The Veil of Nationalism: Frantz Fanon’s ‘Algeria Unveiled’ and Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers

Women’s relationship to anti-colonial nationalism has been a problematic one, in that nationalist movements have tended to employ both women and feminist discourses strategically.1 This phenomenon is far from limited to the Muslim or Arab worlds.2 Nor is nationalism the only ideology to intersect uneasily with women’s interests in the region. However, work produced by feminist scholars grounded experientially in the region suggests that contestation between nationalisms and feminisms in North Africa and the Middle East has been extreme (see Hatem, Kandiyoti, Lasreg 1994 ch7, Moghadam and Moallem).