Making Use of the Colonial Heritage

Kabyle Women Carpet Weavers’ Organization in Rural Algeria

Abstract

This paper focuses on one of Kabyle villages located in Tizi-Ouzou, “the village H,” which is known as a village for women’s carpet weaving since the French colonial period. Furthermore, it focuses on the cultural association “Kahina,” organized by the young people in the late 1980s with an aim to promote and preserve the village’s culture and its historical heritage toward the women’s carpet weaving, as well as support these female weavers in accessing the market. By discussing how the association has utilized the colonial heritage in articulating their village’s historical backgrounds that are firmly entangled with French colonialism, the paper reveals that village H’s tradition of carpet weaving was invented under the educational system sanctioned by the colonial administration. In addition, taking their practice into consideration, the paper concludes that the association functions as the agent that has utilized its colonial heritage to authorize and provide the female villagers an authenticity through their own interpretations about the history of the village. This is done although some aspects and concerns around these individuals’ complex and multiple identities being trivialized in terms of ethnic and national “culture.”