UNSPECIFIED. (2004) Feminism and the question of "woman" in Assia Djebar's 'Vaste est la prison'. RESEARCH IN AFRICAN LITERATURES, 35 (4). pp. 91-104. ISSN 0034-5210

Abstract

This article analyzes the Algerian writer Assia Djebar's uncertain and ambiguous relationship with feminism. While her work is clearly preoccupied with women's experiences, the notion of a collective feminine identity remains a subject of contention, and female characters are frequently presented as both singular and elusive. In Vaste est la prison, the author sets out to trace a coherent genealogy of Algerian women, but the narrative at once hints at and disrupts any clear linking threads. For this reason, I argue that feminist resistance for Djebar revolves not around the uncomplicated celebration of female solidarity, but around a continual shifting between collective and singular critique. Women's resistance to patriarchal oppression in Algeria consists of a continual process of convergence and divergence. Djebar does not propose a single feminist argument but charts instead the very difficult process of creating a shared concrete cause.

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