2015/02/01 by Amal Ghazal · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #North African History and Literature #African history and culture studies #Multiculturalism, Politics, Migration, Gender
paper · doi:10.1017/s0020743814001445
openalex publication_date 2015/02/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
Abstract This article examines the significant yet largely overlooked role of the Mzabis, a community from the northern edges of the Algerian desert, in Algerian and Tunisian anticolonialism and nationalism. In so doing, it pursues two aims: first, to shed light on the importance of Tunis to the politicization of the Mzabis in the 1920s and to their induction into local and regional anticolonial and national movements; and second, to highlight the tensions of subsuming regional identities into overarching national identities by focusing on Mzabi political activists’ negotiation of the relationship between the Mzab and Algeria as a national project. The article also explores the spectrum of political possibilities and alternatives envisioned by Mzabis as they participated in religious reform, anticolonial, and nationalist movements. This spectrum, I argue, conveys the fluid relationship between local, national, and regional identities, thus undermining teleological readings of national identity formation.