Ecrire et résister (Writing and resisting)
Tifin, Berber Literature Review, No 1.

(...) It is a commonly shared conviction that to write in Berber is, for Berbers, an existential choice which places the author on the front line of demands for his or her identity.

Berbers do not think of writing as a pointless exercise or a worldly pleasure. They think of it as a form of resistance.

But is this resistance a rupture, violence or a swansong? Moreover, does the crystallisation of resistance in the form of writing not risk ending up as a form of idolatry of the medium, or the fact that literature is written in Berber is more important that other criteria of assessment?

A literal or written resistance means that there must be common values, ideas, even an ideology, which are shared by all of these resistance fighters or authors. And yet, is not the position of a “resistance” author difficult? Where should the aesthetic choices of each author come in this order of things?

Questioning the relationship between “writing” and “resisting” is also a way of looking at Berber literature, of which we advocate the existence, in a different way.

Tifin Review