Blog Post Week 2: Colonizer Men In Focus and In Control

Alloula's Women's Prisons and Stoler's Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power analyze the same situation of colonial power being exercised to control the way that colonized women were portrayed and treated. On the surface, they seem to take very different approaches toward the treatment of native women in a colonial context. Stoler looks at the treatment of race and gender in colonies from the points of view of colonizer men, colonizer women, and to some extent colonized men and children of mixed race. However, she does not inquire into the reactions that colonized women had to their treatment by the colonial system. Alloula’s article, on the other hand, with its inclusion of postcards depicting what is meant to be an accurate portrayal of women’s lives in Algeria, would seem to be taking the women’s perspective on their own positions in society. Instead, it analyzes the point of view of the photographer, representing once again the colonial man.

Alloula sees the use of the postcards, and the images on the postcards, as a way of subjugating native women to a particular representation that revolves around a western need to sexually dominate them. The prison bars that play a pivotal role in every postcard represent the frustration of Europeans in being unable to access native women sexually, either because of cultural or religious differences. However, the photographer (presumably European) seeks to use these prison bars more overtly as a condemnation of Algerian gender standards and culture, thus casting the light of sexual frustration and uncontrollable, primal urges on colonized Algerian men.

This same hypocrisy applies to much of Stoler’s article, which details the many ways in which colonizer men attempt to sexually control native women and, by extension, politically control native men. Stoler also speaks about the negative light that was cast on colonized men by the colonizers, although in this context it applies more to fears of sexually aggressive native men attacking white women than native women. Both of these images appeared to be entirely created and manipulated by the European male, increasing in popular belief only around the time of political and racial dissent.

It is interesting to note that these images were in fact orchestrated as a part of larger schemes to maintain white status in the colonies. The conscious attempt to create racial separation through employment policies such as marriage bans, low salary pay, and encouragement or discouragement of concubinage shows, as Stoler puts it, just how much companies and governments saw “white prestige and profits [as] inextricably linked” (Stoler 18), as well as the connection between white prestige and sexual domination of the colonized population.