Women’s Education in Colonial Algeria: Emancipation, Alienation, and the Aphasia of Love in Assia Djebar’s L’Amour, la fantasia (1985)

Abstract

This paper examines the contradictory yet complementary forces that connect women’s spatial liberation to the colonial power’s institutions. It explores the cacophony between women’s education, emancipation, and alienation in Assia Djebar’s L’Amour, la fantasia (1985). It argues that spatial mobility bears the potential to challenge patriarchy and colonial violence. Djebar’s struggle to reconcile with or condemn her Western education foregrounds the ambivalent relationship the author entertains with the vehicle of her empowerment. The appropriation of the language of the other equips the schoolgirl with the instruments needed to subvert extra-Islamic traditions, and to regender the history of Algeria by voicing the stories of her matriarchs, withal, it sentences her to an aphasia of love.

Keywords: Aphasia, Emancipation, French school, Quranic school, Spatial Liberation.