Papers by Anouar El Younssi
Tamazgha Studies Journal, 2023
This article probes the significance of Morocco's urban space gradually welcoming/embracing Tamaz... more This article probes the significance of Morocco's urban space gradually welcoming/embracing Tamazight, a critical step in a potential reconfiguration of the larger North Africa that would account for the region's indigeneity and multilingualism. It further seeks to examine the extent to which the linguistic shifts taking place in Morocco's public sphere, resulting from the 2011 amended constitution, could in the long term generate an epistemic shift in Moroccan consciousness and imaginary. In terms of methodology, this study relies on quantitative and qualitative data accumulated inside and outside of Morocco, specifically photos taken in summer 2022 as well questionnaires completed by Moroccan nationals of Amazigh origin in the same year. The findings in this data are illuminating and shed some light on how the Moroccan Amazigh (especially the educated class) view the Amazigh cultural movement underway and the corresponding debate over language in Morocco. Although limited, this data-while showcasing some of the accomplishments of the Amazigh cultural movement-provides a window into the kinds of challenges facing this movement in Morocco and by extension in the Maghreb and North Africa.
Journal of Arabic Literature, 2023
This article discusses the politics of form in ʿ Abdullāh al-ʿ Arwī's 1989 ʾAwrāq: sīrat Idrīs al... more This article discusses the politics of form in ʿ Abdullāh al-ʿ Arwī's 1989 ʾAwrāq: sīrat Idrīs al-dhihniyyah (Papers: Idrīs's Intellectual Biography), an important contribution to Moroccan experimental literature in the postcolonial era. Together with Muḥammad Barrādah's 1987 novel Luʿbat al-nisyān (The Game of Forgetting, 1996), Awrāq consolidated the experimental turn in the Moroccan literary scene, aiding thereby its ascent to the mainstream. ʾAwrāq is a two-layered text, presenting the reader with, first, a stack of papers of various sorts belonging to the diseased protagonist Idrīs, and second, the commentaries on this archive by the narrator and Shuʿ ayb. The book constantly oscillates between these two layers, attempting in the process to shake the dominant realist form and its underlying European point of reference. ʾAwrāq's search for its best form parallels Idrīs's quest to restore, or be reconciled to, his identity in the context of France and Europe's colonial project and its legacy. The text's experimentalism is thus strategically harnessed to wrestle, within the diegesis, with various political and sociocultural challenges facing Morocco, and the Arab/Arabo-Amazigh world more broadly, in the postcolonial era-including the colossal task of reconciling the Islamic heritage (al-turāth) with hegemonic Western discourses of modernity.
The Journal of North African Studies, 2022
This article analyses Mohamed Berrada’s novel Luʿbat al-nisyān (1987, The Game of Forgetting, 199... more This article analyses Mohamed Berrada’s novel Luʿbat al-nisyān (1987, The Game of Forgetting, 1996), focusing on the book’s unorthodox narrative design, where multiplicity, metafiction, and fragmentation are strategic tools that bring to light the author’s vision of (post)modernist literature in a postcolonial nation. The article examines how the novel’s compelling experimental quality and efficacious engagement of cultural and socio-political issues are at work, highlighting thereby the text’s commitment overtones. The novel embeds narrative multiplicity and fragmentation within a key dialectic that informs and runs through the entire text: remembering and forgetting. These two acts (remembering and forgetting) provide discursive spheres that enhance the imagination of both the author and the reader, who enter into an unspoken partnership to take the literary text into vast interpretive realms, thus expanding and elevating the horizons of contemporary Moroccan and Arabic literature. Overall, Berrada resorts to quintessentially (post)modernist techniques – such as multiplicity, fragmentation, and metanarrative – anchored in the overarching game/dialectic of remembering and forgetting in order to deliver implicit social and political critique.
The End of Western Hegemonies?, 2022
The rise and spread of Jihadist groups, such as al-Qaeda and ISIS, and the atrocities they have p... more The rise and spread of Jihadist groups, such as al-Qaeda and ISIS, and the atrocities they have perpetrated in various Muslim territories and Western cities have raised the alarm about the supposed threat Islam poses to Europe— and to the West more broadly. In Europe, the resurgence of populist, right-wing politics was connected in no small part to the wide audience reached by discourses warning against the ‘threat’ immigrants—especially Muslims—pose to Western civilization. As dramatized threats and fears become a political factor of prime importance, the following question cannot but impose itself. Is an Abrahamic religion like Islam, with as many as 1.8 billion adherents, an existential threat to the West? Put differently, is Islam inherently incompatible with liberal Western values? To answer these questions, this chapter places Islam within its centuries-old tradition and regards it as a general category. It compares and contrasts such a category with various interpretations thereof, including Islamism, Jihadism, and Sufism. The chapter’s historical thrust is the second half of the twentieth century and the first two decades of the twenty- first century—a period that has witnessed the rise and flourishing of Islamism, Jihadism, and right-wing politics in Europe and other Western locales. Departing from the views of various thinkers, this essay argues that, while Islamism/ Jihadism might pose a concrete threat to Western societies, Islam is not inherently antagonistic to the West or to freedom.
Keywords: Islam, the West, Far Right, identity politics, orientalism, colonialism
Middle Eastern Literatures journal, 2020
This article argues that the subversive overtones in Aḥmad al-Madīnī's novel Zaman bayna l-wilāda... more This article argues that the subversive overtones in Aḥmad al-Madīnī's novel Zaman bayna l-wilāda wa l-ḥulm (Time between Birth and Dream, 1974) target two distinct poles of authority, textual and extra-textual. The novel adopts what I call “a poetics of dissent,” with a penchant for rebellion against the classical Arabic novel-seen as a subset of the European realist novel-and the Arab-Moslem heritage. Published a few years after the 1967 Naksa, and two failed coups d'état in 1971 and 1972 in Morocco, the novel paints a gloomy picture of life in Morocco and the Arab world. The novel's experimental gymnastics is an attempt to achieve a formal shift in literary technique and an ideological shift in the politics of literary representation. A politization of form that goes hand in hand with a formalization of politics emerges as a critical dialectic in Zaman and by extension Moroccan experimental literature post-Independence.
Politics, Religion & Ideology, 2018
In the wake of unimaginable atrocities committed by militants of so called ISIS or ISIS sympathiz... more In the wake of unimaginable atrocities committed by militants of so called ISIS or ISIS sympathizers and other terror groups around the world, a number of reform-minded Muslims are calling for an honest conversation about links between Islamic doctrine(s) and human rights abuses. Maajid Nawaz and Irshad Manji are two prominent voices advocating the revival of the Islamic tradition of ijtihad (independent reasoning) in hopes of bringing about a twenty-first-century Muslim reformation. They take issue with the term ‘Islamophobia,’ which they consider an unnecessary burden that stifles any open discussion of Islam and its demerits. Criticism of Islam or any other religion or ideology, following Nawaz and Manji, must be upheld, and should be viewed as consistent with the secular right to freedom of expression. In other words, Islam should not rise above criticism. Such a stance affirms that religious doctrines and/or cultural practices—in contrast to the people who adhere to such doctrines or engage in such practices—do not in themselves have rights, for such rights are granted to people, rather than to ideas or ideologies or cultures. Human rights must assume priority over religious and/or cultural rights.
Journal of North African Studies , 2018
Ten years after Morocco gained its independence from France and Spain in 1956, the relatively bri... more Ten years after Morocco gained its independence from France and Spain in 1956, the relatively brief appearance of the journal Souffles (1966–1972) and its Arabic companion Anfās (1971–1972) served as the umbrella for an avant-garde movement with multi-faceted literary, cultural, and political goals. The journal published work by leftist intellectuals who saw Morocco and other newly-independent Maghrebi and African countries to be plagued by two different, but interrelated, misfortunes: first, that of French economic, cultural, and political domination; and second, that of the rule of self-serving authoritarian regimes, namely the dictatorial reign of King Hassan II of Morocco. This article argues that the creation of Souffles triggered the birth of a movement which sought – on the one hand – to rethink and redefine literature and national culture, and – on the other – to deconstruct various forms of authority (the state, God, tradition, religion, patriarchy, etc.) in order to delegitimize the theocratic and autocratic regime of King Hassan II and potentially other regimes in Africa and the Arab world.
Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, 2014
A recipient of Western literary awards, such as “The Prix Goncourt,” Tahar Ben Jelloun has become... more A recipient of Western literary awards, such as “The Prix Goncourt,” Tahar Ben Jelloun has become a prominent Maghrebi author. His fiction has circulated widely; his novels L'Enfant de sable (1985) and La Nuit sacrée (1987), for instance, have been translated into several languages, granting Ben Jelloun entry into the sphere of World Literature. I argue that the success of Ben Jelloun’s work —tremendously boosted by his use of French — is attributed mostly to his talent in offering an exoticized account of Moroccan society, a trajectory that courts Western readers and the global market, and problematizes the place his works occupy in World Literature.
Vitality and Dynamism: Interstitial Dialogues of Language, Politics, and Religion in Morocco’s Literary Tradition. , 2014
Moroccan society throughout the Twentieth Century CE was fairly conservative and heavily influenc... more Moroccan society throughout the Twentieth Century CE was fairly conservative and heavily influenced by the Islamic tradition. A significant amount of literature – especially the one penned in Arabic – published in Morocco in the last century manifested a tendency that avoided flouting, in any significant way, the social and religious norms prevalent in the country. A number of writers addressed issues of public concern, such as poverty; (illicit) immigration; corruption; the legacy of Franco-Spanish colonialism; Moroccan subjectivity, memory, and imaginary; and others. In particular, literature criticizing or responding to the former colonizers – especially the French– and the legacy of the colonial era abounded in Morocco post-1956. Moroccan writer, Mohamed Choukri, provides a curious case within this paradigm. His writing trajectory is characterized by rebellion, counterculture, and controversy. In his attempts to address the social ills within Moroccan society post-Independence, he produced a literature somehow different from his contemporaries, a literature that is audaciously non-conformist and highly controversial.
Online Articles by Anouar El Younssi
Talks by Anouar El Younssi
Learning a second language for a typical young student should be a dynamic, lively, and fun exper... more Learning a second language for a typical young student should be a dynamic, lively, and fun experience. In all likelihood, having young, energetic language learners sit for all—or even most—of the session will result in boredom. These learners should instead be given lots of opportunities to learn the language by engaging in activities that make them move around and touch/do things, ideally all the time so much so that they would not be able to feel the passage of time. They deserve to be placed at the center of the learning process, and be “all over the map” inside and/or outside of the classroom.
This paper researches the literary phenomenon of al-tajrīb (Arabic for “experimentalism”) in the ... more This paper researches the literary phenomenon of al-tajrīb (Arabic for “experimentalism”) in the Moroccan novel during the decades following national independence in 1956. Al-tajrīb (experimentalism) emerged as an alternative mode to the realist model of Egyptian Nobel laureate Najīb Maḥfūẓ (Naguib Mahfouz) (b. 1911-d. 2006), a model which influenced a number of novelists in Morocco. By contrasting experimental novels by Moroccan littérateurs to the realist model of the classical European novel and the classical Arabic novel, I do not imply that Moroccan (and Arab) novelistic experimentalism is un-realistic or treat the unreal. At stake in my paper is the new definition of “realism” that emerges through the practices and discourses of experimental fiction. Rather than proposing “realism” as a mimetic literary mode based on descriptive prose, what we see instead is a politics of form and a formalization of politics that work through the fusion of multiple narrative voices and layers, a reliance on the technique of fragmentation, the inclusion of a metafictional discourse that interrupts the narrative in order to reflect on the morphology and goal of literary writing, and so forth. As Moroccan novelist-critic Aḥmad al- Madīnī points out, experimental formal features such as the “breaking and interpenetration of [narrative] times [and] the multiplicity of voices” constitute “legitimate attributes to a novelistic world [. . .] with a tragic vision” (Qtd. in Abū Ḥamāla 54). In a similar vein, Muḥammad Barrādah, another prominent novelist-critic, notes that the “experimental takeoff” in Moroccan and Arab novelistic writing could be read as “a period of venting and settling of accounts with a handicapped heritage and an inert history” (al-Riwāyah al-ʿArabiyyah, 37-38). Both al-Madīnī and Barrādah highlight the ideological implications of the shift in literary representation brought about by Arab experimentalism. In this paper, I argue that formal experimentalism in Moroccan and Arab literatures retains its tie to reality through political exigency. It is derived from a political need to break with continuous history, which turns experimentalism into a discursive site that probes the question of how we do things differently.
