Inside The Battle Of Algiers Sparknotes

Zohra Drif is a retired lawyer, freedom fighter, FLN member, and woman of Algeria. Born in Tissemsilt, Algeria, in 1934, she is well known for her remarkable efforts in the Algerian Independence Movement. Her memoir, Inside the Battle of Algiers: Memoir of a Woman Freedom Fighter, includes her experience as a member of the revolutionary movement opposing the French, whose power held onto Algeria for over a century. Drif's account as an upper-class Algerian woman demonstrates her identity as an Algerian woman but also one who understands the elite systems established by the French. Moreover, her justifications of terrorism in the light of the revolution as well as her attraction to the independence movement displays the power relations of the

With the French education she received, her childhood was marked by the success of her intelligence. However, she quickly came to learn how nothing she could do would allow her to fit in better or be better respected than the Europeans there. For instance, she describes a particularly sad day in her childhood when one day, she learned what her successes meant: "Never had the distance between the school and home seemed so long. In a few short seconds, I had just lost my best friend and my innocence. I suddenly realized that neither my excellent grades throughout my schooling - the result of all my efforts and my ability to assimilate to the French language and culture - nor my more comfortable social standing compared to Roselyne, the European. With one simple sentence, she had put me in my place as the 'native,'" (9). Here, Zohra demonstrates that her identity as an Algerian, no matter her societal status, will forever come in the way of her best attempts to assimilate into French culture, for to them, she will never,

Being an upper-class woman who could fit into both parts of society, her writing includes interesting contrasting descriptions of the more modern French areas and the traditional styles of Casbah, seemingly untouched by colonialism as she says: "It seemed unreal to me … everything around me was so new, so different from the houses in my region, so refined, so harmonious. I smiled at the thought of living in a home that itself seemed to have resisted colonization and its misfortunes'' (137). As a woman who grew up essentially assimilating into French society, regarding her education, her shock here demonstrates the complicated power relations between the traditional and the modern - which was what she was accustomed to knowing. Her astoundment further points to the visible differences between what the French built and the pre colonialism housing and how she yearns for the traditional to become customary again. Another interesting power relation within her memoir has to do with how she and the rest of her friends and organization were cast in the public eye. The French newspapers, who wrote about the vicious and violent nature of the FLN, casting them as malicious villains, of course, do not mention their own horrendous and downright cruel actions. Drif recalls this by expressing: "These 'outlaws,' these 'terrorists' were stunned by the sadism and cruelty