Morocco Bound

Morocco Bound is a fascinating and insightful account of the multiple ways that Americans engaged Morocco from the 1940s to the 1970s. Brian T. Edwards examines cultural and political encounters, ranging from U.S. soldiers and reporters in the North African campaign of World War II to novels, state department memos, travelers' accounts, and ethnographies. Edwards rightfully positions his study within recent transnationalist approaches to American studies, and he convincingly argues for the continuing importance of orientalism as an analytical framework for U.S. visions of Morocco. Edwards's major methodological claim is that his work provides a more nuanced account of the relationship between culture and foreign policy than has so far been offered, or presumed, by other scholars. Much of Morocco Bound comprises contextually rich analyses of key literary texts, highlighting cultural productions that potentially disrupt orientalist modes of knowledge. For example, Edwards provides a compelling reading of Paul Bowles's long collaboration with the illiterate Moroccan artist Mohammed Mrabet— one of the many ways Edwards self-consciously brings Moroccans and their perspectives into his account. Edwards argues that literature by writers such as Bowles and William S. Burroughs might have provided—if properly interpreted—avenues for cultural resistance. But since he insists that this literature was generally misread and appropriated, its political power of critique is only, in this model, retrospective. Historians are likely to find most interesting the very fine chapters on World War II reportage and on the 1950s constructions of Tangier as a symbol for Americans. Both chapters, like the rest of the book, usefully attend to the domestic politics of race

Art · Ethnography · Literature · Media studies · Orientalism · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Reading (process · Sociology · Vision · African history and culture studies · Anthropology · History · Law · Race, History, and American Society

• American Belly Dance and the Invention of the New Exotic

  Jennifer Haynes-Clark•2000

  Add to list

• Masters of Adaptation

  Rob Wilson•Cultural Politics an International…•2012

  Add to list