The post-colonial novel and the re-construction of national identity in Morocco: conflicts and paradoxes

Abstract

ABSTRACT Tainted by decades of direct colonial influence, Moroccan cultural identity in the postcolonial era became the battleground for conflicting discourses and competing voices grappling for recognition and dominance. The project of cultural decolonisation and national identity construction was avidly endorsed by Moroccan nationalist authors whose ‘engaged’ literature aimed at resurrecting Moroccanness on solid Islamic and nationalist foundations. Modernist writers, however, espoused a different vision that is based on modernisation, liberalism and secularism. Some other writers wrote ‘undesirable’ literature that is highly individualistic and unconcerned with the question of identity. The cultural scene in general and the novel genre in particular, being a new and a widely receptive genre, vehicled these postcolonial conflicting discourses and ideologies and reflected the discursive and ideological heterogeneity of postcolonial Morocco. This article sheds light on this heterogeneity as manifested in the works of prominent Moroccan post-colonial novelists. I, therefore, contend that there were several literatures at play subsequent to Morocco’s political independence; one is progressive, another reactionary, and the other is ahistorical; all representing the three major currents of post-colonial Moroccan literature.