Rethinking the Radical West: Khatibi and Deconstruction

Mary Ellen Wolf

L'Esprit Créateur, Volume 34, Number 2, Summer 1994, pp. 58-68 (Article)

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/esp.1994.0047

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https://muse.jhu.edu/article/526914/summary

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 Rethinking the Radical West:
Khatibi and Deconstruction

Mary Ellen Wolf

L a différence n ’est pas accordée au premier révolté

—Abdelkebir Khatibi

N THE FIRST PAGE of Abdelkebir Khatibi’s Maghreb pluriel

O we encounter a quotation from the concluding chapter of The
Wretched o f the Earth, a quotation in which Frantz Fanon urges
his comrades to leave Europe behind, to reject its legacies, and to find
“ something different.” While admitting the urgent necessity of finding
“ something different,” Khatibi immediately poses the problematic.
Which Europe, or rather which “ European game” are we to leave
behind, he wonders, and how can we disentangle ourselves from the
Europe which has rearranged the most intimate recesses of our “ being” ? 1
In taking up Fanon’s call for decolonization, Khatibi has no choice but
to insist on its reformulation. Decolonizing strategies have, up to this
point, proven ineffective, missed their mark—for imperialism and ethno-
centrism are forces which continue to operate in more or less covert
ways. The contestatory voices of Maghrebian Independence, while
obliquely present, have become by the late seventies barely audible and
virtually powerless.
It is in the interest of empowering a different voice—collective, eth­
nic, decentered, multi-lingual—that Khatibi redefines decolonization as
a deconstructive praxis of difference. If divested of the “ resentment”
which colors it, and the “ simplistic Hegelianism” which ultimately
neutralizes it, decolonization can be reframed and made to work in the
space of an “ uncompromising” difference—“ une différence intraitable”
(M P 50). Rather than reclaiming the “ right to difference,” which is
already an inalienable one, Khatibi proposes to exploit difference as a
textual strategy, one which attacks those forms of knowledge, Western
or not, which preserve and serve existing power relations. Thus begins
the dialogue with the Radical West—most notably, with Derrida’s decon­
struction and Foucault’s discourse analysis. Khatibi’s tactical alliance is
intended not only to initiate dialogue but to wage war on alternate
grounds. It is a radical offensive which simultaneously engages the dis­

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cursive processes of imperial thought (“ son pouvoir de parole,” M P 48)

and the totalizing metaphysical constructs of Arab theocracy. While the
boldness of this critical gesture is evident, its oppositional potential can
only be determined through close textual readings. My aim is to analyze
Khatibi’s “ double critique” as a particular brand of deconstruction, a
practice which is not merely borrowed but transformed by another
context.
To be appropriated and developed is a critical awareness of the links
between philosophy, ideology and science. Or, as Khatibi puts it, the
“ ideological adaptations of metaphysical concepts” (DC 14). In the
third essay of Maghreb pluriel, a piece on Jacques Berque, an eminent
sociologist and Arabic specialist at the Collège de France, Khatibi
exhibits this awareness by performing a deconstructive reading. The dis­
course targeted is Orientalism and its practitioner Berque is a proclaimed
believer in decolonization and the worldwide preservation of cultural
pluralism. By exposing the Eurocentric underpinnings of Berque’s text,
Khatibi’s intention is twofold: first, to disorient the Orientalist project—
hence the article’s title “ L ’Orientalisme désorienté” ; second, and per­
haps more important, to project a radical orientalism rooted in a textual-
ity which opens up and unravels the imperialist matrix.
It is surely both intentions which motivate the uncanny, shifting
design of Khatibi’s critique. Presented as an exercise in philosophical
reasoning, the middle section or “ argument” is flanked by two exergues
respectively numbered I and II. Upon closer examination, we note that
the phrase which ends the first exergue also begins or remarks the second
exergue or postface. Significantly, this phrase asserts the superior posi­
tion of the Orientalist scholar who ideally straddles two cultures: “ En un
sens noble, l’orientaliste est celui qui veille sur l’aube de la pensée” (OD
177). The watching over or witnessing of the dawning of thought, an
obvious reference to the Enlightenment, creates a privileged relation to a
primordial, transparent origin. Yet this relation is coterminous with the
desire for nobility and elevated perspective: “ il faudrait accorder à
l’orientalisme tout son désir de noblesse, de son élévation de vue vers le
lever du soleil” (ibid.). By reinserting the prefatory phrase in the second
exergue, once again “ outside” the argument, Khatibi subverts the
borders between logical beginnings and ends. Preliminary intentions are
textualized in relation to summarizing statements. This re-marking of the
Orientalist’s claims to transcendence appropriates and mobilizes
Derrida’s critique of Western logocentrism. Neither pure nor primary,

