Term Paper.docx

Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University Faculty of letters and Humanities, Dhar Mehraz Department of English Studies Master Program: Cultural Studies Boualloul Omar, 1513810900 Tradition, Modernity, Identity and the Status of Women in Laila Lalami’s Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits and Wafa Faith Hallam’s The Road From Morocco. Abstract: It has been six decades since Morocco got its independence from France in 1956. Yet the issues that were the center of controversy and that constituted the Moroccan intellectual scene of the time are still relevant even today. Through several colonial institutions and by means of the discourses it circulated within its protectorate, France had been able to “modernize” the country. Reading through the literature that has attempted to capture this modernization or modernity, one would be stunned to learn that there were many faces of modernity in colonial and postcolonial Morocco, not just in the works of Driss Chraibi, Taher Ben Jelloun and others but even contemporary young writers seem to have a tremendous interest in that period and in its influence on the present.

This paper aims at exploring issues of identity,

modernity and hybridity as problematized and conceptualized in two novels of Moroccan women writers namely Laila Lalami in her first work Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits and Wafa Faith Hallam in her memoire The road to Morocco. The begins by paper laying down the theoretical framework and then illustrates how the issues under consideration have been approached by the two writers. Being female writers, Hallam and Lalami problematized and explored the status and reception of women a great deal hence such issues will be attended to and explored more than others in this paper. Keywords: identity, colonialism, postcolonialism, , modernity, tradition, hybridity

Morocco torn between tradition and modernity: Throughout its ancient and modern history, Morocco has been home to so many different cultures, ethnicities, religions, and people from different backgrounds. In being home for diversity and multiculturalism Morocco has been able to significantly accumulate a set of experiences and gain tremendous strength and richness in terms of its cultural repertoire. This diversity has given people the right and opportunity to be and to choose. Today’s Morocco is, in fact, nothing but the fruit of this long tradition of multiculturalism with all the styles of living, being, and thinking it introduced. This multiculturalism is recognized and celebrated by the 2011 constitution as the identity of the new Morocco. Which reinforces the idea that this tradition is to continue and for the years and to come. Morocco’s continuous attachment to such values defines the country to the entire world as a peaceful, tolerant, moderate, rich and powerful nation. The long coexistence of Jews and Muslims in cities across the country is a testimony to the values Morocco claims to hold and cultivate. It is not to affirm, however, that Morocco is a country with no identity or specificity. It would be risky to say that these different cultures have always existed in complete harmony. We cannot dismiss for example the violent clash between European values disseminated by France during colonization and the Moroccan ones. The dichotomy of tradition and modernity, as we shall be referring to it throughout this paper, in the Moroccan context and indeed in the colonial and postcolonial context, in general, is a complicated and complex phenomenon. For, it raises a couple of related questions and issues such as the question of identity, cultural legacy, the importance of the past and other fundamental issues. This violent struggle as we described it was a struggle between the effects of colonialism and the indigenous culture. This struggle stemmed from a strong patriotic determination to preserve the indigenous culture and identity on the one hand and from a need to reform, change and develop on the other hand. In Morocco, this issue of tradition and modernity had been a central intellectual debate amongst scholars. This issue is still relevant even today with a bit more complexity due to the new challenges of globalization.

Modernity or Modernization?

