the west of the Orient, the south of the Mediterranean
At the southwestern frontier of the Mediterranean world, at the crossroads of Islam and Francophone influence, Maghrebian and West African studies deserve special treatment. The region composed of such countries as Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Senegal, Mauritania, Niger, and Chad is marked by great cultural complexity: that of the Arab-Berber dualism, that of the Mediterranean, Saharan, and sub-Saharan worlds, of sedentarism and nomadism, of blet al-makhzen and blet as-siba, of Sufi movements and orthodox Islam. It produces abundant literature both in Arabic and French, without mentioning its vernacular expression in such tongues as Amazigh or Wolof. As an area of study, it presents the apparent facility of reading Francophone novels and the profound difficulty of understanding the cultural idioms born at the crossroads of Africa and the classical, majoritarian Sunni Islam.
selected essays
Limes. Une enquête au pays de Driss Chraïbi lue dans le cadre des études des frontières
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La littérature et la carte géographique, Dorota Chłanda, Małgorzata Kamecka, Małgorzata Zawadzka (eds), Białystok, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu w Białymstoku, 2022, p. 17-30.
ISBN 978-83-7431-732-0 Limes, an ancient term signifying the border of the Roman Empire, indicates not only the natural frontier of the Euro-Mediterranean oikumene, but also that of the “civilized” world of states, governments, official policies and law enforcement. Growing actuality of the topic at the time of mass migrations justifies a glance back to Driss Chraïbi’s novel Une enquête au pays, published in 1981. The heroes, a couple of policemen, penetrate the wasteland interior of the country not to investigate any crime in particular, but rather to establish their presence in the otherwise uncontrolled territory – bled es-siba (“region of anarchy” in contrast to the civilized, tax-paying and law-abiding bled el-makhzen according to a categorization first established in the 14th c., yet valid throughout the colonial era, and apparently till the present day). The policemen are forerunners of modernity and “civilisation” (an important key word of the Chraïbian writing), penetrating a world that refuses to let itself be governed, submitted to taxation, and policed – a Zomia in the conceptualisation of Willem van Schendel. |
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Officiellement, le limes saharien n'existe pas, parce que la modernité ne reconnaît ni l'existence ni la souveraineté des territoires d'anarchie. En dehors du contrôle étatique, de l'économie basée sur la circulation de l'argent et la fiscalisation, de la vie sociale balisée par un code pénal écrit, il ne peut y avoir aucune autre vie. L'état postcolonial ne laisse aucune marge à cette « vie terrienne des hommes » [...].
Le roman de Driss Chraïbi, publié au début des années 80. du siècle passé est un témoignage précoce d'un processus de la détérioration des modes de vie millénaires au sud de la Méditerranée. Les communautés jusqu'ici autonomes viennent de s'effondrer dans le chaos des conflits armés [...]. Les populations en migration qui arrivent aux côtes de l'Europe sont le résultat de la fin d'un monde dont l'existence se dessinait très mal dans notre conscience. Un aspect est toujours à accentuer. L'anarchie ou dissidence (siba) dont Ibn Khaldoûn parlait déjà au 14e siècle doit être vue sous un certain éclairage positif, comme un mode de vie soutenable, adapté aux circonstances naturelles, à sa manière harmonieux. La fin de cette anarchie au sens positif éclaire aussi la violence subjacente à ce qu'on appelle la civilisation – avec ou sans guillemets. Grâce à l'outillage théorique lié au concept de Zomia, les chercheurs sont maintenant en mesure de captiver les éléments positifs de ce contrepoint à la modernité que les communautés en marge des états représentaient. Aujourd'hui, on apprécie la structure sociale basée sur l'égalité relative des membres, le respect pour les ressources naturelles qui ne sont jamais surabondantes, un certain esprit de contestation qui rend ces communautés attrayantes aux yeux de ceux qui s’efforcent de trouver des alternatives à la modernité. Mais, comme Jean Baudrillard a remarqué, « c'est quand une chose commence à disparaître que le concept apparaît ». La notion de Zomia qui contribue à la définition et à l’appréciation d'une communauté est née justement quand son monde, une permanence apparemment atemporelle en marge de l'Histoire, s'est effondré. Une lecture attentive et suffisamment informée du roman de Chraïbi permet d'entendre le monde des nomades et de se rendre compte du fait que ce n'est pas leur anarchie et leur insurgence qui menace le monde « civilisé », mais bien au contraire. C'est la « civilisation », dont Chraïbi était un critique perspicace, qui cause la catastrophe des Zomias et transforme des communautés entières en fugitifs, en migrants et en réfugiés. Chraibi's novel is a curious development of the typical policial genre. The detective is a forerunner of modernity and the civilisation (an important key word of the Chraïbian writing), penetrating a world that refuses to let itself be governed, submitted to taxation, and policed. Significantly, Ali's endeavour is backed up by Europe, closely collaborating with the Maghrebian state. On the other hand, the nomads oppose those joint efforts by their only resource – mobility, the readiness of abandoning their abodes and disappearing in the desert. Control and detection prove to be inherent to the sedentary world; even crime narration – a tool of criminalization of the human existence – is forced to capitulate in confrontation with the wasteland.
Keynote at the Colloque Inspirations – La littérature et la carte géographique, University of Bialystok – University of Vilnius, 26-27.11.2020. |
Desert: an absolute metaphor of J.M.G. Le Clézio. Between exoticism and solidarity writing
“Désert: une métaphore absolue de J.M.G. Le Clézio. Entre l'exotisme et l'écriture de la solidarité”, 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.
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.
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ongoing research & book projects
(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.
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international journals in Maghrebian & West African studies
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