Inside the Battle of Algiers: Zohra Drif looks back on her war experience

Abstract

I propose to examine Zohra Drif's memoir of her participation in Algeria's war against the French colonizer, an eight-year war waged from 1954 to 1962 that ended in Algerian independence. I analyze the memoir as a written representation of resistance that confirms that Algerian women were active participants in an anticolonial war and that their war experience was transformative. Drif's courage and resiliency tested, she emerges empowered. Yet, her narrative attests to the trauma endured and raises a moral issue, the taking of innocent lives in a political struggle. I suggest that by offering her readers a testimonial narrative that acknowledges war in its complexity–the triumphs, the losses, the difficult choices and decisions–Drif confirms Maša Mrovlje's and Jennet Kirpatrick's view of the feminist resister as an individual imbedded in her society, a combatant who acknowledges her vulnerabilities, and accepts the ambiguities of her actions.