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Beappvopvialing lIe Oaze in Assia BjeIav's Ficlion and FiIn
AulIov|s) MiIdved Movlinev
Souvce WovId Lilevaluve Toda, VoI. 70, No. 4, Assia BjeIav 1996 Neusladl InlevnalionaI Fvize
Jov Lilevaluve |Aulunn, 1996), pp. 859-866
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Re
appropriating
the Gaze in Assia
Djebar's
Fiction and Film
By
MILDRED MORTIMER
Although
Assia
Dje-
bar is known as Al-
geria's
foremost wom-
an
novelist,
her
corpus
also includes
poetry, theater,
essays,
and film. She has used the
image
as well as
the word to chronicle
Algeria's
transition from colo-
nialism to
independence
and to
foreground Algerian
woman's
struggle
to redefine her role in
postcolonial
Algeria. Portraying Algeria's
women as victims of
dual
oppression,
French colonialism and
Maghre-
bian
patriarchy, Djebar
claims
subjectivity
for her-
self and her
Algerian
sisters
by reappropriating
lan-
guage, history, space,
and the
gaze.
She reminds her
public,
readers and
viewers,
that as French colonial-
ism once
sought
to stifle voice and
memory, deny-
ing
the colonized the
right
to their own
language
and
history, Maghrebian patriarchy
still
attempts
to
restrict movement and
vision, denying Algerian
woman her
right
to circulate
freely
in
public space
where she
may
see and be seen.
Despite
the fact that
Djebar's
first
novel,
La
soif
(1957), represents
a
flight
from the harsh realities of
the
Algerian
War
by depicting
a love
triangle
set
against
the
backdrop
of Mediterranean
beaches,
her
subsequent
works chart woman's transformation
from
passive object
under
patriarchal
and colonial
rule to active
subject
of her own discourse. Her fem-
inist commitment first
emerged
in Les
enfants
du
nouveau monde
(1962)
and Les alouettes naives
(1967),
novels
depicting
woman's
coming
of
age
through
direct or indirect
participation
in the
Alge-
rian
War,
and
developed
further in her film La
nouba des
femmes
du Mont Chenoua
(1977)
and sub-
sequent
collection of short stories Femmes
d'Alger
dans leur
appartement (1980).
l
The writer's
appropri-
ation of the camera to film La
nouba,
followed
by
her meditation on Delacroix's
painting
in the
post-
face to the short
stories,
an
essay
entitled
"Regard
interdit,
son
coupe,"
confirms the
importance
she at-
tributes to woman's vision in a
Maghrebian society
in which
patriarchy
controls the female
gaze. Finally,
her most recent
probing
of the female
gaze
-
and
probably
not her last word on the
subject
-
occurs in
Vaste est la
prison (1995),
the
penultimate
volume of
her
Algerian Quartet.
Although Djebar's
resistance to colonialism and
patriarchy
is
multifaceted, involving language,
histo-
ry, space,
the
gaze,
and
(by extension)
the female
body,
I will focus
primarily
on the
gaze
in this
study,
because it informs
Djebar's conception
of individual
and collective
identity
on the one hand and con-
cerns the
relationship
between the female artist and
her craft on the other. Not
only
does this focus of
inquiry
cross
genres, finding expression
in
Djebar's
pertinent essay,
her first
film,
and the latest volume
of her
quartet,
but it also
probes
connections be-
tween the
image
and the
word,
both
problematic
for
women under the
sway
of
patriarchy.
For
Djebar
the
gaze
is
crucial,
because the
prohi-
bition
against
woman
seeing
and
being
seen is at the
heart of
Maghrebian patriarchy,
an
ideological sys-
tem in which the master's
eye
alone
exists;
women
challenge
the
patriarchal system by appropriating
the
gaze
for themselves. She writes:
Qu'est-ce que
le
regard
de PAutre dans une culture ou
Foeil a d'abord ete des siecles durant mis sous surveil-
lance? Un ceil
unique existait,
celui du maitre du serail
qui
interdisait toute
representation
visuelle et
qui
invo-
quait
le tabou
religieux pour
conforter ce
pouvoir.
("Un regard
de
femme," 35)
(What
is the
gaze
of the other in a culture in which the
eye
has been under surveillance for centuries?
Only
one
eye existed, the harem master's, which forbade all visu-
al
representation
and invoked
religious
taboos to en-
force this
power.)
Thus,
when the novelist
temporarily
abandons the
novel for the
cinema, recounting
this
experience
in
the second half of Vaste est la
prison,
written two
decades after the
film,
she is
fully
aware of the
sig-
nificance of her
transgression,
her revolt
against
the
dominating gaze.
The act of
placing
her
eye
behind the camera's
eye
elicits the novelist's meditation on Delacroix's
painting
Femmes
d'Alger
dans leur
appartement,
and
more
specifically
the French
painter's regard
vole or
stolen
glance
that resulted in the
painting
of an Al-
gerian
harem.
Evoking
the closed female
space
of
the
seraglio,
the
painting represents
a Moorish inte-
rior with four
Algerian women,
one
leaning against
a set of
cushions,
two seated before a
narguile (water
pipe),
and the fourth
standing
as she lifts a
heavy
curtain.
By lifting
the
curtain,
the fourth
woman,
a
servant,
allows the
painter
to
gaze upon
the oda-
lisques
and their cloistered chambers.2
Reflecting
Mildred Mortimer is Associate Professor of French and Fran-
cophone
Literature at the
University
of Colorado. She is the au-
thor of Contes
Africains,
Mouloud Mammeri: Ecrivain
algerien,
and
Journeys Through
the French
African
Novel
(1990).