The concept of modernity is certainly one of the most vague and illusive concepts to deal with. The theorization of modernity has in fact been a core interest to so many different disciplines such as sociology and political science, It has probably most been problematized and insightfully discussed in postcolonialism and Marxism, with the former focusing on the term as a “cultural dilemma”, and as a projection of a philosophy or paradigm into societies other than the West. Hence, it often describes the process of modernization as “Westernization”. Marxism approaches the term as related to capitalism and suggests that the two are bound up with each other very strongly (Bartolovich, and Lazarus). Barker argues that a modern way of life is, “organized along capitalist lines, a mode of production premised on the private ownership of property and the pursuit of profit.” (p. 125). Etymologically, “The term modern derives from the late Fifth-century Latin term Modernus which was used to distinguish an officially Christian present from a Roman, pagan past. Modern was used in the medieval period to distinguish the contemporary from the ancient.” (Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin. p. 130). This definition suggests that the term modernity is nothing but a mere distinction between the past and the present. The term however, argue Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin, has today come to mean more than that and has gained tremendous political and ideological significance, “It refers to modes of social organization that emerged in Europe from about the sixteenth Century and extended their influence throughout the world in the wake of European exploration and colonization” (p. 130). Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin also argue that Europe’s experience of modernity could be traced back to Three momentous cultural shifts that took place around the year 1500 AD, these three major shifts are, the discovery of the “new world”, the Renaissance and the Reformation. (p. 130). The emergence of modernity is also associated with the emergence and development of industry and the industrial society. To modernize a society, therefore, means first and foremost “to industrialize it”, not just in terms of its economy. Modernization, in fact, is more than an economical paradigm; it is “a way of life that encompasses profound economic, social, political, and cultural changes.” (Krishan. “Modernization”). The idea or philosophy of modernity has always been contrasted with the idea of tradition and conservatism. Looking at the history of Europe could reveal so

much about its complex experience with modernity. Modernity started as a reaction to the Church which was prevailing and dominating all areas of life. The renaissance philosophers, scientists and writers rebelled against the Church as an attempt to develop alternative solid values, principles and discourses for Europe to adopt. They emphasized reason and rationality, the priority of scientific inquiry over theology. They also sought to understand Man and the universe by means of science instead of religion and mythology. They marginalized religion and weakened the power, privileges and authority it enjoyed, therefore, we can describe Europe’s experience of modernity as a secular one. It follows then that a modern state should be a secular one. European imperialism helped disseminate this discourse or idea into its colonies across the African continent, claiming that such “modes of social organization” would contribute to the development of these countries. European scholarship up until the present time still insists that it is this strong attachment to tradition, or cultural legacy, and that includes a range of cultural, political, intellectual ideas that make up these legacies, is what prevents these countries from developing and being on the same line with the Western, modern and developed block. Hence Europe or the west, with such an experience, has been trying in various ways to project this modernity onto the rest of the world. “As European power expanded, this sense of the superiority of the present over the past became translated into a sense of superiority over the pre-modern societies and cultures that were ‘locked’ in the past - primitive and uncivilized peoples” (Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin .p. 131). This is the very reason, besides imperial interests of course, why Europe had to exercise its cultural hegemony over its colonies; to impose this model on them. It is this difference in ways of life that pushed Europe and the west to try to propagate their cultures and ways of life to other countries. Edward Said notes, “They weren't like us and for that reason they deserved to be ruled” (Said, “Introduction”). This highlights a crucial fact; the reason behind imperialism and colonization was not simply a thirst for more land and power, but also a strong will to impose and “copy past” the Western, European model onto the non-European and non western. We can therefore decide that we should rather be considering modernization than modernity. The first is forced and imposed, the second is a choice. The projection of such a model is not innocent

and does not aim at developing the underdeveloped as claimed, but it is a process amongst others that facilitates and gives legitimacy to the colonial rule. The emergence of modernity is largely associated with the emergence of Euro-centrism and the European dominance of the world through imperial expansion. Europe as Said argues constructed itself as modern, civilized and enlightened block, and simultaneously constructed the “other”, or the non-European, as traditional, static, and pre-historic. Europe, in fact, defines itself by setting the Orient as its opposing picture or idea. Whatever the Orient and the Oriental(s) were the Occident and the Occidental(s) were not. Said elaborates: The Orient is not only adjacent to Europe; it is also the place of Europe's greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilizations and languages, its cultural contestant, and one of its deepest and most recurring images of the Other. In addition, the Orient has helped to define Europe (or the West as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience.” (Said, Edward). Modernity, after all, should not simply be perceived as an epoch but, as a discourse with modern institutions that help cultivate and generate such discourse. That is why it is more of a “modernization”, than of “modernity. Modernity implies and embodies a set of “modern” ways and paradigms of thinking and living. It has always been associated with words like rationality, civilized behavior, science, secularism, l’état modern [The modern state] and the like. The “civilizing mission”, the motto of European imperialism, centered on these terms and values. People who would not accept the model of modernity refused the whole “Noble” values that modernity embodies. Others strived to maintain it. There were so many scholars who after the colonizer departed, worked very hard to reproduce and perpetuate the modernity discourse in the different institutions of society, believing that such paradigm would help develop the economy, politics and also the people’s consciousness and civil sense. In Morocco, for example, there has been up until the present day huge debate amongst scholars, politicians and even ordinary people on this dichotomy of tradition versus modernity. This has been a core issue for Morocco because It has been related to and associated with a range of relevant issues like, the question identity, the position of women in society, development, hybridity, cultural independence

and much else. Modernity is believed by orientalists to be able to rescue the orient and the Orientals form strangeness and backwardness and set them free from the shuffles of history and tradition. Edward Said states, “in short, having transported the orient into a modernity, the orientalist would celebrate his method and his position, as that of a secular creator, a man who made new worlds as God had once made the old” ‘(Said, W. Edward.). The modernization/ westernization mission is a project and had been part and parcel of the colonial agenda of Europe.

The possibility of an Arab/ Islamic modernity: European Modernity is believed to have been inspired and vehicled by rationalism. It came as a break with the traditional, superstitious, totalitarian and authoritarian rule of the church which abused its status a great deal. The idea of secularism, the separation of state and religion, was consequently a central idea to the European modernist movement(s). Arab modernist and secular thinkers and activists today insist, following the western experience, on secularism as a guarantee for more personal freedom and development. It would be inappropriate to credit this emphasis on rationalism to Europe. They trace it back to the Greek philosophy. But it should rather be traced back to Islamic philosophy; Descartes rational philosophy and particularly his Cogito are credited to Abu Hamid AlGhazali. Al-Jabri maintained that an Arab modernity should be crafted from within the tradition which contains rationality, human rights democracy and the rule of law. Much ink has been shed in illustrating this. The question of the possibility of a pure Arab modernity is possible since the elements that make up a modernity are present namely, the rational line of thought, that could be traced back to the Mu’tazilite school, to which Averroes pertains. So, the immaterial potential that could carry out such a vision is available. The only thing left to materialize such paradigm is an independent economy and modern institutions. Laila Lalami’s ‘Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits’: Faces of modernity and its clash with tradition in the new Morocco.

In her first and most celebrated novel Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, Laila Lalami proves to be very much interested in postcolonial Morocco and in demonstrating how had French colonization, through various ways, been able to transform the country from a conservative, traditional realm to a totally different one. Laila Lalami offers us insights into this new Morocco that is torn between tradition and modernity. She also capitalizes on the Islamist or conservative resistance to the styles of living and thinking introduced by the French through acculturation and other neocolonial means. Larbi’s family represents the new, nuclear, modern family that is lost between tradition and modernity. This new family consist of parents and two children Noura and another son studying engineering in Québec, Canada. Larbi keeps bear in his fridge. The family does not seem to regard it to be strange. Salam, Larbi’s wife, who is a social activist, it was a fashion at that time for rich women to engage in associations and NGO’s. adopts the modern ways of life but does not refuse the legacy of the past, including Islam, altogether. She rather offers new interpretations to Islam claiming that the latter should chime in with the spirit of the age. Within Larbi family we witness a clash between Noura, the daughter, and her parents. Influenced by her friend and classmate Faten, Noura decides to put on the veil and begins to recite the Qur’an which her parents do not approve of. Lalami depicts the rise of the fashion of the veil which is part of the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and the Islamist ideology. The university is a fertile ground for both the Islamists and the communists to propagate their ideologies and circulate their discourses and materialize their agenda. Since Noura went to a French lycée she was very much into the western lifestyle: rock music, jeans with the names of rock brands on and so forth. It can be assumed therefore that Noura had been influenced by the Islamists. Especially as she harshly criticizes her secular parents. On the other side, we have Halima’s family. Halima is often abused and beaten by her husband Maati. “If I don’t give him money for drinking, she says, he steals it from me.” All the money Maati gains from driving a cab for a business man, goes to the bar. Halima’s mother is very superstitious as she continuously tries to persuade her daughter to do magic to her husband so that he would no longer beat her. Kadija, another neighbor of Halima’s, is superstitious. She mistakes Farid for a saint

