That Obscure Subject of Desire: France, Algeria, and the Circumscription of the Feminine in Kateb Yacine's "Nedjma"

[...]this article will suggest that Nedjma's own desire on closer inspec- tion may be not merely inscrutable, exotically mysterious, and ultimately an object of male fantasy, but a powerful, active, potentially violent force. [...]the desire to master Nedjma can be understood also as bound up with the search for an independent Algeria, as critics have more than once read her precisely as a symbol for a new nation born out of the union of France and Algeria.