Her articles
have
appeared
in French Review, Research in
African Literatures,
VEsprit Createur, Callabo, and the CELF AN Review > and she has
regularly
reviewed new works in
francophone
African literature
for WLT since 1973.
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860 WORLD LITERATURE TODAY
upon
the
portrait
more than a
century
after the
French
painter
first viewed the cloistered
women,
Djebar
writes:
Prisonnieres
resignees
d'un lieu clos
qui
s'eclaire d'une
sorte de lumiere de reve venue de nulle
part
-
lumiere
de serre ou
d'aquarium
-
,
le
genie
de Delacroix nous
les rend a la fois
presentes
et
lointaines, enigmatiques
au
plus
haut
point. (FA, 170)
Resigned prisoners
in a closed
place
that is lit
by
a kind
of dreamlike
light coming
from nowhere
-
a hothouse
light
or that of an
aquarium
-
Delacroix's
genius
makes
them both near and distant to us at the same
time,
enigmatic
to the
highest degree. (WA, 135-36)
She
acknowledges
Delacroix's
talent,
evident in his
remarkable
rendering
of the sad and distant
gaze
of
the
captives
of the enclosure and in his
reproduction
of the exotic interior with its luxuriant colors and
textures,
but
categorizes
the French
painter's
visit as
a
transgression.
In her
view, Delacroix, despite
his
genius,
remains an
emissary
of colonial
conquest,
and the women whom he
painted
are victims of the
patriarchal
domination that
preceded,
then accom-
panied,
and now
postdates
the French
conquest
of
Algeria. Djebar
states
clearly
that the man who
agreed
to allow Delacroix to enter his home was a
chaouch,
an
Algerian
in the
employ
of a French
colonial official and therefore in a subservient
posi-
tion. Delacroix would never have been able to see
these
quarters
before the French
conquest
of
Algeria
in 1830.
Arriving
two
years later,
the
painter joins
in
France's colonial
venture;
his
gaze
is therefore inex-
tricably
linked to the colonial
conquest.
Recognizing
Delacroix's
genius
and
yet
sensitive
to his
transgression,
how does
Djebar respond
to
the
painting?
An
Algerian
woman and therefore in-
directly
a descendant of the
odalisques,
she never-
theless conserves the role of
spectator,
not
partici-
pant,
and writes: "Entre elles et
nous, spectateurs,
il a
eu la seconde du
devoilement,
le
pas qui
a franchi le
vestibule de
l'intimite,
le frolement
surpris
du
voleur,
de
l'espion,
du
voyeur" (FA, 173; emphasis
mine);
"Between them and
us,
the
spectators,
there
has been the instant of
unveiling,
the
step
that
crossed the vestibule of
intimacy,
the
unexpected
slight
touch of the
thief,
the
spy,
the
voyeur" (WA,
137). Djebar positions
herself not
only
as viewer
who,
like the
painter, participates
in the "stolen
glance,"
but as informed art historian.
Citing
the
progression
in Delacroix's
perspective
from the first
canvas of 1834 to the second exhibited in
1849,
she
explains
that the women in the second version be-
come more distanced and
isolated,
their universe
more
oneiric,
their confinement more
apparent.
She
also reflects
upon
Picasso's series of
paintings
and
lithographs inspired by
Delacroix and undertaken in
1954,
when the
Algerian
War
began.
Picasso's
Femmes
d'Alger
marks a radical
departure
from
Delacroix's
painting by opening
the cloistered
chambers to
sunlight
and the outdoors.
Contextualizing
Delacroix's
painting
within the
historical framework of French colonialism's en-
counter with an Islamic world that refuses
figurative
representation
but finds artistic
expression
in archi-
tecture, calligraphy,
and decorative
arts,
she ex-
plores
the links between Delacroix's stolen
glance
and the
Maghrebian patriarch's controlling gaze.3
She notes that as the
Algerian
nation became fur-
ther
dispossessed
under colonial rule, Algerian
men
tightened
their control over
Algerian
women. Colo-
nial rule and colonialist
dispossession joined
to im-
prison Algerian
women
doubly,
a domination con-
veyed graphically
via le
regard orientalisant,
the
orientalizing
look.
Djebar
writes:
Le
regard
orientalisant
-
avec ses
interpretes
militaires
d'abord et ses
photographes
et cineastes ensuite
-
tourne autour de cette societe fermee,
en
soulignant
davantage
encore son
"mystere
feminin"
pour
occulter
ainsi Phostilite de toute une communaute
algerienne
en
danger. (FA, 183)
The
orientalizing
look
-
first with its
military
inter-
preters
and then with its
photographers
and filmmak-
ers
-
turns in circles around this closed
society,
stress-
ing
its "feminine
mystery"
even more in order thus to
hide the
hostility
of an entire
Algerian community
in
danger. (WA, 146).
Thus,
the stolen
glance
of a
remarkably gifted
nine-
teenth-century
French
painter
is transformed
by
a
series of lesser
artists,
first
painters
and then
pho-
tographers,
into the
"orientalizing
look" that reifies
the
Algerian
woman and her
world; she, oppressed
by
French colonialism as well as
by Algerian patri-
archy,
becomes all the more vulnerable to con-
straints and confinement.4
The title of
Djebar's essay, "Regard interdit,
son
coupe" ("Forbidden Gaze,
Severed
Sound"),
fore-
grounds
Delacroix's stolen
glance
on the one hand
and the inaudible conversation of the cloistered
women on the other.
