To the rhythm of feminine memory: Decoloniality and dissonance in the films of Assia Djebar

Abstract

The late Algerian author Assia Djebar had published four novels in French before she famously retreated from writing for ten years. Disillusioned with the creative possibilities of her "step-mother tongue", yet reluctant to write in the formal Arabic she had come to associate with religious nationalism, the author turned to film to unearth the "buried voices" of Algerian women, whose accounts of occupation and independence in vernacular Arabic would reveal a rich alternative archive. Focusing on "the gaze" and "voice", two key concepts in Djebarian discussions of Algerian femininity, this contribution examines the destabilizing impact of Djebar's use of material images and sound, tracing the strategies of decoloniality and dissonance she carried into her later written work. Rather than recuperating Algerian women's voices to make up the gaps in the national/colonial archive, the article argues that Djebar's films dwell in the radical potential of irrecuperability, exploring new possibilities of feminine resistance from without re/presentation and History.