The paper investigates the different roles that women covered while participating in freedom movements, usually in the transition between colonial and postcolonial regimes. The question is whether, to use a term coined by Anne McClintock, these women acted in their own right and capabilities or were arsenal of male position in combat and therefore operating under a form of ‘designated agency’. Taking into account Spivak’s unrelenting warning “Can the Subaltern Speak?” the question is how to account for the positions, voices and legacies of female freedom fighters around the gaps of the dominant history writing and the representation of modern mass media.
Starting with Frantz Fanon and his analysis of the historical meaning of the veil in the Algerian revolution this paper will explore diverse figurations of female freedom fighters ranging from virginal martyrs to terrorists and suicide bombers. I will do so by exploring the role of women in different liberation movements such as the guerrilla fighters of the South-African ANC, the tegalit (female combatants) of the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF), and the female suicide bombers of Hamas and the Tamil Tigers among other liberation movements.
This will involve the exploration and analysis of different media, including testimonios, novels, films, documentaries, photographs, news, songs and posters among others. The semiotic, discursive and postcolonial analysis of these sources is meant to avoid seeing the female freedom fighter as a fixed signifier abstract from its cultural context.