By granting importance
to the
muted
conversation,
to women's
silence, Djebar
as-
sumes the task
completely beyond
Delacroix's realm
of
competency,
that of
restoring
sound to this silent
study
of Orientalist
imagery. Moreover, by linking
the
reappropriation
of the
gaze
to the
word,
the
right
to see
(and
be
seen)
to the
right
to
speak (and
be
heard),
the
essay
marks an
important stage
in
Djebar's personal quest
and
explains
her decision to
become a filmmaker. On the one
hand,
her work
will restore the lost sound of her maternal
language;
on the other
hand,
it will
defy
and
oppose
the male
dominating gaze. Yet, by undertaking
this
task, Dje-
bar is forced to think
through
her own
position
with
respect
to Delacroix's Orientalist
representation.5
In
addition,
the circumstances
surrounding
the
paint-
ing
and the canvas itself set
up
a tension between
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MORTIMER 861
disclosure and dissimulation
-
what to show versus
what to hide
-
that occurs in the
filming
of La nouba
and in
Djebar's writing, particularly
as her work has
become
increasingly
more
autobiographical
in the
volumes that
comprise
her
Algerian Quartet.
When she films La
nouba, Djebar
views her
ap-
propriation
of the camera as a
challenge
to colonial
and
patriarchal domination,
an
important political
and
symbolic
event in the liberation and
empower-
ment of
Algerian
women. It
is,
for
her,
the
logical
outcome of her
rejection
of the
dominating gaze.
If
the
project
is crucial to the collective
enterprise,
it is
also
deeply personal
as she undertakes the
quest
of
reestablishing
links with the maternal world of her
childhood. In the
attempt
to restore severed
sound,
the maternal
language
of her
past,
she returns to her
native
region
of
Cherchell, revisiting
the
city
situat-
ed
approximately sixty
miles west of
Algiers
and its
neighboring countryside,
the
rocky coast, fields,
and
hills
surrounding
Mont Chenoua. There she
cap-
tures in
image
and sound the oral
history
of rural
women
and,
via
Lila,
the film's fictional
protagonist,
charts the
process
of
self-discovery
and self-affirma-
tion of a modern
Algerian
woman troubled
by
a
war-scarred
past
and an
unsatisfactory marriage.
In La nouba
Djebar's
camera follows lila on her
dual
itinerary:
an exterior
trajectory leading
to a re-
discovery
of traditional rural life and an internal tra-
jectory
that becomes a meditation on
memory.
Re-
turning
to Cherchell fifteen
years
after the end of
the
Algerian War,
Lila is obsessed
by painful
war
memories:
prison, torture,
the loss of members of
her
family. Through
encounters with rural
women,
following
their
daily lives, listening
to their accounts
of their own war
experiences,
and
eventually
record-
ing
their narratives,
she finds the comfort she seeks
and her
psychological
health is
finally
restored.
Yet,
despite
her
spiritual renewal,
Lila is unable to
repair
her
marriage.
She remains saddened
by
the failure
of her
marriage
and the
pervading weight
of
patri-
archy
in
postcolonial Algeria.
As Lila renews her contact with the rural
Algeria
of her childhood,
her
gaze encompasses landscapes,
faces,
architecture.
Following
Lila into the
country-
side,
the camera's
eye
takes in
panoramic
views of
Mont Chenoua and the hills
overlooking
the Medi-
terranean. It
lingers
on
landscape, capturing
the
reddish and
golden
hues of the rocks
along
the
coast,
and on the female
collectivity, focusing
on the
rural women
working
in the fields. When the cam-
era follows Lila
home, however,
to film the interior
of the small house she shares with her husband and
young daughter,
it bears witness to
tension,
soli-
tude,
and the lack of communication within the
couple. Thus, Djebar
uses visual elements to
convey
Lila's double
itinerary:
one
path
toward the out-
doors,
her encounter with rural woman's life and
traditions;
the other
path introspective,
the
protago-
nist's meditation on
intimacy
and
personal memory.
The
importance
of Lila's
gaze
is evident from the
beginning
of the film. In one of the first
sequences
the
protagonist,
her back to the
spectators,
her face
pressed against
the
wall,
cries out in
anger: "Je
parle, je parle, je parle" (I speak,
I
speak,
I
speak),
then
pauses
to address
Ali,
her
husband,
who is in
the room:
"Je
ne veux
pas que
Ton me
voie; je
ne
veux
pas que
tu me voies"
(I
don't want to be
seen;
I don't want
you
to look at
me). Thus,
Lila comes
before the camera
proclaiming
her
right
to
speak
and be heard and
refusing
the
dominating gaze.
Ali
does not understand his wife's desire to see and
speak
for
herself,
her
rejection
of his
control;
the
woman filmmaker does. In a
close-up
of Lila's head
turned toward the
wall, Djebar
films Lila's revolt.
Her
eye
behind the camera moves from Ali's
gaze
upon
Lila to focus
directly
on
Lila, recording
the
young
woman's
progressive journey
to self-affirma-
tion.
When she later describes the
filming
of La nouba
in Vaste est la
prison, Djebar explains
that she attrib-
uted her own words and
gestures
to her
protagonist,
who
exclaims, "Je parle, je parle, je parle" (FP,
297).
Lila's
struggle
for
empowerment,
her desire to
speak coupled
with her refusal to be
gazed upon,
re-
flects the filmmaker's
personal identity quest and,
as
she
explained
in an interview
preceding
the
publica-
tion of the
novel,
attributes
importance
to the
ap-
propriation
of
speech.
J'aboutis
a cette
evidence,
ou a cette
interrogation: que
le cinema fait
par
les femmes
-
autant cette fois du tiers
monde
que
du "vieux monde"
-
procede
d'abord d'un
desir de
parole.
Comme si "tourner" au cinema
repre-
sente, pour
les
femmes,
une mobilite de la voix et du
corps,
du
corps
non
regarde,
done
insoumis,
retrouvant
autonomie et innocence.
