This article explores representations of Algerian women in colonial, decolonizing and postcolonial contexts, drawing in interdisciplinary fashion on written and visual texts by Malek Alloula, Frantz Fanon, Assia Djebar and Zineb Sedira. It problematizes hegemonic constructions of Algerian women, and cites commentators affiliated to Algeria who present pedagogical models of the potential and limits of counter‐representational projects. ‘The Algerian woman’, as a contested and mobile signifier, is thus read as produced by, but always in excess of, historically‐specific discourses and differently‐embodied reading/spectating positions.