A Book Review of Inside the Battle of Algiers, by Zohra Drif: A Thematic Analysis on Women’s Agency

This paper explores Zohra Drif’s memoir, Inside the Battle of Algiers, which narrates her desires as a student to become a revolutionary activist. She exemplified, in her narrative, the different roles, she and her fellows performed as combatants in the Casbah during the Algerian Revolution 1954-1962. This book review aims to evaluate the concept of women’s agency through education and language learning, and its impact on empowering women’s desires. Close-reading method and thematic analysis are used to explore the text. The analysis identified themes that refine the meaning of agency which are social and cultural supports, education, and language proficiency. These themes aim to contribute to the representation in Inside the Battle of Algiers of a woman guerrilla who engaged herself to perform national acts of resistance.

• W. Zekri

• Agency
• education
• learning
• women.

[1] Z. Drif, Inside the Battle of Algiers. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. 2017.
[2] S. Bignal, Postcolonial Agency Critique and Constructivism. Edinburgh University, 2010.
[3] M. Foucault, Subject and Power. Critical Inquiry, vol. 8, 1982, pp. 777–795.
[4] A. Allen, The Power of Feminist Theory, 1st Edition. New York: Routledge, 1998.
[5] E. Said, The word, the Text, and the Critic. Harvard University Press, 1983.
[6] O. George, Relocating Agency: Modernity and African Letters. SUNY Press, 2012.
[7] J. Butler, Gender Trouble and the Subversion of Identity. New York and London: Routledge, 1990.
[8] B. Davies, "The Concept of Agency: A feminist poststructuralist analysis". Social analysis: the International Journal of Social and Cultural Practice. Vol.30, pp. 42-53, 1991.
[9] S. Carle, "Theorizing Agency". American University Law Review, Vol. 55, no.2, pp. 307-387, December. 2005.
[10] F. Fanon, J. P. Sartre, and C. Farrington. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press. Vol. 36, p. 53, 1963.
[11] Z. Drif, Just World: Zohra Drif, Algeria's National Liberation Heroine Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baQP-miDyPE 18 February 2018.
[12] J. McLeod, Beginning Postcolonialism, 2nd edition. Manchester University Press. P. 138, 2010.
[13] A. Mazrui. Language and the Quest for Liberation in Africa: the Legacy of Frantz Fanon, Third World Quartly. Vol. 14. N2, 1993.
[14] N. Vince, Our Fighting Sisters: Nation, Memory, and Gender in Algeria, 1954-2012. Manchester University Press, 2015.