The Typewriter Cuts

Abstract

This article studies the role of the typewriter in the Algerian War of Independence (1954–1962). When a printing press was unavailable during the war, women militants used the typewriter to process articles for El Moudjahid, the designated newspaper of the anticolonial revolutionaries. Providing a media history and theory of this event, the article argues that the typewriter—both woman and machine—was an active militant who cut texts and bodies to advance the revolutionary cause. The typewriter denaturalized assumptions about the newspaper’s colonial appearance, thus bringing forth a new form for anticolonial journalism.