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The Amazigh Republic of Letters: A Review and Close Readings
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 January 2024
Extract
Amazigh literature refers to the literary tradition of Amazigh-speaking populations. Imazighen or Amazigh speakers are the Indigenous people of Tamazgha. Described as the Amazigh homeland, Tamazgha encompasses the territory extending from the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean to the oasis of Siwa in southwest Egypt, including Morocco, Algeria, Niger, Mauritania, Chad, Mali, Libya, Burkina Faso, and Tunisia. The countries composing this vast territory of indigenous populations have historically spoken a variety of “awāl Amazigh” (Amazigh language). Although the current varieties of Tamazight spoken nowadays in these places may not be fully intelligible, they are descendant of a common language that was shared by the different people of Tamazgha. This linguistic kinship is what cements the different trends that compose the expansive territory of Tamazgha. Because of long historical processes beyond their control, the inhabitants of Tamazgha speak a variety of non-Indigenous languages, including Arabic, French, and Spanish. Since their advent at different historical periods, these non-Indigenous languages have shaped the cultural and social landscape in Tamazgha in ways that suppressed the indigenous language and prevented it from fully achieving its literary and intellectual potential. These non-indigenous languages have also been used to produce literature and thought, furthering complicating the very notion of Amazigh literature and its contours.
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- Special Focus on Amazigh Literature: Critical and Close Reading Approaches
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Middle East Studies Association of North America
References
1 There is an important body of literary studies that we cannot fully engage with in this short introduction. Readers are advised to read: Galand-Pernet, Paulette, Littératures berbères: Des voix et des lettres (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Merolla, Daniela, De l'art de la narration tamazight (berbère) (Louvain: Éditions Peeters, 2006)Google Scholar; Salhi, Mohand Akli, Littérature kabyle: Contexte, poétique et enseignement (Tizi-Ouzou: Éditions Achab, 2019)Google Scholar; Zaheur, Lahcen, Al-Adab al-amāzīghī al-ḥadīth bi-al-maghrib: Al-nash'a 1967–2000 (Ait Melloul: Publications Tirra, 2021)Google Scholar; Usus, Mohammed, Fī riḥāb al-ungāl: Dirāsāt fī al-riwāya al-amāzīghīyya bi-al-janūb (Ait Melloul: Manshūrāt Rābiṭat Tirra, 2022)Google Scholar.
2 See Guabli, Brahim El, Moroccan Other-Archives: History and Citizenship after State Violence (New York: Fordham University Press, 2023), 34–36Google Scholar.
3 Al-Hasan al-Wazzān, Waṣfu ifriqīyya li Muḥammad ben al-Hasan al-Wazzānī al-fāsī al-mulaqqab bi-līon al-ifrīqī, trans., Mohammed Hajji and Mohammed El Akhdar (Beirut: Dar al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1983), 39.
4 See Brahim El Guabli, “Tankra Tamazight: The Revival of Amazigh Indigeneity in Literature and Art,” Jadaliyya November 1, 2021, accessed 20 October 2023, https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/43440.
5 There is a long scholarly tradition that focused on Amazigh tales. Some important works in this regard include Basset's, René Nouveaux contes berbères: Recueillis traduits et annotés (Paris: Ernest Lereux, 1897)Google Scholar, Mammeri's, Mouloud Contes berbères de Kabylie (Paris: Pocket Jeunesse, 1996)Google Scholar, and Benamara, Hassane, Contes amazighs inédits: Bilingue Amazighe-Français (Paris: Éditions L'Harmattan, 2023)Google Scholar.
6 The Amazigh novelistic tradition has taken off in the last thirty years. Works published in Tamazight in Morocco and Algeria have been increasing by the day, and the existence of nongovernmental organizations, like Tirra and Ad Nuru in Morocco, has led to a phenomenal increase in the novelist output. An example is Mohamed Akounad's Tawargit d imk (A Dream and a Little More) (Aït Melloul: Centre Imprimerie, 2018), which revolves around the preacher Ssi Brahim, who delivers his Friday sermon in a local Amazigh village in Tamazight, highlighting the language's capability to convey both the sacred and the mundane aspects of life.
7 Amazigh theater has an important, albeit underresearched, history, connected to the emergence of the Amazigh cinema in the 1990s. Some studies that focus on theater include Zohra Makach's “Le théâtre marocain d'expression amazighe: un traitement esthétique de l'héritage. L'exemple du metteur en scène Boubker Oumouli.” Expressions maghrebines 21.1 (2022): 53–67 and Bounfour's, Abdellah “Hemmu U Namir ou l’Œdipe berbère,” Etudes et documents Berbères 14 (1996): 119–141CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 The tradition of tamdyazt or sung poetry is widespread in the Amazigh-speaking communities, and Amazigh poetry is one of the most studied facets of this literature. See, for instance, Jouad, Hassan, “Les Imdyazen: une voie de l'intellectualité rurale.” Revue de l'occident musulman et de la méditerannée 51 (1989): 100–110Google Scholar; Aḥmad ‘Aṣīd, Imārīrn: Mashāhīr shuu‘arā’ ahwāsh fī al-qarn al-‘ishrīn (Rabat: IRCAM, 2011); Khadaoui, Ali, La poésie Amazighe entre l'oralité et l’écriture (Paris: Edilivre, 2016)Google Scholar; Lefebure, Claude, “Les poètes Berbères.” Cahiers de la méditerranée 38 (1989): 5–21Google Scholar.
