Publication of Berber Writings in Fragments (Geuthner): Mohand Saïd Lechani resurrected..

.After publishing Du bon usage de la pédagogie in 2017 with Les Chemins qui montent, a work that brings together M.S Lechani’s writings on education, his grandson Méziane Lechani, a doctor by profession, has just published Ecrits berbères en fragments, in a bilingual edition, with Geuthner. This initiative is commendable in more ways than one. As well as making the writings available to the public, this republication has made it possible to bring together texts that were previously scattered. Its also reveals the prolific and multi-faceted work of M.S. Lechani. Méziane Lechani has worked on his grandfather’s scattered notebooks, sorting and cross-checking them, classifying them by theme, and formatting certain writings that were left undone, such as the ethnographic writings. This shows the rigour of the grandson’s concern to bring together and pass on his grandfather’s work.
Mohand Lechani: a man of many commitments
Mohand-Saïd Lechani was born in 1893 at Aït Halli in Irjen and died in Algiers in 1985. He was educated at Tamazirt, one of the first French schools to open in Kabylia. He was one of the first indigenous teachers during the colonial era. Trained at the Ecole Normale de Bouzareah, where he met illustrious Berberists such as Boulifa, Lechani taught in several schools in Algeria, including Hadjout, where he met Emile Laoust, then headmaster, whom he considered his teacher. The book Du bon usage de la pédagogie, published in 2017, illustrates the modernity of Mohand-Saïd Lechani’s pedagogical and didactic thinking, as researcher Marie Chartier writes in her preface to the volume. Lechani was a proponent of new methods known as ‘free methods’, initiated by Maria Montessori and Célestin Freinet. The originality of the method used by M.S. Lechani is also emphasised by Philippes Meirieu, a famous educational researcher and supporter of the action approach, which makes pupils the actors in their own learning, and of differentiated teaching, which takes account of the level of each learner.
Lechani was also one of the first indigenous Berberists. It was at the Ecole Normale, in contact with Boulifa, Laoust and Picard, whose research companion and friend he later became, that he developed a passion for Berber studies and went on to become a fervent defender of the Amazigh language and culture. These fortunate encounters led him to pass the Moroccan Berber Certificate in 1919 at the Institut des Hautes Études Marocaines in Rabat under the direction of Laoust, then the Berber Language Certificate (Kabyle) in 1947 at the University of Algiers.
Militancy was undoubtedly a common thread linking M.S. Lechani’s various struggles. Throughout his life, he never stopped fighting for just causes and for the Algerian proletariat. His fight for schooling and the emancipation of all indigenous people can only confirm this. His contributions to the newspaper La Voix des humbles show the figure of a man committed to the rights, particularly educational rights, of the indigenous populations.
A rich and prolific body of work
The three chapters of Ecrits berbères en fragments shed light on a prolific body of work comprising ethnographic articles, writings on the Amazigh language and a corpus of oral literature. They are supplemented by appendices whose wealth invites in-depth examination.
Whether they concern Amazigh cosmogony and beliefs, or Kabyle women, the ethnographic writings reveal M.S. Lechani’s in-depth knowledge of traditional Kabyle society. The article on Kabyle women, which runs counter to Western ethnocentric discourse on the status of women in Kabyle society, could be seen, like Boulifa’s, as a scathing response to Hanoteau. In his article ‘L’âme berbère’ (‘The Berber soul’), he responds as a defender and promoter of Amazigh identity to the colonialist discourse on the origin of the Berbers, which he replaces with a ‘local’ vision of a ‘ root identity ’, in the words of his grandson.
The second part brings together a rich corpus of traditional proverbs, maxims, sayings, tales and stories. This collection by M.S. Lechani shows his constant concern to safeguard and pass on his traditional heritage. The collection also includes poems (17 in all), including a long poem of praise known as izli n lḥenni and another dealing with the defeat of 1871. There are also poems composed by Lechani himself. In addition to a certain thematic similarity with Si Mohand (inversion of values, trials of life, exile, etc.), we can see the predominant place occupied by the theme of war in Lechani’s work, which does little to conceal his patriotic fervour. Despite their traditional vein, however, their structure often goes beyond the Mohandian neuvain, indicating a certain creative freedom, a corollary of the author’s freedom of spirit.
The chapter entitled ‘Berber Language’ is a compilation of writings and analyses dealing with the etymology and morphology of the Kabyle language, in a comparative approach which involves using other Amazigh varieties; it also deals with neology: the neological creations of the Berberiser have proved to be correct for a good many of them. K. Nait-Zerad describes them in his afterword as ‘ intuitive but fertile ’.
The appendices at the end of the book are essential because they confirm the coherence, if need be, between M.S. Lechani’s career and her work. For example, Appendix II, entitled ‘Centres of local culture’, dating from 1949, is truly a plea for indigenous cultures to be taken into account, and underlines their importance in the definition of a global and world culture, which in 1949 already anticipated the concept of ‘ world-culture ’ theorised by Edouard Glissant.
A work worth rereading
Unlike Boulifa, whose work on Berberism is widely known, M S Lechani’s contribution to the awakening and illustration of Amazigh culture and identity has remained the prerogative of a restricted circle of initiates and researchers. The publication of Ecrits berbères en fragments (Berber Writings in Fragments) comes at just the right time to fill this gap and reveal the richness of his thought and work. The importance of this pioneer of peasant extraction is embodied by his many faces: teacher, political activist, trade unionist, Berberiser… A great humanist and defender of just causes, committed to the Amazigh language and identity, and to the Algerian proletariat, in particular by advocating schooling for all.
His work is a reflection of the man himself: plural and multiple, it embraces various fields: language, customs, oral literature, etc. It offers rich and abundant material that is now being put at the service of Berber (Amazigh) studies. These writings reveal that M.S. Lechani had a holistic vision of culture. An open vision that invites us to (re)read his work.
Amar Améziane