at the crossroad |
Vertical Divider
|
At the western frontier of the Mediterranean world, and at the crossroad of my Romance and Orientalist interests, Maghrebian studies perhaps deserve a special treatment as a specific sub-discipline. I came to the region by the more conspicuous way, that of Francophone literature, yet what captivated me was the less patent cultural complexity: of the Arab-Berber dualism, of the Saharan limes of the Mediterranean, of blet al-makhzen and blet as-siba, of transcontinental, Euro-African identifications (not only those of multicultural France of the 1980s and 1990s, but also such as the Catalan-Amazigh inscription of Najat El Hachmi). Even more than Lusophone Africa, the Maghreb became my favourite field of comparativist exploitation, but also a reality worth studying for its own sake.
|
my maghrebian & euro-maghrebian writings
|
Vertical Divider
|
“Khouribga a sprawa polska. Zwycięstwo życia nad kulturą w pisarstwie Fouada Larouiego” [„Khouribga and the Polish Cause. The victory of life over culture in Fouad Laroui's work”], Teksty Drugie, no 4/2018, p. 297-309. ISSN 0867-0633; DOI: 10.18318/td.2018.4.18
www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=708188 Beginning with a presentation of Fouad Laroui’s novella Les noces fabuleuses du Polonais, I outline its potential in Polish post-colonial studies understood as an analysis of Poles’ participation in the Eastern Bloc’s neo-colonial project. Essentially, I propose a threefold reading drawing on post-colonial theory, gender and transcultural studies. Juxtaposing the novella with the novel L’insoumise de la Porte de Flandre I am able to describe Laroui’s message in more depth. The writer not only tackles Morocco’s neocolonial experience, characterised by the arrival of Polish ‘contractual’ specialists. Above all he invites readers to destabilize their identity and to liberate themselves from the corset of mental automatisms – a corset acquired whenever culturally transmitted paradigms are treated as an absolute. “„Literatury mniejsze” w perspektywie studiów afro-europejskich. Od niderlandzkiej inskrypcji Kronik abisyńskich Mosesa Isegawy do rewindykacji katalońskości przez Najat El Hachmi” [“Minor literatures in the perspective of Afro-European studies. From the Dutch inscription of Abyssinian Chronicles by Moses Isegawa to the Catalan vindication of Najat El Hachmi”], Niewłasne lektury. Od pisarstwa w języku wyuczonym do wielości kultur czytania, Ewa Łukaszyk, Krystyna Wierzbicka-Trwoga (eds.), Warszawa , DiG, 2018, p. 69-80. ISBN 978-83-2860-032-4
“Le ruban de Möbius. Pour un modèle topologique de la continuité créatrice dans le monde méditerranéen” [“The Möbius strip. Towards a topological model of creative continuity in the Mediterranean world”], Prace Komisji Neofilologicznej Polskiej Akademii Umiejętności, vol. XIV, 2016, p. 71-81. ISSN 1731-8491
The article deals with the problem of creative continuity in the Mediterranean region, often seen rather as the discontinuous space of the Huntingtonian “clash of civilizations”. As counter-examples of such a vision, numerous writers who deliberately sought for a double, oscillating identity are mentioned: Driss Chraïbi, Edmond Amran El Maleh, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, Juan Goytisolo, Abdelwahab Meddeb. The main aim of this essay is to propose a “geometrical” way of conceptualizing the paradoxical character of the Mediterranean continuity, using the topological model of the Möbius strip, previously brought into the domain of humanities by Slavoj Žižek, together with other tools created in the context of post-modern philosophy and cultural criticism, such as the Derridean notion of khōra. "Written exercises. Ancestral magic and emergent intellectuals in Mia Couto, Lhoussain Azergui and Dorota Masłowska", Colloquia Humanistica, nr 5/2016, s. 143-156. ISSN 2081-6774
The article consists in a comparative reading of three novels: Um rio chamado tempo by Mia Couto, Le pain des corbeaux by Lhoussain Azergui and Paw królowej by Dorota Masłowska. In spite of the difference of the historical circumstances of Mozambique, Morocco and Poland, these three books meet at an intersecting point: the emergence of an intelligentsia that uses literacy and writing as an instrument to deconstruct the post-colonial concept of nation and to operate a trans-colonial renegotiation of identity. By the notion of trans-colonial, I understand the opposition against new kinds of symbolic violence that emerged after the end of the colonial period; here this new form of oppression is related to the concept of national unity – an artificial construct that leaves no place for the dualism or pluralism of cultural reality (two shores of the Zambezi river, Arab and Berber dualism in Morocco, “small homelands” in Poland). The young heroes of the novels grasp the pen in order to break through the falseness or the taboos created by the fathers, establishing, at the same time, the relation of solidarity with the world of the grandfathers. The act of writing becomes an actualization of the ancestral universe of magic. The settlement of accounts with the parental generation concerns the vision of nation built upon the resistance against the colonizer (it also refers to the Polish cultural formation, based on the tradition of uprisings and resistance against the Russians). "Asgudi i taskla: przejście od oralności do pisma i nowa literatura w poszukiwaniach tożsamości marokańskich Berberów" ["Asgudi and Taskla. The transition from orality to literacy and the emergent literature in the search for Amazigh identity in Morocco"], Przegląd orientalistyczny, nr 1-2/2014, p. 89-98. ISSN 0033-2283
![]()
“Désert: une métaphore absolue de J.M.G. Le Clézio. Entre l'exotisme et l'écriture de la solidarité” [“Desert: an absolute metaphor of J.M.G. Le Clézio. Between exoticism and solidarity writing”], Le Maroc dans l'oeuvre de J.M.G. Le Clézio, Claude Cavallero et Ijjou Cheikh Moussa (eds.), Rabat, Publications de la Faculté des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines de Rabat, 2014, p. 115-125; [Série: Colloques et Séminaires, n°177].
