Also on point
> “We must go out and find them behind the veil where they hide themselved and in the
> houses where the men keep them out of sight.” The dominant administration solemnly
> undertook to defend this woman, pictured as humiliated, sequestered, cloistered… It
> described the immense possibilites of woman, unfortunately transformed by the Algerian
> man into an inert, demonetized, indeed dehumanized object. The behaviour of the Algerian
> was very firmly denounced and described as medieval and barbaric. With infinite science,
> a blanket indictment against the “sadistic and vampirish” Algerian attitude toward women
> was prepared and drawn up.
>
>
Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism
Presumably Foucault had read Fanon. Certainly, among other things, A Dying Colonialism is a deeply insightful analysis of power/knowledge.
I hadn’t read any Fanon before, so I was unaware of his incredible analysis of the attempts by the colonial administration to prevent Algerian women from wearing the veil, which is, for obvious reasons, massively relevant right now. I’ve given up being disappointed in the British press’s coverage of this issue, but ideally this context would have been mentioned back when the French government was busy outlawing the hijab. How do those Socialist and Communist deputies who voted for the ban manage to call themselves ‘left’ without bursting out laughing at their own absurd hypocrisy? (This is as good a time as any to mention Badiou’s excellent article on the hijab law).
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