Sisterhood, Solidarity, and Resistance during the Algerian War for Independence: The Boupacha Affair of 1960-62

On February 11, 1960, French military police arrested FLN militant Djamila Boupacha, brutally torturing her until she confessed to planting a bomb in Algiers.  Instead of bowing to an inevitable conviction, Boupacha fought tenaciously to bring her torturers to justice. How was Boupacha able to resist a system so heavily stacked against her?  I argue that female solidarity—imagined through the prism of sisterhood—shaped this case from beginning to end.  A close trusting relationship, expressed in familial terms, bound Boupacha, her sister FLN prisoners, and lawyer Gisèle Halimi together as they refashioned the case into an indictment of the colonial state.  At the same time, Halimi organized prominent French female intellectuals to transform the case into a mediatized “Affair.”  In the hands of this trans-Mediterranean sisterhood, Boupacha’s trial became a lightning rod for indignation over French human rights abuses and an important catalyst for feminist activism in the years ahead.