The Amazigh Novel, Mythology of Origins, and Return of the Repressed: A Titrological Approach

In: Review of Middle East studies, Band 56, Heft 2, S. 313-329

Abstract

AbstractAmazigh literature has undergone a veritable historic shift from oral to written form, following the constitutional and institutional recognition of this indigenous language in Morocco and Algeria. We intend to seize this historic moment by focusing on a titrological analysis which, in our view, would be able to highlight the pragmatic side of a stammering literature that would like to proclaim its rebirth and speak to the world. The titular discourse of these novels, still in an experimental phase, informs us about the semiospheres that nourish and irrigate this writing that defossilizes a buried memory, repressed and threatened by the inexorable desymbolization process that traditional cultures are undergoing. This body of work could never be reduced to a simple scription of a narrative folklore that provides it with its cultural semantics; it is driven by the desire to integrate the international literary heritage by dialoguing with it and drawing inspiration from it.