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Resistance, Representation, and War: Algerian Women, the French Army, and the Djamila Boupacha Case

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Resistance, Representation, and War: Algerian Women, the French Army, and the Djamila Boupacha Case Resistance, Representation, and War: Algerian Women, the French Army, and the Djamila Boupacha Case Sarah Kleinman Advisor: Dr. Sheryl Kroen Spring 2012 Acknowledgements I would like to thank Dr. Howard Louthan and Erin Zavitz for guiding me through the thesis-writing process; Dr. Sheryl Kroen for her invaluable advice, constructive criticism, enthusiasm, and encouragement; and my parents for their unconditional love and support. This thesis would not have been possible with you. ii Table of Contents Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..1 Chapter One: Djamila’s Resistance: Women of the urban FLN networks and the French Army’s “emancipation” campaign………………………………………...7 Chapter Two: Djamila’s Torture: Rape, culture, and sexualized violence in the French-Algerian War……………………………………………………………….14 Chapter Three: Intellectuals for Djamila: Left-wing intellectuals, public opinion, and reports of torture..……………………………………………………………….……21 Chapter Four: Beauvoir’s Ethics and Halimi’s Justice: The Djamila Boupacha Case…………………..29 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………..40 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………..44 iii Introduction On the night of February 10, 1960, French military forces raided the Boupacha family home in Dely Ibrahim, near Algiers.1 Ostensibly, the French paratroopers were searching for two prominent members of the Algerian independence movement (known as the FLN, or Front de Libération Nationale).2 Forcing their way into the home, the soldiers dragged the entire family from their beds by waking them with brutal punches to the face and blows from rifle butts.3 Upon finding two letters from the FLN members, the French paratroopers arrested twenty-two year old Djamila Boupacha, her brother-in-law Abdelli Ahmed, and seventy-one year old father Abdelaziz Boupacha. Djamila Boupacha would subsequently be beaten, tortured, and raped by members of the French Army. Unlike thousands of other torture cases brought before military tribunals in Algeria during the French-Algerian War, the details of Djamila Boupacha’s story received considerable public attention in metropolitan France. Her case became a cause célèbre during a colonial war of independence which brought down France’s Fourth Republic and irrevocably altered the political, social, and economic landscape of both France and Algeria. How, then, did the trial of one woman manage to garner so much publicity? Part of the answer lies in the strategy employed by Boupacha’s lawyer, Gisèle Halimi, and the timely intervention of Simone de Beauvoir. However, the resonance of the case extends much further than piquing public opinion. In order to properly understand the case, one must examine the nature of the pervasive violence in the French-Algerian War, the specificities of systematic torture practiced in Algeria, the place of women during the conflict, and the multivalent role of gender. 1 Simone de Beauvoir and Gisèle Halimi, Djamila Boupacha: The story of the torture of a young Algerian girl which shocked liberal French opinion, trans. Peter Green (New York: Macmillan, 1962), 33. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid. 1 The French-Algerian War, Algeria’s war of independence from France, lasted from 1954 to 1962. Historians disagree over the official starting point of the French-Algerian War, although the most frequently cited date is November 1, 1954. In what became known as Bloody All-Saints Day, the newly-formed FLN launched attacks against numerous French military and police targets, calling for secession from France.4 Although colonized by French settlers and exploited for its resources, Algeria held the unique status among all French-occupied territories as the only French possession not technically a colony. France annexed Algeria in 1834 making it an integral part of France in the 1848 Constitution of the Second Republic.5 In the immediate aftermath of the November 1954 uprisings, Minister of the Interior François Mitterrand countered the fledgling Algerian independence movement by stating, “Algeria is France. And France will recognize no authority in Algeria other than her own.”6 This gave the government every right to establish martial law, referred to as “police operations.”7 The army took over legislative, judicial, and administrative structures in Algeria, effectively establishing supreme and uncontested control. Almost a year later on November 22, 1955, the Philippeville massacre inexorably altered the dynamics of the conflict. The FLN attacked civilian targets, killing 71 Europeans, including women and children. The French Army’s response to the Philippeville incident was “swift and severe.”8 In their efforts to reestablish authority, maintain the status quo, and resist decolonization, the French Army in Algeria turned to torture tactics. French military authorities 4 Raphaëlle Branche, “Torture of terrorists? Use of torture in a “war against terrorism”: justifications, methods and effects: the case of France in Algeria, 1954-1962,” International Review of the Red Cross 89.867 (2009), 545. 