("Un regard
de
femme," 37)
(I
have reached this conclusion,
or this
inquiry:
that
women's cinema
-
as much in the Third World as in
the "Old World"
-
begins
with the desire for the word.
As if "to film" means for women a
mobility
of voice
and
body,
the
body
not
gazed upon,
but
unsubmissive,
retrieving
its
autonomy
and
innocence.)6
By affirming
that the
struggle
to break the silence is
a central concern of women's
cinema, Djebar
trans-
forms an individual
quest,
her
attempt
to restore
severed sound to her own
world,
into a collective
one, thereby situating
her
personal struggle
within a
larger context, joining
the common concerns of the
community
of women filmmakers.
Charting
Lila's
struggle
for
empowerment, Dje-
bar introduces a later
sequence
that bears an
impor-
tant
relationship
to the first. Situated in the
couple's
bedroom,
it
foregrounds
the
importance
of woman's
eye
behind the camera as it reveals the
weakening
of
patriarchy.
In this
scene, Ali, temporarily
confined
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862 WORLD LITERATURE TODAY
to a wheelchair because of an
accident, gazes
intent-
ly upon
his
sleeping
wife from the bedroom door-
way. Asleep,
Lila cannot refuse the erotic
glance
of
which
she,
in
effect,
is
totally
unaware.
Although
his
gaze expresses desire, Ali, infirm,
is unable to rise
from the wheelchair to
approach
her.
Recording
his
failed
attempt
to lift himself from the
chair,
the
camera,
as the
only
mobile
eye
in the
room,
moves
in his stead.
Turning slowly
around the
room,
its
eye envelops
the
sleeping
woman. In this
way,
the
camera effects an
important
transfer of
power, ap-
propriating
the control that eludes
Ali, revealing
the
man's
impotence.
Her
eye
behind the
lens,
the
woman filmmaker
successfully challenges
the
patri-
archal
gaze.
Although
Lila at first seems at
peace
in this
scene,
recurrent
nightmares
of war atrocities disturb her
sleep. Thus,
the tension
apparent
in the first
scene,
as Lila
rejects
Ali's
gaze
and he
responds
with mute
silence,
is reinforced in the second
sequence,
in
which the wife's
inability
to
bury
the
past
is
coupled
with the husband's
inability
to act.
Yet,
as the cou-
ple founders,
female
bonding strengthens. Fleeing
her
unhappy home,
Lila turns to the rural woman
and their world for her cure. As the camera shifts its
focus
away
from the somber interior
space
where
Lila and her husband live in silence and misunder-
standing
to the
bright outdoors,
it
again
follows
Lila's
eyes rediscovering peace
in the rural world of
her childhood as she
exchanges glances
and then
words with the women of Mont Chenoua.
By reaching
out to the rural
women,
Lila is invit-
ed to
join
in their world. This
participation
takes the
form of an
evening
of traditional dances held in a
local cave.
Dancing
with the
women,
Lila confirms
her sense of
belonging
to the
group. Moreover,
the
space
in which the
festivity
takes
place
is
significant.
Dark, humid, mysterious,
the cave where the
women have assembled
suggests
a maternal womb
and
conveys
a
past history
of tribal
origins
and earli-
er matriarchal
power. Joining
in the Berber wom-
en's oral tradition of music and
dance,
Lila accom-
plishes
the task that
Djebar
as writer and filmmaker
set as her
goal;
she restores severed sound to her
maternal
past.
Although
Lila's
trajectory
includes a
voyage
in-
ward,
a return to female
space
and to the female
collectivity,
it concludes with a
solitary
outward
journey
as
Lila,
alone in a
fishing boat,
sails out to
sea. With a last
glimpse
of the
shoreline,
her
eyes
take in the
beauty
of the
rocky
coast and the blue
expanse
of the
open
Mediterranean Sea.
Thus,
she
leaves behind both the house that
conveyed unhap-
piness
and the women of Mont Chenoua who
helped
her move
past painful
memories.
Having
filmed Lila's
evolution,
her
coming
of
age
by learning
to
see, Djebar
later tells her readers of the
impact
of her
protagonist's
maturation
upon
her
own evolution. In Vaste est la
prison
she writes:
Au cours de ces mois de tatonnements,
a la suite de
mon
personnage, j'apprenais que
le
regard
sur le de-
hors est en meme
temps
retour a la
memoire,
a soi-
meme
enfant,
aux murmures d'avant,
a Pceil interieur,
immobile sur l'histoire
jusque-la cachee,
un
regard
nimbe de sons
vagues,
de mots inaudibles et de
musiques melangees.
. . . Ce
regard
reflexif sur le
passe
pouvait
susciter une
dynamique pour
une
quete
sur le
present,
sur un avenir a la
porte. (FP, 298)
(In
the course of these months of
probing, following
my protagonist,
I learned that the
gaze
on the outdoors
is at the same time a return to
memory,
to one's child-
hood,
to earlier murmurs, to the interior
eye,
immobile
on a
history
until then hidden,
a clouded
gaze
of
vague
sounds,
inaudible words,
and blended music. . . . This
reflexive
gaze
on the
past
could initiate the
dynamic
process
for a
quest
in the
present,
and the future at
hand.)
By filming
Lila's
story,
the camera becomes a con-
duit to the filmmaker's maternal
past. Moreover,
in
a subtle reversal of
images,
the
eye
of the camera
that offers
panoramic views, opening
the world
by
filming
vast
expanses,
transforms itself into the inte-
rior
eye probing
the
hidden,
the
immobile,
the in-
distinct,
the inaudible. When
Djebar
returns
through memory
to closed
space
and indistinct
murmurs,
she hints at
sharing
some common
ground
with Delacroix.
