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.