SIDI MOHAMED BEN ABDELLAH UNIVERSITY           

Faculty of Arts & Human Sciences Sais-Fes                          

 MASTER: “CROSS-CULTURAL & LITERARY STUDIES”

"Literary, Cultural, Gender & Media Studies" Lab. 

“Against Theory”

By Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels

                                                        Reviewed  by Ismail FROUINI

Introduction:

“Against Theory” is an essay written by the two American neo-pragmatists Steven Knapp[1] and Walter Benn Michael[2] and published in Critical Inquiry 8 (Summer
1982). After its publication, the essay has engendered controversy. Critics, mainly E. D. Hirsch, have reproached Knapp and Michael for the severe criticisms these critics received. They published a series of responses to many critics. These responses include “A Reply to Our Critics” published in Critical Inquiry, Vol. 9, No. 4 (June, 1983), “A Reply to Richard Rorty: What Is Pragmatism?" Critical Inquiry 11 (March1985) and “Against Theory 2: Hermeneutics and Deconstruction” (published in 1987) in Critical Inquiry. All these articles have been co-authored by Knapp and Michael. On the side of other critics, the essay has sparked off academic discussions and reproaches; for instance, E. D. Hirsch wrote an essay with the same title of Knapp and Michaels’, “Against Theory?” the essay was issued in the same source Critical Inquiry Vol. 9, No. 4 and one year after Knapp and Michael’s in (June, 1983) and Richard Rorty’s "Pragmatism and Literary Theory II: Philosophy without Principles" that was published in the Critical Inquiry 11 in 1985. The essay mainly revolves around the premise theory is otiose since it matches with practice (praxis).

Contextualising the essay at the very beginning is deemed worthy and, to some extent, necessary. Being publishing in the early 1990s, the essay appeared as a reaction to the penetration of French theory to the American academia and university. These French theories, mainly structuralism and post structuralism, have started disempowering the American theoretical paradigms (New Criticism) at that time.[3] Moreover during this period theory in American and elsewhere was at its high-water mark and even a hot-button issue amongst critics.

Knapp and Michaels’ Thesis:

Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels argue that people delude themselves and become entangled with theory when they make three fundamental mistakes. A critical reading of this essay necessitates at the outset some preliminary explanation or even close reading of the title “Against Theory”. Grammatically speaking, the title is a noun phrase; it is of two words (preposition + noun); its head is theory. We come to know, therefore, that “theory” is pivotal and dominant the realm of criticism. It also indicates the uniqueness of theory which lacks its, to use Hegelian notion, dialectic and co-operator, praxis. Semantically speaking, the title is straightforward, it is oppositional and dismissive. “Against Theory” is only another way of saying anti-theory(zing) then could be probably substituted for “for/towards practice and praxis[4]. Moreover, viewed from another analytical perspective, the title is discursive. It makes it clear that the subject position of the authors is being against theory and theorization by and large. It therefore “excludes” all that is theorizing. In the same vein, theory is (an agent of) discourse, for it shapes the reader’s process of interpretation. Model, conception, abstract(ion), and assumption are all metonyms for the word theory. Having said this, the two critics seem to contradict themselves by falling in the pitfall they are arguing against, that is theorizing. What Knapp and Michaels are doing is a kind of meta-theory; that is to say they theorize to argue against theorizing.

Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels start their assay by defining “theory”. The first lines of the essay read as follows, “By "theory" we mean a special project in literary criticism: the attempt to govern interpretations of particular texts by appealing to an account of interpretation in general.”[5] Theory, simply put, is a means that shapes the process of interpretation(s). It is also a paradigm that “positionally” and “discursively” offers certain critical account of a text and disempowers and excludes other ones. To date, literary theory has concerned itself with two main issues. First, critics seek “Objective” and “valid” Interpretation; second literary critics seek the possibility of “correct” and “closest” interpretation. This latte is, as a matter of fact, the by-product of the former. Critics all over the world have never come to terms as to which of these to use. This sounds quite logical due to the pluralistic mode of the order of discourses that shape their move.

