Reflections on co-optation and defeat in the contemporary Moroccan novel in Arabic: Mohammed Achaari's The Arch and the Butterfly (2011)

Abstract

Mohammad Achaari's The Arch and Butterfly (Al-Qaws wa al-Farāsha, 2011) is a reflection of the social, political, and economic crisis engulfing contemporary Moroccan society. I argue that Achaari's novel provides a form of social and political intervention in contemporary Morocco in the way it critically engages with the failure of the left's political project, the co-optation of its intellectuals and the loss of its vision. It also engages with the suppressed history and culture of the country's Amazigh roots and the way it has been silenced in official records, an engagement that broadens the scope of historical loss and defeat and takes it deep back into Moroccan history. I also argue that the novel's interventionist vision is compromised by its discourse on the Islamists, which categorizes them all in one basket of militant and terrorist groups and which fails to recognize the growing popularity of ‘moderate’ Islamist politics that has largely come to replace the left as a major political force in the country.