However,
in a reflection
reminiscent of Picasso's
response
to Delacroix's
canvas, Djebar
turns to the
past
to vitalize the
pres-
ent, conceiving
of a future where women are mobile
and doors
open
to
sunlight
exteriors and not to
darkened
hallways.
If Delacroix's
painting
remains ever
present
in
Djebar's consciousness,
it is also because
she,
as an
Algerian filmmaker,
must come to terms with the
question
of interdiction: what to
disclose,
what to
dissimulate. Critical of
Delacroix,
whom she termed
a
robber,
a
spy,
a
voyeur,
she avoids
transgression.
Thus,
she is careful to show
respect
for her
hosts,
for whom
she,
her
actors,
and her camera
crew,
all
visitors from
Algiers,
are
potential
intruders. Her in-
tent is to discover and
explore
without
disturbing
daily
lives. For
example,
she knows that were she to
film adolescent
girls
and
young
women without the
consent of their fathers or
husbands,
she would
cause serious
problems
within traditional Muslim
families. The filmmaker
decides, therefore,
to sacri-
fice certain
images
rather than
attempt
a stolen
glance. Djebar
later recounts in Vaste est la
prison
that she was unable to film a
young
woman she
called "the Madonna" because the latter's husband
was not available to
grant permission.
We
may
argue
that she submitted to
patriarchy
rather than
oppose
its
constraints,
but for
Djebar
this woman
came to
represent
those
who,
in the name of
priva-
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MORTIMER 863
cy,
should be allowed to
escape
the camera's
eye.
In
contrast, Djebar
does not hesitate to film the
very
young
and the
elderly,
the
prepubescent girls
and
postmenopausal
women who are free from Muslim
society's
restrictions
upon
women's enclosure.
However,
her camera
skillfully acknowledges
inter-
diction
by capturing glimpses
of veiled women
slip-
ping
into the shadows of a
doorway
as well as hous-
es with their windows shut
tight.
Thus, Djebar's response
to Delacroix and the
painters
and
photographers
he
inspired
is to eschew
transgression
and
reject
the Orientalist's attraction
to darkness and
immobility.
Her
only
indoor
footage
is of actors and their fictional
world;
she
films
Algerian
women outdoors and in movement.
In this
way,
she distances herself from the
regard
ori-
entalisant,
the
controlling gaze
of the Other that
Delacroix's
painting
Femmes
d'Alger
dans leur
ap-
partement
has come to
represent.
It is
important
to note that
Djebar's
deconstruc-
tion of the
regard
orientalisant
points
to a dual
origin:
Maghrebian patriarchy
on the one
hand,
French
colonialism on the other. If at first one
eye
alone ex-
isted,
the harem
master's,
it was forced
by political
events,
the
conquest
of
Algeria,
to make room for
another,
the colonizer's.
Significantly, Djebar
is
charting
the
process
of woman's
empowerment
in
the
postcolonial
era. She herself has witnessed the
dismantling
of colonial
empire and,
with
it,
the de-
parture
of the colonizer.
Yet, keenly
aware of the
presence
and
power
of
patriarchy throughout
the
Maghreb,
she warns that
although
one
controlling
eye
is
gone,
the other remains an active force in
some areas of
public
and
private
life and risks
being
restored in others.
Hence,
as an
Algerian
writer and
a
feminist,
she calls for the transformation of do-
mestic
space
into a locus of
positive relationships,
a
space
no
longer
controlled
by
the male
patriarchal
gaze.
In other
words,
she calls for an end to all ves-
tiges
of the closed and
oppressive system
of domes-
tic
organization
Orientalists termed a harem.
An
analysis
of La nouba has shown that as the
filmmaker distances herself from Orientalism,
from
Europe's
intrusive and
distorting eye,
in her fiction-
al world she
foregrounds
her
protagonist's struggle
to break free from the
controlling gaze
of
Maghre-
bian
patriarchy.
Her
exploration
of both forms of
domination continues in Vaste est la
prison. Incorpo-
rating
several strands of
narrative,
the novel
begins
with a
first-person
narrative that reworks
aspects
of
Lila's
struggle
for
empowerment
and later turns to
Djebar's
reflections on her
experience
as filmmaker.
Briefly,
the
first-person
narrative
(part
1 of the
text)
recounts a thwarted liaison between an
Algerian
woman
-
wife, mother, university professor
-
and
the
younger
man to whom she turns in the belief he
will rescue her from a stale
marriage. However,
illic-
it
passion triggers
violence. The wife's confession to
her husband of her desire for this other man results
in her brutal
beating
and their eventual divorce. The
narrator
ultimately
achieves
independence, freeing
herself from both husband and lover.
She,
like
Lila,
moves on alone and
empowered.
Thus,
the tension
pervading
domestic scenes in
the earlier film
explodes
as violence in this text. To
her
exploration
of the
psychological
mechanisms of
passion
and
jealousy,
the novelist adds the factor of
domestic
violence,
an issue she had addressed once
before,
in Ombre sultane.
However,
she now
gives
the theme of violence
against
women
yet
another di-
mension
by including
in this text incidents of at-
tacks
by
Islamic fundamentalists
against Algerian
women whose dress and/or
comportment they
deem
disrespectful
of their
religious
tenets.
Hence,
the
violence
Djebar
had
depicted
in earlier texts
-
Les
enfants
du nouveau
monde,
Les alouettes
naives,
L 'amour
;
la
fantasia
-
as
brutality
inflicted
upon
Al-
gerians by
an external
enemy,
the
European
coloniz-
er,
is
refigured.
