La construction d’un mouvement national identitaire kabyle : du local au transnational

International audienceThe process of claiming and constructing the consciousness of a Berber identity began to be widely articulated in the national frame of the North African nation states at the beginning of the 80s. However, the nature and the limits inherent to the ideological choices of the governance systems already installed in the North African countries since their independence would quickly reveal their incapacity to take on a plural linguistic and cultural reality. The answer to these demands was a policy of exclusion and persecution of Berber activists who reacted to this repression with a strategic repositioning of human rights. The inclusion of their action within the overall framework of contemporary global processes allowed the Berber movement to redefine its symbolic values and objectives in a transnational space. In this work, I attempt to follow the evolution and transformations of Kabyle identity and of the national movement since the events of April 1980 in Kabylia. For that purpose, this work will be limited to the Kabyle geographical space (Algeria) including, of course, its diasporic spaces in France, which, later on, will extend towards other countries of the western world, in Europe or North America. I will cover both the period of the main Kabyle mass movements (1980-2001) and of the birth of a Kabyle autonomist then sovereigntist movement, with particular focus on its structuring phases (2001-2010)