Oral Knowledge in Berber Women's Expressions
of the Sacred

Fatima Sadiki

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The Berber Language and Women as the Backbone of Orality in Morocco

Orality is associated more with women than with men in Morocco. Women keep households together, raise children, transmit and recreate the tradi- tions and values that characterize Moroccan culture. Moroccan women are conscious of the significance of this role and thus use oral literature to both carry out their social duties and express their inner selves (Sadiqi 2003). As orality is also related to illiteracy and as the majority of illiterates in Mo- rocco are women, the latter express their inner self, transmit various types of knowledge to their children, and communicate with the world outside home exclusively through the oral medium. The written medium is gener- ally perceived by these women as alien; and even when the written lan- guages (Standard Arabic and French2) are used orally in the audio-visual media, non-literate women do not readily identify with these languages.3

Moroccan society is regulated by a deep and pervasive space-based patriarchy (Mernissi 1975) which distances women and their modes of expression from the public spheres of authority. In such a context, critical assumptions, historical circumstances, and ideologies have not been sympathetic to oral literature in general and women’s literature in particular.  This fact has deeply affected the ability of men and women to appreciate female oral literature. The way Moroccan women express themselves (orally or in writing) needs to be seen against the general socio-cultural context in which they live. Many women were and are still misunderstood and, hence, distanced from canon-building; these women emerged at the margin of Moroccan society and were (and are) doubly “other“: as women and as individuals who live a peculiar tension between the oral and the written mediums.

As such, women’s orality highlights the tension between the written and the oral discourses in Morocco and makes ordinary “trivial“ texts problematize canonical texts by claiming that just as women have a specific way of writing (in Cixous’ sense), they have a specific way of “speaking“ and “telling“ (Kapchan 1996). This female way of speaking displaces the laws of both gender and genre in the Moroccan context.

Orality is also related to the two mother tongues in Morocco (Berber and Moroccan Arabic). Indeed, the unique place of orality in Morocco is largely due to the fact that the two mother tongues used in this country (Moroccan Arabic and Berber) are oral4. The tight link between non-written mother tongues and orality positions the latter at the center of the Moroccan speech community’s sensory experience and makes of it a valuable source of information and a strong locus of cultural values. As such, orality is a powerful system of communication that deeply shapes the way visual and non-visual representations of Moroccan cultural roles.

The place of Berber in Moroccan oral literature is central given the historicity of this language. Efforts are being made at the highest official level to preserve Berber oral literature. Berber is very much of a “female“ language (Sadiqi 2003). The contexts in which this language is used are very different from the ones in which Standard Arabic is used, and, hence, the social meanings associated with the former are different from the ones associated with the latter. Unlike Standard Arabic, Berber is neither associated with politics nor with religion in the Moroccan socio-cultural context. The fact that no holy book has ever been written in Berber removes this language from the religious political sphere. The relationship between Berber and religion is explained by Brett and Fentress (1996) in historical terms. According to these authors, the first Berber religion in North Africa was based on Punic dual deities: the male god Baal and the female goddess Tanit and, as a result of this dual character of religious symbolism, ancient Berber societies were organized into public (or male) space which was the domain of external politics, and private (or female) space which was the domain of internal traditions. Interestingly, although these domains were distinct, they did not oppose each other. With the advent of Islam, a typically monotheist religion, Berber societies had to suppress their female characteristics in the public sphere of authority in order to form part of the (male) world of Islam. The Berber female aspect of ancient Moroccan societies became gradually engulfed in magic and saint veneration. According to Brett and Fentress, present-day Moroccan women’s participation in mainstream religion is rather marginal and is often symbolized in female rites and rather “unorthodox“ or even “heretical“ practices of magic, sorcery, and ancestor/saint veneration. This is evident in the cultural deep-rooted association of women with the Zawias (religious sects) and marabouts (saints). These practices hindered women’s public access to the official language and religion and relegated them to unsanctioned domains, a fact which made women open to constant ambiguity.

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Oral Knowledge in Berber Women’s Expressions of the Sacred

by Fatima Sadiki