Turned inward and
self-destructive,
this violence harms
society
and
family life,
trans-
forming
the
Algerian
nation into a divided
society
and the
Algerian
home into a
prison
where interro-
gation
and intimidation
replace
communication and
understanding.
Although
the
plot summary
bears certain melo-
dramatic
elements,
it nevertheless
conveys
the over-
arching
theme of
Djebar's
work:
Algerian
woman's
struggle
for
empowerment
in defiance of
patriarchal
constraints. Woman's
right
to see and be seen is
again
at the heart of the
struggle;
Isma's
beating
is
crucial in this
regard.
When the irate husband at-
tacks his
wife, wielding
a broken
whiskey bottle,
he
aims for her
eyes. Isma,
the
narrator,
recalls:
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864 WORLD LITERATURE TODAY
Proteger
mes
yeux.
Car sa folie se revelait
etrange:
il
pretendait m'aveugler.
"Femme
adultere", gronda-t-il,
la bouteille de
whisky
cassee en deux a la
main; je
ne
pensais qu'
a mes
yeux,
et au
risque que representait
la
baie
trop
ouverte.
(FP, 85)
(Protect my eyes.
His madness is
strange:
he wanted to
blind me. "Adultress,"
he
mumbled,
the broken
whiskey
bottle in his
hand;
I could
only
think of
my
eyes,
and the
danger
of the
wide-open bay window.)
Beaten
ostensibly
for
initiating
an illicit
relationship,
Isma is in fact
punished
for
daring
to review her life
and redefine it. Her husband claims the
dominating
gaze
for himself alone. Threatened
by
his wife's
gaze
upon
the world and
others,
he inflicts violence
upon
her
body
in his vain
attempt
to control her.
In her effort to fill an emotional
void,
Isma had
entered into a
game
of seduction with her
potential
lover.
By dancing seductively
before
him,
she
cap-
tures his
attention,
and then feels validated
by
his
presence, empowered by
his
gaze.7
She states:
"Ainsi un homme m'avait
regardee
danser et
j'avais
ete 'vue'"
(Thus
a man had seen me dance and I
had been
"seen"; FP, 64).
Isma further admits that
she is
prisoner
of the male
gaze
when she exclaims:
. . . moi
regardee par
lui et aussitot
apres,
allant me
contempler pour
me voir
par
ses
yeux
dans le
miroir,
tenter de
surprendre
le
visage qu'il
venait de
voir,
com-
ment il le
voyait,
ce "moi"
etranger
et
autre,
devenant
pour
la
premiere
fois moi a cet instant
meme, precise-
ment
grace
a cette translation de la vision de l'autre.
(FP, 116).
(.
. . me
gazed upon by
him and
promptly looking
at
myself
in the mirror to see
myself through
his
eyes, try-
ing
to seize the face he had
just seen,
as he saw
it,
this
"me,"
the
stranger
and the
other, becoming
me for the
very
first
time,
at this
very instant, precisely
because of
this
displacement
of the other's
vision.)
By accepting
the
"displacement
of the other's vi-
sion,"
Isma conforms to
John Berger's analysis
of
the construction of a female
identity
that
depends
upon
woman's internalization of the male dominat-
ing gaze.
The art critic writes: "Men look at women.
Women watch themselves
being
looked at. This de-
termines not
only
most relations between men and
women but also the relation of women to them-
selves"
(46-47).
After the
relationship
has
ended, however,
Isma
is able to reexamine her
relationship
to the
gaze
of
the man she had
previously
desired.
Then,
with the
understanding
that her
self-image
has
depended
upon
his
gaze mediating
the
process
of her self-vali-
dation,
and that this
dependency
had in fact turned
her,
the female
subject,
into a
passive object
of male
desire,
she has the
perspective necessary
to free her-
self from his hold.
Breaking
the
dependency,
she
reappropriates
the
gaze.
No
longer prisoner
of an-
other's
projection,
she is free to
shape
and articulate
her own
experience,
serve as her own
mirror,
see
and be seen without the mediation of the Other.
Thus, Djebar
situates Isma's reevaluation of the
male
dominating gaze
within her evolution toward
emotional
maturity.
For
Isma,
the
process
of self-
hood
begins
with the
recognition
of a sterile mar-
riage
followed
by
a futile romance and concludes
with her
rejection
of the
controlling gaze. Although
Djebar
considers the
"displacement
of the other's
vision" a
legacy
of
Maghrebian patriarchy, originat-
ing
with the
controlling eye
of the master of the
harem, Berger's
comments
concerning
female de-
pendency upon
the male
gaze
are directed
initially
to the
Occident,
not the Orient.
They
become all
the more
pertinent, however,
in
Algeria,
a
society
that has
traditionally
cloaked its women in veils and
barred their entrance into
public space.
Neither veiled nor
cloistered,
Isma never encoun-
ters the full
weight
of
patriarchy.
The
protagonist
retraces the novelist's
trajectory and,
like
her,
is
sep-
arated
through schooling
from the traditional world
of the women of her childhood
-
her
grandmothers,
aunts, cousins,
and mother
-
and from
experiences
of enclosure that mark their lives. At the
age
at
which her cousins were
veiled, Djebar's
father sent
her as a
boarding
student to a colonial
secondary
school. The break was not
conclusive, however;
she
returned to her extended
family every summer,
reentering
a world from which she became further
distanced as she
grew
older. In the third
part
of the
novel
Djebar
uses
memory
to
bridge
the
gap
be-
tween traditional women's lives and her own.
