The multilingual and multimedia Amazigh/Berber Literary Space: global interactions and research questions

Speaker: Daniela Merolla

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The interaction of artistic productions with several languages, literary markets and media is crucial in the Amazigh/Berber literary space. My lecture addresses contemporary directions in Amazigh oral/written narrative and cinematic works set against the historical and literary background of the Maghreb as well as of the Amazigh diaspora in Europe. Novels and short stories published by writers of Amazigh heritage in European languages will also be treated, looking at intersectionality and collective memory. I intend to show that the given examples challenge the adequacy of the Bourdieusian notion of “field” in the case of multilingual and creolized contexts. The term “Berber”, used to indicate the historical continuity of the studies, will also be discussed as a marker of a complex dynamics within the Maghrebian ethnoscape.

About the Author

Daniela Merolla is Professor in Berber Literature and Art at the INALCO, Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (Sorbonne Paris-Cité). She taught and researched African Literatures and Media at Leiden University (NL) until 2015. Her research focuses on African oral literary productions as well as on written literatures and media in African and European languages. The theoretical and methodological approach of her research is interdisciplinary, at the crossroads between comparative literature studies and cultural anthropology. She published among others: "Amazigh/Berber Literature and 'Literary Space'. A contested minority situation in (North) African literatures". In Routledge Handbook of Minority Discourses in African Literature. Ojaide T. et J. Ashuntantang (dir.). Londres et New York : Routledge, 2020. pp. 27-47; Les cinémas berbères. De la méconnaissance aux festivals nationaux (edited with Kamal Naït Zerad et Amar Ameziane), Karthala, Paris, 2019; Searching for Sharing: Heritage and Multimedia in Africa (edited with Mark Turin), Open Book Publishers, Cambridge U.K. 2017; “Beyond ‘two Africas’ in African and Berber literary studies.” The Face of Africa: essays in honour of Ton Dietz, edited by Wouter van Beek, Jos Damen, Dick Foeken, ASCL, Leiden University, the Netherlands, 2017, pp. 215-235; Transcultural Modernities: Narrating Africa in Europe, Rodopi, Amsterdam, 2009 (edited with E.Bekers and S.Helff); De l’art de la narration tamazight (berbère), Éditions Peeters, Paris, Louvain, 2006.

Contact email: ig12@soas.ac.uk