Beyond colonialism and nationalism.

• Author: Khadder, Moncef
• Position: Review Essay

Ahmida, Ali Abdullatif (ed.). Beyond Colonialism and Nationalism in the Maghreb: History Culture, and Politics. New York, N.Y.: Palgrave, 2000. 255 pages. Hardcover $55.00.

The contributors to this interdisciplinary publication provide, in 9 chapters, a critical overview on the interconnection between Colonialism and Nationalism, as concepts and socio-political realities. The work is divided into 5 Parts that focus on "Historiography;" "Orality, Agency, and Memory;" "Identity Formation, Gender, and Culture;" "Nationalism, Islamism, and Hegemony." Part five is devoted to the "... search of Pan-Mghribism." Alternative approaches are presented in order to understand Maghribi societies and states (mainly Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia) during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Social formations and political institutions are examined as they operate within their own dynamics as well as in relation to Europe and world capitalism.

The nationalist ideologies and policies of the colonial and the postcolonial states fed each other the know how of social control wrapped in a discourse of civilization-liberation. This requires a special attention and a new methodology that help investigate the involvement of the actors behind colonialism/nationalism. To prepare the terrain for a genuine emancipation, there is a need for founding social sciences and knowledge on bases that are decolonized, denationalized. Beyond colonialism and nationalism there is an invitation to rethink and redefine the colonial racist history of the conquest-imperialist period as well as the elitist dictatorial nationalist historiography of the populist independence era. Misled by the mythical opposition between colonialism and nationalism, politicians and specialists alike, often mystified by the state, became accustomed to stressing the role of Islam, tribalism, sects, national character, and principles at the expense of other considerations related to social stratific ation, power struggle, state formation, and the impact of world capitalism. The failure of the dominant theoretical approaches to the Maghrib was evidenced by the work of anthropologists, and social scientists in general, who perpetuated Orientalist assumptions and modernization theories. Having postulated and identified the process of transition to modernity, they tended to view positively the expansion of European and American capital and the diffusion of western cultural values and political ideologies. Many of the predictions of neo-orientalists and neo-modernizers were belied by the development of socio-politico-religious movements and popular oppositional forces in a partly westernized-modernized-secularized public sphere. Meanwhile, no industrial and economic achievement or a meaningful degree of political participation and enjoyment of human rights became a palatable reality. How did nationalism as popular ideology of resistance and liberation, historically and politically limited to targeting oppress ive colonialism, become a system of belief, often manufactured and manipulated by the state, associated with acquiescence and servitude? This is certainly a question asked tragically by the masses through their daily unbearable lives and through their struggle for dignity. This means that it is becoming necessary to discover alternative historical possibilities that require looking beyond the contemporary postcolonial nationalist state and its linear and manichean views of the colonial past for the purpose to secure its shaking legitimacy.

The editor's own chapter analyses the trilogy of the Libyan writer Ahmad Ibrahim al-Faqih, born in 1932. The themes of identity, cultural encounter, and alienation, are exposed for their relevance to the understanding of Libyan society and culture, from the time of the monarchy (1951-1969) to the republican era, since 1969, and the proclamation of Jamahirriyya. Indirectly, this essay is a critique of current studies that remain centered on the state and the political elite if not reduced to overestimating the role of the autocrat Qadhafi. The author calls upon mainstream scholars to pay as much attention to different actors and to listen to voices and alternative...