Ruins, Rumors and Traces of the City of Brass
Moroccan Modernity and Memories of the Arab Global City
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9250645 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Katarzyna Pieprzak (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2007 |
| Volume | 38 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 187-203 |
| Publication date | 2007-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Research in African Literatures (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0034-5210 • E-ISSN: 1527-2044 |
| Publisher | Indiana University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.2979/ral.2007.38.4.187 |
| OpenAlex | W2012936530 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 6 |
Through a reading of Moroccan writer Abdelkrim Jouiti's 1999 short story "Medina Al-Nuhhas" (The City of Brass), this essay seeks to understand how imagined global cities of the past function as imprisoning architectures of memory and how narrative space can be cleared to creatively imagine a new future. The essay argues that in re-telling multiple stories of the City of Brass, Jouiti's text works to expose multiple layers of nostalgia in dominant discourses of modernity, memory and identity in order to critique the processes of industrialization, urbanization and the drive for modernity in contemporary Morocco. By unearthing and questioning intertextual literary traces, rumors and ruins from Arabic and modernist traditions, the text destabilizes the monumental and monolithic nature of cultural narratives that imagine the greatness of the past so as to dissimulate the lack and inequality of the present
Aesthetics · Arabic · Art · Cultural memory · Epistemology · Greatness · Identity (music · Linguistics · Literature · Modernity · Narrative · Sociology · Anthropology · Caribbean and African Literature and Culture · History · Philippine History and Culture · Philosophy · Travel Writing and Literature
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,25 |
| Citation span | 2014 - 2025 (12) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |