The Postcolonial Malaise in Narration
The Construction of Narrative Writing in Mohamed Zafzaf’s Arṣifah Wa Judrān (Sidewalks and Walls)
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 19005486 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Lhoussain Simour (0000-0003-4315-5718, University of Hassan II Casablanca, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 24 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 102-118 |
| Publication date | 2021-01-20 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Interventions (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1369-801X • E-ISSN: 1469-929X |
| Publisher | Routledge (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/1369801x.2020.1863838 |
| OpenAlex | W3121544736 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 12 |
Arṣifah Wa Judrān (Sidewalks and Walls) is associated with some of the aspects inherent in the postcolonial social and cultural transformations that Morocco had witnessed due to the illusive narrative of independence. Lack of political stability, repression, stagnation, and social disparities created helpless and alienated individuals torn between the utopian impulse for a better way of being and the forceful neocolonial crippling situation of aborted desires and hopes. When it first came out, the narrative raised questions about the nihilistic and existentialist position of the protagonist in a Moroccan society at the crossroads of colonial desires and postcolonial drifts. Arṣifah Wa Judrān remaps the contours of an unremitting condition marked out by the predicaments of existence in a society of contrasts par excellence. It demonstrates how the systematic social sufferings of the characters reach absurd extremes, and it casts nihilism and the mendacity of life in the postcolonial setting as restrictive, unreasonable and tragic. This essay attempts to reflect on how nation and narration, gender and sexuality in Arṣifah Wa Judrān coalesce to bring a distrustful glance through narrative themes that resonate with imposed nihilism and absurdity within a cruel society of shattered dreams and unfulfilled promises. It seeks to understand how characters strive to confront the existential crises dictated by loss, weariness, disappointment and the dystopian condition of the postcolony
Absurdity · Aesthetics · Art · Disappointment · Dystopia · Existentialism · Literature · Narrative · Nihilism · Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Caribbean and African Literature and Culture · Gender Studies · History · Law · North African History and Literature · Philosophy · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · Psychology · Social Psychology
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |