In The Battle Of Algiers

An easy way for the colonized to infiltrate white civilized spaces is through the use of language, as “[m]astery of language affords remarkable power” (Black Skin White Masks 18). For example, the colonized Algiers forced most of the population to speak French, the language of the white western world. Originally, the French colonizers imagined this would be another power structure that would stand in the way of the colonizer’s uprising; not only is language a piece of culture that requires little enforcement for infiltration into large communities but forcing the mother language onto the native people re-entrench them into the colonial system and is a tangible connection between themselves and their oppressors. The French attempted to use their

Most prominently was the ability of the women to change their appearances to mask themselves as French women to very literally pass between the Casbah and the French quarters. The scene involves Djamila, Zohra, and Hassiba in a room together, in complete silence, attempting to change their appearance to look more Western. Djamila forgoes her veil for a tight slip dress, Zohra loses her traditional costume to put on a blouse and skirt, and Hassiba bleaches her dark brown hair in favor of the blonde common among the French. These women have hard glares and stoic faces, suggesting that these changes were for something bigger than just personal aesthetics, and the audience later sees Kader giving each woman a bomb to plant in different places of the French quarters. These women choose to strip themselves of their culture, of their subjectivity, in order to pass through the barrier that separates black from white and savage from civilized; they accept the Other’s culture upon themselves to infiltrate their spaces and cause damage to their space like how the French had been causing damage to the Arabs’ space. Shortly after in the film, the audience sees the ease with which all three women pass through the security barrier separating French space from Arab space – upon acceptance of the Other’s culture, the infiltration of their space became as easy as just walking into it. The guards were unsuspecting, even deciding to make advances towards one of the women, and they simply allowed the women to go through the check point. In this case, while language was a piece of the acceptance of Djamila, Zohra, and Hassiba into the French quarters, they were required to give up much more than just their language in order to destabilize the power structure that currently existed. The focus on the girls’ seriousness during the scene and leaving out