Moroccan Women and Colonial Encounters in Leonora Peets’ Women of Marrakech

Abdelghafour BENLAHBIB; Hamza TOUZANI; Mohammed DERDAR

doi:10.55544/ijrah.3.1.16

Authors

Abdelghafour BENLAHBIB Department of Applied Language and Culture Studies Lab (ALCS), Chouaib Doukkali University, El Jadida, MOROCCO.
Hamza TOUZANI Department of Applied Language and Culture Studies Lab (ALCS), Chouaib Doukkali University, El Jadida, MOROCCO.
Mohammed DERDAR Department of Applied Language and Culture Studies Lab (ALCS), Chouaib Doukkali University, El Jadida, MOROCCO.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.55544/ijrah.3.1.16

Keywords:

Morocco, Women, colonialism, contact zone, colonial encounters, identity

Abstract

Since narratives about colonial Morocco historicize turning points marked by shifting patterns of intercultural encounters, political developments, and local experiences of Moroccan women caught under the grip of colonialism and modernity, Women of Marrakech (1988) by Leonora Peets is a contribution to this literature that describes a period when Moroccans’ identities, particularly women's, have been shaped by colonialism and its subsequent encountering with the European other. Seen as a manifestation of the global modernity process, colonialism altered the material and epistemological circumstances of Morocco and other nations around the world. In that regard, the present paper contends that the encounter between Moroccan women and Europeans has contributed to the formation of Moroccan women's consciousness. Drawing upon Mary Pratt’s concept of “contact zones” (1992), the paper concludes arguing that the presence of Europeans in Marrakech has gradually influenced the attitudes of Peets’ women about themselves, their husbands and families, and their overall sense of Moroccanness.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Metrics

Metrics Loading ...

References

Ballantyne, T., & Burton, A. M. (Eds.). (2005). Bodies in contact: Rethinking colonial encounters in world history. Duke University Press.

Bezirgan, B. Q., & Fernea, E. W. (Eds.). (1994). Middle Eastern Muslim women speak. University of Texas Press.

Black, J., & MacRaild, D. M. (2007). Studying history (3rd ed). Palgrave Macmillan.

Canetti, E. (1969). The voices of Marrakesh. Marion Boyars Pub.

Eickelman, D. F. (1976). Women and Property in Morocco: Their Changing Relation to the Process of Social Stratification in the Middle Atlas. By Vanessa Maher. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974. Pp. xii + 238, bibl., map, index. £5.00. Africa, 46(3), 297–297. https://doi.org/10.2307/1159404

Eickelman, D. F. (1985). Knowledge and power in Morocco: The education of a twentieth-century notable. Princeton University Press.

El Saadawi, N. (1977). The hidden face of Eve: Women in the Arab world. Zed Books : Distributed in the USA exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan.

Fatna, S. (1984). Woman in the Muslim Unconscious. Athene Series.

Fernea, E. W. (1975). A street in Marrakech. Waveland Press.

Foster, S. (1982). The exotic as a symbolic system. Dialectical Anthropology, 7(1). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00247064

Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings, 1972-1977 (1st American ed). Pantheon Books.

Hoisington, W. (1984). The Casablanca Connection: French Colonial Policy, 1936-1943. The University of North Carolina Press.

Katz, J. G. (2021). Françoise Légey and Childbirth in Morocco. French Politics, Culture & Society, 39(1), 34–58. https://doi.org/10.3167/fpcs.2021.390103

Loti, P. (1889). Au Maroc. C. Pirot.

Maghraoui, D. (Ed.). (2013). Revisiting the colonial past in Morocco. Routledge.

Mayne, P. (1953). A year in Marrakesh. Eland.

McDougall, J. (2017). A History of Algeria. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781139029230

Mernissi, F. (1993). The Forgotten queens of Islam (5. printing). Univ. Minnesota Press.

Peets, L. (1988). Women of Marrakech: Record of a secret sharer, 1930-1970. Duke University Press.

Pratt, M. L. (1992). Imperial eyes: Travel writing and transculturation (2nd ed). Routledge.

Rosen, L. (1984). Bargaining for Reality: The Construction of Social Relations in Sefrou, Morocco. Middle East Studies Association Bulletin, 21(1), 33–34. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026318400017971

Said, E. W. (1978). Orientalism (1st Vintage Books ed). Vintage Books.

Seddon, D. (1978). Morocco - Prelude to Protectorate in Morocco: Precolonial protest and resistance, 1860–1912. By Edmund BurkeIII. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1976. Pp. xii + 306. £13.90. - Resistance in the Desert: Moroccan responses to French imperialism, 1881–1912. By Ross Dunn. London: Croom Helm, 1977. Pp. 291. £12.50. The Journal of African History, 19(3), 471–474. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021853700016340

Terem, E. (2021a). Educating Women, Recasting Patriarchy: Becoming Modern in Colonial Morocco. French Politics, Culture & Society, 39(1), 83–107. https://doi.org/10.3167/fpcs.2021.390105

Terem, E. (2021b). Women’s Lives in Colonial and Postcolonial Maghrib. French Politics, Culture & Society, 39(1), 1–8. https://doi.org/10.3167/fpcs.2021.390101

Wharton, E. (1920). In Morocco (1st Ecco ed). Ecco Press.