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Absolute Knowledge is always represented and its prefaces or exergues

are, as Derrida cogently argues, “ after-effects of meaning.” 2 It is not
therefore an “ enlightened” or originary vision of another culture which
motivates Orientalism but rather a drive towards hierarchy and noble ele­
vation. Although the scholar may well be in a position to witness the
interaction between two cultures (“ de recevoir Pautre et d’aller vers lui”
(OD 117), the discourse itself negates the possibility of genuine dialogue.
This subversion of dominance is operative from the very beginning of
Khatibi’s text. For not only does he expose the hierarchical relation
between the observer and the observed, but he points up the stylistic
mechanisms by which power perpetuates itself. Nobility, he insists,
“ exige la connaissance des lois de l’hospitalité. ” It is dependent on “ un
certain protocol drapé de vigilance” (ibid.). Reading Khatibi again
alongside Derrida, we are reminded that “ protocol” combines “ the
meanings of priority, formula . . . and writing: pre-scription” (Dis 8).
While this textual edifice permits the announcing and grounding of the
origin of thought, it also divides the prefatory moment within itself.
Thus the inaugurating claims of Orientalism are in fact derivative—
products of a fictional protocol, carefully prearranged, “ drapé de vigi­
lance,” in an effort to conceal its own textuality.
Khatibi’s description of his own writing on Berque is significant here.
He considers the critique a pamphlet which is not only limited by its form
and strategy but unavoidably artificial and reductive. However, at the
same time, he specifies that his text resembles “ un rap t,” “ un miroite-
ment ironique,” and “ un détour de l’agression” (OD 120). This view of
writing as abduction, combat and parody is quite familiar to those who
practice deconstruction. It is a matter of appropriating the terms of the
dominant discourse in order to reinscribe them in such a way as to shake
up and loosen the grip of what Khatibi and Derrida both call ontotheol-
ogy, the Metaphysics of the One. It is the layout of Khatibi’s text itself
which first and foremost mimics and disrupts the philosophical pre­
suppositions and power plays of Orientalist knowledge. The gesture of
reworking or working over the familiar concepts of a discursive tradition
is, in Derrida’s estimation, an “ indispensable phase of reversal,” a
“ process of textual labor” which “ reactivates the repressed potential of
the concept as well as the originary violence which produced it” (Dis
6). In the context of Maghreb pluriel, Khatibi looks to deconstruction to
perform “ this disjunction of Western reason” (DC 11) in order to pro­
ject a knowledge which refuses blind imitation, a pensée-autre which

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resists recuperation within any closed system. He images decolonized

