Writing Tangier In The Postcolonial Transition: Space And Power In Expatriate And North African Literature
by Michael K. Walonen /
2016 / English / PDF
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In his study of the Tangier expatriate community, Michael K.
Walonen analyzes the representations of French and Spanish Colonial
North Africa by Paul Bowles, Jane Bowles, William Burroughs, Brion
Gysin, and Alfred Chester during the end of the colonial era and
the earliest days of post-independence. The conceptualizations of
space in these authors' descriptions of Tangier, Walonen shows,
share common components: an attention to the transformative
potential of the conflict sweeping the region; a record of the
power relations that divided space along lines of gender and
ethnicity, including the spatial impact of the widespread sexual
commerce between Westerners and natives; a vision of the Maghreb as
a land that can be dominated or imposed on as a kind of frontier
space; an expression of anxieties about the specters of Cold War
antagonisms; and an embrace of the underlying logic of the market
to the culture of the Maghreb. Counterbalancing the depictions of
Tangier by Westerners who sought to reconcile their nostalgia for
the colonial order with their support of native demands for
independent governance is Walonen's extended analysis of the
contrasting sense of place found in the writings of native Moroccan
authors such as Mohammed Choukri, Tahar Ben Jelloun, and Anouar
Majid. In its focus on Tangier and the larger Maghreb as a lived
environment situated at a particular spatial and temporal
crossroads, Walonen's study makes an important contribution to the
fields of urban, transatlantic, and postcolonial studies.
In his study of the Tangier expatriate community, Michael K.
Walonen analyzes the representations of French and Spanish Colonial
North Africa by Paul Bowles, Jane Bowles, William Burroughs, Brion
Gysin, and Alfred Chester during the end of the colonial era and
the earliest days of post-independence. The conceptualizations of
space in these authors' descriptions of Tangier, Walonen shows,
share common components: an attention to the transformative
potential of the conflict sweeping the region; a record of the
power relations that divided space along lines of gender and
ethnicity, including the spatial impact of the widespread sexual
commerce between Westerners and natives; a vision of the Maghreb as
a land that can be dominated or imposed on as a kind of frontier
space; an expression of anxieties about the specters of Cold War
antagonisms; and an embrace of the underlying logic of the market
to the culture of the Maghreb. Counterbalancing the depictions of
Tangier by Westerners who sought to reconcile their nostalgia for
the colonial order with their support of native demands for
independent governance is Walonen's extended analysis of the
contrasting sense of place found in the writings of native Moroccan
authors such as Mohammed Choukri, Tahar Ben Jelloun, and Anouar
Majid. In its focus on Tangier and the larger Maghreb as a lived
environment situated at a particular spatial and temporal
crossroads, Walonen's study makes an important contribution to the
fields of urban, transatlantic, and postcolonial studies.