The Contentious Classroom: Education in Postcolonial Literature from Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia Erin Twohig Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2014 © 2014 Erin Twohig All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT The Contentious Classroom: Education in Postcolonial Literature from Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia Erin Twohig ! My dissertation examines literary portraits of education in French- and Arabic-language literature from the Maghreb. The texts that I study recount their protagonists’ experience, as students or teachers, in the school system following independence in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. I focus, in particular, on debates relating to the “Arabization” of education. Arabizing education in the Maghreb was considered a fundamental act of decolonization, yet its promotion of a single national language provoked much criticism. I examine how authors use literary depictions of the classroom to treat critical topics surrounding language policy, national identity projects, the legacy of the colonial past, and the future of the education system. The chapters of this work explore four critical issues in discussions of education: the relationship between “colonial” and “postcolonial” education systems, the place of Amazigh (Berber) minorities in an Arabized education system, the effect of education on gender dynamics, and the “economics of education” which exclude many students from social mobility. This work examines thirteen literary texts, seven written in French and six in Arabic: ‘Abd al-Ghani Abu al-‘Azm’s Al ḍarīḥ and Al ḍarīḥ al akhar, Leila Abouzeid’s Rujūʻ ilā al-ṭufūlah and Al-Faṣl al-akhīr, Wahmed Ben Younes’s Yemma, Karima Berger’s L’enfant des deux mondes, Maissa Bey’s Bleu blanc vert, Wahiba Khiari’s Nos silences, Fouad Laroui’s “L’Etrange affaire du cahier bounni,” Mohamed Nedali’s Grâce à Jean de la Fontaine!, Brick Oussaïd’s Les coquelicots de l’oriental, Habib Selmi’s Jabal al-‘anz, and Zohr Wanissi’s Min Yawmīyāt Mudarrisah Ḥurrah. ! I adopt a comparative disciplinary approach, connecting the literary form of works to a larger discussion of the social roles of literature. I argue that the texts I examine are all concerned with the tension inherent in using the literary form to engage in discussion, and often critique, of the educational institutions that provide conditions for literature’s existence. My dissertation elucidates the stakes of this complicated relationship between education and literature in the Maghreb, asking how it is continuing to evolve. There is a marked anxiety in each of these works as to whether the student will become a reader of the literary text. This anxiety colors approaches to all of the issues that surround education, and brings into question the place of literature in contemporary Maghrebi cultures. Table of Contents Acknowledgements........................................................................................................................ ii Note on Translation....................................................................................................................... iii Introduction ....................................................................................................................................1 Chapter One: Writing the Transition to “Postcolonial” Education .............................................. 30 Chapter Two: Classroom Narratives from Amazigh Discourse to Citizenship Discourse .......... 70 Chapter Three: Rewriting Gender: Literary “Public Spheres” and Gender Dynamics in Education Narratives .................................................................................................. 109 Chapter Four: Resisting Reproduction and the Refusal to “Make Sense” of Education............ 150 Conclusion: Literature and Education: Limits and Possibilities ............................................... 194 Works Cited ............................................................................................................................... 202 i Acknowledgements First, I would like to thank my adviser, Madeleine Dobie, for her mentorship, advice and support throughout all stages of my graduate study. Thanks also to my committee members, Emmanuelle Saada and Muhsin al-Musawi, for their invaluable feedback from the very earliest phases of this project. Without the support of this incredibly knowledgable and helpful committee, this work would not have been possible. Thanks to generous FLAS (Foreign Language and Area Studies) and AIMS (American Institute of Maghrib Studies) grants, I was able to spend a year conducting dissertation research in Morocco. I would like to thank all of those who spoke with me about their work in education, publishing and literature while I was there. These interviews provided invaluable insight into the questions at stake in this work. Thank you finally to all of the colleagues and friends who read various portions of this work at many different stages, and provided their feedback and support. ii A note on translations: Because this work focuses so closely on language as a means of elaborating a critical stance towards education, it has seemed important to me to provide both French and Arabic quotations in the original. Due to the strictures inherent in using two different character sets, I have found it simplest to provide the Arabic original quotes in footnotes throughout the work. Translations from the Arabic are my own unless otherwise noted. iii Introduction The moment when a literary protagonist enters the classroom for the first time is almost always a harbinger of transformation. For Arab and Amazigh (Berber) students educated in French colonial Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, entering the school was also a deeply conflictual encounter with the language and culture of the “other.” From the colonial period, there has been a rich history of using literary forms to explore the issues that education engenders. Yet whereas fictionalized depictions of the French colonial education system have been widely analyzed, literary treatments of education after independence have remained largely unexamined by critics. This critical silence is surprising, given the deeply controversial nature of post-independence education policy in all three countries. Despite the official policy of “Arabization” (making Modern Standard Arabic the exclusive national language) the linguistic situation in the former French colonies of the Maghreb remains characterized by a far more diverse mix of French, standard Arabic, colloquial Arabic dialects, and Tamazight (Berber). The tensions between ideology, policy, and practice have rendered education a flashpoint for heated discussion, and left many questions open for debate. Has Arabization represented, as intended, a break from French linguistic domination, or is it the linguistic sign of a process of re-colonization by the political and financial elite of the postcolonial state? How has the introduction of Arabic into the classroom changed the power relations that govern access to knowledge ? What is the place of Amazigh populations in nations that purport to be “Arab” by both ethnicity and language? How 1 has access to the classroom altered gender dynamics? And how has educational language policy been instrumentalized by those seeking legitimacy and power? The narratives of education explored in my study represent a unique context for the examination of these wide-ranging issues. I consider thirteen literary texts: seven written in French and six in Arabic. In each, the individual experience of a student or teacher in the post- independence school is a major theme. The authors of these texts, many of which are autobiographical, also share the experience of having been educated in the Maghreb after independence. Somewhat like their predecessors in the colonial era, they often find themselves in the difficult situation of criticizing educational institutions and practices, while recognizing that these same institutions potentially give them the tools to write, and are responsible for forming their future readership. My dissertation examines how these tensions inform literary portraits of education, and how these texts create new spaces from which to formulate critiques and imagine change. At the heart of my comparative approach is the examination of literary texts in both French and Arabic. Analysis of novels from the colonial era has often privileged language use, and indeed language “choice,” as a lens of analysis. In response, many authors protested that using French was not a choice, as Arabic was devalued or entirely suppressed in the colonial school.1 It is tempting to suggest that since independence, as both Arabic and French are taught in many schools, language “choice” is again a valid term for these debates. However I find this approach limiting: the question of a binary choice does not consider the full range of linguistic 1 Early examples of discussion of language use include Jean Déjeux’s Situation de la littérature maghrébine de langue française : approche historique, approche critique, bibliographie méthodique des œuvres maghrébines de fiction, 1920-1978 and Jacqueline Arnaud’s Littérature maghrébine de langue française. More recent explorations have included Lise Gauvin’s introduction to and interviews with authors in L’écrivain francophone à la croisée des langues and Alek Baylee Toumi’s Maghreb Divers: Langue française, langues parlées, littératures