Writing and filming the subaltern: Gender, history and post colonialism (France)

The project of my dissertation seeks to investigate the complex interactions between gender and history in the colonial and postcolonial era, as elaborated in the works of Maghrebian and "Beur" women writers and filmmakers. It centers on the crucial role that literature and films have come to play in altering and complicating gendered inscriptions and perspectives on the historical past.; My argument is that in the colonial and postcolonial context official histories co-exist and often collide with non-historiographic, overtly fictional forms of historical production that intervene to supplement the discourse of history and serve as alternative sources of historical knowledge. I read these historical fictions as performing a double task: they seek to re-assess history by drawing attention to the complicity between institutional historical discourses and colonialist as well as nationalist strategies of cultural domination. At the same time, they foreground a historicizing process whereby gendered experiences and expressions are recast within a larger socio-political and historical field and re-examined through the interplay of power, gender, class, ethnicity and political struggles. The importance of this historical investigation, I argue, lies not only in the de-centered reflection it offers on history as a discursive practice and a mode of knowledge but it also offers an indispensable means of understanding the present political, cultural and social landscapes of postcolonial societies as well as the complex historical and political links between France and its former colonies.