Between Publics and Privates

Abstract

AbstractThis article discusses the hypervisibility of the Sahrawi munaḍila (female militant) within dominant representations of a Sahrawi revolutionary nationalism. Drawing connections between nation-state building processes, the production of space, and gendered subjectivities, it destabilizes assumptions of institutions as devoid of political movement and shows how the spaces of the National Organization of Sahrawi Women allow women to inhabit the position of loyal critic toward their movement's dominant model of female empowerment. These positions reveal transformations to the way in which space is inhabited intragenerationally, and they reflect the regeneration of a Sahrawi female militancy under the conditions of a protracted struggle for decolonization.