The sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has based his study on male domination (1998) on the example of the kabyle society, which he perceives as an objective archaeology of our unconscious where women have “embedded” the “male domination” - joining interpretation from other researchers blaming women for “consent to domination.”

Studying as an ethnologist for nearly half a century the kabyle culture, Camille Lacoste-Dujardin was able to see how her observations contradicted this vision. This is what led her go in depth with this book the analysis of this complex reality, putting herself firmly on the side of the dominated“, neglected until now . The author shows how women, with lucidity and courage, built in Kabylia a”science of women", where resistance has become counter attack: it is expressed in the stories that Mothers teach to children, where the frightening adult is the mountain witch Teryel, extreme expression of the female rebellion against the men’s constraints witch that women denounces in all of her actions.

Better still, these Kabyle women force men to acknowledge the superiority of women by collaborating in many areas. They come to challenge the patriarchal rule of conter-power, even in the field of kinship that men claim confiscating. This feminine exemplariness has continued in the kabyle mountains thanks to these women, some of which are national heroes. Today, their descendants continue with the same bravery fighting for recognition of their rights and participation in society, in the difficult circumstances of today Algeria .

Camille Lacoste-Dujardin, La vaillance des femmes. Relations entre femmes et hommes berbères de Kabylie Editions La Découverte, février 2008, 168 p.

Translation: Jugurten