"I have precious stories to tell that no one knows of” History, Identity, and Memory Amongst Shawi Algerians

Abstract

Abstract This thesis considers a remarkably under-researched ethnic group in Algeria. The Shawi are one of a series of Amazigh populations in the country, but as compared with other Amazigh "fractions", such as the Kabyles (or Moroccan Amazigh groups), their culture, history and place in national life has lain largely unstudied. This considerable gap in the literature is filled in this exploratory thesis, which opens out a number of key areas of what might become Shawi Studies, considering broad and important themes such as gender, language, history and identity. Written from an explicitly decolonial and "insider" perspective, the thesis attempts to locate the Shawi in history and to relate their experiences to broader extant debates relating to Algerian identity and the place of minorities in the post-colonial Algerian polity. The research puzzles which this thesis addresses are, therefore, twofold: one asks why the Shawi have not hitherto been accorded a place in history, and the second asks how our understanding of the history of modern Algeria might change when the Shawi are written into its histories. Within this overarching research frame, the thesis uses ethnographic methods to try to determine how Shawi communities themselves understand the kinds of dilemmas which they face within the nation, such as the reality of maintaining a local language alongside Darija (dialectal Arabic), Fusha (Classical Arabic) and French. The thesis has also served as a process in which the author's own preconceptions as to how to understand Shawi- ness have been interrogated, often with surprising new conclusions being reached, alongside following through the implications of Shawi interviewees interest in the question as to whether a model of a federal Algerian state could generate a truly decolonised future for the Shawi and Algeria more generally.