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An ethnology of dialogue and sharing : Camille Lacoste-Dujardin

Une ethnologie du dialogue et du partage : Camille Lacoste-Dujardin

Cahiers de Littérature Orale n°90

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Published on vendredi, février 21, 2020

Summary

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The aim of this thematic issue is to pay tribute to Camille Lacoste-Dujardin (1921-2016), an eminent figure of French ethnology who dedicated her fifty-eight years scientific career to the study of the complexities of the Kabyle society and, beyond, to those of any human society. Indeed, even though her ethnological researches seem to have been “restricted to a people of mountain dwellers, its language and culture”, actually “they have never been limited neither in space, nor in time”, and “not even strictly confined to some single object of observation”; they have rather always involved “references to larger [sociocultural] wholes”.

Announcement

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Coordination

  • Souad Azizi (LADES, Hassan II University of Casablanca)
  • Cécile Leguy (LACITO, Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3)

Argument

The aim of this thematic issue is to pay tribute to Camille Lacoste-Dujardin (1921-2016), an eminent figure of French ethnology who dedicated her fifty-eight years scientific career to the study of the complexities of the Kabyle society and, beyond, to those of any human society. Indeed, even though her ethnological researches seem to have been “restricted to a people of mountain dwellers, its language and culture”, actually “they have never been limited neither in space, nor in time”, and “not even strictly confined to some single object of observation”; they have rather always involved “references to larger [sociocultural] wholes” (Lacoste-Dujardin, 2010:76). The bibliography of this tireless researcher comprises 14 individual books and some 200 scientific articles, of which the main themes are tales, ethnopolitics, male/female relationships, as well as the integration of young women born of North African parents in France (look at the selected bibliography). As a student of André Leroi-Gourhan and Lionel Galand, her respective ethnology and Berber language professors, she begins her career as an ethnologist during a troubled historical period marked by the independence wars and the decolonization of North and Western African countries (1950-1960). Faithfull to the teachings of her thesis director, André Leroi-Gourhan, without being insensitive to the heuristic and methodological virtues of the structural analysis, Camille Lacoste-Dujardin participated in the development of a postcolonial, dialogic and dynamic ethnology, which breaks with the paradigms of an ahistorical, backward-looking and essentialist, or even an ethnology in collusion with the colonial regime (Lacoste-Dujardin, 1997: 55-58, 261-272).

Commenting her itinerary, Pierre Robert Baduel (2017) – as well as Camille Lacoste-Dujardin herself (1982: 7; 2010: 83) – present the interest in Kabyle tales as resulting from a combination of circumstances (the discovery of a corpus collected by Auguste Mouliéras in the 1880’s) and the geopolitical context (the war of Algeria) preventing her from access to the Kabyle field. Nevertheless, this oral and mainly feminine literature represents a major and constant subject in Lacoste-Dujardin’s work, from the Traduction des Légendes et contes merveilleux de la Grande Kabylie d’Auguste Mouliéras (1965) to Contes de femmes et d’ogresses en Kabylie (2009), through Le conte kabyle, étude ethnologique (1982). A prime contribution has been the break away from the classical orientalist approach and the elaboration of an original ethnological approach of tales as “witnesses of the interior” (Lacoste-Dujardin, 1982: 111). “A kind of self-ethnography” (Ibid.), the analysis of which enables the discovery of the culture of a social group, its value system, the coexistence of competing conceptual systems, as well as the inner social tensions which are displayed mainly by two categories of tales: the ancient tales (“peasant tales”) which enhance a mythicized traditional social order and the more recent ones (“political tales”) which present heroes contesting the established order (Lacoste-Dujardin, 1982 : 485-486). She has thus “revolutionized” the study of the Kabyle tales through an innovative approach considering them as “ethnographic documents” (Lacoste-Dujardin, 1982: 45) revealing of male/female relationships and feminine counter-powers, of which they are a privileged space of expression and a field of observation as important as direct ethnographic investigation.

From Dialogue de femmes en ethnologie (2002) to La vaillance des femmes (2008), through Des mères contre les femmes (1985), Camille Lacoste-Dujardin has elaborated an ethnology of the complexity of male/female relationships, sensitive to their variability according to the sociocultural context and to their dynamics in time and space. Des mères contre les femmes develops an original thesis on the issue of the mechanisms of transmission and perpetuation of women subordination, while showing that the subjection of women to the patrilineal and patriarchal order is done by means of feminine agents, the “mothers of boys” who are its kingpins. As “delegates of masculine authority” in the domestic space, these mothers of adult and married sons (timɣarin) make themselves the “accomplices of masculine power”, which is the principal source of their own authority and power on the younger women (Lacoste-Dujardin, 1985 : 130-132). In reaction against the thesis of the general consent of women to male domination and to the apprehension of Kabyle society as the conservatory – and instrument of a socio-analysis – of “the Mediterranean androcentric subconscious”, the foundations of Pierre Bourdieu’s analysis in La domination masculine (1998), Camille Lacoste-Dujardin took up again the issue of the complexity of male/female relationships in La vaillance des femmes (2008) in order to show that ancient as well as contemporary Kabyle women are valiant contesters of the patrilineal and patriarchal order, against which they deploy multiple forms of resistance and feminine counter-powers.

