A FAMILY AFFAIR: REPRESENTATIONS OF THE FAMILY THROUGH THE FRENCH-ALGERIAN WAR BY STEFANIE ALICIA SEVCIK B.A. REED COLLEGE A.M. BROWN UNIVERSITY A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE DEPARTMENT OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE AT BROWN UNIVERSITY © Copyright 2016 by Stefanie Sevcik This dissertation by Stefanie Alicia Sevcik is accepted in its present form by the Department of Comparative Literature as satisfying the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Date___________________ ___________________________________ Ariella Azoulay, Advisor Recommended to the Graduate Council Date__________________ ___________________________________ Elias Muhanna, Reader Date___________________ _________________________________ Ourida Mostefai, Reader Date___________________ ____________________________ Amine Bekhechi, Reader Approved by the Graduate Council Date___________________ _________________________________ Peter Weber, Dean of the Graduate School iii CURRICULUM VITAE Stefanie Alicia Sevcik was born in 1984 in Owatonna, Minnesota. She graduated with a B.A. From Reed College where she majored in General Literature. In 2008, she entered the graduate program in Comparative Literature at Brown University where she received her A.M. in 2013. In 2010-2011, she participated in an exchange between Brown University and the Université de Bourgogne in Dijon, France. At Brown, she served as a Graduate Teaching Assistant for the Departments of Comparative Literature and Political Science. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I owe the deepest debt of gratitude to the faculty, staff, administrators, and students at Brown University who enabled me to pursue my intellectual dreams in various capacities over most of the last decade. I know this dissertation would have never existed without each and every one of you. In particular, I must thank Ariella Azoulay for agreeing to be my Chair and helping me to question myself and my work in critical ways. Thank you for pushing me toward a more ethical reading of my work and my world. A thousand and one thanks to Elias Muhanna for his continued support as a patient mentor, advisor, and sounding board through the perpetual ups and downs of graduate school. Thank you for never giving up on me! Special thanks to my mentors Amine Bekhechi and Paul Armstrong for floating in and out of my academic life at crucial moments. Thank you both for pushing me and believing in me when I did not believe in myself. And to Ourida Mostefai for agreeing to join my committee in the eleventh hour of this project. I am thankful to the graduate students in Comparative Literature, English, and French who have supported my ideas inside and outside of the classroom. Andrea Actis, you are a first rate friend, scholar, and artist. No amount of time apart could ever change that. To Bruno, Sonja, Anja, Andrea, and Bessie for sharing dinner parties, ideas, and laughs with me. Louis, without your sofa, I know this project would not exist. And to everyone who has shared a table and some time with me over the years. I have cherished every moment! Thanks to my mother for teaching me to always challenge myself—even when the going gets tough. To my father (in memoriam) for being the absent presence underscoring my life. And to Lesley, Clint, and Garth who always had to live in the shadow of an older sister who actually enjoyed school. The biggest thanks of all goes to my loving husband, Michael. Your emotional support, patience, and loving kindness have been invaluable. Thank you for reading my drafts, incessantly discussing my work with me, and supporting all of my whims. And to Addie, whose final months of gestation aligned with the final months of the gestation of this project. May you always have the courage to speak out against injustice and to love unconditionally. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction.......................................................................................................................1 Chapter One: Illegitimacy and the Birth of an Algerian Nation.....................................15 Chapter Two: Algerian Sons and the Question of History..............................................70 Chapter Three: Nedjma and the Illegitimate Children of the Revolution.....................134 Chapter Four: The Eloquent Silences of Algeria's Sisters............................................208 Conclusion: Algerian Nouba.........................................................................................310 Bibliography..................................................................................................................316 vi 1 INTRODUCTION [We broke] up the great traditional families of Algeria...Because we found them to be forces of resistance. We did not realize that in suppressing the forces of resistance in this fashion, we were also suppressing our means of action. The result is that we are today confronted by a sort of human dust on which we have no influence and in which movements take place which are to us unknown. ---Jules Cambon, 1894 Jules Cambon, Governor General of Algeria in 1894, anticipated the loss of French colonial possession of Algeria sixty years before the official beginning of the Algerian war for independence on November 1, 1954. The French had identified the large, traditional family as a potential foundation for anti-colonial collective action in Algeria. By breaking up these families, they had hoped to dispel pockets of resistance to their authority. However, by asserting their dominance and disrupting the family, the limits of France's hegemony were revealed. Cambon's words betray his fear of losing control over the non-European masses as a result of French interference and ignorance. After years of disenfranchisement and exploitation, the French had created a “human dust” out of the indigenous population that they could no longer read or influence. Politically, this fear of losing control over the non-European majority blocked subsequent social and legal reforms from passing. Dissatisfaction with French rule fueled by broken promises and interference into the civil sphere led non-European Algerians to create alternative forms of collectivity which gradually led to armed resistance. This was not only the result of a colonial/indigenous struggle over history as Ranajit Guha describes in the case of colonial India in Dominance Without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India, 2 but a struggle over identity in the civil, family sphere. As French attempts at manipulation of the family increased, the Algerian family likewise changed form—sons violently resisted their fathers' traditions and sisters dropped their veils to go to war to shake off the yoke of colonial oppression. Evidence of the changing Algerian family structure are visible in legal, literary, and cultural documents of the period. One of the most famous “Algerian” intellectuals, the Martiniquais Frantz Fanon, describes alterations in a number of family relationships in his 1959 essay “The Algerian Family” in Studies in a Dying Colonialism.1 These shifts, Fanon argues, developed out of “direct” political action replacing political discussions or complaints of the “party.” The revolution dominated every aspect of life—including family relations: The political party passes over to direct action, and the problems that the son faces are problems of life or death for the country. In a parallel way, his attitude toward his father and the other members of the family frees itself of everything that proves unnecessary and detrimental to the revolutionary situation. The person is born, assumes his autonomy, and becomes the creator of his own values. (101) Disrupting the patriarchal relationship between father and son set the stage for shifts in other kinds of relationships. As soon as respect for the father and elders came into question, it revealed the unsteady foundation of other family relationships between daughters and fathers (105) and between brothers (110). This dislocation of the family's traditional foundation also changed the nature of social relationships between women and men (111), feminine society (116), and legal matters such as marriage and divorce (114). 1 In French, this was published as L'an V de la révolution algérienne. 3 By discussing different types of relationships, Fanon indicates that matters of the family relate directly to a variety of different discourses—particularly the political. Representations of the family provide a useful lens through which to view the Algerian war for independence. The family structure was viewed as a potential threat early in the course of colonial rule as seen in Cambon's comments and France's actions. Although I would argue that relationships of the family inherently involve political, legal, cultural, religious, and literary concerns,2 the family structure in the case of Algeria seems particularly relevant to a discussion of the politics of decolonization in part due to its unique relationship with France as both a colony and a state comprised of many different religions and ethnicities. Civil law was left largely in the hands of the people, so matters of the family were de jure dictated by Muslim law courts. This gave the people a vestige of freedom in their private affairs, so when the French interfered in civil matters such as forced unveiling and a new family code (as I will discuss later), the non-European majority did not react well. Challenges to French colonial treatment appeared in various