Description
Book SynopsisThis is a masterful study of the ways in which sex and law were inextricably intertwined in the elaboration of French rule in Algeria. Its great virtue is to demonstrate in careful detail, with an impressive range of material (from court records to novels), exactly how the conquest of Algeria repeatedly challenged the very ideals of the secular universalism in whose name colonization was carried out.? Joan Wallach Scott, author of Sex and Secularism
During more than a century of colonial rule over Algeria, the French state shaped and reshaped the meaning and practice of Muslim law by regulating it and circumscribing it to the domain of family law, while applying the French Civil Code to appropriate the property of Algerians. In Sex, Law, and Sovereignty in French Algeria, 1830–1930, Judith Surkis traces how colonial authorities constructed Muslim legal difference and used it to deny Algerian Muslims full citizenship. In disconnecting
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Surkis combines her careful combing of case files with an equally painstaking review of legal texts, press reports and novels... This approach not only makes the work immensely readable, but also ensures its significant contribution across a number of fields, including histories of gender, law, empire, and emotions.
* The Journal of North African Studies *
Table of ContentsIntroduction
1. Bodies of French Algerian Law
2. Polygamy, Public Order, and Property
3. Making the "Muslim Family"
4. Civilization, the Civil Code, and "Child Marriage"
5. Special Mœurs and Military Exceptions
6. Conversion, Mixed Marriage, and the Corporealization of Law
7. The Sexual Politics of Legal Reform
8. Colonial Literature and Customary Law
Epilogue: Sex and the Centenary
Bibliography
