Conference Abstracts
20. Elkouche, Mohamed; Faculty of Letters Oujda:
"Paul Bowles’ Tangier and Fez : The Agony of Transition
from Colonial to Post-Colonial Times"
While it is generally true that Paul Bowles was much
interested in Morocco and its Arabo-Islamic culture, as his fifty-two
years’ residence in this country well indicates, it is also
true that Tangier and Fez had the greatest and most exceptional
attraction for him. This special admiration for these two historic
cities can be proved not only by his frequent and passionate references
to them in many of his interviews and writings (including his autobiography,
travel accounts and short stories), but also by the fact that he
chose to commemorate each city in one specific novel of his —Tangier
in Let It Come Down (1952), and Fez in The Spider’s House
(1955). Yet, the natur e of this commemoration remains somehow questionable
because in both novels Bowles seems to deplore the impending encroachment
of (post-colonial) modernization in Morocco, along with its concomitant
disintegration or collapse of the nature of this commemoration remains
somehow questionable because in both novels Bowles seems to deplore
the impending encroachment of (post-colonial) modernization in Morocco,
along with its concomitant disintegration or collapse of the colonial
order as well as the traditional way of life.
Even a cursory look at Bowles’ prefaces* to
both novels is apt to draw the reader’s attention to this
author’s sense of regret and disappointment at the passing
of a ‘sweet’ colonial/pre-colonial era and the coming
of a ‘deplorable’ post-colonial one. While introducing
Let It Come Down, for instance, he states that this novel was first
published “at the very moment of the riots which presaged
the end of the International Zone of Morocco. Thus even at the time
of publication the book already treated a bygone era, for Tangier
was never the same after the 30th of March 1952. The city celebrated
in these pages has long ago ceased to exist, and the events recounted
in them would be now inconceivable.” The word ‘celebrated’
in this quotation is highly indicative of Bowles’ ideological
standpoint as it hints at his yearning and nostalgic desire for
the Tangier of colonial times.... Such implicit dissatisfaction
with the post-colonial Morocco is also expressed in his preface
to The Spider’s House. Commenting disapprovingly on the projects
of the nascent liberation movement in Fez, he writes that “the
Nationalists were not interested in ridding Morocco of all traces
of European civilization and restoring it to its pre-colonial state;
on the contrary, their aim was to make it even more “European”
than the French had made it....” He adds at the close of this
preface that: “The city is still there. It is no longer the
intellectual and cultural center of North Africa, it is merely one
more city beset by the insoluble problems of the Third World.”
The above prefatory statements from both novels raise
a number of questions that are greatly pertinent to the discussion
of Bowles’ perception and discursive representation of two
central Moroccan cities, whose cultural and political metamorphosis
he witnessed with passionate and alarmed ‘Western eyes’.
Some of these questions may be formulated as follows: What are these
“insoluble problems” from which Fez has suffered after
independence, according to Bowles? Why is Bowles so nostalgic in
his desire for the colonial Tangier and (pre-colonial) Fez? Can
such desire be stigmatized as romantic and Orientalist? To what
extent is Bowles a reliable or objective witness of the changes
these cities underwent? Why did Bowles continue to live in Tangier
up till his death, despite his dissatisfaction with its post-independence
realities? Was not his identity as an American problematized and
hybridized by this experience of self-exile in an alien Oriental
city?
These and other related questions will be tackled
in this paper, whose chief aim is to analyze Bowles’ views
and judgements about the transformations that took place in Tangier
and Fez after Morocco’s independence in 1956. The opinions
he expressed in his autobiography and numerous interviews** will
be contrasted with the discourses of the aforementioned novels so
as to show clearly the pictures he had in mind about each city.
The ideological significance of his representations will be also
considered so as to see if his apparent preference of (pre-)colo
nial Morocco to post-colonial Morocco is not just an aspect of his
affiliation to the hegemonic/Orientalist ideology of the West.
* It is worth mentioning that these prefaces did not appear in the
first editions of both novels. Bowles wrote them retrospectively
more than 25 years after the publication of each novel.
** Bowles’ autobiography Without Stopping was written in 1972,
and the vast majority of his interviews were given after 1964. These
texts contain a lot of references to the realities of Tangier and
Fez both before and after independence.
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