From exile to cultural nationalism: reading Fadhma Amrouche as a Kabyle cultural nationalist

ABSTRACT

The beginning of the Amazigh cultural movement is often traced to the Berber Spring of 1980 which was triggered by the cancellation of Mouloud Mammeri’s lecture on ancient Berber poetry at the University of Tizi Ouzou in Algeria. But the intellectual foundation of the movement can be traced to the discourse of an Amazigh cultural nationalism which developed since the 1930s in the articulation of anti-colonial sentiments. From Si Amar Saïd ou Boulifa to Mouloud Mammeri, several writers from Kabylia have been identified as having contributed to the construction of a Kabyle Berber identity in their articulation of colonial subjectivity. But in this list of cultural nationalists from Kabylia, Fadhma Amrouche’s name is conspicuously absent despite the rich legacy of Kabyle oral poetry and songs she left behind and her autoethnography My Life Story: The Autobiography of a Berber Woman ([1968] 1988). This essay seeks to situate Fadhma Amrouche in the above-mentioned list by arguing that her eternal sense of alienation and exile as a Berber Christian colonised subject, is also a story about her adherence to her Kabyle identity. This shall be done by examining the relationship between her exile, quest for identity, and cultural revival as expressed in her autobiography.

KEYWORDS:

• Amazigh cultural movement
• Kabyle identity
• Berber identity
• Cultural nationalism
• Fadhma Amrouche

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Brahim El Guabli (2021) defines ‘Tankra Tamazight’ as ‘a sociopolitical and cultural project’ that aims to revitalise ‘Amazigh language and its diverse cultural expressions … the prism of indigeneity, enunciating a new configuration of the cultural North Africa and its adjacent literary and geo-cultural spaces’. In this project, ‘Amazighitude’ or the ‘active consciousness of one’s Amazigh indigeneity’ is placed as the ‘cornerstone identity’ of North Africa.

2 Seeing no contradiction between the expression of Algerian nationalism and their Kabyle Berber traditions, these members, most prominent of whom was Amar Imache, ‘emphasized the historical continuity of the Berbers in their resistance to foreign rule and assimilation’ (Maddy-Weitzman 2011, 46).

3 According to James McDougall, the term Amazigh (pl. Imazighen) became a part of common parlance for self-reference among the Berbers of Kabylia, Aurès, and the Mzab only after 1945 when the term was popularised through the nationalist song ‘Arise, son of Amazigh’. However, the term was used by Berbers of central Morocco and the Tuareg regions, albeit in slight variations, and appears to be derivations of Maxyes, Mazax, and Mazices, Latin and Greek names of antiquity for North Africans (McDougall 2003, 68).

4 Mohand Aarav Bessaoud, in the foreword to his Heureux les Martyrs qui no’ont rien vu (1963) refers to this suppression of differences as a proof of the ‘political maturity’ and ‘spirit of sacrifice’ possessed by the early Kabyle nationalist leaders (Bessaoud 1963 (1991), 16)

5 One school of the Algerian nationalist discourse founded on the Algerian ulama’s Salafi movement argued that the purest and oldest cultural and linguistic identity of Algeria is Arabic, and the narrative of the Berber identity in Kabylia was a French colonial fabrication to bring about a divide between the mountainous people and those living in the plains. Due to this reason, the first casualty of Algeria’s decolonising project was the Berber dimension of Algeria’s identity.

6 Mouloud Feraoun’s The Poor Man’s Son (2005), an autobiographical account of Fouroulou Menrad, a poor man’s son, who achieves colonial modernity through the French colonial school system, and succeeds to become a school-teacher, is a depiction of a native Kabyle village and life from an insider’s perspective. The narrative also contains a critique of the colonial conditions of deprivation, poverty and exile, while highlighting the benefits of education brought by the French school system. At the same time, it also dwells on the sense of alienation felt by the protagonist as a result of this education.