Isma,
her voice and life
story merging
with
Djebar's,
re-
calls
episodes
in the lives of her mother and
grand-
mother that were
clearly
subversive and
successfully
challenged patriarchy
and colonialism.8 As Isma ex-
presses Djebar's struggle
for
self,
she reveals that
her female forebears were not
resigned prisoners
of
the enclosure. She is
following
a
path
that earlier
generations
of women had
already begun
to trace.
First,
Lla
Fatima, Djebar's
maternal
grandmoth-
er, given
in
marriage
at the
age
of fourteen to a
wealthy, aged patriarch.
As the narrator
imagines
the
wedding night,
she studies the child bride's
eyes
for
signs
of submission or revolt.
Elle
garde
les
paupieres baissees, lorsque
Phomme
-
son maitre
-
souleve,
des
doigts,
la
voilette, approche
son
visage gris
des
yeux
de la
jeune
mariee . . . sa main
tatonne, frole les
pommettes,
les
yeux
de Fatima
qui,
lentement
enfln, regarde. (FP, 210)
(She keeps
her
eyes lowered,
when the man
-
her mas-
ter
-
raises the veil with his
fingers,
his
gray
face
ap-
proaching
the
young
wife's
eyes
... his hand
fumbles,
strokes the
cheek,
the
eyes
that
finally slowly
look
up.)
Although
the
girl's eyes convey
submission on her
wedding night,
she
subsequently,
as the old man's
wife,
establishes control
and,
still an
adolescent,
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MORTIMER 865
manipulates
the
aged patriarch. Upon
his death a
few
years later,
she refuses to remain with his fami-
ly.
In later
years,
twice more widowed and then di-
vorced,
Lla Fatima secures
autonomy
and
standing
in
Cherchell,
where she is an
important
elder known
for her wisdom and
independence,
and becomes a
property
owner as well.9
As Lla Fatima subverts
patriarchal domination,
her
daughter
Bahia
challenges
colonial
authority.
When the latter's son is sent to
prison
in France
during
the
Algerian War,
she sets out to
persuade
French authorities to allow her a
private
visit with
her son.
Traveling
from
Algiers
to the
prison
in Al-
sace,
she knows that the fate of her mission
depends
upon
a successful encounter with the French ad-
ministrator. She will succeed
if,
under the
scrutiny
of the
prison
director's
gaze,
she is able to affect a
certain
"Europeanness."
Isma
explains:
Elle
parlait
maintenant sans accent;
ses cheveux chatain
clair,
sa toilette de la
boutique
la
plus elegante d'Alger
la faisaient
prendre (quarante ans,
elle en
paraissait
dix
de moins,
un
peu
raidie dans son air
"chic") pas
telle-
ment
pour
une
Frangaise, plutot pour
une
bourgeoise
dTtalie du Nord,
ou
pour
une
Espagnole qui
serait
francisee.
(FP, 188-89)
(She
now
spoke
without an accent;
her
light
brown hair
and her clothes from the most
elegant boutique
in Al-
giers
made her
appear [at forty
she seemed ten
years
younger,
a little stiff in her "chic"
appearance]
not so
much as a French woman,
but rather an Italian bour-
geoise,
or
perhaps
a
Spaniard
who had become
quite
French.)
The
Algerian
mother is
granted
the visit to her
son,
an
Algerian "rebel,"
because she meets criteria that
place
her outside
indigenous space.
In
truth,
the
French
prison
director does not
quite
know where
to situate her and asks himself as he looks her over:
"Une
Mauresque,
cette
jeune
femme si bien habil-
lee?"
(A
Moorish woman,
this
young
woman so
well-dressed? FP, 195).
Her
only
trace of former
veiling
is the
pair
of dark
glasses shielding
her
eyes.10
In this
episode
that
foregrounds
visual
represen-
tation, Djebar conveys
as well the
importance
of
language
skills to the
performance,
a test in assimi-
lation. The
Algerian
woman must
speak
the coloniz-
er's
language flawlessly
at the same time that she
undergoes
the
scrutiny
of his
gaze.
Yet when
Djebar
becomes narrator and scribe, using
the French lan-
guage
to record her mother and
grandmother's
sub-
version of
patriarchy
and colonialism,
she enters lin-
guistic space they
do not share.
Delving
into the
past
to
bridge
the
gap
between their lives and
hers,
the novelist encounters the barrier of
language.
In
colonial
Algeria,
her
grandmother
was not
taught
to
speak French;
her mother was not
taught
to read or
write it.
In this
regard, having
examined the
ambiguous
nature of the French colonial educational
experi-
ence in U
amour,
la
fantasia,
the text in which she
recalls the crucial event of
walking
to school for the
first time
accompanied by
her
father, Djebar,
in this
work,
recounts an
equally significant episode:
a
scene constructed not from
memory
but from an
image.
At the
age
of
four,
the novelist is
photo-
graphed
with her father in his classroom with his
male
pupils.
On the one
hand,
the
photo
reveals the
schoolteacher's intent to educate his
children,
to
break social and cultural barriers and move his
daughter
into
space formerly
reserved for men and
boys.
On the other
hand,
it confirms the child's re-
sponse,
a
steady
and resolute stare back at the cam-
era's
eye;
she
accepts
the
challenge.
The
photo
does
not show
-
and cannot
predict
-
either the subse-
quent process
of social and cultural dislocation
(the
price
one
pays
for
challenging prevailing norms)
or
the
powerful promise
of
discovery, formerly
an ex-
clusively
male
prerogative,
that a move into new
realms makes
possible.