and asks him to help her son not to flunk his exams again. Halima does not find refuge in the law as at that time it did not criminalize domestic violence. The husband beating his wife was quite a normal thing both socially and legally. As a consequence of her poverty and living conditions, Halima, decides to work as a janitor; a housemaid, and she often sells embroidery to the neighbor for Fifty hundred Dirham and later sells baghrir at the market and Millefeuille for students. Hadda, a neighbor of Halima’s was left by her husband for another woman leaving her neither married nor divorced. Maati, Halima’s husband, never apologized for or regretted his beating his wife and dehumanizing her in all sorts of ways. All the money she received from her brother in France was given to the judge to grant her her divorce. Maati asked his wife for money in return for his granting her her divorce. He brings her divorce papers and spits on her. Lalami also proved to be concerned with a set of social problems like poverty, the position of women, corruption, unemployment and much else. These problems are what push people to immigrate putting themselves to death on small lifeboats. Youth in the novel seem t be crazy about immigrating to Europe and starting a new life there. In her second, more mature work; Secret Son, Lalami engages with these issues and others in a more insightful and profound manner. And in her Third novel The Moors Account she proves to be more concerned with questions of identity, history, and culture.

The position of women and identity in Hallam’s ‘The Road From Morocco’ Wafa Faith Hallam’s family memoire ‘The Road from Morocco’ is also a contemporary writer’s mediation and contemplation of both the past and the present. It is a depiction of a country that is torn between:” two different worlds increasingly lived side by side, a modern French society and a traditional Arab Moroccan culture” The memoire opens with the story of Wafa’s mother where we are. are given a glimpse of the pre-colonial and early colonial Morocco, which the writer did not explore much, because she preferred to give more priority to addressing and tracing the different faces and manifestations of modernity and development in her society rather than clinging to the past. Hallam did not want to lock herself and her story in the past Like Chraibi, Ben Jeloun and others. She deploys this past to contrast it with the present and to make us

contemplate how modern Morocco was. She wants us to look back at this past and draw on it as a source of inspiration and enrichment not a source of shame and an impediment to our development and progress. Reading through the memoire, one would be stunned to see and experience Morocco where purely western ways prevail and that includes; swimming pool parties, sexual freedom, jazz music, dancing, etc. Hallam regards modernity as a kind of salvation and a refuge from the shuffles of patriarchy and tradition. It is modernity and the modern ways that freed her mother and empowered her. At the start, the mother lived a harem-like life where the only thing excepted of her was to serve her husband and please him in anyway a man can be pleased and that includes first and foremost giving up birth and where the husband-wife relationship is managed by a ‘boss’: the husband’s mother. A woman is only validated and approved by her community when she manages to perceived a child. If she does not she is outcaste and stigmatized. The beginning of the novel dramatizes the status of women; who were forced into marriages against their will, just like the mother. “It has to be done…It’s God’s will” Hallam’s father said in the wedding night to his wife. We see that there is no distinction between the religious and the cultural. The whole novel, I think, captures the transformation of Morocco from an extremely patriarchal society to a moderate or less patriarchal one. Women in this work are locked indoors; the public space is a man’s space. Hallam’s mother rebels against this and frees herself from this tradition to explore new possibilities and realize her dreams. She travelled aboard, worked, exercised, went to the beach, had affairs and did all the things a woman was not expected to do. She lived life as it is defined by western modernity: a life where people thirst after happiness and joy and meet them in all possible means without attending to question of culture or value system. Saadia is more free and independent when she divorces her husband who marries, Lalla Badi’a, a woman of the Sufi tradition. This very act reinforces his inability to cope up with the new/ modern life style, which he never approved of, and his attachment to the past and to the traditional. Hallam’s mother was much fond of this western model. In the memoire we read: “My mother was going through an awakening of her own. Upon her arrival in Sidi Kacem, she has noticed and applauded the way western women were free to interact with

men outside their homes; how they were educated enough to hold jobs as teachers, doctors, nurses, secretaries and shopkeepers; how they seemed to be in control of their lives in ways she could never imagine her sisters could control theirs. And so she determined to change the course of her life.” She embraced this lifestyle and saw that it would free her and make her more independent and empowered, which it did. Hallam seems to affirm that women’s freedom and independent could only be achieved through their material independence. The more materially independent Saadia got: owning a car, villa, having money, the more free and happy she felt. These material things foster her dreams and ambitions. Sadia’s rebellion against the father is a rebellion against that which he stands for and the values he upholds. “As our father vanished from our lives, so with him did everything that was seemingly backward and old fashioned. We have once and for all chosen our mother’s camp, and it was firmly set out on the grounds of modernity and French culture”. Among the two models Saadia and Wafa chosed the western one as it helps them enjoy more freedom. Sadia saw that this path would ultimately set her free from all the obstacles she faces: “she was intent on following a path that was to lead her out of the course that had been preordained for her by her gender”.

Identity politics in Hallam’s The Road From Morocco: Being a diasporic writer, Wafa Faith Hallam is very interested in questions of identity and home. She even entitles a chapter in her memoir “New identity” and this proves how much she is concerned with the issue. She states that America is home and felt no difference than Morocco. She even changed her entire name: In October 1993, I legally sealed my cultural individuality by applying to the superior court of New Jersey for a name change. I adopted “Faith” as middle-name and simplified the French spelling of my first name from the clumsy“Ouafae” to “Wafa”. By December, I was officially authorized to assume my new identity. In an interview, and even in the book, she added that she changed her last name from Ben Hallam to Hallam. The omission of Ben is an omission of origin; of her relationship to her father and family. She also said that she got into problems with her

cousins because of it. Hallam is a hybrid person in that she does not turn down her origin, religion, culture and so forth but she does not recognize them either. Once in America Hallam does not aprove of the streotypes, maltreatment of Arabs and Muslims. Her humanistic word view push her to sympathise with them and feel angry and fussy though she cannot speak her anger and dissatisfaction out. The question of home is another important issue in Hallams memoir. The notion of home is very ambigeous as he takes it to stand for any place where there is comfort and happiness. In her stay in Paris she described it as home: I felt at homewith the language, the culture, the food, and going back home was the hardest thing I had to do.She also uses the same word for his mother’s attitude of America: Life in Morocco had become unbearable for her. She had broken up with Berto, the love of her life, and she was deeply alienated from her society. She had visited us on a couple of occasions in Florida and had fallen in love with America and the American Dream. I believe she had already, albeit tacitly, made up her mind that this was the home she had always longed for.

Wafa Faith Hallam is a humanist writer. She draws on other cultures as a source of enrichment and does not regard them as a threat to her own. Identity for her is not a fixed thing, it is subject to change and negotiation. It is a process of self-definition. A process that is not limited to ones religion, homeland, people, traditions and so forth. Identity is an amalgam of cultures. Such an identity, Hallam seems to affirm, empowers individuals and offers them opportunities to be and to grow. both Wafa Faith Hallam and Laila Lalami prove to be much concerned about the question of identity, the position of women and the continuous clash between tradition and modernity. Reading through their outstanding works gives us insights into these issues and raises many question and debates concerning cultural relativity, eurocentrism, universalism, humanism, the relevance and importance of the past and other issues that are worth exploring and discussing.

Bibliography Primary sources:  Hallam, F. Wafa. The Road from Morocco. Ireland Books: 2011. Print.  Lalami, Laila. Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits. Algonquin Books, 2005. Print.

Secondary sources:  “Marxism Modernity and Postcolonial Studies”. edited by, Bartolovich, Crystal and Lazarus Neil. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.2004. Print.  Ashcroft, Bill, Griffiths Gareth and Tiffin Helen. “Post-colonial Studies: The Key Concepts”. 2nd ed. New York: Rout ledge. 2007. Print.  Kumar, Krishan. “Modernization”. Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc. Mars 21, 2016. Accessed 14/2/109. Web.  Said W Edward. “Culture and Imperialism” 1st Ed. New York: Vintage Books.1994. Web.  ___ “Orientalism” 1st Ed. New York: Vintage Books.. 1979. Print.