Oral Knowledge in Berber Women's Expressions
of the Sacred

Fatima Sadiki

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Conclusion

Berber women’s oral expressions are a deeply culture-bound knowledge that, while transmitting preoccupations of the self, transcends them to the level of the local community, the nation, as well as the spiritual. As such, this experiential knowledge does not need a formal canon to exert transforming power on both the self and the environment. In producing oral and symbolic knowledge of a specific type, Berber women are not mere conduits of this knowledge; they are social critics who give us accounts of underlying social and historical trends and use analytical tools. This is why their knowledge has persevered. Scholars of literature and culture need to go beyond their ideological blinkers and look at orality as a complex and dynamic phenomenon rather than as the primitive condition from which written cultures emerged. Only then will we have a more adequate account of “world literature“ and “world culture,“ going beyond the one-sided gendered and class-based view that many scholars have conventionally presupposed.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11


Notes

1 Speech in Moroccan culture is inherently dependent on the private and public dichotomy. Public and private speeches are two distinct acts: whereas the former is geared towards keeping appearances and, thus, is far from reflecting facts, the latter is more personal and direct.

2 Four main languages are used in Morocco: Standard (written) Arabic, French, Berber, and Moroccan Arabic. Whereas the former two have written versions, the latter two are still perceived as “oral“ languages in spite of the fact that Berber has its own Alphabet and started to be taught in some schools since the end of the last century, and the Moroccan Arabic may be written in the Arabic script.

3 Most of them identify with Egyptian films because the latter are channeled through the typically oral Egyptian dialect.

4 Although Berber has now a written form and is is being introduced in the Moroccan educational system, it is still considered an oral language.

5 Mririda’s poems were translated from Berber into French and published in 1959 by René Euloge in a book called Les Chants de la Tassaout. Some of her poetry was translated from French into English by Sadiqi (2003).


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Oral Knowledge in Berber Women’s Expressions of the Sacred

by Fatima Sadiki