Abdelfattah Kilito: On the Merits of Bilingualism and the Persistence of Colonial Linguistic Paradigms

Mohamed Wajdi Ben Hammed

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Chapter 26 Abdelfattah Kilito: On the Merits of Bilingualism and the Persistence of Colonial Linguistic Paradigms

In: Contemporary Moroccan Thought

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Mohamed Wajdi Ben Hammed

Mohamed Wajdi Ben Hammed
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 658–678

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004519534_027

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Abstract

Abdelfattah Kilito is a Moroccan author and literary critic who writes in Arabic and French. His works combine literary criticism of the classical Arabic literary tradition (adab) with autobiographical and fictional meditations. In his oeuvre, Kilito directs himself in a bilingual performance to the study of the Arabic storytelling tradition all while reflecting on the power differential in postcolonial bilingualisms. He often articulates a celebratory discourse on the plurality of linguistic imagination. His discourse also reflects the Maghrebian author’s historical consciousness of the colonial dynamics that still organize the encounter between Arabic and French. This ambivalence, as this chapter argues, finds its coherence in Kilito’s opposition to monolingual logic which can perpetuate itself efficiently under the cover of bilingualism. The chapter first explores the development of Kilito’s intellectual project from the dedicated study of the conceptual world of adab to increasing existential meditations on the necessity and impossibility of bilingualism and translation. In so doing, the chapter demonstrates how Kilito draws on adab to locate important resources for thinking ethically about the pluralism of languages all while critiquing the modern institutions of world literature and translation circuits which, while appearing to promote a pluralistic approach to global literary landscapes, can still be inflicted with colonial dynamics.

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Contemporary Moroccan Thought

On Philosophy, Theology, Society, and Culture

Series: Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section 1 The Near and Middle East, Volume: 186

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004519534

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 24 Oct 2024

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Part 1 Projects in Philosophy and Philosophical Thought

Part 2 Projects in Theology, Theological Politics, and Sufism

Part 3 Projects in the Social Sciences and Cultural Studies

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Chapter 26 Abdelfattah Kilito: On the Merits of Bilingualism and the Persistence of Colonial Linguistic Paradigms

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Contemporary Moroccan Thought

On Philosophy, Theology, Society, and Culture

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