Forced public unveiling drove Algerian women back to the veil in solidarity

Evidence

Ignorant or feigning to be ignorant of these new forms of conduct, French colonialism, on the occasion of May 13th, reenacted its old campaign of Westernizing the Algerian woman. Servants under the threat of being fired, poor women dragged from their homes, prostitutes, were brought to the public square and symbolically unveiled to the cries of “Vive l’Algérie française!” Before this new offensive old reactions reappeared. Spontaneously and without being told, the Algerian women who had long since dropped the veil once again donned the haïk, thus affirming that it was not true that woman liberated herself at the invitation of France and of General de Gaulle. — Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 212

Categorization

• XREF: Illustrates the reader’s theme of colonialist penetration of intimate sectors — the colonizer staging public unveiling coerces female bodies back under the veil. — connects to: Algerian women’s veiling practices changed without being part of the revolution’s program; Algerian women who had abandoned the veil re-donned it in response to forced unveiling; Unveiled Algerian women unsettled European women by excelling at Western femininity (+5 more)

Related

• Algerian women’s veiling practices changed without being part of the revolution’s program (similarity 0.93)
• Algerian women who had abandoned the veil re-donned it in response to forced unveiling (similarity 0.91)
• Unveiled Algerian women unsettled European women by excelling at Western femininity (similarity 0.90)
• French unveiling campaigns aimed to demoralize Algerian men, not liberate women (similarity 0.89)
• Forced unveiling in colonial Algeria backfired by politicizing the veil (similarity 0.87)
• Algerian women’s seclusion made them core vehicles of anti-colonial resistance (similarity 0.86)
• France’s 1958 forced unveiling drove Algerian women to adopt the veil as protest (similarity 0.86)
• Enforced unveiling converts the veil into a symbol of anticolonial resistance (similarity 0.86)
• The veil shifted from passive tradition into an active revolutionary instrument (similarity 0.84)
• European observers read the veil as concealing beauty that should be forcibly exhibited (similarity 0.83)
• The European’s impulse to unveil Algerian women is an act of possession (similarity 0.83)
• Colonial confinement degraded Algerian women’s bodily mobility and assurance (similarity 0.83)
• French unveiling campaigns functioned as gendered warfare to demoralize Algerian men. (similarity 0.82)
• Algerian women turned the veil into a weapon of anticolonial warfare (similarity 0.82)
• Colonial unveiling campaigns functioned as psychological warfare against colonized men (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• Algerian women’s seclusion made them core vehicles of anti-colonial resistance #corroborates (0.80) — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 1230
• Algerian women’s traditional seclusion made them the hardest nucleus of anti-colonial resistance #corroborates (0.80)