The gist of Knapp and Michaels’ argument is that literary critics have made some ontological and epistemological[6] “mistakes”. These “mistakes” are all linked to their assumption of “theory” which, following their definition, govern their interpretation.  The first “mistake” is that readers should not differentiate between meaning and intention. Interpreting or grasping the “entire” meaning of a piece of writing. For example, Hirsch, they argue:

What seems odd about Hirsch's formulation is the transition from definition to method. He begins by defining textual meaning as the author's intended meaning and then suggests that the best way to find textual meaning is to look for authorial intention. (p. 725)

           

Hirsch, as a matter of fact, ascribes a god-like authority to the author. This, undoubtedly, would disempower other potential readings of the text. Some critical and literary theorists, including Roland Barthes, argues that any text is polysemantic; it has no single interpretation. In this respect, Barthes states “To give an Author to a text is to impose upon that text a stop clause, to furnish it with a final signification, to close the writing.” [7] The coming back of the author’s intention must be ransomed by the death of the reader and therefore the death of criticism. At this level, W. K. Wimsatt Jr. and M. C. Beardsley remind us “that the poem (any literary work of art) is not the critic's own and not the author's (it is detached from the author at birth and goes about the world beyond his power to intend about it or control it). The poem (any literary work of art) belongs to the public.[8] (My italics).

The other “mistake” that critics make, according to Knapp and Michaels, is that making difference between language and speech act. This is another epistemological mistake that backs up the Knapp-Michaels thesis. “De Man's separation of language and speech acts rests on a mistake.” (p. 734) for Knapp and Michaels, language and speech act are inseparable:

In our view, however, the relation between meaning and intention or, in slightly different terms, between language and speech acts is such that intention can neither be added nor subtracted. Intention cannot be added to or subtracted from meaning because meanings are always intentional; intention cannot be added to or subtracted from language because language consists of speech acts, which are also always intentional. (p. 736)[9]

At this level, they distinguish between two kinds of theorists. Positive theorist, like P. D. Juhl, who adds speech act to language to foreground a meaning; negative theorist such as Paul de Man who subtracts  the authorial intention and  who relies on the formal rules and public norms of language to “to preserve what it takes to be the purity of language from the distortion of speech acts.”

            The last mistake, according to Knapp and Michaels, is when some critics, mainly Stanley Fish, separate between knowledge and belief. It is an ontological mistake. They argue that “knowledge and true belief are the same.” The epistemology of both belief and knowledge are different, however. Equating the two is an epistemological “mistake”; there different methodologies that govern each of these notions. Critics cannot always adopt the same perspective to reach certain “knowledge” or “belief”.  For Fish, the truth of knowledge is that all beliefs are equal.

The theoretical impulse, as we have described it, always involves the attempt to separate things that should not be separated: on the ontological side, meaning from intention, language from speech acts; on the epistemological side, knowledge from true belief. Our point has been that the separated terms are in fact inseparable. Our point has been that the separated terms are in fact inseparable. (p. 741)

            In a nutshell, Steven Knapp and Benn Michaels conclude their essay by stressing the very first point the make from the title that “the theoretical enterprise should
therefore come to an end.”[10] They argue that since there is that gap between theory and practice, theorizing should be doomed. Yet what seems inconsistent in the Knapp-Michaels thesis is their inability to work outside the realm of theory. Simply put, what are Knapp and Michaels doing but theorizing? Their discursive theoretical background (Neo-pragmatism) replaces its emphasis on the practicality rather than “theory” which they suggest to be impractical. Following the thread their argument, Knapp and Michaels argue at the very outset that “theory” “governs the interpretation” and then they conclude by claiming “the theoretical enterprise should therefore come to an end.” This, beyond doubt, is another “mistake”, I believe, that is made these critics. All in all theory and practice/praxis are the twins that usually meet.

Works Cited

Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels, "Against Theory," Critical Inquiry 8 (1982): 723-42.

