ABSTRACT
Following the travels and vagabondage of the writer Jean Amrouche (1906–1962) and his family, this chapter explores the ambiguous cultural narrative of the Berbers exiled in France and denied cultural existence on their native land, thus experiencing a fragmented perception of language and self. Their linguistic and cultural resilience was the result of a paradox: the need to belong to the world because they were pushed outside of their world. The notions of “nativism,” “cosmopolitanism,” and “landscape” are discussed in conjunction with the Berber question. The Amrouche family can be seen in two complementary ways: their history in exile—having to move first to Tunisia (because they were Christian) and then to France, where the Berber community has always been very strong, especially in Paris—is the consequence of exclusionary Algerian politics; but it is also part of the long history of resistance and resilience of the Berber culture to several forms of domination. The paradox of “being cosmopolitan” in this case is discussed within the paradigm of an inner voice that territorializes and worlds at the same time its traditional forms of life in another language, and of the poetics of the chant as both loss and reparation.
