Magrebines: Historical Representations of North African Women in 19th-Century French Oriental ism and Post-1950s North African Narrative

The theme for this year's Penn Humanities forum is that of 'word and image,' a broad topic indeed. Even after deciding that my project would broadly focus on the interactions between French Orientalist and North African narrative and painting, I lacked a focus for the project that would marry it firmly to this theme. Finally, I arrived at what had always been the most obvious connection: the image of the so-called "Oriental" woman. Despite my initial fears of such a focus becoming reductive, it has in fact shed a revealing light on the interplay of these two discourses. As can be imagined, however, any attempt to attack this multivalent image without first limiting one's scope temporally, theoretically, and geographically will not only expand to an unmanageable size; it will also once again reduce the huge variety of the Arabo-Islamic nations to one reductive sigil, that of the "Arab woman." This essay will therefore confine itself to the Maghreb region, comprising the modern nations of Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco. Further, I am concentrating on the two major temporal points: mid-to-late 19th century French Orientalist painting and narrative, and post-1950's North African francophone and Arabic narrative. Comments 2005-2006 Penn Humanities Forum on Word & Image, Undergraduate Mellon Research Fellows. URL: http://humanities.sas.upenn.edu/05-06/mellon_uhf.shtml This presentation is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/uhf_2006/15 Magrebines: Historical Representations of North African Women in 19-Century French Oriental ism and Post-1950s North African Narrative Tara Mendola, College '06 University of Pennsylvania 2005-2006 Penn Humanities Forum on Word & Image Undergraduate Humanities Forum Mellon Research Fellow Final Project Paper April 2006 Magrebines: Historical Representations ofNorth African Women in 19 century French Orientalism and post-1950's North African Narrative Introduction: The theme for this year's Penn Humanities forum is that of 'word and image,' a broad topic indeed. Even after deciding that my project would broadly focus on the interactions between French Orientalist and North African narrative and painting, I lacked a focus for the project that would marry it firmly to this theme. Finally, I arrived at what had always been the most obvious connection: the image of the so-called "Oriental" woman. Despite my initial fears of such a focus becoming reductive, it has in fact shed a revealing light on the interplay of these two discourses. As can be imagined, however, any attempt to attack this multivalent image without first limiting one's scope temporally, theoretically, and geographically will not only expand to an unmanageable size; it will also once again reduce the huge variety of the Arabo-Islamic nations to one reductive sigil, that of the "Arab woman." This essay will therefore confine itself to the Maghreb region, comprising the modern nations of Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco. Further, I am concentrating on the two major temporal points: mid-to-late 19 century French Orientalist painting and narrative, and post-1950's North African francophone and Arabic narrative] While it is undoubtedly important in the region's heritage, I have neither the training nor the language ability to approach the medieval Andalusian heritage of the Maghreb in a productive fashion; I shall therefore reference superior secondary texts when necessary and attempt to give the appropriate weight to the effects of the Arabo-Islamic literary heritage where appropriate. Within these parameters of genre, time, and space, I wish to examine how the French and 1 Fiction and autobiography. I include autobiography because it is such a prominent part of the Arabic literary tradition that a study of prose narrative would be incomplete without it.