Barthes, Roland. "The Death of the Author." Image / Music / Text. Trans. Stephen Heath. New York: Hill and Wang, 1977. 142-7.

Ashcroft, Bill, and D. P. S. Ahluwalia. Edward Said. London: Routledge, 2001. Print

---

[1] Steven Knapp is associate professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, and is the author of Personification and the Sublime: Milton to Coleridge (1985).

[2] Walter Benn Michaels (born 1948) is an American literary theorist; he is professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, and is the author of The Gold Standard and the Logic of Naturalism (1987). And The Shape of the Signifier: 1967 to the End of History (2004).

[3] I am much obliged to Professor N. LAHLOU of Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdellah for helping me critically understand this essay and other related issues of this sort.   

[4] I shall refer to the Gramscian notion of “Praxis” rather than practice; the former refers to the social reform and change, while the latter could be grasped as the application of any theory to any literary production.

[5] Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels, "Against Theory." Critical Inquiry 8 (1982): 723.

[6] I deem it worthy to make it clear what it is meant by the two philosophical notions: epistemology and ontology. Epistemology is the he science or philosophy of knowledge, investigates the definition, varieties, sources and limits of knowledge, experience and belief. Ontology is the science or philosophy of being. It is the branch of metaphysics which examines the existence or essence of things, producing a theory about what exists or a list of things that exist. (these definitions are taken from Bill Ashcroft and Pal Ahluwalia’s Routledge critical thinkers on Edward Said  p. 56)

[7] Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author” p.5

[8] W. K. Wimsatt Jr. and M. C. Beardsley, “The Intentional Fallacy” The Sewanee Review, Vol. 54, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 1946) p 4

[9] Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels, "Against Theory." Critical Inquiry 8 (1982): 736.

[10] Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels, "Against Theory." Critical Inquiry 8 (1982): 742.

Tamellalte: Sinking to its Knees Twofold

Published by Morocco World News

By Ismail FROUINI

Fez – The Moroccan government’s lack of attention to its citizens facing great hardship for more than a week is pitiful. Morocco’s southeastern region (Ouarzazate, Tinghir, and Zagora) is facing substantial trauma, and its people, houses and plantations have been devastated, while the region was flooded. 

“There hasn’t been a time when we’ve been completely cut off from other parts of the country,” a man from Tamellalte tells me. People’s belongings and possessions were dispersed throughout the area after heavy rain and floods recently incapacitated several southern Moroccan towns.

In Tamellalte, a vilage located 60 kilometers northeast of Zagora, the current situation is unbearably dismal. People from inside and outside the area have appealed for government assistance. Tamellalte is generally prepared when the Draa Valley is flooded, due to the tribe’s low elevation and seasonal weather patterns. Dwellers have come to expect these events. What they did not expect is the continuous negligence and delinquency from Moroccan authorities to address the issue of their remoteness.

Many people in Tamellalte are in desperate need of help in terms of shelter, food, and other basic living amenities. Imagine students, schoolteachers, and traders unable to attend their institutions in the village on the other bank of the river because of floods. Imagine people unable to access basic food items in their local market. Imagine the entire infrastructure in Tamellalte either destroyed or inaccessible, with its dwellers effectively cut off from the rest of the region due to destroyed roads.

I have already made an account of a similar incident in a previous article, “Tamellalte, the Forgotten Town.” Now, the same situation is playing out across the greater southeast, and in Tamellalte in particular. These floods are, in fact, an additional challenge to Tamellalte, alongside an ongoing tribal conflict between the people of Tamellalte and their neighbouring tribe on the opposite side of the river, Tamezmoute. Short skirmishes have broken out all along and over the bridge and road construction, to which Tamezmoute never consented.

As far as back as I can remember, 2004 saw the most traumatic event of the long history of tension between Tamellalte and Tamezmoute, with both tribes constantly fighting over the bridge. As an onlooker, I was overwhelmed to see the tribes warring and fighting with one another. It was around 5:00 pm February 4^th when men, women, and children all joined in on the fight. The news spread, and dominated the entire region. It’s shameful that people in the 21^stcentury still get worked up over the pettiest of subjects, such as a bridge or tarred road. It shows how ignorance perpetuates society. Both Tamellalte and Tamezmoute are subjects to their ignorance, alas!!!

Efforts have been made to heal the rift, yet it is ordinary to find the two constantly in conflict, rarely reaching common ground. Tamellalte always sues for peace, because they always anticipate catastrophic events. However, such a flood is never anticipated. The onus, accordingly, falls on the local authorities to intervene and maintain the status quo and to end such skirmishes. This accentuates the authorities’ neglect and both tribes’ remoteness.

Recently, the significance of this negligence has come into sharp focus. Many people question the possibility of dialogue between the belligerents. Still, it’s difficult to gauge where the blame lies. First and foremost, as inhabitants of the area, we must be aware of the problems that should be overcome by moving from a framework of personal and tribal interests to looking at what we have in common as a neglected, ostracised, and remote part of Morocco.

I believe that it is high time to build our lives together on solid foundations of mutual love, peace, and knowledge, rather than the sands of ignorance. I painfully stress that both tribes align themselves together for the sake of future generations. Still, regrettably, the strong beliefs of antagonism, hatred, and enmity are instilled in every member of both tribes. The tribes’ adults, both educated and uneducated, have arrogantly declined to discuss the matter. Whenever tribe members pass by youth gangs from the opposite tribe, they receive bitter and relentless insults. I have always wondered why authorities condone harassment like this?

It is a depressing fact that both tribes are not yet ready for dialogue because of their disdain, arrogance, denial, and dogmatic tribal interests. I have no doubt that our society, our future, and our very existence are better than this. Sooner or later, the tragedy of flood will come to an end. We urgently need a concrete bridge to open Tamellalte to the rest of the region. It is something we have fought for, imprisoned for, and killed for. It is common knowledge that Tamellalte runs in our blood. In the same vein, we live by it, or we die by it.

The Politics of Representation in Video Games
By Ismail Frouini

 – “The Orient is watched, since its almost (but never quite) offensive behavior issues out of a reservoir of infinite peculiarity; the European, whose sensibility tours the Orient, is a watcher, never involved, always detached, always ready for new examples of what the Description de l’Egypte called “bizarre jouissance.” The Orient becomes a living tableau of queerness.” Edward Said, Orientalism

Visiting the old medina is a phenomenon that completely occupies a researcher’s mind. In the last couple of years, regrettably, the medina looks to be invaded and occupied by untraditionally “modern” equipment coming from without. This universe is given a new look. The traditional values are gradually swept away. It is mournful. The fact is that ceramic and local wares are being substituted by new fashionable clothes, electronic devices and the like. What intrigues me is the increasing number and rampant growth of arcades, grocery stores, shopping centers, and chain stores. Evidently, this computerized society—due to our offspring’s encroachment on new technological devices such as TVs, virtual reality, computers, cameras, video-games, and so forth—will create an alienated and lost generation.

As it happens, I believe that it behooves researchers to dwell on this growing phenomenon; my fastidious observation of various videogame stores and the content of videogames leads me to suggest that videogames constitute a coherent ideology. They, in one way or another, entail certain cultural, and in some cases religious, orientations and values of certain communities—not to mention the deliberate misrepresentation of certain communities, such as Arabs or Muslims. Moreover, these computer games are organized into what is sometimes called “videology.”

Videogames are novel forms of audio-visual media and visual representation. They transcend their anticipated raison d’être. Accordingly, they have an incredible influence on children’s attitudes. “Under Ash,” “Special Force,” “Heavy Fire,” “Desert Strike,” “Prince of Persia,” “Command Conquers Generals,” and “Assassin’s Creed” are some videogames that directly channel the issues of (mis)representation. Recent videogames launched during the Israeli attack and siege on Gaza—where the latter is depicted as being set in a series of tunnels in which hides Hamas—are a total miss. “Bomb Gaza”  is the most outrageous game ever launched by gaming company PlayFTW. Games like this have consolidated the antagonistic interplay of the orthodox binary divisions of, borrowing from Said, the ‘Self’ and the ‘Other.’ Ultimately defining and delimiting the ontology of the Western “Selfhood” is premised upon the representation, and the construction of Eastern “Otherness” as such.

