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Taskla or The Creation of a New Literature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 February 2024

El Khatir Aboulkacem
El Khatir Aboulkacem*
Affiliation:
Institut Royal de la Culture Amazighe, Rabat
*
Email: aboulkacem@ircam.ma
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Abstract

Taskla means literature in Tamazight. A neologism, taskla has been used since the 1980s by a group of Kabyle cultural activists, who had joined together in the academic association Imdyazen, to refer to modern literary genres that have been emerging in the field of Amazigh creation since at least the 1960s. Members of the Moroccan Association for Research and Cultural Exchange (AMREC) also adopted the term to encapsulate the work they were doing to construct the new Amazigh literature. This article reconstructs the choices that Moroccan Amazigh activists undertook to establish a full-fledged literary field between 1967 and the early 2000s. Contextualizing this new literature in a longer history of lmāzghī (Amazigh writing in Arabic script), the article reveals how a process of intentionality and active construction of the field has led to the development and current flourishing albeit changing, landscape of Amazigh literature.

Keywords

AmazightasklalmāzghīId Belkassamidentity
Type
Special Focus on Amazigh Literature: Critical and Close Reading Approaches
Information
Review of Middle East Studies , Volume 56 , Issue 2 , December 2022 , pp. 362 - 373
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Middle East Studies Association of North America

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Footnotes

Translated by Tegan Raleigh Independent Scholar Email: teganraleigh@gmail.com

References

1 This text is a slightly modified version of an article entitled “Remarques à propos de la littérature écrite d'expression berbère au Maroc,” which appeared in the November-December 2013 issue of Revue Europe (pp. 45-55) dedicated to Moroccan literature.

2 Regarding the context and fundamental features of this production, see Aboulkacem, El Khatir, “La production manuscrite des informateurs berbères à l'époque coloniale: le cas de Ssi Brahim Akenkou,” Etudes et Documents Berbères, 35-36 (2016a): 31-51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 To get a sense of these kinds of documents and how they are used to study the legal structure, see Montagne, Robert, “Un magasin collectif de l'Anti-Atlas. L'Agadir des Ikounka,” Hespéris, 9 (1929): 145-266Google Scholar and, for their use in the study of social history, see Berque, Jacques, Structures sociales du Haut-Atlas, (Paris: PUF, 1955)Google Scholar.

4 For additional information on the written tradition in Amazigh in Southern Morocco, see Aboulkacem, El Khatir, “ssirt n Brahim Akenkou d lasl nns d nnsb nns et ttɜlim x dar iclḥiyn n Wactukn de Ssi Brahim Akenku” in Institut Royal de la Culture Amazighe (Rabat: Publication de l'Institut Royal de la Culture Amazighe, 2010)Google Scholar; Amahan, Ali, “L'écriture en tachelhit est-elle une stratégie des zaouïas” in Drouin and Roth, eds., A la croisée des études libyco-berbères, mélanges offerts à Lionel Galand et Paulette Galand-Pernet (Paris: CNRS, 1993): 437-449Google Scholar; Van Boogert, Nico, The Berber Literary Tradition of the Sous, with an Edition and Translation of “The Ocean of the Tears” by Muhammad Awzal (d. 1749) (Leiden: Nederlands Institut voor het Nabije Oosten, 1997)Google Scholar; and Medlaoui, Mohamed, Raf’ al ḥijab ‘an maghmur taqafa wal ‘adad ma'a ṣiyagha li'aruḍay al ‘amazighiya wal mlaḥun/ la découverte de la culture et des littératures méconnues et l’élaboration des métriques de l'amazighe et du malhun (Rabat: Publications de l'Institut Universitaire de la Recherche Scientifique, 2012)Google Scholar.

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6 Ghouirgate, Mehdi, L'ordre almohade, 1120-1269. Une nouvelle lecture anthropologique (Toulouse: Presses universitaires du Mirail, 2014)Google Scholar; Méouak, Mohamed, La langue berbère au Maghreb médiéval. Textes, contextes, analyses (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2016)Google Scholar; and Ousgan, Laoucine, ad dawla wa lmujtama' fi l'asr al muwahidi (518h-668H))/Pouvoir et société à l'époque almohade (1125/1270) (Rabat: Publications de l'Institut Royal de la Culture amazighe, 2010)Google Scholar.

7 See Aboulkacem, El Khatir, Nationalisme et élaboration du postulat identitaire de la nation au Maroc (Rabat: Publications de l'Institut Royal de la Culture Amazighe, 2021)Google Scholar.

8 In particular, see Terhi Leitnen, “Nation à la marge de l'Etat.” La construction identitaire du Mouvement culturel amazigh dans l'espace national et au-delà des frontières étatiques, Doctoral thesis, (Paris, EHESS, 2003), and Lahoucine Ouazzi, Nash'at al-ḥaraka at-taqafiya al-amazighiyya. Sayrurat tahawul al-wa'y bi lhuwiyya al-amazighiyya min al-wa'y at-taqlidi ila al-wa'y al-ḥadati, (Formation du mouvement culturel amazigh au Maroc, processus de la transformation de la conscience identitaire d'une conscience traditionnelle en une conscience moderne), Doctoral thesis in Political Science, (Rabat, AMREC Publication, 2001).

9 Regarding certain aspects of this production, see Aboulkacem, El Khatir, “Action collective et production culturelle: le cas de la néo-culture amazighe au Maroc” in Action collective en milieux amazighes (Rabat: Publications de l'Institut Royal de la Culture Amazighe, 2012), 11-78Google Scholar; and Lakhsassi, Abderrahmane, “Amazighité et production culturelle” in Rachik, H., ed., Les Usages de l'identité amazighe au Maroc (Casablanca: Imprimerie Najah al-Jadidah, 2006), 93-127Google Scholar.

10 Bouzid, Ahmed, preface to AMREC, Imuzzār (recueil de poèmes d'intellectuels membres de l'Association) (Rabat, 1974), 8Google Scholar.

11 Ibid., 16.

12 Azayku, Ali Sadki, Timitar: Collection of Poems, (Rabat: Okad, 1988), 1Google Scholar.

13 For more details about the debates regarding the script, see El Guabli, Brahim, Moroccan Other-Archives: History and Citizenship after State Violence (New York: Fordham University Press, 2023), 27-26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Program, Myth, Reality. Reference for this article was the French translation Nations et nationalisme depuis 1870. Programme, mythe, réalité by D. Peters (Paris, Gallimard, 1992 (1990)), 108.