Finally, by combining narratives, adding
her
memories of childhood and adolescence to bio-
graphical fragments
of her mother and
grandmoth-
er's
lives, Djebar
retraces a collective
trajectory
away
from the enclosure. The writer reveals that al-
though
her
father, deeply
commited to
educating
his
children,
made her individual
journey possible,
women
family
members
provided
collective
support.11 Interweaving
several strands of narrative
and
fusing
the voices of
protagonist
and
novelist,
Djebar
widens the
scope
of
autobiography
to em-
brace the collective female voice.12
Situating
her dis-
course within the
community
of
Algerian women,
she,
with their
help,
restores severed
sound,
the task
she assumed from
Delacroix,
and in the
process
cre-
ates collective autofiction. Hence,
when
Djebar
re-
calls her
experience
of
filming
La
nouba,
she
clearly
defines her individual mission as a shared endeavor.
J'ai
dit: "Moteur." Une emotion m'a saisie. Comme
si,
avec
moi,
toutes les femmes de tous les harems avaient
chuchote: "Moteur." Connivence
qui
me stimule.
D'elles seules dorenavant le
regard m'importe.
Pose sur
ces
images que j 'organise
et
que
ces
presences
invisibles
derriere mon
epaule
aident a fermenter.
(FP, 74)
(As
I said
"Begin,"
I was seized with emotion. It was as
if with me all the women of all the harems had whis-
pered, "Begin."
This
complicity urges
me on. What
only
matters to me from now on is their
gaze upon
the
images
I am
organizing
and which their invisible
pres-
ence
peeking
over
my
shoulder
helps develop.)
As
Djebar's pen brought Algerian
women's muted
voice and veiled
presence
into
public space,
so does
her
camera;
hence the
symbolic
value of
giving
the
camera to a
sequestered
sister. Before
concluding
Vaste est la
prison, Djebar
states:
Cette
image
-
realite de mon enfance,
de celle de mon
enfance,
de celle de ma mere et de mes
tantes,
de mes
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866 WORLD LITERATURE TODAY
cousines
parfois
du meme
age que moi,
ce scandale
qu'enfant j'ai
vecu
norme,
voici
qu'elle surgit
au
depart
de cette
quete;
silhouette
unique
de
femme,
rassem-
blant dans les
pans
de son
linge-linceul
les
quelque
cinq
cents millions de
segreguees
du monde
islamique,
c'est elle soudain
qui regarde,
mais derriere la
camera,
elle
qui, par
un trou libre dans une face
masquee,
devore le monde.
(VP, 174; emphasis mine)
(This image
-
reality
of
my childhood,
that of
my
mother and
my aunts, my
cousins who were often
my
age,
this scandal that for me as a child was considered
normal,
here she is at the start of
my quest;
woman's
unique silhouette, gathering
in the folds of her
drapery-
shroud the five hundred million
segregated
women of
the Islamic
world; suddently
she is
staring
at
us,
but
from
behind the
camera,
and
through
a free hole in a
masked face she is
devouring
the
world.)
Djebar's gesture
of
handing
the camera to her sister
is an
attempt
to
encourage
the latter's
subjectivity
at
a time when
any
effort to
reappropriate
the
gaze
is
considered
by
Islamic fundamentalist
groups
a
provocation
to be met with violence and
oppres-
sion.13
However,
too
long
a victim of colonial and
patriarchal oppression,
the
Algerian
woman is in
movement, engaged
in the
process
of liberation.14 As
writer and
filmmaker,
Assia
Djebar represents
an
important
voice of resistance. In her
rejection
of the
controlling gaze
-
be it individual or collective
-
she
reminds her fellow
Algerians
that her nation must
remain commited to
pluralism;
she claims for her-
self and her sisters the
right
to see and be
seen,
as
they
circulate
freely
in
open space.
University of Colorado,
Boulder
1
For the historical
background
to woman's
participation
in the
Algerian War, see Amrane-Minne.
2
Aas-Rouparis interprets
the role of the servant as a
sign
of
confrontation with tradition. Zimra views her as the
spy,
the
proxy
of the master (WA, 209).
3
Beauge
and Clement's edited work
provides
a series of inter-
esting
articles on the
image
in the Arab world as well as
portraits
of the Arab world
by European travelers, painters,
and
photogra-
phers.
4
For a
study
of
photographs
as
postcards
of the exotic
Alge-
rian
woman, see Alloula.
5
For a
thorough
and well-documented
study
of
Orientalism,
see Said. For an
important study
of
Djebar's "dialogue"
with
Orientalists Delacroix and Fromentin in Ly
amour, la
fantasia,
see
Zimra
(1995).
6
This translation and the translations from Vaste est la
prison
are mine.
7
Chikhi notes the
importance
of the dance in
Djebar's work,
particularly
for its
importance
to
say
or hide certain
things (105).
For a detailed
study
of the role of women's dance in the Arab
world, see Henni-Chebra and Poche.
8
For a theoretical discussion of the
autobiographical pact,
the
promise
to the reader that the textual and referential "I" are one
and the
same, see
Lejeune
and Lionnet.
9
Djebar
dedicates a short
story,
"Les morts
parlent" (Femmes
d'Alger
dans leur
appartement),
to her
grandmother,
Lla Fatma
Sahraoui.
10
Djebar's
mother
customarily
wore the voile
mauresque
of
urban
Algerian
women. See Gauvin, p.
78.
11
When the child
goes
off the school,
she wears a
"protecting
eye,"
an amulet
containing
Koranic verses
given
to her
by
her
grandmother (287).
12
In her
study
of L' amour, la
fantasia Geesey provides
an infor-
mative
essay
on collective
autobiography.
13
Djebar's
latest work, Le blanc de
VAlgerie,
is devoted exclu-
sively
to the theme of violence and death in
Algeria.
She and her
family
members have close friends and relatives who have been
assassinated
by
Islamic extremists.
14
For a further
study
of women in
contemporary Algeria,
see
Lazreg.
Works cited
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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions