Professor Tasadit Yacine is an Algerian specialist in anthropology. She was born in 1949 and moved to Paris decades ago. According to her biography, she holds the position of Director of Studies at the Higher Studies School of Social Sciences (EHESS) in Paris. She specializes in Berber culture, especially language issues. It also runs “Awal” magazine, which was founded in 1985 in partnership with the late Mouloud Maamri. Among her books are “The Thieves of Fire,” “The Jackal or the Cunning of the Oppressed,” and “If You Love Me, Heal Me.” She supervised the publication of the diaries of the talented Jean Amroush (1906-1962).
A week ago, this writer published an article in Le Matin d’Algérie newspaper entitled “On the Good Use of Francophonie, or the Art of Liberating French from Colonialism,” in which she calls on Algeria to deal well with the French language and consider it a primary language, “the language of war spoils,” in the country due to its past that has been implanted in the minds of Algerians, and she clarifies that French is no longer the language of the colonialists, calling for its liberation from this complex.
Tasadit Yassine began her article with this paragraph: “The country (Algeria) was exhausted by 132 years of colonialism, and witnessed many uprisings, revolutions, and wars. It did not hesitate to use the language of others as a weapon of liberation, after it had overcome all ideological and ideological obstacles to achieve its sovereignty. And now, after almost two centuries, it is stripped of what it gained by blood and death.” She continues in this manner, saying: “However, those who were closed to one language, keen to satisfy their selfishness, possessed by a historical conservative tendency, and fascinated by antiquated Anglo-Saxon templates, decided after independence to transform a young, vibrant country into a model museum in terms of customs and morals, not in terms of technology.” Thus, the author believes that “those closed to one language” wanted to preserve outdated customs, traditions, and morals and make them the basis of the country’s identity, at the expense of its scientific and technological progress, development, and keeping pace with the times.
The author ends her article with the following paragraph: “In conclusion, this “culturally exterminating” decision falls within an internal colonialism aimed at emptying Algeria of its elite, the most creative and most committed to defending its cultural interests and memory, in order to plunge Algeria into obscurantism and ignorance.”
It is clear that the matter is related to a defensive ideological discourse, not an analytical discourse, which builds its ideas on a historical fallacy when it makes French a “liberation weapon” and ignores that it was primarily a tool of elite hegemony and social duality. He also describes supporters of language diversification as closed-minded, selfish, and infatuated with Anglo-Saxon, instead of countering argument with argument. On the other hand, the use of the phrases “cultural genocide” and “internal colonialism” is a dangerous conceptual falsification. French has not been deleted, Arabic remains, and the decision is sovereign for the country. The author here also ignores the practical motives for choosing education: English is the language of science and research, and French has declined relatively, but not completely, in Algeria and the world. The strangest thing about the article is that the “resistance to colonialism” discourse imposes its guardianship on others, and turns the discussion about education and the economy into a test of patriotism. In short, this speech is simply a defense of the position of authority of the Francophone elite using the language of victimhood, and intellectual decadence that replaces proof with betrayal and intimidation.
Tasadit Yassin says in another paragraph: “To adopt English, an additional language, a language that has imposed itself over the years, a “scientific” and global language, is in itself a good gain, and openness to a broader world. But to go from that to believing, and to making people believe, that there are languages that carry within themselves the sin of colonialism and other languages that do not carry it is like trying to hide the sun with a sieve.”
We believe that the content of the paragraph is misleading because it attributes to the opponent a claim that no one makes, which is that languages carry within themselves a colonial sin, while the real debate concerns the institutional legacy of French and its dominance in administration and education, not the “spirit” of the language. The author mixes the adoption of English as an additional language – which is an obvious and undisputed matter – with criticism of the French monopoly. The writer moves from a postulate to a response to an invented opponent. Finally, we say that the metaphor of the phrase “hiding the sun with a sieve” is rhetoric through which the writer evades practical questions: How is English developed, and who benefits from it? What can be done to ensure that one hegemony is not replaced by another hegemony?
The author of the article says regarding sociology: “This decision (removing French) is not without similarities to the policies adopted in the 1970s, when officials at the time declared that sociology was a colonial science and that it should not be taught.” In this context, the writer refers to the article of the late Mouloud Mammeri entitled “An Anthropological Experience in Algeria,” published in 1985, in which he quoted – according to what we understand from the writer – some of the statements of officials during the twenty-fourth conference on sociology.
Ironically, the author ends the same paragraph with the following sentence: “The social sciences, which were partially Arabized, witnessed the withdrawal of Francophone professors trained in these disciplines from them in favor of teaching in Arabic. Political parties did not realize until a long time later – after 1992 – the seriousness of this grave mistake.” We note that this sentence contradicts the previous one, as it proves that sociology continues to be taught in our universities, even though officials (according to the first sentence) say, “Sociology is a colonial science that should not be taught”!
This contradiction is not the only one on this subject. These rulings involve simplification that is misleading with history, and are closer to caricature than balanced analysis. The claim that Algerian officials declared in the 1970s that “sociology is a colonial science that should not be taught” is a serious accusation that is not based on any specific reference: there is no name of the person who made this statement, no history of it, nor the context in which it was mentioned. More problematically, this claim seems to conflate sociology with colonial ethnology, some of whose currents were actually harnessed to serve the interests of French hegemony. This is because ethnology studies the origins, roots, races, religion, language, and social structure of ethnic or national groups, and these studies have always been the first support for the invaders before the invasion process.
After investigation, it seems to us that the writer actually means what was stated by the late Mohamed Al-Siddiq Ben Yahia, then Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, at the opening of the Twenty-Fourth International Conference of Sociology in Algeria, held from March 25 to 30, 1974: This is the text that came in the speech of the late Ben Yahia: “Ethnology appears to us today, whether in view of the circumstances in which it arose or its basic axioms, to be outdated in terms of its methods and controls, and weak in scientific validity. Because it is a science that is generally based on axioms that can be challenged.”
Ben Yahya also said about “colonial ethnology”: “Its role was to provide information about the pattern of social, political and economic organization of the peoples to be conquered or who were being conquered… It constitutes an integrated system to justify a past past, and therefore it represents a scientific danger.” In the same speech, Minister Ben Yahya praised sociology, considering it “a distinguished weapon for the liberation of the peoples of the Third World.” Hence, we see that the Minister of Higher Education, in his speech, was criticizing the science of race that colonialism exploited in all countries of the world, and not criticizing sociology, which was praised as a distinctive weapon for liberating peoples. How does the writer mix sociology and race science to this degree? How did it not refer to official statements to find facts on which to base its arguments?
Finally, we note that the writer greatly weakened her credibility due to her negligence in writing her article, which is approximately 1,400 words long and contains 41 grammatical, typographical, and historical errors, including the names of prominent intellectuals, such as writing Olivier Leclerc instead of Xavier Le Clerc, Mouhoud Mouhoud instead of El Mouhoub Mouhoud, and Borjes instead of Borges. We cannot miss here the silence about the Arabic language, which was mentioned only once to say that some subjects are taught in it, in addition to the complete absence of mentioning the historical role of the Islamic religion as a support for the Arabic language, and this is what truncates the analysis and directs the text towards a selective reading of the Algerian linguistic issue. The newspaper, for its part, bears a heavy editorial responsibility: leaving 41 grammatical, typographical, and historical errors in an article written in the language that the writer and the newspaper both defend, reveals a defect in the editorial review of the texts, and harms the credibility of the article. It also supports the doubts of those who believe that the treatment of this issue is governed by ideological considerations that come before any other considerations.