In the academic realm, it is normal that postcolonial critics have been silent on many contemporary issues. As such, video games have not yet provoked substantial concern. Admittedly, research on the psychological effects of video games on our children is very limited. The little research undertaken in media and not just video games in particular, has demonstrated negative effects in relation to stereotyping. On the one hand, video games are a major entertainment medium and enculturation force for today’s young generation. On the other, they are used as an ideological means that inoculate western imperialist discourse into our teenagers’ mind. How cliché that in the last few decades, videogames have added extra layers within this generation, as well as reaching an even wider audience. It is also known that our generation plays games more than reads books, which is yet another cause for mourning.

Being on the issue of video game representation, this paper might forecast some of the potential unforeseen repercussions of these games for Arab youth. Colonial discourse is inevitably ubiquitous: most Western narratives are based on and saturated with interminable binary opposition that privileges the “civilized” Self over the “backward” Other. …This idiosyncratic mode of existence of the Western “Self” evokes a kind of unremitting resistance or counter discourse on the part of postcolonial subjects, “Other.” As such, we on the ‘other side should be at pains to contrapuntally read and immunize this orientalist fever that has sprawled into our culture and we should do without the colonial enterprises. To quote a few lines from the Palestinian American intellectual Edward Said in his 1981 book Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World, ” The analysis of the relationship between the Self, the occident, and the “Other,” the orient, is at the heart of post-colonialism.”

Instead of scholarship, we resort to journalists making extravagant statements, which are instantly picked up and further dramatized by the media. Looming over their work is the slippery concept, to which they constantly allude, of “fundamentalism,” a word that has come to be associated almost automatically with Islam, although it has a flourishing, usually elided relationship with Christianity, Judaism, and Hinduism. The deliberately created associations between Islam and fundamentalism ensure that the average reader comes to see Islam and fundamentalism as essentially the same thing.

It is clear that these representations of the “Other” as terrorists, criminals, and killers have generated a kind of discourse. More often than not, this knowledge is produced by scholars, novelists, anthropologists, and in our framework, video game companies. All founders of the orientalist discussion are a far cry from being either scientific or exact. Moreover, video games sublimate a colonialist discourse in the sense that the “Other,” mostly in the incarnation of a terrorist, is treated on the basis of denial, dehumanization, belittlement, tokenism, and exploitation.

Consequently, the onus falls on every cultural and social researcher to develop a critical attentiveness towards our children. Intellectually, it is an appeal against these prejudices and misrepresentations of the populace; at the same time, it is an appeal for third-spacing or subverting the aforementioned binary division, and shunning this glib reductionism and Western essentialism as well. These divisions are reiterating the cryptic orientalist discourses on the Orient. The aforesaid vilifications and reductionist representations blur the boundaries between the West and the Rest and therefore offer no interstice of peace. Undoubtedly, such biased and malicious representations have their finger on advancing the millennial thesis that militant Islam is a danger to the West. This has (mis)led- and will lead- so many people to believe that Islam is a religion of war, violence, bloodshed, and mass murderers who only seek the thrill of the kill. This kind of thinking will have dire repercussions on future generations.
                                                                                              By Ismail Frouini- Rabat

THE OLD MAN BY ISMAIL FROUINI

THE OLD MAN BY ISMAIL FROUINI


http://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2014/02/121481/the-old-man-poem/
THE OLD MAN BY ISMAIL FROUINI

The Old Man – Poem

Saturday 1 February 2014 - 16:04

Ismail Frouni

Alone in the corner!

Sitting,

Waiting,

Then leaving in stagger,

Gaunt and tall, bearded is his smiling face,

An old man is gazing into the space.

****

The deep wrinkles in his forehead dwell.

Make of his face a set of stairs.

