...inventoried and defined. This enabled the colonial administration to define a precise political doctrine: "If we want to destroy the structure of Algerian society,...its capacity for resistance, we must first of all con• See Appendix at the end of this chapter. quer the women; we must go and find them behind the...

...delimit its capacity to resist the colonial administration, Algerian women would have to be unveiled: "!f we want to destroy the structure of Algerian society,...in the houses where the men keep them out of sight" (1967: 37-38). As in all colonial societies, the occupiers rationalized their rule as the "modernization"...

...York: Grove, 1965): "This enabled the colonial administration to define a precise political doctrine: "If we want to destroy the structure of Algerian society,...resistance, we must first of all conquer the women.'" (pp. 37-38). 13 Georges Perec, Les choses (Paris: René Julliard, 1965); trans. David Bellos as Things...

...inventoried and defined. This enabled the colonial administration to define a precise political doctrine: "If we want to destroy the structure of Algerian society,...the houses where the men keep them out of sight." It is the situation of woman that was accordingly taken as the theme of action. The dominant administration...

...colonial hands and disrupt the patriarchal power of colonized men. Fanon ventriloquizes colonial thinking: "If we want to destroy the structure of Algerian society,...resistance, we must first of all conquer the women" (37—38). His insight here is that the dynamics of colonial power are fundamentally, though not solely,...

...Algerian women and family relations as the crucial site for their onslaught against native culture: If we want to destroy the structure of Algerian society,...in the houses where the men keep them out of sight. It is the situation of woman that was accordingly taken as the theme of action. The dominant administration...

...Fanon continues: "this enabled the colonial administration to define a precise political doctrine: 'If we want to destroy the structure of Algerian society,...the houses where the men keep them out of sight.'" 4 I propose to take this "precise political doctrine" seriously, because it provides us with several...

...battle, on one level, becomes waged. Fanon characterises the French colonial resolve in the phrase: 'we must first of all conquer the women; we must go...in the houses where the men keep them out of sight' (pp. 37-8). This 'kind of violence', where 'unveiling' equals 'revealing . . . baring . . . breaking...

...concealment. Fanon characterizes French colonial resolve in Algeria, for example, with a determination to 'conquer the women; we must go and find them behind...where they hide themselves and in the houses where men keep them out of sight' (Fanon, 1970: 37-8). Here, the colonial gaze sought to penetrate all those...

...words of Frantz Fanon: This enabled the colonial administration to define a precise political doctrine: 'If we want to destroy the structure of Algerian society, its capacity of resistance, we must first of all conquer the women; we must go and find them behind the veil where...