Sex, Law, and Sovereignty in French Algeria, 1830–1930

Awards:   Winner of Association for Middle East Women's Studies (AMEWS) 2020 (United States) Winner of Association for Middle East Women’s Studies (AMEWS) 2020 (United States)
Author:   Judith Surkis
Publisher:   Cornell University Press
ISBN:  

9781501739507


Pages:   354
Publication Date:   15 December 2019
Recommended Age:   From 18 years
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
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Sex, Law, and Sovereignty in French Algeria, 1830–1930


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Awards

  • Winner of Association for Middle East Women's Studies (AMEWS) 2020 (United States)
  • Winner of Association for Middle East Women’s Studies (AMEWS) 2020 (United States)

Overview

"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 Muslim law from property rights, French officials increasingly attached it to the bodies, beliefs, and personhood. Surkis argues that powerful affective attachments to the intimate life of the family and fantasies about Algerian women and the sexual prerogatives of Muslim men, supposedly codified in the practices of polygamy and child marriage, shaped French theories and regulatory practices of Muslim law in fundamental and lasting ways. Women's legal status in particular came to represent the dense relationship between sex and sovereignty in the colony. This book also highlights the ways in which Algerians interacted with and responded to colonial law. Ultimately, this sweeping legal genealogy of French Algeria elucidates how ""the Muslim question"" in France became-and remains-a question of sex."

Full Product Details

Author:   Judith Surkis
Publisher:   Cornell University Press
Imprint:   Cornell University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.40cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.907kg
ISBN:  

9781501739507


ISBN 10:   1501739506
Pages:   354
Publication Date:   15 December 2019
Recommended Age:   From 18 years
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us.

Table of Contents

"Introduction 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"

Reviews

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 *


Sex, Law, and Sovereignty opens up new ways to understand debates about religious and sexual pluralism, and marvelously demonstrates how attention to the paradoxical effects of instability and the workings of transgression, scandal, and crisis, lead to critical analytic perspectives. -- Todd Shepard, Johns Hopkins University, author of <I>Sex, France, and Arab Men, 1962-1979</I> This 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 <I>Sex and Secularism</I>


This 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 <I>Sex and Secularism</I> Sex, Law, and Sovereignty opens up new ways to understand debates about religious and sexual pluralism, and marvelously demonstrates how attention to the paradoxical effects of instability and the workings of transgression, scandal, and crisis, lead to critical analytic perspectives. -- Todd Shepard, Johns Hopkins University, author of <I>Sex, France, and Arab Men, 1962-1979</I>


Author Information

Judith Surkis is Associate Professor of History at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. She is author of Sexing the Citizen.

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