On a log that his DJELLABA hardly covers

He sits silently????? without farewell!

Still waiting…

 ****

Aloof and stubborn,

The old man is of none but of his own

Always waiting and looking towards the mountain

For the last glow of the sunset.

 ****

Watching the sunset over the mountain

Halas! The sun sinks below the horizon.

Taking his walking stick home,

In  a great sorrow,

Hoping the log is not moved tomorrow…

Morocco: Arabic Language in Danger*

The point of departure of this paper is to call to question the process of language (de)construction in our daily life. Of course, what is deemed as language today used to be a dialect –or less than that a slang- of a specific society. Regardless of the inferiority of dialect to language, the transition is linguistically proven valid and true.

In Morocco, the situation seems to be the case. Another point is contesting the potential outcomes of loaning words from other languages, especially in the public discourse and conversations. As far as language is concerned, two issues are debatable and disputable in the Arab world. First, is language standardisation; second is the appropriation or abrogation of language in both speaking and writing.

Morocco is a multilingual country; Tamazight, the recently and the officially standardized language, is said to be the pioneer language uttered and settled on this territory. Arabic language arrived to Morocco thanks to Islam. The other languages spoken in other places in Morocco are nothing but the debris of the ever-lasting colonialism.

So far Tamazight and Arabic are two officially standardized languages in Morocco. Before, the issue of Tamazight had been disputed. There has been a dogmatic [dis]agreement whether it is a language or just a mere dialect like other Moroccan varieties; in other words, the question was which of the varieties (Tarifit, Tachlhit, Tamazight…) to be officially standardized. Now I think that game is over. Tamazight has become an official language.

 Few days ago, Noureddine Ayouch, the Moroccan activist, lodged an opinionated appeal to standardize Moroccan Arabic or what is known is daily life as “Darija”. Empowered by the francophone ideology, Ayouch, the francophone activist, schooled in France, states: “ Arabic is the language of Quraich, of backwardness; it is not the language of Moroccans; so we have to teach our kids using our own Moroccan varieties, say, “Darija” and/or the other dialects.

I think that this is one of the procedures through which any societal phenomenon passes. It is the situation of shock, and then comes hesitation and finally vulgarization or normalization. Ayouch seems to account for his opinion by attributing the miserable situation of the Moroccan educational system to the use of standard Arabic and the teachings of Islam in curriculums, in which standard Arabic is taught to students who ignore it. The reality proves the opposite, however. One day, sooner or later, Ayouch and his “opinion” may celebrate their heyday.

At this level, we have to question this opinion and the potential outcomes of this alleged standardization. What is that standardization for? What has “Darija” advanced and contributed to academic research? How many “Darijas” do we have in Morocco? Which of these to standardize, which not, and why? Is it an appeal to standardize Moroccan Arabic or to Moroccanize standard Arabic? I said sooner or later this dialect, “Darija” will be standardized; for it serves the coming back as well as the main purpose of colonialism: division, disempowerment, mitigation, and civil-war and conflicts.

If it happens that you speak with a Moroccan speaking “Darija”, you will see the duality of language use, say, code switching. He or she shifts from using Moroccan Arabic, “Darija”, to using a few French words. In fact, there are two interpretations of this case. The first, one has to do with the weakness in mastering his or her own language (or dialect) and therefore, for them, the language is not able to convey their messages. The second, and most perilously, is the fact that the speaker postulates that he or she is knowledgeable, prestigious, superior (or rather that the language switched to is superior) by intruding those words.

 In fact the case is the converse. The same is noticeable with any speaker of Tamazight varieties. I think that the act of loaning or code switching is not confined to dialects; it trespasses upon the standard Arabic language. If it happens, for instance, that you watch a sports match of football on an Arab Arabic TV, you will discover that the broadcaster loans many words from foreign languages, say, the English language, for example, “DERBY”, “SEMIFINAL”, “PRESSING”, “GOAL”, “EXTRA TIME”, “COACH” and so on. As I said above, these words will be vulgarized and accounted as Arabic words in the future. It is because Arab society, in general, and Morocco, in particular, is the product of the “knowledge” which is offered by “media”.

