The deterritorialised self in Laila Lalami's Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe most recurring image of the Mediterranean in recent years has been that of the overloaded migrant boat, an image often accompanied by the tragic story of shipwrecks and death tolls. Laila Lalami's novel, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, expands upon this tragic image, challenging narrow categorisations of Moroccan emigrant identity. Lalami creates a discursive space that disrupts the myth of the nation and subordinates considerations of Hispano-Moroccan relations to the individual narratives of four Moroccan emigrants. The novel – in three parts titled, ‘The Trip', ‘Before', and ‘After’ – opens with the Mediterranean crossing; it begins where the international discourse about North African immigrants generally ends. In the subsequent sections, Lalami redefines the emigrants, exploring their individual trajectories and the processes that lead them to their ultimate destinations. The end result – both for those characters who make it to Spain and those who must return to Morocco – is a liminal, deterritorialised self that challenges not only the immigrant narrative but also the cultures between which these people travel. Ultimately, Lalami's construction of diasporic and migrant identity reveals an untethered selfhood, one in constant movement, transit, and mutation. ‘Home’ is radically redefined, existing only in these individuals themselves, identifying with neither Morocco nor Spain, belonging instead to a liminal space caught somewhere in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea.