Week 4 - Whither freedom

Colonization meant subjugation, both overt and insidious. The colonialists, given their aim, have claimed an enduring, resounding victory. While it was only a few years prior that the colonialists granted their own women the right to vote, they chose to attack indigenous societies’ treatment of their women. Their actions captivated the very women they had become obsessed with liberating. Indigenous women’s lives became another battleground to fight the war against colonialism and their choices, far from being made with individual agency, threatened the precarious power struggle and frustrated the indigenous man.

Outgunned and outwitted, the indigenous man realized he cannot defeat the white man on the battlefield or the factories or the daises. The military, economic, and political fight would be severely uneven and it would be imprudent to commit scarce resources in outlets where power was already consolidated. A fight could be won in the social arena, in the everyday lives of the colonized. It meant fiercely defending and preserving the traditions censured by the colonialists for their barbarity and backwardness. Hence, in fighting for freedom from the colonialists, the colonized were trapped in the choices that their oppressor had set for them: either strictly adhere to your traditions and inflict a significant setback for their occupier or renounce them and betray your own blood and community. Just as contextual understanding was important for the colonialists before lambasting their traditions, so was a critical reflection important for the indigenous. The former didn’t pay heed to how some practices were the lifeblood of the communal life and constituted an important part of the indigenous culture. The latter didn’t pay heed to how some practices were detrimental to other members of the community and whether they were worth surviving. Both were blinded in the attempt to gain an advantage over another; the white man didn’t consider the indigenous man and the indigenous man didn’t consider the indigenous woman, and so ultimately, it was the indigenous woman who paid the price for their war on her.

The woman was not asked to lend her voice in either the searing attack on certain practices, that affected her wholly or the resolute defense for them. Her decision to choose the wearing of her veil, sacrificing herself for her husband, or circumcise her genitalia picked her side on the liberation movement. There was no freedom to choose; you take off your veil and you have allowed yourself to be raped by the colonizer or you keep your veil and you have succumbed to the dictate of the Algerian man. A European man is obsessed with breaking the resistance of the Algerian woman who hides behind the veil and an Algerian man is obsessed with castigating the resistance of the Algerian woman who takes off the veil. She will either frustrate the man from another society or the man from her own society. There is no room in the narrative for a woman who wants to take off the veil willingly and also, fight against the colonizer. Her freedom is a hoax for she is still bound by either her community or her colonizer. She is woven into a single strand of oppression: she is either oppressed by the indigenous customs that demonetize and dehumanize her, or she is oppressed by the colonizer who has tricked her into forgetting her way of life and isolated her from her community. There can’t be a woman who doesn’t feel humiliated by the veil for the colonizer and there can’t be a woman who feels humiliated by the veil for the colonized.

In fighting to be free, the colonized man was confined to adhere to his traditions, both mindlessly and through sophisticated arguments. In a fight for her freedom, the colonized woman was confined to choices that agreed with either the narrative of the colonizer or the colonized. When one is confined to choose, one is not free to choose.