Postcolonial Feminism in Assia Djebar's Children of the New World
This paper examines postcolonial feminist theory through Assia Djebar's novel Children of the New World, which depicts Algerian women during the 1956 rebellion against French colonial rule. The essay argues that Djebar portrays women caught in a double bind: rejected by patriarchal nationalist movements yet unable to align with colonial interests without betraying their culture. Drawing on Gayatri Spivak's concept of the subaltern, the paper demonstrates how Djebar illustrates the impossibility of a universal feminism that ignores the specific historical and cultural contexts of postcolonial women. The analysis reveals that traditional gender roles and colonial legacies prevent Algerian women from achieving authentic autonomy or meaningful self-expression.
- Introduction: Women and Colonialism in Children of the New World: Women's complex roles in Algerian anticolonial struggle
- Touma's Tragedy: Gender, Honor, and Complicity: Informant caught between colonial power and patriarchal honor killing
- The Subaltern Cannot Speak: Spivak's Theory in Djebar's Novel: Postcolonial women excluded from both nationalist and colonial discourse
- Lila's Dilemma: Patriarchy and Postcolonial Identity: Educated woman trapped in controlling marriage and emasculated masculinity
- Postcolonial Feminism as a Theoretical Framework: Feminism must account for colonized women's distinct experiences and contexts
- Resistance and Limited Agency in Djebar's Portrait: Limited examples of autonomy within constraints of marriage and culture
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What makes this paper effective
- Integrates close textual analysis with sophisticated theoretical frameworks, moving beyond plot summary to examine how Djebar's characterization of women embodies postcolonial feminist concerns.
- Uses specific scenes (Touma's death, Lila's marriage conflict, Cherifa's resistance) to ground abstract concepts like the subaltern and emasculation theory in concrete narrative moments.
- Develops a coherent argument about the double bind facing postcolonial women: rejecting colonialism means accepting patriarchal cultural norms, while accepting feminist liberation requires alignment with colonial values.
- Demonstrates intellectual maturity by acknowledging tensions within postcolonial feminism itself—the need to critique one's own culture without reinforcing colonial justifications for domination.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper exemplifies literary analysis in dialogue with postcolonial theory. Rather than applying theory to text, the writer uses textual evidence to test and refine theoretical claims. The comparison between Spivak's essay on sati and Djebar's portrayal of Touma shows how historical and literary scholarship can illuminate each other, while the extended analysis of Lila demonstrates how individual character development illustrates macro-level theoretical problems about colonialism, gender, and agency.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a clear thesis about women's complex relationships to nationalism, gender, and colonialism. It then builds outward in concentric circles: from a single tragic character (Touma) to a theoretical framework (Spivak) to a second character embodying related tensions (Lila), then to the broader postcolonial feminist school of thought, and finally to a more nuanced portrait that includes limited examples of agency (Cherifa). This structure moves from specific to general and back to specific, allowing the writer to develop increasingly sophisticated interpretations while remaining grounded in textual evidence throughout.
Introduction: Women and Colonialism in Children of the New World
Children of the New World by Assia Djebar chronicles a day in the life of the Algerian rebellion of 1956, one of the years in which Algerians were attempting to wrest control of their nation back from the colonizing French. Algeria was a Muslim country; France was mainly Christian. Women played a decisive role in the struggle for liberation in many instances, while others found their gender complicated their relationship with their Algerian and Muslim identity. Advocating for rebellion from colonialism did not necessarily grant women equality, as Djebar demonstrates. All of the women in the novel have a complex relationship to nationalism, gender, and colonialism. Djebar simultaneously validates the women's right to speak and to have a personal reaction to the war even while she shows the dangers of imperialism.
Touma's Tragedy: Gender, Honor, and Complicity
A striking example of this tension appears in the case of Touma, a colonial informer. As a woman, she frequently feels powerless—such as when she is openly insulted by a waiter in a degrading fashion—and her status as an informant gives her a sense of self-aggrandizement. However, her actions cause her to run afoul of her brother, with tragic consequences. Her brother, a fiery anti-colonialist revolutionary, takes vengeance against his sister in a kind of politically motivated honor killing: "Touma's body remained on the ground, resting, the circle of men ('Her brother!' 'Yes, it was her brother! He avenged his honor! May God have mercy on him!') had time to examine the slaughtered victim at leisure. Then they began to retreat, their ranks growing thinner" (Djebar 178).
Her death is dismissed as a "family matter," as if the death of a sister at the hands of her brother is outside the reach of the law. On one hand, the killing highlights the terrible, dangerous side of patriarchy for women—women's lives can be taken with impunity if regarded as a "family matter" outside the realm of the justice system. In such a situation, women are trapped in a double bind. On one hand, the colonial infrastructure is complicit with the oppression of Algeria. However, honor killings according to custom and the supposed "right" of men to take the lives of women as a cultural norm is profoundly frightening and degrading.
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