From the first edition of Dialogues de femmes en ethnologie (1977), Camille Lacoste-Dujardin has contributed to the development of a dialogic and committed ethnology, which gets rid of the colonial figure of the native/informant and relies on a discursive relationship stamped with empathy and mutual respect, in which her interlocutors are partners/actors along the process of understanding the complexities of social phenomena (Lacoste-Dujardin, 2002 : 106-108). Of the act of restitution, comprehended as transmission to the peers, and even to a larger public, Camille Lacoste-Dujardin has made a real commitment to make restitution to the observed themselves of the ethnological knowledge from which they can draw means of action (Lacoste-Dujardin, 2002 : 111-114). From the self-endorsed duty to make the Kabyle society known, and its complexities comprehended, derive books that can be considered as shared ethnology. Dictionnaire de la culture berbère en Kabylie (2005) and Le voyage d’Idir et Djya. Initiation à la culture kabyle (2003) fall in that category, the explicit aim of the last book being to initiate young Franco-Kabyles to the culture of their grand-parents.

Thematic axes

 

  •  Camille Lacoste-Dujardin’s contributions to the study of speech arts.
  •  The tales as "ethnographic documents": questions of methodology.
  • The interviewer/interviewee relationship and the duty of restitution in ethnology.
  • Women’s speech performances, masculine domination and feminine counter-powers.

Calendar and procedure

Proposals of contribution (title and an abstract of no more than 1 000 characters) must be addressed to souad_azizi@hotmail.com and cecile.leguy@sorbonne-nouvelle.fr no later than April 15th 2020.

Selected articles must be submitted by October 1st 2020.

Articles will be written in French or English; the title, abstract and keywords must be provided in both languages.

The note to authors is available on the journal’s website (https://clo.revues.org/).

 

Selected bibliography

Baduel Pierre Robert, 2017, « D’un moment de l’ethnologie sur le Maghreb : Camille Lacoste-Dujardin, d’un orientalisme ethnologique à une ethnologie postcoloniale », Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée [En ligne], 141 | juin 2017, mis en ligne le 25 octobre 2017, consulté le 01 mars 2019. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/remmm/9986

Bourdieu Pierre, 1998, La domination masculine, Paris, Seuil, 142 p.

Lacoste-Dujardin Camille, 1962, Bibliographie ethnologique de la Grande Kabylie, Paris-La Haye, Mouton, 104 p.

Lacoste-Dujardin Camille, 1965, Traduction des Légendes et contes merveilleux de la Grande Kabylie d’Auguste Mouliéras, Paris, Geuthner, 558 p.

Lacoste-Dujardin Camille, 1976, « À propos de Pierre Bourdieu et de l’Esquisse d’une théorie de la pratique », Hérodote, n°2, p. 103-116.

Lacoste-Dujardin Camille, 1977, « La relation d’enquête », Hérodote, n°8, p. 21-44

Lacoste-Dujardin Camille, 1982 (1970), Le conte kabyle, étude ethnologique, 2ème éd. Paris, François Maspero, 534 p.

Lacoste-Dujardin Camille, 1984, « Genèse et évolution d’une représentation géopolitique : l’imagerie kabyle à travers la production bibliographique de 1840 à 1891 », p. 257-278, in Jean-Claude Vatin et al., Connaissances du Maghreb. Sciences sociales et colonisation, Paris, Editions du CNRS.

Lacoste-Dujardin Camille, 1985, Des mères contre les femmes. Maternité et patriarcat au Maghreb. Paris, La Découverte, 268 p.

Lacoste-Dujardin Camille, 1986a, « L’invention d’une ethnopolitique : Kabylie – 1844 », Hérodote, n°42, p. 109-126.

Lacoste-Dujardin Camille, 1986b, « Opération Oiseau bleu, 1956. Géostratégie et ethnopolitique en montagne kabyle », p. 168-193, in P. R. Baduel (dir.), Désert et montagne au Maghreb. Hommage à Jean Dresch, Revue de l’Occident musulman et de la Méditerranée, n°41-42.

