From Sensation to Representation: The Torture of Djamila Boupacha During the Algerian War

Djamila Boupacha was a militant member of the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) who was accused of placing a bomb in the Brasserie des Facultés during the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962). In order to elicit a confession, Boupacha was tortured by French military officers: she endured beatings, burns, electrocution, waterboarding, and most traumatically, rape with a bottle. This article analyzes the relationship between the physical sensations that Boupacha experienced during torture and their subsequent representation in Djamila Boupacha (1962) by Simone de Beauvoir and Gisèle Halimi. While Boupacha focuses on the personal implications of the torture she endured, Halimi highlights the importance of this case at the institutional level—particularly in regards to the French judicial system, military, and medical profession—and Beauvoir concentrates on the public reception of Boupacha's story in metropolitan France, as well as its implications at the national level. Djamila Boupacha is a unique text because it brings to the forefront the meaning-making process through which one woman's corporeal pain takes on numerous layers of significance as it is interpreted, and reinterpreted, through the lenses of gender, religion, politics, social class, and culture. Although not without problems, these three women's testimonies work seamlessly together to oppose colonial discourses that justify the use of torture in order to maintain France's colonial presence in Algeria.