Tensions of Nationalism

The Mzabi Student Missions in Tunis and the Politics of Anticolonialism

Bibliographic Data

ID8968077
AuthorsAmal Ghazal (corresponding author), Amal N Ghazal
Year2015
Volume47
Issue1
Pages47-63
Publication date2015-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Journal Middle East Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-7438 • E-ISSN: 1471-6380
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0020743814001445
OpenAlexW2145045342
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited26

This article examines the significant yet largely overlooked role of the Mzabis, a community from the northern edges of the Algerian desert, in Algerian and Tunisian anticolonialism and nationalism. In so doing, it pursues two aims: first, to shed light on the importance of Tunis to the politicization of the Mzabis in the 1920s and to their induction into local and regional anticolonial and national movements; and second, to highlight the tensions of subsuming regional identities into overarching national identities by focusing on Mzabi political activists’ negotiation of the relationship between the Mzab and Algeria as a national project. The article also explores the spectrum of political possibilities and alternatives envisioned by Mzabis as they participated in religious reform, anticolonial, and nationalist movements. This spectrum, I argue, conveys the fluid relationship between local, national, and regional identities, thus undermining teleological readings of national identity formation

Aesthetics · Identity (music · National Identities · National identity · Nationalism · Negotiation · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Teleology · African history and culture studies · Gender Studies · Law · Multiculturalism, Politics, Migration, Gender · North African History and Literature

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