knowledge as a “ blank contract with the yet-unthought-of,” a virtual
space where the silent identities of postcolonial societies may be effec­
tively and continuously renegotiated.3
While this process of definition and renegotiation is indeed facilitated
by recourse to Western theorists of difference—Khatibi names Derrida,
Nietzsche, Heidegger and Blanchot—it is not without precedent in the
relatively brief history of Moroccan literature of French expression. The
controlled violence of the writing practices of the Souffles movement in
the late sixties and early seventies immediately comes to mind. To write
in the language of the colonizer was considered an effective weapon, a
way to “ dynamite from the inside,” thereby “ breaking at every level. . .
the founding logic of the French language.” 4 By the mid-seventies,
Khatibi, a member of Souffles, has transferred this deconstructive
impulse to the larger, more ominous, field of discourse. In exploring the
archaeology of Western knowledge on native soil, the Arab researcher
encounters “ a stratification of discursive masses and of disparate events
. . . which are coagulated and dispersed . . . in the rock of their founda­
tions” (DC 10). This epistemic violence remains operative in the current
situation of Arab identity and knowledge. Here, Khatibi locates a “ con­
flicting interference between two epistemes, of which one (the Western
one) covers the other, restructuring it from within while detaching it
from its historical continuity” (DC 17).5 For an effective intervention,
the “ war of nomination” (DC 18) must be waged on borders which are
interdependent and excessively mobile. The economy and tactics to be
employed approximate Derrida’s textual practice of différance—a “ war
economy—which brings the radical otherness or the absolute exteriority
of the outside into relation with the closed, agonistic, hierarchical field
of philosophical oppositions” (Dis 5). Throughout Maghreb pluriel
Khatibi intentionally enlarges and complicates the field by shuttling
between Arab and Western ideological manipulations. The significance
of this maneuver is that it forces decolonizing strategies to exceed
national boundaries, to more out of the now exhausted category of
center-periphery and to resonate on a global scale.
The first engagement in this war involves, as we have seen, a réin­
scription of colonial discourse. It is evident that Khatibi, like Derrida, is
convinced that such textual interventions necessarily “ interfere” with
“ extrinsic conditions of practice” and “ material institutions.” 6 To
deconstruct the grid of Western knowledge which organizes Berque’s

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work, Khatibi focuses on the oppressive, indeed overwhelming sense of

orchestration between the concepts of Orientalism overtly displayed and
the covert codes and assumptions which orient them. The “ structural
solidarity” between the multiple facets of imperialism and the develop­
ment of the social sciences does not emerge in bold letters. What Khatibi
probes and processes is primarily the play of “ scattered traces” (DC 11)
which cooperate to legitimize the institutions and laws of the social
sphere. He is less concerned with the private or personal Berque than
with his prolonged functioning within a so-called “ decolonized” scholar­
ly tradition.
Under the rubric of “ Tout le monde sait que,” Khatibi nevertheless
reminds us of Berque’s institutional affiliation with the Collège de
France. There is a chain effect with a reference to Le Chatelier, another
professor of Islamic sociology at the Collège, the founder of both the
Mission scientifique in Tangiers in 1904 and the prestigious journal
Revue du monde musulman in 1906. The Mission’s stockpiling of empir­
ical knowledge (taxonomies of Moroccan geography and culture, narra­
tives of Islamic history) constructed a knowledge which would make the
protectorate transparent and therefore approachable for Western pene­
tration and perpetual hegemony. Khatibi agrees here with Michaux-
Bellaire’s view that the Mission’s purpose was to familiarize with a view
to conquer: “ de reconnaître . . . le terrain sur lequel nous pouvions être
appelés à opérer un jour” (OD 119).
Readers could easily assume that Khatibi has been heavily influenced
by Edward Said. Yet the essay on Berque predates Orientalism (1978) by
two years. Although there is no mention of Said in Maghreb pluriel nor
of Khatibi in Orientalism, both are working out of comparable cultural
archives at approximately the same time. Equally important in each work
is the unmistakable presence of Foucault’s theory of discourse and
power. At the same time, there is a cross-reference which illustrates a
divergence between Khatibi and Said, one which I believe relates to both
the scope of the work and the position of the theorist. It concerns
the framing of a debate between Berque and renowned scholar Louis
Massignon which took place in Paris during the Algerian war. Said uses
their discussion of the Arab-Israeli conflict to point up the “ limitations”
of Massignon’s vision—specifically the latter’s refusal to deal with the
contemporary dimensions of Islamic issues. In spite o f his “ profound
humanism,” his efforts to grasp the conflict, Massignon, in Said’s

