Homemaking, Making Home, and Femininity in Contemporary Women’S Filmmaking and Literature of the Métropol and the Maghreb
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THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME: HOMEMAKING, MAKING HOME, AND FEMININITY IN CONTEMPORARY WOMEN’S FILMMAKING AND LITERATURE OF THE MÉTROPOL AND THE MAGHREB DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Stacey Weber-Fève, M.A. ***** The Ohio State University 2006 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor Judith Mayne, Advisor Professor Danielle Marx-Scouras _________________________________ Advisor Professor Jennifer Willging Graduate Program in French and Italian Copyright by Stacey Weber-Fève 2006 ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the problematic location of home, the traditional female activity of homemaking, and the representation of female subjectivity in contemporary cinematic, (auto)biographical, and fictional texts by several contemporary French and Francophone women artists. These writers and filmmakers question the home as a female interior space in which female protagonists traditionally become objects or accessories. They also bring to the fore multiple representations of contemporary French, Algerian, and Tunisian femininity. In these texts, the artists embrace and foreground domestic space, female housekeeping activities, and women’s ideological roles in order to (re)appropriate the normative gender discourses of their homelands. They accomplish these goals by revealing how the home within each society functions subversively as a space of socio-political-historical contention. Using Assia Djebar’s work as a source of theoretical departure, this study illustrates the representation of women in body, by voice, and through the gaze in a collection of narratives created by French-speaking women artists from the Métropol and the Maghreb. Using feminist film theoretical and lifewriting critical perspectives, I examine the functions of the gaze and the effects of voicing the personal for women of France and North Africa. I also introduce theories of domesticity when considering the ii role and position of the home in the processes of personal identity formation and social gender construction. This dissertation considers women’s coming to voice through women’s (re)appropriation of hegemonic discourses of representation, use of language, and authority in speaking as made possible through the domestic space of the home and the arts of homemaking. Through a postcolonial lens of destabilization and the celebration of the in-between, hybrid spaces of first-person feminine expression and representation, I show how the relationship between “center” and “margin” becomes problematized and overturned in the work of Assia Djebar, Annie Ernaux, Simone de Beauvoir, Raja Amari, Coline Serreau, Leïla Sebbar, and Yamina Benguigui. iii For my mother, who gave my sister and me our allowances “just for breathing.” ***** In memory of my grandmothers, Rose Migliorino and LaRue Weber, who inspired me to learn how to knit, cook, and bake. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank my advisor, Professor Judith Mayne, for her relentless support, direction, and encouragement. Her wisdom, insight, patience, and generosity constitute a model to us all that I will strive to follow throughout my teaching and research. I am truly indebted to her and to my other committee members, Professor Danielle Marx- Scouras and Professor Jennifer Willging, for their guidance and advice. I am equally indebted to Professor Julia Watson and Professor Karlis Racevskis for their early vision in this project’s conception and prospectus stages. I wish to thank Professor Wynne Wong for her unwavering support and belief in me, Rebecca Bias for her inspiration and words of encouragement, and Amanda Nelson, Kelly Campbell, and Elizabeth Bostrom for their support and friendship. I am grateful to my family – especially my mother and father in-law, Jean-René and Eliane Fève, my sister, Laura Weber, and my parents, John and Mary Ann Weber – for their constant love, support, and faith in me. And finally, I am especially grateful to my husband, Sébastien Fève, who spent countless evenings and weekends on his own while I worked, never complaining, objecting, or questioning. I could never have succeeded without his tireless support, endless patience, and unconditional love. To him, I also dedicate this work. v VITA 1999………………………………………………………...B.A. Westminster College 2001…………………………………………………..M.A. The Ohio State University 1999-present….……………Graduate Teaching Associate, The Ohio State University PUBLICATIONS Weber-Fève, Stacey A. “Assia Djebar as Film Theorist,” December 2005. French Review (February 2008). FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: French and Italian Studies in: French Cinema/ Women’s Studies..