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

Abstract

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.