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estimation, remained entrenched in the difference between Western

modernity and Islamic tradition.7 As James Clifford has observed, it is
precisely this “ humanistic dimension” which prompts Said to “ rescue”
Massignon:—a move which distances him from the rigid determinism of
Foucault’s power apparatus.8 While contending that scholars like Louis
Massignon and Berque exhibit a very forceful “ will to knowledge over
the Orient,” Said wants to avoid what he calls “ vulgar determinism” by
personalizing their approaches and contributions. Near the end of
Orientalism, he commends Berque for his “ methodological self-
consciousness” and “ direct sensitivity” towards his material (327). In his
report on the same debate, Khatibi ignores any difference of opinion
between Berque and Massignon. He chooses rather to foreground con­
sensus through institutional bonding. The logic which provokes the
scholar’s exchange, structures it, and quickly closes it in ceremonious
fashion, exceeds individual autonomy. In a tone of pure mockery,
Khatibi interrupts his text to parody the Orientalist humanist by means
of direct quotation:

BERQUE: Et voilà pourquoi il y a au fond assez peu de différence entre vos positions et les
miennes.
M ASSIGNON: —N ous sommes tous les deux du Collège de France, et cela suffit. (OD 126)

It is evident that Khatibi does not share Said’s hope that Orientalists
like Berque can ever escape their “ old ideological strait-jacket” by
expansion into complementary disciplines (Said 326). The awesome
eclecticism of Berque’s theorizing is not so much progressive but
strategic and dangerous. What this relentless “ sauterie théorique” (OD
131) or “ theory-hopping” illustrates above all, is the equally relentless
capacity of Western academic discourse to appropriate, neutralize and
finally white out the subversive potential of theory. The “ petite machine
gobeuse” (OD 130) operative in Berque’s texts recycles everything from
semiology to phenomenology to psychoanalysis to ethnology to struc­
tural linguistics. And Berque’s appetite for synthesis has magical results
—for the Arabs who emerge from his pages are to Khatibi’s dismay and
alarm “ d’une espèce rare” (OD 120), a “ species” so “ rare” as to be un­
identifiable. With each redefinition, Arabic identity has been further
abstracted, essentialized, whitewashed and severed from any contempo­
rary materialist frame of reference, any sense of a living texture.
Berque’s Arabs, writes Khatibi, “ habitent en dehors de leur langue”

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(OD 131). They wander periodically in the Bedouin deserts of pre-islamic

times like the muted creatures of a science-fiction film. Evoking the
classical unity of an authenticity, now lost, these relic figures function as
reflectors, reassuring mirrors in which to relocate and reassemble the
transcendent sense of the Western Self. It is then not knowledge of the
Other but rather recognition of the Self that recurs in this process of
validation, incorporation and exclusion. As Homi Bhabha asserts, the
Other’s identity is positioned so that it remains “ the ‘good’ object of
knowledge, the docile body o f difference, that reproduces a relation of
domination.” 9
The Orientalist does not straddle but rather traffics between two
seemingly opposed metaphysics—Western and Islamic. It is the complic­
ity between these two systems which Khatibi remarks and attacks
throughout Maghreb pluriel by means of his double critique. Berque’s
silence on the Decadent period and the mystic poets is significant in that
these are radical elements which also challenge and decenter orthodox
Islam .10 Capitalizing on the mythical unity of Arab collective identity
(the Oumma) the Orientalist advances, however inadvertently, the
pecuniary interests of Western technocracy. All the while recommending
that Arabs be themselves (“ Soyez vous-mêmes,” OD 127), Berque also
wants them to “ accede” to the modern world of industrialization. Collu­
sion again? It at least appears that way when Khatibi dips into Berque’s
past as a civil controller who promotes the “jemaa on the tractor” (the
modernization of the rural collectivity). As Berque explains it, the
challenge facing him and his colleagues was to find a way to orchestrate
“ la montée des indigènes et l’approfondissement français” (OD 130). Un­
willing or unable to approach Arab identity in all of its historical density
and contemporary uncertainty, Berque either pushes it backward into a
primitive purity or propels it forward into an equally romanticized
pastoral modernity: “ Chez Berque, le destin des Arabes est d’être surpris
par l’histoire et d ’arriver sur une scène globale occupée par la civilisation
industrielle” (OD 138). This proclivity for the authentic versus the effec­
tive is a Catch-22 simply because what has been deemed genuine is
already antiquated and most certainly powerless. The salvaging of the
lost Bedouin landscape is a redemptive project. Recovered is the right to
be only momentarily different and in this way to serve the universal
expansion of Western technology.
Berque’s professional experience is only important in that it demon­
strates how colonialist ideology has continued to shape theories and

