Biopolitics and the emergent self-reflexive Maghribi subjectivity in Laila Lalami's Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits

Abstract

ABSTRACTCommonsense discussions about illegal immigration in the Maghreb point the finger in the direction of authorities on both sides of the Mediterranean. The EU is reproached for closing its borders and North African governments for exploiting the problem by diverting attention elsewhere and downplaying its gravity. The Moroccan writer, Laila Lalami, through her collection of short stories Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits (2005), prefers to focus more on the harraga populations themselves; it is their unthinking proclivities that exacerbate the problem and allow the ruling machinery to become biopolitical entities, working less for the interest of the impoverished populations and more for staying in power, no matter how.Through characters and narrative situations, Lalami shows that illegal immigration is a trap. For, even when the harrag makes it to the host country and starts sending remittances, as Aziz does, to family back at home, he remains a loser. The middle-class ideal of a steady income and improved living standards lifts the Maghrebi's spontaneity and turns him or her into a superfluous commodity, seeking always to behave, not to think. Unlike Aziz or Larbi then, Murad failed to make it to Spain. His prolonged joblessness becomes an extension of his romantic character. Shaking that romanticism off allows him eventually to reverse the biopolitical reality by embracing the art of ‘story telling’. Readers find him expertly selling artworks in souvenir shops in Tangier. Success in this context is not capitalistically driven; it involves organically connecting self-important American tourists with the artwork. The tourism industry becomes less of a recognition of already ordered reality, and more of an encounter with a new one: money matters but does not determine or control the encounter. The self-reflexive Murad assumes now a constructive engagement with the world.