African studies and Berber studies in Europe: epistemological reflections on “two Africa’s” (original) (raw)
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Beyond 'two Africas' in African and Berber literary studies
The Face of Africa. Essays in Honour of Ton Dietz. Wouter van Beek, Jos Damen, and Dick Foeken Eds, 2017
Studies on North Africa and African studies developed internationally on relatively parallel tracks: the first were usually included within the scope of research on the Arab world and the Middle East, while the ‘rest’ of Africa was approached and studied as a world comparatively homogeneous and different from North Africa. This articleaims at presenting the criticism of divisive conceptions in African studies and the reflections from a field that has a marginal position in both African research and Middle Eastern research: Berber/Amazigh literary Studies.
Berber Origins and the Politics of Ethnicity in Colonial North African Discourse
PoLAR: Political <html_ent glyph="@lt;" ascii="<"/>html_ent glyph="@amp;" ascii="<html_ent glyph="@amp;" ascii="&"/>"/<html_ent glyph="@gt;" ascii=">"/> Legal Anthropology Review, 1993
More than once during our sojourn in the late 1980s in the migrant boomtown of Nador (90,000-plus Berber capital of northeastern Morocco) we heard people casually comment that Nadoris emigrated to Germany and Holland in such numbers because the Germanic Languages and Tamazight (or Berber) languages were so similar. Linguistic closeness made it easy for the emigrants to leam German and Dutch. On other occasions people mentioned that the cross design tattooed on the foreheads or chins of some older women were souvenirs of the Christian era in Berber North Africa. The presence of lighter skinned children in scattered families throughout the Rif mountains of the north provided further proof, said the locals, of the ancient ties that bound the Rif to Europe. One local school teacher even told us tUn *. his tribal region of Kebdana got its name from a legend about the Roman goddess Diana losing her dog ("Kelb" in Arabic) in the mountains of the area, hence "kelb Diana" or Kebdana.
This article discusses the development of Berber literature in Morocco and the connections between this literature and Moroccan national identity as well as the pan-Amazigh identity movement. Over the last 40 years, the political conjuncture in Morocco has led Berber writers to affirm an alternative definition of Moroccanness, not exclusively based on Arabness, but one in which Berberity is included. This article aims to shed light on modern Berber literature, and on the social space in which it is embedded. It argues that there is no autonomous Berber literary field, the literature being intrinsically bound up with identity issues, but a Berber literary space, located at the intermingling of several fields (the political field and the field of language production in particular). The article first reconstructs the Moroccan political context by exploring the Amazigh movement, its aspirations and its reality. It then focuses on the relationship between the language issues (alphabet, standardization, etc.) and the emergence of a Berber “neo-literature.” Lastly, it moves beyond Morocco into the wider pan-Berber world – the Maghreb and those countries to which Berbers have emigrated – to question the possibility of a transnational Berber literature.
History of Humanities, 2021
Amazigh/Berber Researchers, schoolteachers, students, and writers from the Amazigh/Berber region of Kabylia in northern Algeria made use of colonial knowledge, autobiographical data, and oral sources to revise and to subvert colonial humanities. They contributed to a chain of studies leading to the demise of presuppositions and interpretations of colonial humanities in Berber studies. Though often unrecognized, Kabyle intellectuals “coproduced” as well as challenged colonial literary and historical research. I argue that instead of considering early Kabyle intellectuals as reproducing the “mythologies” of colonial studies, other concepts such as acquisition, discussion, appropriation, and coauthorship are more appropriate. In the field of literary studies in Africa, the example of Kabyle intellectuals points to seemingly universalist humanities as locally bounded and invites reflection on both decolonizing African studies and “provincializing” the general disciplines. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/713265
The interaction of artistic productions with several languages, literary markets and media is crucial in the Amazigh literary space. Focusing on writers who use the Amazigh (Berber) language, this study addresses contemporary directions in Moroccan Amazigh (Berber) artistic works set against the historical and literary background of the Maghreb as well as the Amazigh diaspora in Europe. It also discusses Amazigh elements in Dutch novels and short stories published by writers of Riffian heritage. The term “Berber” will be used throughout this essay to indicate the historical continuity of the field of study.
Intersections: Amazigh (Berber) Literary Space
The interaction of Amazigh artistic productions with several languages, literary markets and media is crucial for understanding recent developments. Focusing on writers who use Tamazight (Berber language), this article addresses contemporary directions in Moroccan Amazigh (Berber) artistic works set against the historical and literary background of the Maghreb as well as the Amazigh diaspora in Europe. The article also discusses Amazigh elements in Dutch novels and short stories published by writers of Riffian heritage. In this article, the term ‘Berber’ is used to indicate the historical continuity of the field of study.
The Place of North African Literature in African Literary Canon
This study is an evaluation of North African literature, aimed at contributing to the few available discourses on the rather "silent" voices of writers from North Africa in mainstream African literary studies. Within the theoretical framework of New Historicism, the study examines the influence of Arab nationalism, colonialism, as well as literary trends and movements on the development of modern North African literature. The study provides textual analyses of selected works
North African Literatures: an introduction
A Companion to African Literatures, 2020
an introductory essay, which suggest a number of ways to look at the literatures of North Africa, including a multivectorial approach to literary history (the movement of literature between the Maghreb and the Egypt; the colonial factors and local literary traditions) and the multilingual dimension of the maghreb.