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practices of “ official” decolonization. What is missing in each revision,

is a fundamental reexamination of Western metaphysics—the logo-
centric subtexts of Orientalism. Focusing on oppositional hierarchies,
specular dynamics and framing devices, Khatibi exhibits an acute aware­
ness of Derrida’s critique of the sign—in pursuit of truth, in flight from
difference. While we do not find detailed mediations on Derridean
deconstruction anywhere in Maghreb pluriel, we are consistently
reminded of the “ primordial” question of language and representation.
It is only by means of a “ conceptual de-centering” that the “ speech of
power” can be transformed “ into a power of speech” (DC 19). What
Khatibi finds in deconstruction is a textual economy/strategy for over­
turning and displacing the dichotomous relation Occident/Orient.
Locating the Orientalist myth in the detextualization of its absolute
origin, in the pre-facing of its own hegemony, Khatibi concludes that it is
necessary to confront the myth with its own textuality: “ Seúl le texte
peut assurer une parole á la différence” (OD 139).
In the context of the essay, Khatibi moves from Orientalism as it has
been practiced in the Maghreb to Orientalism as it could be practiced
both in the Maghreb and beyond its borders. Deployed in the rethinking
of the “ silent gap between colonization and decolonization” (OD 9),
Western poststructuralist strategies are made to assume an ethical dimen­
sion. This is not at all evident in the first stage of the process, for emanci­
pation is not assured by investigating the powerful networks of master-
texts. To perform this indispensable task, an “ économie d ’avance limitée
et réductrice” (OD 117), Khatibi, like Said, relies heavily on Foucault,
and then for comparable reasons, shifts his focus. Unlike Said, however,
he embraces Derridean deconstruction by taking a resolutely“ textualist”
position. For it is in the elaboration of a generalized textuality that
Khatibi locates unlimited possibilities for intervention, resistance and
transformation.
To imagine what radical Orientalism might be, we have to determine
what Khatibi means by text and how he proposes to empower it. These
issues arise in his discussion of the Orientalist as translator. By virtue of a
continual oscillation between cultures and languages, the Orientalist
faces the crucial problem of rendering a faithful translation: “ Comment
aller vers la langue de l’autre et Paccueillir dans sa propre langue?” (OD
138). All translation, writes Walter Benjamin, “ is only a somewhat pro­
visional way of coming to terms with the foreignness of language.” 11 It is
precisely the sense of the provisional and its masking which Khatibi

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engages. Operating under what Derrida calls philosophy’s premise of

“ exhaustive translatability,” the Orientalist measures success in terms of
readability—the drive to transfer “ univocality” and to formalize poly­
semy. 12Nowhere is this readability more valued and protected than in the
zoning system which circumscribes Berque’s comments on French-
language Maghrebian writers: “ Sans vouloir le soulever avec trop
d’indiscrétion, disons qu’il n ’est pas normal qu’une avant-garde de la
littérature arabe, . . . s’exprime dans le langage de l’autre. Ne s’est-il pas
produit.. . une expatriation de l’intérieur?” (OD 140-41). There can be lit­
tle doubt as to the source of this judgment. Fear of contamination or, as
Khatibi suggests, fear of competition on one’s own turf? Above all, it is
the untranslatable which Orientalism cannot tolerate and which Khatibi,
in this pivotal moment, resolves to celebrate.
Connecting with Derrida’s economy of supplement and trace,
Khatibi projects an errant, bilingual écriture which allows us to hear the
clamor and silence of several languages in process. Implicit in this
encounter is the simultaneous transformation and preservation of both
the original and the translating text: “ Une langue qui transporte une
autre doit se transformer au cours de ce voyage tout en restant elle-
même” (OD 139). Both translatable and untranslatable, this text
remarks the undecidability that philosophy cannot admit. Such a process
of perpetual transcription and reproduction is a travelling text, a
“ planetary” script which interferes, decenters, and “ lives on” (“ Living
on” 102-03). In this sense, it is a failed translation which, in its multiple
versions, continues to grow and, as Benjamin believes, implies, however
provisionally, the “ kinship” o f languages.
The second exergue or postface of “ L’Orientalisme désorienté”
seems to position its readers on familiar grounds. We find all the terms
of the first exergue—nobility, difference, protocol, origin and vigilance.
But something is different. Although part of the framework, these same
terms bear the traces of a certain exteriority. Rather than a summation,
this postface, in its supplementarity, feigns closure. It is possible, as
Derrida notes, to “ play-act” the finale by “ pretending to turn around
and look backward,” while one is “ in fact starting over again, adding an
extra text” and “ opening up” a play of infinite “ speculation” (Dis 27).
Here the hierarchical opposition Occident/Orient is no longer intact but
repositioned in such a way that its splitting invokes “ toute question car­
dinale de l’être.” Radical orientalism is now resituated on the unthinka­
ble and nontotalizing border “ de tout Orient, de tout Occident.” Here

