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ABSTRACT
This article examines Fouad Laroui’s novel (Laroui, Fouad. 2010. Une année chez les Français. Paris: Julliard), Une année chez les Français, and charts the protagonist's development to argue that it offers a new model for Moroccan coming-of-age in a postcolonial context. While Une année is a Bildungsroman, it breaks away from patterns seen in the genre before it to illustrate the possibilities of creating ‘Third Spaces’ (Bhabha, Homi K. 1990. “The Third Space.” In Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, edited by Jonathan Rutherford, 207–221. London: Lawrence & Wishart). The protagonist, Mehdi, arrives at his moment of ‘apprentissage’ thanks to his pseudo-adoption by a French family and French boarding school, where he experiences what I have termed a pull-push sensation. I outline the sources and effects of the pull-push Mehdi perceives and then turn to argue that these experiences allow him to destabilise the relationship between the concepts of family and familiarity. It is through his newly found understanding that what is familiar is not always family and what is family does not always feel familiar that Mehdi is able to articulate the third space he desires for himself and come of age. While this article focuses on the experiences of a single, fictional character, Une année chez les Francais introduces readers with a framework for imagining the identity-formation of a multiplicity of individuals who have grown up at the intersection of postcolonial North Africa and continental France.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
* A portion of this paper was presented at the 2017 Annual Meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association in Utrecht, Holland.
1 For more information on General Lyautey, see Singer and Langdon's (Citation2004).
2 Examples of what I mean by the classic Western model include Goethe's (Citation1870), Jane Austen's (Citation1833), Charles Dickens's (Citation1908), and Gustav Flaubert's (Citation1907).
3 Unless otherwise indicated, translations are my own.
4 Unlike many Bildungsroman protagonists before him, Mehdi is not pulled between the two opposing poles of school and home. Instead, his status as a boarding-school student creates a different intermediary position that is the result of being pulled toward and pushed away from the same pole: European Casablanca.
5 Bise: small kiss, usually on some skin other than the lips.
6 My emphasis.
7 Nineteenth century poem considered a classic, known for its ‘decadent’ style and moralizing themes.
8 Laura Reeck shows how the same assumption is made of Azouz Begag's protagonist in Le Gone du Chaâba (Citation1986) (38).
9 As a Franco-Algerian Jew, Derrida explains that he could never rid his French of linguistic markers that betray these facets of his identity.
10 Here, I mean ‘Other’ in the Lacanian sense.
11 A controversial expression used to designate French citizens whose families have been in France long enough not to identify with other national origins or who do not see themselves as the products of immigration.
12 By this notion of progress, I mean the one neatly defined by Robert Nisbit in his five crucial premises: 1. value of the past; 2. nobility of Western civilisation; 3. worth of economic/technological growth; 4. faith in reason and scientific/scholarly knowledge obtained through reason; 5. intrinsic importance and worth of life on Earth (Citation1980, 4).
13 Masculine title of respect. In Morocco, sometimes ‘Sidi’ is a title given to members of the Alawi dynasty. In this case, ‘Sidi’ is mostly likely used to designate this students as a wealthy Moroccan.
14 A common trope for children who are educated under the French system in the colonial world; see, for instance, Camara Laye's (Citation1970).
15 Laroui's emphasis.
16 Moretti's emphasis.