian woman who walks stark naked into the European city relearns her body, re-establishes it in a totally revolutionary fashion." p.59
"Involved in the struggle, the husband or the father learns to look upon the relations between the sexes in a new light." p.60 footnotes
"Removed and reassumed again and again, the veil has been manipulated, transformed into a technique of camouflage, into a means of struggle. The virtually taboo character assumed by the veil in the colonial situation disappeared almost entirely in the course of the liberating struggle." p.61
As the French realised European women as well as Algerian women not wearing the veil were participating in the resistance, the veil was once more donned and women continued to participate in the resistance. p.61
"It was not enough to be veiled. One had to look so much like a "fatma" that the soldier would be convinced that this woman was quite harmless." p.61
The Algerian people began to be treated with such contempt, where women were dragged into public spaces and publicly unveiled, that women began to don the veil as a form of protest. p.62
"Colonialism wants everything to come from it. But the dominant psychological feature of the colonized is to withdraw before any invitation of the conqueror's." p.63
"There is not occupation of territory, on the one hand, and independence of persons on the other. It is the country as a whole, its history, its daily pulsation that are contested, disfigured, in the hope of a final destruction. Under these conditions, the individual's breathing is an observed, an occupied breathing. It is a combat breathing." p.65
"The home is the basis of the truth of society, but society authenticates and legitimizes the family. The colonial structure is the very negation of this reciprocal justification. The Algerian woman, in imposing such a restriction on herself, in choosing a form of existence limited in scope, was deepening her consciousness of struggle and preparing for combat." p.66
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