Decolonizing Feminism

Abstract

It has already formed its concepts; it is already certain of their truth; it will assign to them the role of constitutive schemata. It’s sole purpose is to force the events, the persons, or the acts considered into prefabricated molds. Jean-Paul Sartre on institutional Marxism.1 Writing about women in Algeria has been the most challenging task I have undertaken so far. Not only did it concretize for me the difficulty of doing interdisciplinary research, and raise theoretical/methodological issues, it has also led me to question the feasibility of writing and communicating across cultures about the subject of women. My project is not to entertain readers with one more exotic tale or shock them with another astounding revelation about womanhood in a faraway place. All I wish to do is communicate in intelligible terms another mode of being female. But this is more easily said than done.