The persistence of patriarchy: class, gender, and ideology in twentieth century Algeria

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Book

Title:	The persistence of patriarchy: class, gender, and ideology in twentieth century Algeria
Author:	Knauss, Peter R.
Year:	1987
Pages:	176
Language:	English
City of publisher:	New York
Publisher:	Praeger
ISBN:	0275926923
Geographic term:	Algeria
Subjects:	nationalism patriarchy women
Abstract:	Patriarchy is defined here as a hierarchy of authority that is controlled and dominated by males in which women are subordinated to the role of permanent minors. Its persistence in Algeria can be explained by the suppression of what most Algerian men regarded as their traditional identity by a draconian colonialism. The thesis of this study is that the French, by their negation of everything that was authentically Algerian, mobilized in the oppressed Algerians a longing for the affirmation of everything authentically Algerian. The nationalists became the prisoners of this colonial Manicheanism, as Frantz Fanon called it. Algerian women, in particular, became the double prisoners of this nationalist antithesis of everything French. They became both the revered objects of the collective act of national redemption and the role models for the new nationalist patriarchal family.