Rape or Obscene Copulation?: Ambivalence and Complicity in Djebar's L'Amour, la fantasia

Women In French Studies Rape or Obscene Copulation?: Ambivalence and Complicity in Djebar's L'Amour, lafantasia . . . lame de couteau dans la laine de l'abandon: tout à fait au fond, pourtant, comme une bête hurlant le refus, la révolte aveuglée, le durcissement dressé: 'Non!', un corps peut-il hurler 'Non!' en son profond et que ce soit pourtant un don?" Assia Djebar, Les Alouettes naïves Many Algerian women come to writing in French through the optic of war and inscribe in their texts a discovery of the female body and of personal sexual desire: "what we have is nothing less than a literary 'event'," as Marx-Scouras so accurately describes this contemporary problematic (174). Celebrating erotic self-discovery and sexual difference among women, western feminists have considered writers such as Assia Djebar a paradigm of liberation, despite accusations of imperialistic "internationalist" feminism that may be leveled at them as a result. Anne Donadey, for example, sees in the strategies structuring the use ofepigraphs in Djebar's L Amour, lafantasia an act of "reappropriating and subverting not only the discourse of (Western and Arabic) patriarchy about women, but also the discourse of colonialist imperialism about Algerians" (1 ??- ? 11). She relies on Irigaray's notion of mimicry to explain how Djebar's "deliberate repetition of a male discourse of female representation" (110) functions as resistance and illuminates "ce qui devait rester occulté" (qtd in Donadey 1 10, 74). Algerian women writing in French "sont aussi ailleurs" and thus are able to free themselves from the shackles of patriarchal discourse by virtue ofpositioning themselves at a vantage point above/beyond it (1 10, 74). Clarisse Zimra also reads liberation in Djebar's use of the French language, itself a legacy of colonization and war (or "war booty") deployed by Djebar against traditional Muslim subjugation of women. "She uses the colonizer's language against the colonized's own gender code, showing it for what it is, an argument ad feminam" (77). A means of escape from sequestration and the veil, French provides access to sexual liberation; it 42 Women In French Studies "brings freedom, a freedom expressed through the contrapuntal images of naked/clothed, covered/uncovered body" (77). Déjeux finds in Djebar similar reasons to applaud what could only be called a feminist consciousness. "Chez Assia Djébar nous découvrons avant tout la découverte du corps par la femme, la découverte ensuite du couple et de l'amour pour soi-même. Bref, la femme naît au monde, elle s'affirme elle-même et non plus en dépandence de l'homme, frère ou époux" (qtd in "The Evolution . . ." 11). Along the same lines, Tahon explores the use of homoerotic imagery as a form of subversion of the patriarchal economy of desire. While these readings are unquestionably valid on the one hand, it seems undeniable, on the other, that Djebar's relationship to French is at best ambivalent. Perhaps some of the feminist praise mentioned above may be on a certain level too hastily accorded, or rather, anchored in a convenient gloss of the problematic Djebar faces when writing in French as an Algerian woman. Several of these same critics have noted, to be sure, Djebar's ambivalence. In her analysis of Les Alouettes naïves, Zimra discusses the moment of sexual truth for the protagonist, Nfissa. "The last sentence remains poised between Man's passive fascination to watch and his active urge to sculpt; not much is left for Woman's desire to sculpt herself. As for Nfissa, the most intimate act uncovers absolute indifference" (74). Surprisingly, Zimra draws no conclusions from this revealing example of the lack of inscription of heterosexual female desire at a moment where, if any, it would most likely be located. In his article on the construction of textual identity of the colonized woman, Murdoch explores at great length Djebar's ambiguity in regards to the colonizer's language. Following Lacanian theory, he sees the central problem as one of the search for textual subjectivity: the Algerian woman desired as Other by the French and desiring as subject to be recognized in the oppressor's tongue (75...