(Re)‎ constructing Algerian women’s history through mobility and hybridity: a close reading of Assia Djebar’s fantasia: an Algerian cavalcade

Abstract EN

Assia Djebar is one of the most important female authors in Algeria who has earned international recognition for the portrayal of female subjugation and French hegemony in Algeria.

Her semi-autobiographical fiction, Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade, highlights the complex lives of Algerian women who attempt to release themselves from the domineering restraints of cultural and social customs.

Throughout the novel, Djebar journeys on a route in an attempt to liberate the community of women through re-constructing history.

Djebar examines the archives of the colonial travel texts to reveal the evidence of women's participation in resistance struggles; thus through her own mobility, Djebar attempts to empower the women of Algeria and opposes the French dominant narrative.

Not only does Djebar find evidence from her colonial predecessors that women were indeed active agents in the war, but she travels to the outskirts of Algeria to interview and collect oral testimonies from the Algerian women themselves in order to present to the reader real accounts of women freedom fighters, thus, re-constructing Algerian women's place in history.