Feminism and the Question of ?Woman? in Assia Djebar's Vaste est la prison

Bibliographic Data

ID9250592
AuthorsJane Hiddleston (0000-0003-4616-6017, corresponding author)
Year2004
Volume35
Issue4
Pages91-104
Publication date2004-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueResearch in African Literatures (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0034-5210 • E-ISSN: 1527-2044
PublisherIndiana University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.2979/ral.2004.35.4.91
OpenAlexW2079510606
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited14

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

Aesthetics · Argument (complex analysis) · Art · Criminology · Feminism · Identity (music) · Literature · Narrative · Oppression · Political science · Prison · Resistance (ecology) · Silence · Sociology · Solidarity · African history and culture studies · Gender Studies · Law · Multiculturalism, Politics, Migration, Gender · North African History and Literature · Philosophy

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