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Writing as resistance: Berber literature and the challenges surrounding the emergence of a Berber literary field in Morocco

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Stéphanie Pouessel
Stéphanie Pouessel*
Affiliation:
Institut de Recherche sur le Maghreb Contemporain, Tunis, Tunisia
*
∗Email: stephanie.pouessel@gmail.com
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Abstract

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.

Keywords

BerberMoroccoethnic literaturenational identityminority languages
Type
Special Section: The Autonomy of Minority Literature
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 40 , Issue 3 , May 2012 , pp. 373 - 394
Copyright
Copyright © 2012 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

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