It follows that reality, in its cultural and socio-political ramifications, undergirds Moroccan (and Arab) literary experimentalism. Along with novelist-critic Muḥammad Amanṣūr, I maintain that “realism is not in contradiction with experimentalism” (Istrātījiyāt, 168). The notion of realism in this context is not figural representation of plausible worldly coordinates, but the formal, structural, and linguistic invocation of new subject positions that correspond (implicitly and/or discursively) to immediate contemporary political exigency. Al-Madīnī remarks that formal experimentalism has sought to establish “an extra-realistic relationship” with the social, which positions the individual—not his or her environment—in the center (Ru’yat, 157). This new subject position or positioning is indicative of formal experimentalism’s endeavors to create new discursive spheres for the treatment of the social and the political, and in so doing Moroccan (and Arab) experimental writings become—or make the claim of being—realistic. With the politics of formal experimentalism in mind, this paper makes the claim that experimental writings in Morocco (and by extension the Arab world) are deeply ingrained in social reality—albeit in their own way—and, therefore, should not be seen as invested in formal experimentation for its own sake. That is, experimentalism has a point of reference in the political and socio-cultural arenas, and should be treated accordingly.
Key words: experimentalism, realism, Morocco, Arabic, formal politics, political exigency
There is an emerging tradition in Moroccan novel writing that invests in al-turāth (Arab-Muslim h... more There is an emerging tradition in Moroccan novel writing that invests in al-turāth (Arab-Muslim heritage) in the last few decades. Following critic Aḥmad al-Yabūrī, this tradition was solidified in the 1980s and the 1990s. In fact, a number of successful Moroccan novels take al-turāth as their centerpiece. Examples include Binsālim Ḥammīsh’s al-ʿAllāma (The Polymath) and Aḥmad al-Tawfīq’s Jārāt ‘abī mūsa (The Neighbors of Abī Mūsa). I view al-turāth as a double-edge device that, on one hand, contributes to the efforts of innovating the Moroccan novel, but on the other hand it brings to the fore a text’s reliance on traditional themes and tropes. That is, al-turāth seems to navigate two seemingly oppositional entities: al-tajdīd (innovation) and al-taqlīd (tradition). I argue that value of al-turāth lies in this ability to straddle these two entities and generate the possibility for a third text, marked by hybridity and a potential authenticity outside European models. In this respect, al-Yabūrī avers that the investment in al-turāth has relatively liberated Moroccan novelists from imitating “Western narrative forms,” and has allowed them “the opportunity to search for a possible authenticity” in the domain of Arab creativity. Similarly, Muḥammad Barrāda underscores that since the 1960s many Arab novelists have employed “the Arabic prosaic heritage” in order to produce a novelistic form with “specificity,” a form inspired from Arabic texts of history, journeys, and books of Sufism. The employment of al-turāth could arguably be seen as a critical phase in Moroccan and Arab literary history and creativity.
A recipient of Western literary awards, such as the French “Prix Goncourt” and the British “Inter... more A recipient of Western literary awards, such as the French “Prix Goncourt” and the British “International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award,” Moroccan-born writer Tahar Ben Jelloun –who has chosen residence in France – has become a prominent figure in Maghrebian letters and beyond. His novels L'Enfant de sable (1985) and La Nuit sacrée (1987), for instance, have been translated into several languages, granting the Francophone Moroccan author entry into the sphere of World Literature. I situate Ben Jelloun within a group of Francophone Maghrebi writers –colonial and postcolonial – who display an ambiguous relationship with their country of birth and its culture, civilization and heritage. I argue that the success of Ben Jelloun’s work –which is tremendously boosted by his adoption of French as a literary medium– is to large extent attributed to his talent in offering an exoticized account of Moroccan society, a trajectory that courts Western readers and the global market, and problematizes the place his works occupy in World Literature. I view Ben Jelloun’s literary oeuvre as having a troubled morphology, which in turn reflects his troubled identity. I underscore that his literary career is shaped by the dominant French colonial presence in Morocco during the past century, one major outcome of which is his unwillingness to write fiction in his Arabic mother-tongue. I trace two dimensions of this troubled world literature and its construction of Moroccan imaginary: Firstly, the discrepancy between the French medium and his Moroccan-themed fiction and, secondly, the symptoms of an Orientalist discourse.
