Writing Morocco, Writing Tunisia : Reading the World

Writing Morocco, Writing Tunisia : Reading the World

This text is partly intended as a response to Mohamed Laamiri's excellent essay 'Writing North Africa', which not only presents a survey of the current state of writing in English from North Africa but also examines the problematics that this raises for the reader and writer in a political and aesthetic sense. It follows from this that this text is also intended as a critical intervention in the development  of what Laamiri describes as a 'burgeoning literature' from the point of view of the Anglophone reader. My response is also informed by my experiences in Tunisia and Morocco of the Médi-café project, a community of writers from the Maghreb and the UK, who have come together with the shared aim working through many of these problematics in the most practical sense - that is to say by writing. The most interesting fact of all is, however, is not that literature exists in the Maghreb but that it is in fact thriving; writers such as Abdelattif Akbib from Tangier and Hassan Mekouar - to name only two of the most prominent figures - are indeed shaping a new form of expression which occupies the interstices of postcolonial theory and practice(s).

In other words, what is really happening in the Maghreb is the development of a new form of literature. As Laamiri points out in his essay, part of the appeal of English for these readers is that does not carry any of the colonial baggage of Spanish or French in these territories. English is, however, never a neutral language. More to the point, in the present global context where the UK and the US are actively fighting wars and occupying Arab-speaking lands, it may well be argued that more than ever English is the first language of oppression.

But, as Laamiri subtly indicates in his essay, this view is really to miss the point. The real question is over ownership of the English language: put simply does English belong to the army or the artist?

The answer is that belongs to both, but in the hands of the artist it becomes a weapon of resistance rather than oppression. Of course not all the writing which is emerging from North Africa is this directly political - Maghrebi writers dream too, or fall in love, or wonder at the mysteriousness of human existence.

All of this contains a deeper politics of course. The model is to be found in the earlier experiences of anti-colonial resistance in Ireland or Wales, as over the centuries the old Celtic languages were buried under the weight of Anglo-Saxon hegemony. In Wales, Welsh is still widely used and is part of a cultural renaissance. There is, however, a uniquely Anglo-Welsh genre alongside the old language which in every sense carries the cultural weight of the past: the poet RS Thomas who spoke Welsh at home and wrote publicly in English is perhaps the greatest recent avatar of this pattern.  In Ireland, the English language as used by Irish writers has always been the site of active revolt. The modernity of James Joyce is a cosmopolitan phenomenon which is rooted in his essential Irishness; the same paradox applies these days to Seamus Heaney, whose writings reflect too this fundamental and living contradiction.

And this is precisely why those who are writing Morocco, writing Tunisia in English for such a significant group. Their experiences may be local, but the language they use is universal.

Most crucially, at the beginning of the globalized 21st century, as so many borders dissolve or fade into the imaginary, it has become finally possible to speak of a world literature.  Writing the Maghreb in English is, therefore, not only writing a specific territory, but part of a larger literary matrix which is really about reading the world.

Professor Andrew Hussey
University of London Institute in Paris.