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vigilance is no longer surveillance, the exclusionary logic of binary

thought. Here, vigilance promises the possibility of perpetual dialogue.
It is a gift, insists Khatibi, one which does not fall from the sky, does not
transfigure or enslave with solar metaphors, but rather recurs spontane­
ously “ dans la proximité de Pautre” (OD 143).
This valuing of textuality, translation and dialogue permeates all
of Khatibi’s production—from his literary work to his essays on
Maghrebian popular culture, art, philosophy, politics and philosophy.
The emphasis on the textual is first of all a response to the essentializing
tactics of Islamic theological discourse—a theocracy which continues to
demand a “ violent submission” to the invisible and inimitable sacred
Koranic text. When placed in the service of Arabo-Islamic nationalisms,
such a generalized discourse automatically “ marginalizes,” even
“ infantalizes,” any and all potentially subversive expression rooted in
the sphere of popular culture.13 But Khatibi is also addressing his own
historical predicament—namely the situation of the bilingual writer who,
after Independence, continued to write in French rather than Arabic.
What differentiates Khatibi’s voice in the literary domain is his guiltless
indeed ecstatic affirmation of his bilingualism. This truly remarkable
aspect of Khatibi’s bi-langue, as Réda Bensmaia maintains, has defini­
tively altered the course of contemporary Maghrebian literature of
French expression.14
Khatibi readily admits to the hermetic and highly personalized nature
of his bilingual practice which he views as both “ une traduction per­
manente” and “ un entretien en abyme” (MP 48) between the maternal
dialect, classical Arabic and French. Equally aware of the risks involved
in appropriating the critical strategies of the “ radical W est,” he fre­
quently stops his texts to dialogue with his Arab readership, to openly
discuss questions of cooptation and complicity. On a broader level, his
work on Orientalism is and will be subject to the recent critiques leveled
at postcolonial theory.15 There is an urgency in Khatibi to move on and
move beyond the polarities which shackle the growth and development
of Arab culture within a global environment. The sheer volume of efforts
generated in this direction as well as the ongoing critique is evidence
enough that the process of decolonization is necessarily continuous and
global.

