Being-in-the-world: the Afropolitan Moroccan author's worldview in the new millennium

Abstract

In the last decade, many contemporary African authors of French expression from both North and sub-Saharan Africa have posited perspectives in their novels that reveal a global cosmopolitanism that uniquely defines African literature in the twenty-first century. Moroccan authors writing in French such as Youssouf Amine Elalamy and Fouad Laroui, among others, promote a way of being African in the world that disassociates the author from the literary tropes of earlier decades. They no longer dwell on the angst of the postcolonial condition, the traumas rooted in tensions between modernity and traditionalism, the sociocultural and economic divisions between North and sub-Saharan Africa, poverty and despair. Moroccan authors promote an ‘Afropolitanism’ in their works that connotes movement forward, to engage in becoming something other than the pessimistic stereotypes associated with Morocco as well as the African continent.

Au cours de la dernière décennie, de nombreux auteurs africains contemporainsd'expression française du Maghreb et de l'Afrique sub-saharienne proposent des perspectives dans leurs romans qui révèlent un cosmopolitisme global qui définit de façon unique la littérature africaine du XXIe siècle. Les auteurs marocains écrivant en français comme Youssouf Amine Elalamy et Fouad Laroui, entre autres, soutiennent une manière d’être africaine dans le monde qui dissocie l'auteur des tropes littéraires des décennies précédentes. Ils se centrent moins sur les sujets tels que l'angoisse de la condition postcoloniale, les traumatismes socioculturels enracinés dans les tensions entre la modernité et le traditionalisme, les divisions socioculturelles et économiques entre le Maghreb et l'Afrique subsaharienne, la pauvreté et le désespoir. Les auteurs marocains promeuvent un « Afropolitanisme » dans leurs œuvres qui évoque un mouvement vers l'avant pour engager autres choses que les stéréotypes pessimistes associés au Maroc ainsi qu'au continent africain.

Keywords:

• Africanité
• Afropolitanism
• Littérature-monde
• worldliness
• humanism
• postcolonial
• African literatures

Notes

The list is certainly not limited to those authors writing in French. Authors writing in English such as Nigerian Helon Habila, Kenyans M.G. Vassanji and Shailja Patel, Libyan Hisham Matar, Zimbabwean Brian Chikwava, equally can be classed in the Afropolitan camp. See Makokha (2011).

Some examples of the most well-known African francophone works of the past which for the first time took to task the disenfranchisement of African immigrants in Europe are: Les Boucs (Driss Chraibi, 1955); Le Docker noir (Ousmane Sembene, 1950); Un Nègre à Paris (Bernard Dadié, 1959).

Heidegger's emphasis.

My translation.

My emphasis and translation.

Author's emphasis.

Maghrebi authors such as: Salim Bachi (Algeria), Souad Bahéchar (Morocco), Farid Yamina Benguigui (France/Algeria), Boudjellal (Algeria), Hajer Djilani (Tunisia), Youssouf Amine Elalamy (Morocco), Mohamed Leftha (Morocco), Edmond Amran El Maleh (Morocco), Nine Moati (Tunisia), Arussiyya Naluti (Tunisia), Leila Sebbar (Algeria), Abdellah Taia (Morocco), and Fawzia Zouari (Tunisia) have responded to the challenges of the twenty-first century in aesthetically and sociopolitically engaged ways that are remarkably different from those of the past. The themes of these authors represent the current trends, sociocultural and political tensions of the Maghreb in a myriad of manners that extend beyond the scope of this article.

Yet there are many more Moroccan authors who could be considered Afropolitan. See Orlando (2009).

These national themes are much more social-realist in nature, focusing on poverty, women's emancipation, and enfranchisement in society, corruption, and the tension between Islam and secular politics.

For a complete analysis of most of these texts, see Orlando (2009).

Authors writing in-country are published by the many small publishing houses in Morocco which specialize in printing novels, poetry, and essays in French. See Orlando (2009).

Interview with Touria Oulehri, Rabat, Morocco, 17 January 2007.

The Moudawana of 2004 basically brought women out of the dark ages as far as granting them rights to divorce and access to the judicial system. There have been several Moudawanas in the past, but the 2004 legislation has gone the farthest in granting rights to women under the law.

Interview with Rachid Chraïbi, Editor, Marsam Editions, 29 January 2007, Rabat, Morocco.

Think of earlier canonical first- and second-generation authors' texts such as Algerian Mouloud Feraoun's Le Fils du pauvre (1950), Moroccan Driss Chraïbi's Le Passé simple (1954), Mohamed Dib's L'incendie (1954), and Khateb Yacine's Nedjma (1956) and later, Beur and Banlieue, second-generation novels of authors such as Azzouz Begag, Nina Bouraoui, Mehdi Charef, and so on.

‘Une littérature nouvelle, bruyante, colorée, métissée, qui [prononce] le monde en train de naître…où se brass[ent] et se mêl[ent] les cultures de tous les continents… [c'est] une idée plus large, plus forte de la littérature, retrouvant son ambition de dire le monde, de donner un sens à l'existence, d'interroger la condition humaine, de reconduire chacun au plus secret de lui-même. La littérature-monde…[est] l'enfantement d'un monde nouveau’ (Le Bris and Rouad 2007, 41).

‘Rencontre littéraire’, Youssouf A. Elalamy, 7 June 2011, Bibliothèque nationale, Rabat.

Author's emphasis.

Author's emphasis.

Beurs, first generation sons and daughters of Maghrebi immigrants, were the first authors to write in French about their experiences stemming from a bicultural identity. Beur is the word ‘Arabe’ (in French) said backwards in the code language, verlan, popular with youth in France who live predominantly poor, disenfranchised, immigrant banlieues (neighborhoods) on the outskirts of large, urban centers.

The best examples of these are: Driss Charibi's Les Boucs (1955), Mehdi Charef's Le Harki de Meryem (1989), and Yamina Benguigui's Inch'Allah Dimanche (2001), to name only a few.