Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Glossary
- Acronyms & Abbreviations
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Massinissah's Children
- 2 The Republic of Martyrs
- 3 Shifting Centres
- 4 The Theft of History
- 5 The Centres of the World
- 6 Speaking in the Name of the Village
- Conclusion
- Appendix 1 Tables & Figures
- Appendix 2 Texts
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - Massinissah's Children
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Glossary
- Acronyms & Abbreviations
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Massinissah's Children
- 2 The Republic of Martyrs
- 3 Shifting Centres
- 4 The Theft of History
- 5 The Centres of the World
- 6 Speaking in the Name of the Village
- Conclusion
- Appendix 1 Tables & Figures
- Appendix 2 Texts
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Jugurtha is the man who has taken up his uncle Massinissah's slogan ‘Africa to the Africans’. In this sense, he is the pioneer of the people's liberation movement. He is the incarnation of the Berber soul and philosophy whose driving force is the constant struggle to take off the straitjacket that any kind of power imposes on society. He is genealogical continuity in the political, cultural and social sense.
(Hacène Hireche, quoted by Ourad 2000: 27)In 2002, the Algerian national football team played, for the first time in history, a French national team (the French national team, in fact, that had just won the World Cup, and catapulted France into the never-dreamt-of realms of football paradise). The captain of the French team, Zinedine Zidane, world footballer of the year and Marseille's ‘national’ idol, was of Kabyle origin. A large number of the other footballers similarly were second-generation Algerian (or West African) immigrants. The team had been heralded by most of the national press and the political establishment as the living representation of France's multi-cultural, but nevertheless distinctively French, identity. For the match, the newly constructed Stade de France, situated in one of the notoriously ‘Arab’ and notoriously ‘dangerous’ banlieues of Paris, was packed with young Algerians living in France and with beurs (second-generation North African emigrants). On the balcony reserved for the government delegation, the then French prime minister, Lionel Jospin, was watching.
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- Information
- Village MattersKnowledge, Politics and Community in Kabylia, Algeria, pp. 10 - 30Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2009