The legacy of dissent: Mohamed Khair-Eddine and the ongoing cultural diversity debate in Morocco

Abstract

In 1967, a small and uncategorisable narrative work was published that triggered a seismic chain reaction in the emergent Moroccan literary scene. Agadir (Le Seuil, 1967) and the subsequent works of Mohamed Khair-Eddine laid the foundation for debates that are ongoing, and tackle our most pressing issues of cultural identity, popular culture, religious practice, political system, and societal values. Initially a member of the ‘Souffles’ group, Khair-Eddine eventually went beyond the aesthetics and especially the political positions of his fellow writers, artists, and poets. In this article, I argue that the aesthetics and politics of oppositionality that moves Mohamed Khair-Eddine's writing were the expression of ‘the dream deferred’, in that the current debates on cultural identity, societal values, and the political system in Morocco are similar to the issues debated by the intellectual elites in the 1960s and the 1970s of the past century.