Voicelessness from Beyond the Grave, Djebar's Neutre Féminin in La femme sans sépulture

Abstract: This essay examines Assia Djebar's use of the neutre féminin in La femme sans sépulture (2002) as a narrative practice that inscribes women's voices and bodies while simultaneously effacing them; Zoulikha, the martyred revolutionary whose body is never recovered, functions as a structuring absence rather than an object of documentary recuperation. Building on and departing from Maurice Blanchot's notion of the neutre , this essay argues that Djebar reimagines the concept. Mohamed's analysis traces three markers of the neutre féminin : resistance to documentation, a decentered narrative that disrupts temporal continuity, and the imbrication and inhabitation of feminine voices. In using the neutre féminin , Djebar re-inscribes women's militancy in the Algerian War of Independence while unsettling femininity as a fixed or representable category.