9 For a longer analysis of this point, see El Guabli, “Tankra Tamazight.”
10 Robert Aspinion has written in his book Apprenons le berbère: Initiation aux dialectes Chleuhs that “Berber is not a written language” and that “there is no Berber writing.” See Aspinion, Apprenons le Berbère, 1.
11 Bounfour, Abdellah and Chaker, Salem, Littérature berbère (Paris: Karthala, 2006), 5Google Scholar.
12 See Lahoucine Bouyaakoubi, “Amazigh Neo-Literature: The Challenge of Civil Society,” Jadaliyya, November 1, 2021 accessed 20 October 2023, https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/43441; Zaheur, al-Adab al-amāzīghī, 7.
13 Readers can refer to Zaheur's al-Adab al-amāzīghī for a detailed explanation of the notion of taskla in Tamazight. Zaheur, al-Adab al-amāzīghī, 33–36.
14 Merolla, Daniela, “Intersections: Amazigh (Berber) Literary Space,” in Routledge Handbook of Minority Discourses in African Literature, eds., Ojaide, Tanure and Ashuntantang, Joyce (New York: Routledge), 48Google Scholar.
15 For example, in Vaste est la prison, Assia Djebar explores through a Francophone novel the relationship between individual and collective Amazigh memory and literature in the context of postcolonial Algeria. Also see, Abdelkader Cheref, “Cultural Memory and Resistance in Assia Djebar's Vaste est la prison.” Romance Studies 37.3–4 (2019): 134–148.
16 El Guabli, “Tankra Tamazight.”
17 Casanova, Pascale, “Literature as World.” New Left Review 31 (2005): 72Google Scholar.
18 Pascale Casanova, The World Republic of Letters, trans. M.B. Debevoise (Boston: Harvard University Press, 2007), 20.
19 Ibid., 21.
20 Ibid., 29.
21 Alalou, Alil, “The Sociolinguistic Situation in North Africa: Recognizing and Institutionalizing Tamazight and New Challenges.” Annual Review of Linguistics 9 (2023): 155–170CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
22 Abderrahman El Aissati, “Ethnic Identity, Language Shift and the Amazigh Voice in Morocco and Algeria.” Race, Gender and Class 8.3 (2001): 57–69. Also see, Hart, David M., “The Berber Dahir of 1930 in Colonial Morocco: Then and Now (1930–1996),” The Journal of North African Studies 2.2 (1997): 11–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
23 Brahim El Guabli, “Literature and Indigeneity: Amazigh Activists’ Construction of an Emerging Literary Field,” Los Angeles Review of Books, October 28, 2022, accessed 21 October 2023, https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/literature-and-indigeneity-amazigh-activists-construction-of-an-emerging-literary-field/.
24 See Brahim El Guabli, “When Tamazight was Part of the World,” in Colonial Vocabularies: Teaching and Learning Arabic in Europe (1870–1970), eds., Sarah Irving, Rachel Mairs, and Karène Sanchez-Summerer (Holland: Amsterdam University Press, forthcoming).
25 El Guabli, “When Tamazight Was Part of the World;” Chaker, Salem, “L'Algérie 1962–1974: Le refoulement des études berbères,” Le temps de la coopération: Sciences sociales et décolonisation au Maghreb (Paris: Karthala-IREMAM, 2012)Google Scholar.
26 See Brahim Akhiyyat. Al-Nahḍa al-amāzighiyya kama ‘ishtu mīlādahā wa taṭawwuraha (Rabat: Maḅa‘at al-Ma‘ārif al-Jadīda, 2012); Silverstein, Paul, “The Cultivation of ‘Culture’ in the Moroccan Amazigh Movement,” Review of Middle East Studies 43.2 (2009): 168–177CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see Brahim El Guabli, Morocco's Other.
27 For more information about this context, see Bessaoud., Mohand Aarav Histoire de l'Académie Berbère (Algiers: L'Artisan, 2000)Google Scholar.
28 Guabli, Brahim El, “Where is Amazigh Studies?” Journal of North African Studies 27.6 (2022): 1092–1100CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
29 The seminars of the Agadir Summer University organized by Jam‘iyyat al-jāmi‘a al-ṣayfiyya bi-agādīr (The Association of the Summer University in Agadir), recurrent since 1980, are the prime example in Morocco. In Algeria, the seminar of Yakouren was an important encounter where the participants identified some of the principles of the Amazigh movement in the country. See Algérie, quelle identité?: Rapport de synthèse du Séminaire de Yakouren, 1–31 août 1980 (Algiers: Imedyazen, 1981).
30 For Amazigh film festivals, see Soussi, Houssine, “Amazigh International Film Festivals and the Promotion of Amazigh Cinema” in The Annual Kurultai of the Endangered Cultural Heritage AKECH Conference Proceedings, ed., Anticus Multicultural Association, 154–167 (Constanta, Romania: Anticus Press, 2019)Google Scholar.
31 Aomar Boum and Brahim El Guabli, “Why Amazigh Studies Initiatives Now,” Tamazgha Studies Journal (forthcoming).