……………………………………...Judith Mayne Twentieth/Twenty-first Century Literature in French…………Danielle Marx-Scouras Second Language Acquisition…………………………………………...Wynne Wong vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract…………………………………………………………………………..……......ii Dedication………………………………………………………………………..……….iv Acknowledgments…………………………………………………………..……………..v Vita………………………………………………………………………......……………vi Chapters: 1. Introduction..............................................................................................................1 2. Destablizing the Center(s): Making Home with Assia Djebar……………..……22 3. Dis/appointing Gender Roles: (Re)Displaying Femininity Through the Home with Annie Ernaux and Simone de Beauvoir.........................75 4. Shifting Lines of Gender Demarcation: Creating Domestic Landscapes and Soundscapes with Raja Amari and Coline Serreau…………………..….…137 5. Breaking From Tradition: (Re)Presenting Female Iconography at Home with Leïla Sebbar and Yamina Benguigui………………………………..…….193 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………..……….258 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………..………..266 vii INTRODUCTION This dissertation examines the problematic location of home, the traditional female activity of homemaking, and representation of female subjectivity in contemporary cinematic, (auto)biographical, and fictional texts by several contemporary French and Francophone women artists. The women artists considered in this dissertation question the home as a female interior space in which protagonists traditionally become objects or accessories. They also bring to the fore multiple representations of contemporary French, Algerian, and Tunisian femininity. In these texts, the artists embrace and foreground domestic space, female housekeeping activities, and women’s ideological roles in order to (re)appropriate the normative gender discourses of their homelands. They accomplish these goals by revealing how the home within each society functions subversively as a space of socio-political-historical contention. I take as my point of departure two of Assia Djebar’s texts, “Regard interdit, son coupé” (1980) and Ces voix qui m’assiègent (1999), which investigate the signification, potential, and location of home within traditional Algerian and post/colonial Franco- Algerian contexts. In using these essays as a theoretical point of departure, this study illustrates the representation of women in body, by voice, and through the gaze in a collection of narratives created by French-speaking women artists from the Métropol and 1 the Maghreb. In addition to this Djebarian optic, I will also engage with feminist film theoretical and autobiographical/ autoethnographical perspectives when drawing on the functions of the gaze and the problems of voicing the personal. In addition, I will introduce theories of domesticity when considering the role(s) and position(s) of the home in processes of personal identity formation and social gender construction. In her essay, “Regard interdit, son coupé”, Assia Djebar, by using the narrative of the Song of Messaouda , calls into question the cultural erasure of representations of Algerian women beyond that of the mother. Her critique of this restricted representation or iconography of Algerian women is not unique to Algeria, as one may trace this representation to other cultures in other parts of the Maghreb as well as in the Métropol – bearing in mind the differing cultural parameters and pressures surrounding women’s maternal representation as specific to each society or culture. The Song of Messaouda narrates the story of a young girl, Messouda, who spurs the fleeing men of her village to turn around and fight the invading army by involuntarily exposing her body to the would- be conquerors. This dissertation will focus on the manner in which Djebar uses this narrative to illustrate the importance of communal language (or oral discourse) as these songs and legends are passed inside traditional, indigenous female communities and how these oral discourses, among others as specific to the different communities included in the subsequent chapters, work to tease out multiple theoretical interrogations of women’s contemporary representations, ideologies, subjectivities, and identities. I read this discursive dialogic exchange and prevalent image of the mother as a point of departure in “Regard interdit, son coupe” for a necessary revisiting of the past, for the “official” insertion of women into inscribed history, but most importantly for a 2 rewriting of this past. All of the women artists whose primary texts this dissertation examines position the maternal (the mother’s gaze, her voice, her body, her activities, her space, and her iconography) as a link to the past. These women artists reframe the maternal as a virtual location of first-person expression in which to rewrite this past in an