Contenu du sommaire : Varia

The socio-historical realities behind identity awareness in the Kabyle environment, behind its evolution and its eventual emergence in the late twentieth century as a social force are in diametrical opposition to the policy of Arabization and its management by the Algerian public powers. These realities show that the kabylophone claim is, in fact, the linguistic side of the society project inherited from the radical wing of the generation of activists who struggled for the independence of Algeria and which is supported by the younger generations aspiring to recover/defend/promote their language and participate in the management of their country through the establishment of a participatory democracy.

The martyrdom of the Jesuit father Gonçalo da Silveira is considered both in early Portuguese documentation and in modern scholarship as a very significant event which had substantial implications on the course of the history of the Portuguese presence in southeastern Africa.  The present article provides a new interpretation of this event by reconstructing and unfolding its local meanings using contemporary and subsequent Portuguese historical and ethnographic written documentation and oral traditions of the population of the region.  By doing this, this article challenges orthodox historical narratives of a region relatively rich in written historical documents by demonstrating our ability to understand the manner in which historical events were interpreted from an indigenous point of view.

Since the pre-colonial period, socio-historical conditions have led to the political subordination and the social marginalization of Islam.  With the arrival of Blaise Compaoré to power, a logic of inclusion of formerly marginalized actors, including those of the Islamic milieu, is established. However, despite this policy being introduced in a context of religious revival, Islam only partially succeeds in liberating itself, as shown by the analysis of the Muslims religious authorities and economic operators' status in the semi-authoritarian regime of the 4th Republic.

The article attempts to understand a crucial question now in the urban development in sub-Saharan Africa in general and Cameroon in particular. Based on a qualitative survey conducted in Cameroonian cities, the study highlights the “problem” of motorbike taxis as a social construction linked to the confrontation of multiple perceptions of urban development.  Analysis highlight discursive fights between actors involved in the definition of the motorbike taxis phenomenon as a public problem.  At the end, it is noted that the public action around the phenomenon is constrained the subsequent public action, transforming the space of possible of that action.

This article traces the social history of the longest-running literary prize for francophone African authors: the Grand Prix littéraire d'Afrique noire. This marker of prestige is a common reference point in the African literary field, but has to-date not received any sustained empirical analysis. The prize has been awarded annually since 1961 by the Association des écrivains de langue française (the Association of French-language writers), which dates back to 1924 and the history of colonial literature. This article analyses the function and positioning of this institution over the longue durée, together with the structuring role of this prize for African literature, and its relative decline over the past twenty years. The association's evolution is placed in relation to more general reconfigurations of transnational literary institutions which have given legitimacy to authors from sub-Saharan African in the twentieth century.

The city of Dakar was the first capital of the sultanate of the Barr Sa'd ad-Dīn founded by the descendants of the sultans of Ifāt in the early fifteenth century.  Dakar was the heart of the most powerful Islamic State of Ethiopia for nearly a century before being replaced by the city of Harar in 1520.  It is barely present in medieval written sources and not yet localized.  The memory of this city was outshined in favor of Harar, the current oral tradition overvaluing the influence of Harar in Ethiopia's Islamic history.  Dealing with written materials and assumptions of location, this article makes an inventory of knowledge and proposes ways to further research on Dakar.