L’orientalisme Comme Mémoire Partagée. Au Détroit D’averroès De Driss Ksikes

Abstract

This study is part of a research project I am currently conducting on the new relationship between
the Francophonie and Orientalism. Recent publications aimed at redefining the specificities of the two fields
justify, among other things, such an interest. In the Dictionnaire des Orientalistes en langue française,
published in 2008 by Karthala under the direction of François Pouillon, for example, we can see a deliberate
blurring between francophonie and orientalism, which is at the antipodes of Edward Saïd's theory. Names such
as Eugène Delacroix, Théophile Gautier, Pierre Loti, Sylvestre de Sacy now rub shoulders with those of
Mouloud Feraoun, Kateb Yacine Marguerite-Taos Amrouche, Mouloud Mammeri. All those who have written,
produced, touched the East, from near or far, in all fields, are simply qualified as orientalists, whether they
are from the East or the West. A second reason justifying this work of redefinition is to be found, it seems to
me, in the very evolution of a certain contemporary francophone literature which, since the publication of
Orientalism in 1978 and the rise of postcolonial studies, has in turn taken on the task of re-reading orientalist
knowledge, often in the form of essays and more recently in the form of narratives which put into fiction the
drifts of certain postcolonial theories. I will take as an example of study the latest work of the Moroccan
writer Driss ksikes, Au Détroit d'Averroès , in order to show how the fictionalized debate around averroism as
orientalist topos can be put at the service of new ultra-contemporary battles.