Lacoste-Dujardin Camille, 1988, « Renier les parents pour s’intégrer ? Le dilemme des enfants de parents maghrébins immigrés en France », Hérodote, n°50-51, p. 138-152.

Lacoste-Dujardin Camille, 1990, « Les fichus islamistes : approche ethnologique d’une stratégie d’anti-intégration », Hérodote, n°56, p. 14-44.

Lacoste-Dujardin Camille, 1992a, Yasmina et les autres, de Nanterre et d’ailleurs. Filles de parents maghrébins en France. Paris, La Découverte, 282 p.

Lacoste-Dujardin Camille, 1992b, « Démocratie kabyle. Les Kabyles : une chance pour la démocratie algérienne ? », Hérodote, n°65-66, p. 63-74.

Lacoste-Dujardin Camille, 1997, Opération “Oiseau bleu”. Des Kabyles, des ethnologues et la guerre d’Algérie, Paris, La Découverte & Syros, 307 p.

Lacoste-Dujardin Camille, 1999a, Contes merveilleux de Kabylie narrés par ‘Amor ben Mohammed ou ‘Ali de Taoudouchth recueillis par Auguste Mouliéras en 1891, Aix-en-Provence, Edisud/“Bilingues”, 182 p.

Lacoste-Dujardin Camille, 1999b, « Une intelligentsia kabyle en France: des artisans d'un "pont transméditerranéen" », Hérodote, n°94, p. 37-45.

Lacoste-Dujardin Camille, 2001, « Géographie culturelle et géopolitique en Kabylie. La révolte de la jeunesse kabyle pour une Algérie démocratique », Hérodote, vol. 4, n°103, p. 57-91.

Lacoste-Dujardin Camille, 2002 (1977), Dialogue de femmes en ethnologie, 2ème éd. Paris, Editions La Découverte & Syros, 115 p.

Lacoste-Dujardin Camille, 2003, Le voyage d’Idir et Djya. Initiation à la culture kabyle, Paris, L’Harmattan, 133 p.

Lacoste-Dujardin Camille, 2005, « Une ethnologue en Kabylie : situation postcoloniale et culture traditionnelle », p. 65-82, in Dionigi Albera et Mohamed Tozy (dir.), La Méditerranée des anthropologues. Fractures, filiations, contiguïtés, Paris, Maisonneuve & Larose, 385 p.

Lacoste-Dujardin Camille, 2005, Dictionnaire de la culture berbère en Kabylie, Paris, La Découverte, 394 p.

Lacoste-Dujardin Camille, 2006, « Un effet du postcolonial : le renouveau de la culture kabyle. De la mise à profit de contradictions coloniales », Hérodote, vol. 1, n°120, p. 1-15.

Lacoste-Dujardin Camille, 2008, La vaillance des femmes. Les relations entre femmes et hommes berbères de Kabylie, Paris, La Découverte, 164 p.

Lacoste-Dujardin Camille, 2010, « Des femmes au Maghreb : regards d’une ethnologue sur cinquante ans d’études et de recherches », Hérodote, vol.1, n⁰136.

Lacoste-Dujardin Camille, 2010, Contes de femmes et d’ogresses en Kabylie, Paris, Karthala, 198 p.

Lacoste-Dujardin Camille, 2014, La Kabylie du Djurdjura : du bastion montagnard à la diaspora, Tizi Ouzou, Editions Achab, 170 p.

Lacoste-Dujardin Camille, 1995, « Les jeunes filles issues de l’immigration maghrébine : une problématique spécifique », Rapport final réalisé sous la dir. de C. Lacoste-Dujardin, La documentation française, 98 p.

Loyer Barbara, 2016, « Egalité entre hommes et femmes : les mères en première ligne. Hommage à Camille Lacoste-Dujardin », Hérodote, n⁰162, 3ème trim., p. 193-208.


Date(s)

  • mercredi, avril 15, 2020

Keywords

  • Camille Lacoste-Dujardin, Kabylie, contes, arts de la parole, relations-hommes/femmes, relation-d'enquête

Contact(s)

  • Cécile Leguy
    courriel : cecile [dot] leguy [at] sorbonne-nouvelle [dot] fr
  • Souad Azizi
    courriel : souad_azizi [at] hotmail [dot] com

Information source

  • Souad Azizi
    courriel : souad_azizi [at] hotmail [dot] com

To cite this announcement

« An ethnology of dialogue and sharing : Camille Lacoste-Dujardin », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on vendredi, février 21, 2020, https://calenda-formation.labocleo.org/747566

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