Un regard « arabe » sur les femmes touarègues : Le « Voyage à R’at » d’Ismaël Bouderba

Abstract

Explorer of Ghat, in present-day Libya, in 1858, Ismaël Bouderba (1823-1878), son of a mother from Marseille and a father from Algiers, published the account of his journey in the Revue algérienne et coloniale, under the title “Journey to R’at” (1859). This atypical voice of French travel literature prefigures the work of Henri Duveyrier on the Tuaregs. But, where the latter elaborates a meliorative stereotype, praising the Tuaregs to better decry the Arabs, Bouderba proposes the strictly opposite relationship. In doing so, the encounters with the Tuareg allow him to bring out his own point of view as an “Arab” traveler. The emergence of this point of view is only made possible, in the narrative, through the prism of encounters with women, which allow the explorer to reveal himself.

Keywords

• exploration
• Sahara
• Bouderba (Ismaël)
• Tuaregs
• Ghat