Rabat – Sadik Rddad’s latest book, Decortion of the Maghreb: Morocco in British and American Travel WritingVisit western stories about Morocco with a new perspective.
Rddad moved on the worn issues of the orientalist discourse and examined how British and American travel authors built the Morocco image in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The book is challenged dominant Academic trends that focus on time and continuity and instead concentrate on geographical and historical context.
Ali Behdad, professor at UCLA, describes Rddad’s work as a valuable addition to travel literature and post -colonial studies.
“His differentiated approach invites readers and scholars to rethink the way we deal and interpret the rich tradition of travel crops,” notes Behdad.
RDDAD identifies four key shifts in the way in which Western writers represented Morocco. In Our mission at the Marocco farm (1880) Philip Durham Trotter presents a British diplomatic mission through a lens of the national pride, which reinforces and further confirms a belief in British superiority.
Frances MacNab’s A ride in Morocco (1902) moves away from religious and missionary perspectives and instead promotes colonial secularism as the main power of modernity. In Morocco the spicy (1914) George Edmond is reflected in Morocco and the USA wider cultural changes and places the country into a growing transnational network.
Finally, Edith Whartons In Morocco (1920) tells the tensions between American nationalism and French colonial ambitions, while he offers an insight into imperialist thinking and unbalanced dichotomies.
RDDAD, professor of English and cultural studies at Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University in Fez, has long dealed with questions of postcolonialism, nufism and cultural exchange.
With his newly published book, he encourages a deeper reflection on how western writers and sometimes distorted understanding of Morocco are shaped and with the urgently needed attention to stories that were often overlooked in academic discourse and classified as secondary.