"Is there Tunisian literature? Emergent writing and fractal proliferation of minor voices", Colloquia Humanistica, nr 2/2013, p. 79-93. ISSN 2081-6774
The article presents the Tunisian literature from the non-local perspective of global literary market and the circulation of translated literature. The minor status of the studied phenomenon becomes obvious even when the Tunisian literature is compared with the Moroccan one. What is more, this comparison helps to understand the consequences of some choices made by the Tunisian writers, choices that established diverging directions of literary quest and the ambivalent aspiration of belonging both to the Arabic and the French linguistic and cultural zone. This basic ambivalence is treated in the article as essential fissure and a kind of fractal principle, conducing to the proliferation of minor voices, instead of synergistic pattern of development leading to the synthesis of cultural contradictions. Some of these voices, such as Abdelwahab Meddeb, try to inscribe themselves in the universalist, gallicized context, while others, such as the emigrant Arab-speaking writer Hassouna Mosbahi, find in the translation a chance of reaching new readers and the promise of escaping the status of minor or emergent writers. ![]()
"L'identité amazighe et la langue française. Autour de l'auto-traduction du roman Le Pain des corbeaux par Lhoussain Azergui" ["Amazigh identity and French language. On auto-translation of the novel Le Pain des corbeaux by Lhoussain Azergui"], Romanica Cracoviensia, nr 13/2013, p. 207-216. ISSN 1732-8705; ISBN 978-83-233-3479-8 e-ISSN 1689-002
![]()
"Labels and dignities. Designating the otherness in post-colonial Mediterranean", Romanica Cracoviensia, nr 12/2012, p. 300-313. ISSN 1732-8705; ISBN 978-83-233-3479-8 e-ISSN 1689-002
L’article est une tentative de lecture des romans de l’écrivain marocain Driss Chaïbi, tels que Les Boucs (1955), dont l’expression littéraire est particulièrement crue et violente. Cette intransigeance devient compréhensible dans le contexte des discours manipulatoires, remplis d’euphémismes, contre lesquelles Chraïbi se propose d’écrire. Le but de cette entreprise d’écriture, but qu’on peut retrouver aussi chez d’autres auteurs marocains, est la découverte soit d’une appellation adéquate d’une identité, soit d’une représentation adéquate de ses dimensions cachées. De cette manière, la littérature créée au Maroc et dans le contexte des immigrants nord-africains, choisissant la langue française comme son moyen d’expression, essaye de vaincre de multiples conditionnements, liés autant aux traditions locales, au passé colonial et, de l’autre côté, au « fardeau de l’avenir », constitué par la modernité. |
|
|
(Il)legibility of Morocco
A BOOK PROJECT
This research project leads to a book characterizing the recent developments of the Moroccan literature, marked by linguistic divergence. The idea appeared as a consequence of a research realized in Casablanca and Rabat in March/April 2013. The materials brought from the book fair at that occasion form a first "pack" that will be contrasted with another lease in two or three years in order to produce a publication that might conjugate novelty and insight into the becoming of the country and its reputed literary market.
This research project leads to a book characterizing the recent developments of the Moroccan literature, marked by linguistic divergence. The idea appeared as a consequence of a research realized in Casablanca and Rabat in March/April 2013. The materials brought from the book fair at that occasion form a first "pack" that will be contrasted with another lease in two or three years in order to produce a publication that might conjugate novelty and insight into the becoming of the country and its reputed literary market.
A LIMITED VISIBILITY
My contribution to the Mediterranean studies obviously takes for the starting point my competence as a Romanist. It is thus a vision filtrated through French. Nonetheless what attracts me in this area is exactly its complexity and irreducibility to the domain of a single language and culture, its diagrammatic character - the necessity of considering this cultural reality as a complex diagram of connections.
A single key must do, together with a category of translucent that I treat as a specific esthetic concept. A French text written by a Maghrebian author - or intellectual, because essays interest me more than novels in this context - is in fact supported by a complex "plumbing" of concepts, conditions of their translatability and intranslatability, their presence and significant absence on the surface. The interplay of these elements builds the dimension of emergence - a completely new level of complexity that interests me so vividly. In these terms I read, as I just mentioned, first of all the intellectuals: Laâbi, Meddeb, Benzine, in fact any I can put my hands on. The transparencies of their French formation and persuasions show me novel intellectual landscapes, going very far beyond anything that we could actually call "French", deconstructing the very sense of Europeanness and enriching it in new meanings coming from the peripheries, in what I once called intrusive spirit of the Desert.
My contribution to the Mediterranean studies obviously takes for the starting point my competence as a Romanist. It is thus a vision filtrated through French. Nonetheless what attracts me in this area is exactly its complexity and irreducibility to the domain of a single language and culture, its diagrammatic character - the necessity of considering this cultural reality as a complex diagram of connections.
A single key must do, together with a category of translucent that I treat as a specific esthetic concept. A French text written by a Maghrebian author - or intellectual, because essays interest me more than novels in this context - is in fact supported by a complex "plumbing" of concepts, conditions of their translatability and intranslatability, their presence and significant absence on the surface. The interplay of these elements builds the dimension of emergence - a completely new level of complexity that interests me so vividly. In these terms I read, as I just mentioned, first of all the intellectuals: Laâbi, Meddeb, Benzine, in fact any I can put my hands on. The transparencies of their French formation and persuasions show me novel intellectual landscapes, going very far beyond anything that we could actually call "French", deconstructing the very sense of Europeanness and enriching it in new meanings coming from the peripheries, in what I once called intrusive spirit of the Desert.