(Source: Cornell University Press)
Cornell University Press has
published a new book on sex, law and sovereignty in French Algeria.
ABOUT THE BOOK
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.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Judith Surkis is Associate
Professor of History at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. She is author
of Sexing the Citizen.
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