Building the Nation: Narrating Women and the Algerian War

Traditional accounts of war define it as a masculine enterprise and war narratives thus as the work of men. Such accounts have been used to justify a special role for men within the nation, as wartime experience supposedly makes them eminently qualified to be not only military but also civilian leaders. While one might begin by challenging the premise that war experience qualifies one for a special civilian status, readers of European literature have also challenged the idea that war narratives are the work of men alone. As critics rediscover and re-place women's narratives of war within the canon of war literature, they have focused in particular on redrawing the boundaries between the frontlines and the home front. [...] Where women have joined in opposing colonial occupation of their homes and land, such as in the Algerian Revolution, the 'frontline' involves entire regions, and women are often in the middle of combat.