ABSTRACTS

Littérature-monde in the New Morocco: Humor and the Human in the Novels of Mohamed Nedali

Valerie Orlando
(University of Maryland, College Park)

Since 1999, the death of King Hassan II, and the end of the repressive, les années de plomb (Lead Years), Morocco has refashioned its image as a country grounded in democratic reforms and dedicated to rectifying the egregious human rights abuses committed in its past. In general, Moroccans are blessed with an inordinate amount of good humor despite the country's brutal past history, the dire economic situations many people confront on a daily basis, and the constant, often insurmountable, bureaucratic hurdles they routinely must face in order to get anything done in the country. Therefore the humorous literature of authors of French expression, as Faoud Laroui remarks, "est souvent une façon agréable de remettre en question ce qui ne vas pas(Bourakkadi).

At the dawn of the 21st century in the 'New Morocco', Moroccan francophone writing promotes a humanism that is rooted in the belief that we are all connected in a "common humanity on the basis of universal reason(Zimmerman 500). " Contemporary francophone authors writing in Morocco are hum(an/or)ists who meld the ironies and conundrums of today's Morocco with the values that all humanists share in our contemporary world. These men and women promote a philosophy that exemplifies a new vision of francophone literature as a means to promote our commonalities in the global, human experience. Their works are truly those of a littérature monde, characterized as une littérature nouvelle, bruyante, colorée, métissée, qui [explique] le monde en train de naître. It is a body of work that champions a world that reflects the grandes métropoles où se télescop[ent], se brass[ent], se mêl[ent] les cultures de tous les continents (Le Bris 32). The contemporary hum(an/or)ist is not just [occupying] a position or place, nor simply [belonging] somewhere, but rather [is] both insider and outsider to the circulating ideas and values that are at issue in our society or someone else's society or the society of the other (Said 76).

This paper engages the humorist prose of authors Mohamed Nedali (Morceaux de choix : Les amours d'un apprenti boucher, 2003) and Saoud Bachéhar (Le Concert des cloches, 2005), both residing and writing in Morocco, in order to examine certain modialiste questions that exemplify how far francophone literature has moved beyond the former thematic binaries of colonizer/colonized, East/West, Muslim/Christian. Contemporary writing in French from Morocco proposes humanist projects that are transforming socio-cultural and political norms in the homeland as they consider the globalized interconnections of contemporary humanity. These novelists' stories blend humor and the human in order to construe treatises that evoke the desire for enlightenment and emancipation from the fetters of social, political and cultural injustices. Hum(an)(or)ists, authors who mix both the human and the humorous, strive to explore the "achievement of form by human will and agency (Said 15)." They maintain that épanouissement --a flowering of all this is human development-- is the key to existence and to the Joy of Life that grounds one's very sense of being in every community. Most importantly hum(an/or)ist writing explores men's and women's commitment to each other and to the collectivities of which they are a part. Their messages promote the singular, existentialist ideal that "l'homme est l'avenir de l'homme (Sartre 40)."

Works Cited:

Bahéchar, Souad. Le Concert des cloches. Casablanca : Editions Le Fennec, 2005.

Bourakkadi, Mustapha. Interview with Fouad Laroui : On ne peut pas comprendre le Maroc sans le vivre, Le Matin, 31 may 2006, .

Le Bris, Michel and Jean Rouad, Eds. Pour une littérature monde. Paris : Gallimard, 2007.

Nedali, Mohamed. Morceaux de choix : Les amours d'un apprenti boucher. Casablanca : Editions Le Fennec, 2003.

Said, Edward. Humanism and Democratic Criticism. New York: Columbia UP 2004.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. L'Existentialisme est un humanisme. Paris : Gallimard, 1996.

Zimmerman, Jens. Quo Vadis?: Literary theory Beyond Postsmodernism, Chritianity and Literature (Vol. 53. No. 4, Summer 2004: 495-519).