SINGERS, SAINTS, AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF POSTCOLONIAL SUBJECTIVITIES IN ALGERIA

Through a close study of the multivocal plays of intertextuality in th e ''new songs'' of Algeria's Berber Cultural Movement, this paper expl ores how genres can support the emergence of new, forms of self-recogn ition aid promote novel possibilities for engagement with older expres sive forms. Via double-voiced parodies of religious chants known as ad ekker, the new, Berber singers call into question the ''magical'' powe rs of saints and exhort the population to relinquish the notion that s aints control human destiny. Paradoxically, however, this interplay of genres generates unexpected interpretive possibilities, which in some cases subvert new, song's secularist vision.