Le Maghreb dans la construction identitaire de la Tunisie postcoloniale

Abstract

in Identitarian Construction of Postcolonial Tunisia The image that Maghreban construct of North Africa is a little investigated subject. This study examines question of Maghreban imaginaire from a South-South perspective on basis of a systematic analysis of a corpus of twelve school history textbooks published in Tunisia between 1956 and 2005. This approach implicitly echoes current French debates on way colonial history is presented to younger generations. It also attends to grasp meaning of various categories which are Maghreb, North Africa, Muslim West, south of Mediterranean, etc., from an endogenous standpoint. The is presented as a political rather than a cultural concept. This makes North African space difficult to grasp, as it has multiple, sometimes even contradictory representations. One of evolutions evidenced is that since the death of Arab nationalist ideology, Mediterranean Maghreb paradigm is now far from being mobilizing myth shared by all Maghreban populations.