Paper short abstract:

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the long-dating relationships between African Studies and Berber (Literary) Studies. The issue will be approached by looking at the complex relation between North Africa and the ‘rest’ of Africa.

Paper long abstract:

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the long-dating relationships between African Studies and Berber (Literary) Studies. The issue will be approached by looking at the complex relation between North Africa and the 'rest' of Africa.

Historically, research studies on North Africa and African Studies have internationally developed on relatively parallel tracks since studies on North Africa have usually been included within the scope of research on the Arab world and on the Middle Eastern world, while 'the rest' of Africa has been approached and studied as a relatively homogeneous world different from the Northern African one. In the way research developed we can recognize socio-historical processes that emphasised the unity of Africans by defining and "essentializing" their identity in terms of colour. Such socio-historical processes, and related disciplinary motivations, are now well-known and criticized (Zeleza 2006, Benthar 2011). The epistemological force that moulds the separation of the "two Africas" is however still at work, for example, in the preponderance of papers that privilege 'black' Africa at the conferences organised by AEGIS (Africa-Europe Group for Interdisciplinary Studies). In this sense, the state of the art of Berber Studies offers a specific case of the critique of the separation between a North and a South in Africa and the opportunity to reflect on the construction of disciplinary fields of African research.