Literature And Development In North Africa: The Modernizing Mission (literary Criticism And Cultural Theory)

E-Book Overview

The book examines how modern global development largely privileges Western multinational interests at the expense of local or indigenous concerns in the "developing" nations of the East. The practices of development have mostly led not to economic, social, and political progressivism in local society but rather to instability, poverty, debt, and repression. "Modernization" may therefore be seen as the catalyst of anti-Western reaction. The record of exploitative "development" is traceable in the anti-colonial works of Frantz Fanon, Albert Memmi, and Jean-Paul Sartre, as well as in the fiction and memoirs of several North African authors, including Albert Camus, Naguib Mahfouz, Nawal El Saadawi, Assia Djebar, and Edward Said, who address decolonization in the middle twentieth century. The critical regard of development provides better understanding of the independence movements in North Africa. Further, one may look to the colonial past for perspective upon global development today. One sees similar practices and rhetoric are now invoked under "globalization." This recognition is key to understanding today’s so-called "war on terror." The understanding of things "postcolonial" is therefore critical for Americans today. Grounded in literature in English translation, this work has relevance for cultural studies in the Middle East, Africa, globalization, postcolonialism, and women’s studies.

E-Book Content

Literary Criticism and Cultural Theory Edited by William E. Cain Professor of English Wellesley College A Routledge Series Literary Criticism and Cultural Theory William E. Cain, General Editor Negotiating the Modern Orientalism and Indianness in the Anglophone World Amit Ray Novels, Maps, Modernity The Spatial Imagination, 1850–2000 Eric Bulson Novel Notions Medical Discourse and the Mapping of the Imagination in Eighteenth-Century English Fiction Katherine E. Kickel Masculinity and the English Working Class Studies in Victorian Autobiography and Fiction Ying S. Lee Race, Immigration, and American Identity in the Fiction of Salman Rushdie, Ralph Ellison, and William Faulkner Randy Boyagoda Cosmopolitan Culture and Consumerism in Chick Lit Caroline J. Smith Asian Diaspora Poetry in North America Benzi Zhang William Morris and the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings Andrea Elizabeth Donovan Zionism and Revolution in European-Jewish Literature Laurel Plapp Aesthetic Hysteria The Great Neurosis in Victorian Melodrama and Contemporary Fiction Ankhi Mukherjee Shakespeare and the Cultural Colonization of Ireland Robin E. Bates The Rise of Corporate Publishing and Its Effects on Authorship in Early Twentieth-Century America Kim Becnel Spaces of the Sacred and Profane Dickens, Trollope, and the Victorian Cathedral Town Elizabeth A. Bridgham Conspiracy, Revolution, and Terrorism from Victorian Fiction to the Modern Novel Adrian S. Wisnicki The Contemporary Anglophone Travel Novel The Aesthetics of Self-Fashioning in the Era of Globalization Stephen M. Levin City/Stage/Globe Performance and Space in Shakespeare’s London D.J. Hopkins Transatlantic Engagements with the British Eighteenth Century Pamela J. Albert Literature and Development in North Africa The Modernizing Mission Perri Giovannucci Literature and Development in North Africa The Modernizing Mission Perri Giovannucci New York London First published 2008 by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Routledg