New Mexico State University, Las Cruces

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Notes

1. All references in French are from K hatibi’s M aghreb pluriel (Paris: Denoël, 1983) and
will be abbreviated in the text as M P . References to “ L ’Orientalism e désorienté” (the
third chapter o f M aghreb pluriel) are indicated as OD. English translations are from
“ Double Criticism ” found in Contem porary N orth A frica: issues o f D evelopm ent
and Integration, ed. Halim B arakat (London, Croom Helm , 1985), abbreviated as
DC.
2. Jacques D errida, Dissem ination, trans. B arbara Johnson (Chicago: U. o f Chicago
Press, 1982), 21. Further references are noted as Dis.
3. The praxis o f renegotiation is effectively pursued in all o f H om i B habha’s w ork, but
m ost notably in “ DissemiNation: Tim e, N arrative, and the M argins o f the M odern
N ation,” in his collection N ation and Narration (London: Routledge, 1990), 291-322.
4. The citation is from A. L aâbi’s “ L ittérature m aghrébine actuelle et francophonie,” in
Souffles 18 (m ars-avril 1970), 35-37. For further discussion o f K hatibi’s strong affilia­
tion with this group and its radical form al experim entation and cultural engagement
see M arc G ontard, La Violence du Texte: L a Littérature marocaine de langue
française (Paris: Editions L ’H arm attan, 1981) and my article “ Textual Politics in
Contem porary M oroccan Francophone L iterature,” The Journal o f the M idw est
M odern Language Association (special issue: Possibilities o f O ppositional Discourse),
25.1 (1992): 32-*0.
5. The imagery here evokes Michel F oucault’s The Archaeology o f Knowledge (New
York: H arper & Row, 1976).
6. Jacques D errida, P A R E R G O N , The Truth in Painting, trans. G eoff Bennington and
lan M cleod (Chicago: U. o f Chicago Press, 1987), 19.
7. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1978), 270.
8. For further discussion o f Said’s hum anist orientation see Jam es C lifford’s The Pre­
dicam ent o f Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and A r t (Cam ­
bridge: H arvard U. Press, 1988), 255-76.
9. Homi B habha, “ The C om m itm ent to T heory,” N ew F orm ations 5(Sum m er, 1988):
16.
10. Khatibi describes the appeal o f the oum m a as a regressive concept which nationalist
and bourgeois traditionalists (i.e., the Salfiyya after Independence) have tended to
exploit in order to accom m odate the West and thus assure their own power base. See
M P 24-34.
11. W alter Benjamin, “ The Task o f the T ran sla to r,” in Illum inations, ed. H annah
Arendt (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), 75.
12. Jacques D errida, “ Living On: Border L ines,” in Deconstruction and Criticism, ed.
H arold Bloom, et al. (New York: Seabury Press, 1979), 93.
13. See K hatibi’s La Blessure du no m propre (Paris: Editions Denoël, 1974), 18, and
Figures de l ’étranger (Paris: E ditions de Denoël, 1987), 207.
14. Réda Bensmaïa, “ Traduire ou ‘blanchir’ la langue: A m o u r bilingue d ’Abdelkebir
K hatibi,” in Imaginaires de l ’autre: K hatibi et la m ém oire littéraire (Paris: L ’H ar­
m attan, 1987), 133-60. For further reading on K hatibi’s use o f the bi-langue in his
literary works see Réda Bensmaïa, “ W riting M etafiction: K hatibi’s L e Livre du
Sang,” Substance 21.3 (1992): 103-14; Lucy Stone McNeece, “ Decolonizing the Sign:
Language and Identity in Abdelkebir K hatibi’s L a M ém oire tatouée," Yale French
Studies 83 (1993): 12-29; Jam es M cGuire, “ Forked Tongues, Marginal Bodies:
Writing as Translation in K hatibi,” Research in A frican Literatures 23.1 (1992):
107-16; and Samia Mehrez, “ The Subversive Poetics o f Radical Bilingualism: Post­
colonial Francophone N orth A frican L iterature” in The B ounds o f Race, ed.
Dominick L aC apra (Ithaca: Cornell U. Press, 1991).
15. Representatives o f such critiques are the following: Aijaz A hm ad, In Theory: Classes,
Nations, Literatures (London: Verso, 1992); A rif Dirlik, “ The Postcolonial Aura:
T hird W orld Criticism in the Age o f Global C apitalism ,” Critical Inquiry 20.2
(W inter, 1994): 328-56; Rosalind O ’Hanlon and David W ashbrook, “ A fter O riental­
ism: C ulture, Criticism, and Politics in the T hird W o rld ,” Comparative Studies in
Society and H istory 34.1 (Jan. 1992): 141-67; G yan P rakash, “ Postcolonial Criticism
and Indian H istoriography,” Social Text 31-32 (1992): 8-19; A. A ppiah, “ Is
the Post- in Postm odernism the Post- in Postcolonial?” Critical Inquiry 17 (W inter,
1991): 336-57. A response to this critique, in particular to A hm ad’s w ork, is presented
in Public Culture, 6 (1993). See also Edw ard Said’s Culture and Imperialism (New
York: Knopf, 1993).

68 Su m m e r 1994