Of these, we, Ayouch, broadcasters, the media jeopardize standard Arabic language. Arabic is at stake. It suffers within and without. As an Amazigh-speaking man, I do view that Arabic, the language of Quran and Islam, unifies people and peoples all over the world. This kind of appeal of using other varieties in our institutions, schools, daily conversations is nothing but the coming back of the ugly face of colonialism, imperialism, which tore apart- and still tears- the Moroccan community. It is an appeal which is cooked somewhere to be devoured here in Morocco.


                                                                                                    * Ismail FROUINI, Fes

Language at Stake:Morocco: Arabic language in danger

Postcolonial discourse in Morocco:

Contextualizing the “Other” in George Orwell’s

“Marrakesh”

                                                                                              By Ismail FROUINI

"When you see how people live and still more how easily they die, it is always difficult to believe that you are walking among human beings." George Orwell1 (1903-1950), Marrakesh (1939).

 “Colonial subjects, as George Orwell saw them in Marrakech in 1939, must not be seen except as a kind of continental emanation, African, Asian, Oriental” Edward Said (1935-2003) Orientalism. London: Routledge & Kegan LTD, 1978, 251 pages.

“‘They’ were not like ‘us’, and for that reason deserve to be ruled”. Edward Said (1935-2003) Culture and Imperialism (1993), (the introduction p: 13)

               The aim of this paper is to consider George Orwell’s essay on “Marrakech” and analyze it from a postcolonial perspective. It is a study where the “Other” or the “Orient” is theorised then contextualised to touch one facet of the intentionally made misrepresentations of the West on the Orient –Morocco in this case. Based upon George Orwell’s essay “Marrakesh”, some light will mainly be shed on Orwell’s reading and viewing to Moroccan culture. At this stage, this paper will rely, of course, upon some, but not all, of the forefathers of postcolonial discourse such as Edward Said’s prominent book “Orientalism”(1978), Frantz Fanon, Gayatri Spivak’s article: “ Can the Subaltern Speak?”, Abdul R. JanMohamed‘s article “The Economy of Manichean Allegory: the Function of Racial Difference Colonialist Literature”, to name a few. As such, this paper will make the reader introduced to some ideological function of colonialist literature.

               It is commonplace among critics and theorists that Postcolonialism, as an academic discipline, is a reaction against colonialism. It reveals the aftermaths of the colonisation on the colonised. It scrutinizes the ambivalent relationship between the colonizer and the colonized. But who colonized whom? Historically speaking, it was the “white man” ² who took the initiation to subdue and “civilize” the “black man”. Whilst the British Empire, which is, to render to Said’s Culture and Imperialism, the chief imperialist power in the nineteenth century, evaded the quarter of the universe, France and the other neighbouring countries invaded the African continent. Colonialism nowadays is apparently manifest; it is of different and compartmentalized facets. These facets of colonialism, in fact, embalm the subalternity of the Orient to the Occident.

               In recent postcolonial studies, the sound of the “subaltern”3, “oppressed”4, and “silenced” countries was made heard, thanks to some critics and theorists such as Edward Said, Frantz Fanon, Gayatri Spivak, Homi Bhabha, to cite a few. All Postcolonial theorists and critics agree that the colonizers, be they intellectual or ordinary man, misrepresent the “Orient”, at the same time uphold and stress the “Eurocentrism” (European superiority). Said in his book “Orientalism” ⁵ (1978) says that:

 “The Orient as a representation in Europe is formed—or deformed—out of a more and more specific sensitivity towards a geographical region called "the East." Specialists in this region do their work on it, so to speak, because in time their profession as Orientalists requires that they present their society with images of the Orient, knowledge about it, insight into it.”⁶

Abdul R. JanMohamed in his article “The Economy of Manichean Allegory: the Function of Racial Difference Colonialist Literature” states that “the ideological function of all “imaginary” and some “ symbolic” colonialist literature is to articulate and justify the moral authority of the colonizer and --by positing the inferiority of the native as a metaphysical fact—to mask the pleasure the coloniser derives from that authority(...)we must bear in mind that colonialist fiction and ideology do not exist in a vacuum”.

