From the mountain sanctuary to the nation

Abstract

Reflecting on a long itinerary of research in the Aurès begun in the 1970s, and the significance today of the ‘high’-cultural model of nationalism advanced by Ernest Gellner (which drew on Weberian sociology in principle and the example of Algeria empirically), this article considers the historical roots and the long-term consequences of the incorporation, via the Islamic reformist (islah) movement of Abdelhamid Ben Badis and his followers, of local cultural producers and local social spaces into an Algerian nation-state politically defined by the hegemony of the National Liberation Front (Front de Libération Nationale (FLN)). Close examination of local and familial strategies for the accumulation and reinvestment of spiritual capital reveals both the local importance, beginning in the 1930s, of linkages to the emerging national sphere and the absence, at a national level, of competition for religious and cultural legitimacy that would contest the imposition of a uniform, hegemonic vision of national community. The reformist movement itself would suffer from the monopolisation of control after independence by the FLN party-state. While the limitations of this model, and the artificial consensus it created, were subsequently revealed in the obstacles to a critical intellectual life and the more radical disaffection of younger generations, it seems that there were few or no other ways, in the 1930s–50s, to articulate local society and national aspirations effectively.

Keywords:

• Algeria
• Aurès
• nationalism
• education
• Islamic reform
• local intellectuals
• FLN

Notes

† Translated by Julia Goddard, a professional translator.

1. That is, one of the official madrasas (in colonial parlance, médersas) of Algiers, Constantine, and Tlemcen. Established in the mid-nineteenth century and remodelled in the mid-twentieth century as lycées franco-musulmanes, these schools trained small numbers of Algerian students in a bilingual curriculum.

2. Mekacher's work is fine recent monograph on the town, published by a local company. We should note, incidentally, that its author is a former pupil of an official madrasa and is therefore bilingual.

3. The Seminars on Islamic Thought (more properly ‘Seminars for the Propagation of Islamic Thought’) were officially sponsored by the Algerian Government through the Ministry of Religious Affairs in the 1970s. In part a counterpoise to the leftward orientation of the regime in economic and social policy (the Agrarian Revolution's land reform, and a degree of rapprochement with the communist underground opposition), the seminars brought leading Islamic personalities to Algeria and provided platforms for a conservative cultural and educational agenda.

4. On this crucial point see also Jane Goodman's paradoxical but stimulating article (Goodman 2013), which also usefully draws attention to the role of educational theatre in the reformists' communications strategy.

5. Personal communication from Robert P. Parks.

6. Durkheim's book originated in a course of lectures delivered in 1904–05 – a significant date given the (then as now, topical) issue of state secularism in France and the 1905 law on the separation of church and state that had such significance, at least in ideological if not in practical terms, for religiously oriented education.

7. On the official rhetoric of the ‘new man’ in independent Algeria, see Taleb Ibrahimi (1973).

8. Cheriet, a less well-known figure, was nonetheless an important personality in the train of the reformist movement and author of a number of works on history and philosophy with a pan-Arabist orientation; his own educational background was in the French system, followed by studies at the Zaytuna in Tunis and a degree in philosophy at the University of Damascus.

9. This dispute, although an essential development of the late 1970s, resists analysis because it took place almost entirely in the context of the press. See the documents gathered during this crucial period by the Revue de Presse Maghreb-Moyen-Orient based in the Centre Diocésain des Glycines in Algiers; for Lacheraf's perspective, see his memoir (Lacheraf 1998, 323–332); for an even-handed assessment of the two positions, see Kerroumi (2006). On this dispute in the wider context of the language question, see also Benrabah (2013, chap. 5).

10. Addressing the question from the perspective of the centre, McDougall (2006, 231–232) reaches the same dismaying conclusion.