5 Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 (London: Macmillan, 1977), 32. 6 James D. Le Sueur, Uncivil War: Intellectuals and Identity Politics During the Decolonization of Algeria (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), 28, footnote 3: quote from The New York Times, November 8, 1954. 7 Branche, “Torture of terrorists?” 545. 8 Le Sueur, Uncivil War, 30. 2 cited torture as the only effective means of responding to the Algerian insurgency and collecting intelligence.9 According to historian Raphaëlle Branche, “without ever being explicitly justified in writing – given that it was a form of violence totally prohibited under French law – torture was suggested by the highest authorities and on the whole was both tolerated and encouraged.”10 My objective in writing this thesis is to turn a focused lens on a particular cause célèbre, as well as shed light on the situation of Algerian women, the purposes and uses of torture, and the importance of liberal French intellectuals and public opinion during the French-Algerian War. According to James D. Le Sueur, “it was the story of Djamila Boupacha…which really became the cause célèbre and finale of the anti-torture cases [during the war].”11 Through autobiographies, a writer’s wartime journal, the testimonies of torture victims, and newspaper articles, I will demonstrate how the Boupacha case captured public opinion and revealed the importance of Algerian women, torture, and intellectual engagement to the history of the French- Algerian War. Chapter One will explore the various active roles Algerian women played during the conflict, specifically focusing on the women of the urban FLN networks. An examination of the French Army’s relationship with Algerian women, specifically the small group of “evoluées” (French-educated Algerian Muslim women) supportive of Algerian independence, is crucial towards understanding Djamila Boupacha’s case. Boupacha belonged to this small stratum of educated women; she came from a bourgeois family with nationalist tendencies, received a French education, and dressed in “European” clothing. Boupacha was also a member of the 9 James D. LeSueur, “Torture and the Decolonization of French Algeria: nationalism, ‘race’ and violence during colonial incarceration,” in Colonial and Post-Colonial Incarceration, ed. Graeme Harper (New York, Continuum, 2001), 161. 10 Branche, “Torture of terrorists?” 547. 11 Le Sueur, “Torture and the Decolonization of French Algeria,” 168. 3 urban FLN network, and this group’s relationship to the French Army and the Algerian war effort reveals many intricacies about identity, gender roles, and the dynamics of the war itself. Women’s active roles in the war, both in auxiliary civilian support services and as resistance fighters, transgressed traditional gender boundaries in an unprecedented way that posed significant problems for the French Army and the “emancipation” program French authorities sought to implement.12 This emancipation campaign, a targeted psychological warfare campaign, aimed to re-make Algerian women’s identities along colonial European lines and became a central facet of the French Army’s counterrevolutionary policies. Chapter Two will explore the violence and torture Algerian Muslim women suffered at the hands of the French Army in the countryside and in urban detention centers. Once the French Army became aware of female rebels working within the FLN ranks and identified women as potential threats, women were subject to the same systematic violence and treatment in detention as men. The sexual component of this violence reveals the deeper nature of the French Army’s relationship with female combatants and the female population. In the words of historian Marnia Lazreg, women’s bodies became another “terrain in the counterrevolutionary war.”13 Chapter Two will explore and demonstrate how Muslim women’s bodies became a site of colonial control for the French Army. Chapter Three will examine the impact of the French-Algerian War on French intellectuals. The French-Algerian War forced a reconsideration of French culture and identity, 12 In her 2004 dissertation, Ryme Seferdjeli argues that the politicization of Algerian women during the French- Algerian War, in their entry into the public sphere and wide-spread participation in political activities, was unprecedented prior to the start of the conflict in 1954. Ryme Seferdjeli,“‘Fight with us, women, and we will emancipate you’: France, the FLN and the Struggle over Women during Algerian War of National
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