This similar sense of alienation is portrayed by Mouloud Mammeri through Arezki, his protagonist of The Sleep of the Just (1958). Arezki’s story is one of initial disavowal of his indigenous culture for the sake of French culture that he is initiated into through his readings and conversations with his teacher, M. Poiré. However, the realisation of the impossibility of assimilation takes him through a process of return, by rejecting the entire French intellectual philosophy and European history and attempting to join the Algerian nationalist group in Paris.

While both the above novels highlight the colonial condition of Algeria, they are set in Kabylia and are in effect, attempts to respond to the colonial ethnography on Kabylia. By this virtue, they also play important roles in contributing to the mapping of Kabyle identity.

7 While there were many writings that identified all Algerian natives as Arabs, most 19th-century colonial ethnographic works on Algeria, such as the ones produced by Daumas and Fabar (1847), Alexis de Tocqueville, and Hanoteau and Letourneux (1872) perceived the mountain-dwelling Kabyles as racially, linguistically, and culturally different from those who lived in the plains, and whom they identified as Arabs. Some of them believed that the Kabyles had lived for long, in established villages within a social and political system which was more in sync with Europe than their plains-dwelling counterpart. These, and the perception that the Kabyles had a Christian antecedent and adhered to Islamic norms only loosely, had been integral to the Kabyle Myth, which presented Kabyles as eligible candidates for assimilation. While Fadhma Amrouche expressed her difference from her Arab neighbours in her inability to understand their language, it is also seen that she felt the difference in terms of her Catholic religion. In other words, when she refers to the ‘Arabs’ as her other, she is doing so from her position of an Amazigh (non-Arab language) and a Christian (non-Muslim) woman, who may also have been influenced by the colonial perception of the Arabs.

8 Belkacem Amrouche did not give up his fez, the traditional cylindrical hat, which was a mark of his Kabyle identity. This hindered his promotion to a higher place and he was surpassed by other colleagues who did not even have their school certificates.

9 The Kabyle Myth comprises a set of narrative templates which emerged from 19th-century ethnographic writings by colonial military and civilian officers, and which developed the colonial discourse that was being perpetuated in Algeria as well as in France. These ethnographic accounts often presented the Kabyles in a more or less positive light and juxtaposed them with their Arab counterparts. The most enduring part of the Kabyle Myth has been the narrative that the Kabyles are racially and on the civilisation ladder, closer to Europe, and that they are a fiercely independent people (Daumas and Fabar 1847; Carette 1853; Hanoteau and Letourneux 1872). Paul Silverstein (1996), Patricia M.E. Lorcin (2014) and Karima Dereche-Slimani (2004) perceive this Kabyle Myth as occupying a significant place in post-independence Algeria’s political, linguistic and cultural politics which marginalised Kabyle political aspiration, and linguistic and cultural identity.

10 Converted Christians or indigenous Kabyles who were assimilated into French culture like Fadhma and Belkacem Amrouche were derogatorily called ‘Roumis’ in Kabylia and were targeted by the nationalist militants during the Algerian war of independence as traitors and informers. On the other hand, for the French colonial powers, as well as European settlers, all Algerian natives, Muslims and Christians, assimilated or not, were natives nevertheless, and, during the war, they were uniformly suspected of being ‘maquis’ or militants.

11 Fadhma Amrouche finished her autobiography in 1946 and its publication was supposed to be taken care of by Jean Amrouche. However, Belkacem Amrouche, her husband, prevented her from having it published, at least when he was alive. After Belkacem Amrouche’s death in 1959, followed by Jean Amrouche’s in 1962, Fadhma Amrouche added an epilogue to her autobiography and handed the responsibility of the book to Taos Amrouche, who got it published in 1968.

12 Patricia Lorcin holds Sallust’s Jugurthine War (circa 41–40 B.C.) as a significant work that influenced French colonial discourse on the Kabyles after their conquest. The Berbers, believed to be inhabitants of ancient Numidia, and hence descendants of Jugurtha’s tribe, would be easily conquered, they believed, with the help of the invaluable information contained in the book (Lorcin 2014, 21). True enough, colonial historians such as Henri Gorrot reproduced accounts of ancient historical personalities such as Masinissa, Jugurtha, and Kahina to link the Berbers with Europe.