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Papers by Anouar El Younssi
Keywords: Islam, the West, Far Right, identity politics, orientalism, colonialism
Online Articles by Anouar El Younssi
Talks by Anouar El Younssi
It follows that reality, in its cultural and socio-political ramifications, undergirds Moroccan (and Arab) literary experimentalism. Along with novelist-critic Muḥammad Amanṣūr, I maintain that “realism is not in contradiction with experimentalism” (Istrātījiyāt, 168). The notion of realism in this context is not figural representation of plausible worldly coordinates, but the formal, structural, and linguistic invocation of new subject positions that correspond (implicitly and/or discursively) to immediate contemporary political exigency. Al-Madīnī remarks that formal experimentalism has sought to establish “an extra-realistic relationship” with the social, which positions the individual—not his or her environment—in the center (Ru’yat, 157). This new subject position or positioning is indicative of formal experimentalism’s endeavors to create new discursive spheres for the treatment of the social and the political, and in so doing Moroccan (and Arab) experimental writings become—or make the claim of being—realistic. With the politics of formal experimentalism in mind, this paper makes the claim that experimental writings in Morocco (and by extension the Arab world) are deeply ingrained in social reality—albeit in their own way—and, therefore, should not be seen as invested in formal experimentation for its own sake. That is, experimentalism has a point of reference in the political and socio-cultural arenas, and should be treated accordingly.
Key words: experimentalism, realism, Morocco, Arabic, formal politics, political exigency
Keywords: Islam, the West, Far Right, identity politics, orientalism, colonialism
It follows that reality, in its cultural and socio-political ramifications, undergirds Moroccan (and Arab) literary experimentalism. Along with novelist-critic Muḥammad Amanṣūr, I maintain that “realism is not in contradiction with experimentalism” (Istrātījiyāt, 168). The notion of realism in this context is not figural representation of plausible worldly coordinates, but the formal, structural, and linguistic invocation of new subject positions that correspond (implicitly and/or discursively) to immediate contemporary political exigency. Al-Madīnī remarks that formal experimentalism has sought to establish “an extra-realistic relationship” with the social, which positions the individual—not his or her environment—in the center (Ru’yat, 157). This new subject position or positioning is indicative of formal experimentalism’s endeavors to create new discursive spheres for the treatment of the social and the political, and in so doing Moroccan (and Arab) experimental writings become—or make the claim of being—realistic. With the politics of formal experimentalism in mind, this paper makes the claim that experimental writings in Morocco (and by extension the Arab world) are deeply ingrained in social reality—albeit in their own way—and, therefore, should not be seen as invested in formal experimentation for its own sake. That is, experimentalism has a point of reference in the political and socio-cultural arenas, and should be treated accordingly.
Key words: experimentalism, realism, Morocco, Arabic, formal politics, political exigency
Drawing on works by Muḥammad Barrādah, ʿAbdullāh al-ʿArwī, Aḥmad al-Madīnī, and others, the book contends that the Moroccan experimental novel reflects an historic turning point and transitional cultural landscape. It further shows that the experimental novel laid the ground for a different vision of literature, an important feature of which was the intent to surpass the traditional realist model as executed by Moroccan novelist ʿAbdulkarīm Ghallāb (1919–2017) and Egyptian Nobel laureate Najīb Maḥfūẓ (1911–2006). This new vision of literature seeks to create new discursive spheres for the treatment of the social and the political.
This book will be an important contribution to debates around Moroccan/Arabic/Maghrebi literature, as well as to the field of literary experimentalism more broadly.
Table of Contents:
Introduction: Mapping al-Tajrīb in the Moroccan and Arabic Novel
Chapter 1: The New Novel in Morocco and the Arab World and the Question of Reception
Chapter 2: Al-Tajrīb (Experimentation), al-Turāth (Heritage), and The New Moroccan Novel: Between Innovation and Imitation
Chapter 3: Aḥmad al-Madīnī’s Zaman bayna al-Wilādah wa al-Ḥulm: Writing the Self and Flouting Systems of Authority
Chapter 4: Muḥammad Barrādah’s The Game of Forgetting: Experimental Multiplicity, Ludic Memory, and Sexual Politics
Chapter 5: ʿAbdullāh al-ʿArwī’s ʾAwrāq Sīrat Idrīs al-Dhihniyyah: The Politics of Form as an Allegory for the State of Crisis
Conclusion
Index