The Djamila Phenomenon: How the Confinement of Two Algerian Revolutionaries Was Translated for a French and Global Public, 1956–1962

Abstract

Abstract:Two female Algerian revolutionaries, Djamila Bouhired and Djamila Boupacha, both members of the Front de libération nationale (FLN), were captured by French troops in Algeria, tortured, tried, and sentenced to death, approximately three years apart. After their sentencings, both their cases would go abroad, moving from Algeria to France and from France elsewhere. It is the movement of these women themselves—as well as their legal cases, the associated press campaigns, and the ways that writers, lawyers, artists, journalists, and activists in France represented both the cases and the women at their center—that interests us in this article. Indeed, the cases and faces of both Bouhired and Boupacha became the canvases upon which French media and intellectuals reflected on Algeria and the Algerian question: existential questions of freedom and constraint, nuances of second-wave feminism, and even France's own nationhood and identity. And what began as the literal confinement of two young female Algerian revolutionaries would emerge and evolve as a challenge to cultural confinement and hierarchy on the levels of gender and colonial status alike.