Hegemony and Hybridity in Assia Djebar’s 'Femmes d’Alger dans leur appartement', 'L’Amour, la Fantasia' and 'Oran, langue morte'

This article was a commissioned piece for a special issue of the Journal of Romance Studies. In L’an V de la revolution algérienne (1959) Frantz Fanon offers an alternative to western accounts of the colonial and post-colonial era of Algerian history. One of his most interesting insights concerns the relationship between French hegemony, Algerian traditions, and the role of women within Algerian society. For he argues forcefully that, faced with the problem of how to assimilate a recently-conquered nation, the colonizers, who viewed women as the lynchpin (le pivot) of Algerian society, tried to change the nation by westernizing its women. The article exposes the tension between hegemony and hybridity in Algeria post its independence.