Resumen de L’exil carcéral de femmes sans noms: regards anthropologiques et historiques sur les prisonnières algériennes dans les guerres de colonisation et de décolonisation (1830-1962)
The conquest of Algeria resulted, according to the law, in codifying Algerian surnames and emphasizing identity papers. By observing Algerian women arrested and imprisoned during both the colonization and decolonization phases, it appears that female prisoners are generally reduced to a simple first name. Using the concept of “colonial aphasia” (Ann L. Stoler), to then speak of nominal aphasia, this article seeks to understand strategies created by both French and Algerians around pseudonyms, unidentified first names, names of wars or generic names used to designate Algerian women. To do so, three cases are examined: the female entourage of the Emir Abd el-Kader, the “nurses of the maquis,” and the “bombers” of Algiers, all women brought to France to live exiled in prison. By exposing the logics behind the erasure of names (clandestinity, fictionalization, essentialization, generalization), this article measures, in part through the eyes of anthropologists, lawyers, intellectuals, and prison visitors, those minute traces left by women prisoners notably in France, and the difficulty of doing history and ethnography because it is the name that is key to accessing archives and witnesses
