The colonial harem

This provides a commentary on images, specifically on a series of French postcards depicting mainly eroticized "scenes from Algerian life" under colonial rule during the first three decades of this century (which Alloula calls the "Golden Age of the colonial postcard"). The aim is to address, to some extent create, a new audience, one capable of seeing through the immediate scene of the images in order to view the machinery of colonialism at work, behind the scene. Edward Said has cited The Colonial Harem as an "excellent example" of the kind of post-colonial text that "open[s] the [Western]…