               Based upon the quotes above, it is obviously clear that most of the Western literature is not based primarily on history – though literature is almost of fiction; it is grounded and constrained under the Western ideology that make survive the barbaric misrepresentation on the Orient.

By declaring and depicting someone as "Other," writers – or artists, theorists, and critics- tend to stress what makes them dissimilar from or opposite of another and this identifiable in the way they represent others, especially through stereotypical images. George Orwell, as a “white” West intellectual, represents the postcolonial conditions of Marrakech, though it seems that it is not infiltrated with personal attitude, there is a kind of exaggeration in the portrayal.

In this essay, George Orwell portrays Marrakech. He focuses more on the status quo of people. The first excerpt tells of a funeral that, due to the poverty of the people living under the colonial domination, is simple and careless. George Orwell, through his essay, at the very beginning of this essay, depicts a sample of Moroccan people inasmuch as he castrates Moroccan people from human being aspect and therefore from their “Moroccanness”. He also reveals the spiritual and the psychological inner self of Moroccans, who always stick to their own culture. In this case, Orwell displays a kind of “Eurocentrism”7, for having seen and castigated the culture of the “Other” paves the way to what Homi Bhabha called Ambivalence and the outdated dualities which are identifiable while describing Moroccan people as “others”. As such, the expressions used in this essay -as I quote Orwell here “The little crowd of mourners—all men and boys, no women (…) No gravestone, no name, no identifying mark of any kind (…) when you see how the people live, and still more how easily they die, it is always difficult to believe that you are walking among human beings” - show the inferior outlook of “Them” towards “Us”; “We” and “They”: Orwell’s on the “Other”, that is to say on Moroccan people.

               For so many people, who are not aware of the philosophy behind the description in the essay, Orwell is saying the truth; if so, Joseph Conrad, for example, in his novel “Heart of Darkness” is saying (more than) the “truth”. What is the problem then? Do we have to keep silent? What does it do to minimize the culture of the “Other”? We are already silenced; we are the subaltern and the “Other”. The “Other” for Orwell is not yet a human being, as shown implicitly in the excerpt above. The “Other” in this case is a subaltern subject, therefore. So far as this issue of the subaltern subject is concerned, Gayatri Spivak in her seminal article “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Says that:

“The oppressed, if given the chance and on the way to solidarity through alliance politics, can speak and know their conditions”.

               In a nutshell, the concept of the “Other” in George Orwell’s essay on “Marrakech” goes beyond its conventional limitation. At this stage one has to speak and make voiced the situation of oppressed ceded people. This action, of course, will end, or at least cease, the intentionally made second-hand opinions about Orients, in general, and Moroccan people, in particular. George Orwell remarkably regurgitates what other Orientalists said about Oriental countries. Last, but far from least, fortunately, so many critics paid attention to Orwell’s paradoxical discourse: his satirical study of the society and imagery, symbolic and metaphysical fiction (second-hand opinion) said about Marrakech.

1 George Orwell: (1903–1950) (Eric Arthur Blair) is an English novelist, journalist and essayist.

2These binary oppositions- as Aristotle first put them- should, according to Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) and Edward W. Said, come into being overcome since they are based on racial and religious propaganda. 

3 This term is first used by the Italian Marxist political activist, Antonio Gramsci, in his widely known book “Prison Notebooks” and then later devised by the deconstructivist, post-colonial critic, Gayatri Spivak, mainly in her seminal essay: "Can the Subaltern Speak?"

4 Paulo Freire in his book “The Pedagogy of the Oppressed” refers to the colonizer as such.

5 « Orientalism » (published in 1978) by Edward W. Said, is an outstanding and cornerstone book in post colonial studies.

6 Edward Said. Orientalism. London: Routledge & Kegan LTD, 1978,273 pages.