Contextualizing the “Other” in George Orwell’s “Marrakesh”
The University of Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdallah
Faculty of Arts and Humanities –Sais FesMaster Programme: Cross-Cultural & Literary Studies
Academic year: 2012/2013
Postcolonial discourse in Morocco:
Contextualizing the “Other” in George Orwell’s
“Marrakesh”
By Ismail FROUINI
"When you see how people live and still more
how easily they die, it is always difficult to
believe that you are walking among human
beings."
George
Orwell1
(1903-1950),
Marrakesh (1939).
“Colonial subjects, as George Orwell saw them
in Marrakech in 1939, must not be seen except
as a kind of continental emanation, African,
Asian, Oriental” Edward Said (1935-2003)
Orientalism. London: Routledge & Kegan
LTD, 1978, 251 pages.
“‘They’ were not like ‘us’, and for that reason
deserve to be ruled”. Edward Said (1935-2003)
Culture and Imperialism (1993), (the
introduction p: 13)
1
George Orwell: (1903–1950) (Eric Arthur Blair) is an English novelist, journalist and essayist.
1
Contextualizing the “Other” in George Orwell’s “Marrakesh”
The aim of this paper is to consider George Orwell’s essay on “Marrakech”
and analyze it in the postcolonial perspective. It is a study where the “Other” or
the “Orient” is theorised then contextualised to touch one facet of the
intentionally made misrepresentations of the West on the Orient –Morocco in
this case. Based upon George Orwell’s essay “Marrakesh”, some light will
mainly be shed on Orwell’s reading and viewing to Moroccan culture. At this
stage, this paper will rely, of course, upon some, but not all, of the forefathers
of
postcolonial
discourse
such
as
Edward
Said’s
prominent
book
“Orientalism”(1978), Frantz Fanon, Gayatri Spivak’s article: “ Can the Subaltern
Speak?”, Abdul R. JanMohamed‘s article “The Economy of Manichean Allegory:
the Function of Racial Difference Colonialist Literature”, to name a few. As
such, this paper will make the reader introduced to some ideological function
of colonialist literature.
Contextualizing the essay:
It is commonplace among critics and theorists that Postcolonialism, as a movement, is
a reaction against colonialism. It reveals the aftermaths of the colonisation on the colonised. It
scrutinizes the ambivalent relationship between the colonizer and the colonized. But who
colonized whom? Historically speaking, it was the “white man”2 who took the initiation to
subdue and “civilize” the “black man”. Whilst the British Empire, which is, to render to
Said’s Culture and Imperialism, the chief imperialist power in the nineteenth century, evaded
the quarter of the universe, France and the other neighbouring countries invaded the African
continent. Colonialism nowadays is apparently manifest; it is of different and
compartmentalized facets. These facets of colonialism, in fact, embalm the subalternity of the
Orient to the Occident.
2
These binary oppositions- as Aristotle first put them- should, according to Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) and
Edward W. Said, come into being overcome since they are based on racial and religious propaganda.
2
Contextualizing the “Other” in George Orwell’s “Marrakesh”
In recent postcolonial studies, the sound of the “subaltern”3, “oppressed”4, and
“silenced” countries was made heard, thanks to some critics and theorists such as Edward
Said, Frantz Fanon, Gayatri Spivak, Homi Bhabha, to cite a few. All Postcolonial theorists
and critics agree that the colonizers, be they intellectual or ordinary man, misrepresent the
“Orient”, at the same time uphold and stress the “Eurocentrism” (European superiority). Said
in his book “Orientalism”5 (1978) says that
“The Orient as a representation in Europe is formed—or deformed—out of a
more and more specific sensitivity towards a geographical region called "the
East." Specialists in this region do their work on it, so to speak, because in
time their profession as Orientalists requires that they present their society
with images of the Orient, knowledge about it, insight into it.”6
Abdul R. JanMohamed in his article “The Economy of Manichean Allegory: the
Function of Racial Difference Colonialist Literature” states that “the ideological
function of all “imaginary” and some “ symbolic” colonialist literature is to articulate
and justify the moral authority of the colonizer and --by positing the inferiority of the
native as a metaphysical fact—to mask the pleasure the coloniser derives from that
authority(...)we must bear in mind that colonialist fiction and ideology do not exist in a
vacuum”.
Based upon the quotes above, it is obviously clear that most of the Western
literature is not based primarily on history – though literature is almost of fiction; it is
grounded and constrained under the Western ideology that make survive the barbaric
misrepresentation on the Orient.
3
This term is first used by the Italian Marxist political activist, Antonio Gramsci, in his widely known book
“Prison Notebooks” and then later devised by the deconstructivist, post-colonial critic, Gayatri Spivak, mainly in
her seminal essay: "Can the Subaltern Speak?"
4
Paulo Freire in his book “The Pedagogy of the Oppressed” refers to the colonizer as such.
5
« Orientalism » (published in 1978) by Edward W. Said, is an outstanding and cornerstone book in post
colonial studies.
6
Edward Said. Orientalism. London: Routledge & Kegan LTD, 1978,273 pages.
3
Contextualizing the “Other” in George Orwell’s “Marrakesh”
The “Other” in this essay:
By declaring and depicting someone as "Other," writers – or artists, theorists, and
critics- tend to stress what makes them dissimilar from or opposite of another and this
identifiable in the way they represent others, especially through stereotypical images. George
Orwell, as a “white” West intellectual, represents the postcolonial conditions of Marrakech,
though it seems that it is not infiltrated with personal attitude, there is a kind of exaggeration
in the portrayal.
In this essay, George Orwell portrays Marrakech. He focuses more on the status quo of
people. The first excerpt tells of a funeral that, due to the poverty of the people living under
the colonial domination, is simple and careless. George Orwell, through his essay, at the very
beginning of this essay, depicts a sample of Moroccan people inasmuch as he castrates
Moroccan people from human being aspect and therefore from their “Moroccanness”. He also
reveals the spiritual and the psychological inner self of Moroccans, who always stick to their
own culture. In this case, Orwell displays a kind of “Eurocentrism”7, for having seen and
castigated the culture of the “Other” paves the way to what Homi Bhabha called
Ambivalence and the outdated dualities which are identifiable while describing Moroccan
people as “others”. As such, the expressions used in this essay -as I quote Orwell here “The
little crowd of mourners—all men and boys, no women (…) No gravestone, no name, no
identifying mark of any kind (…) when you see how the people live, and still more how easily
they die, it is always difficult to believe that you are walking among human beings” - show
the inferior outlook of “Them” towards “Us”; “We” and “They”: Orwell’s on the “Other”,
that is to say on Moroccan people.
7
Eurocentrism is premised on the foolish axiom that the West is the centre of meaning and order, or, in
extreme words, the originator of culture, if I may avail myself of a post-graduated researcher’s phraseology.
4
Contextualizing the “Other” in George Orwell’s “Marrakesh”
For so many people, who are not aware of the philosophy behind the description in the
essay, Orwell is saying the truth; if so? Joseph Conrad, for example, in his novel “Heart of
Darkness” is saying (more than) the “truth”. What is the problem then? Do we have to keep
silent? What does it do to minimize the culture of the “Other”? We are already silenced; we
are the subaltern and the “Other”. The “Other” for Orwell is not yet a human being, as shown
implicitly in the excerpt above. The “Other” in this case is a subaltern subject, therefore. So
far as this issue of the subaltern subject is concerned, Gayatri Spivak in her seminal article
“Can the Subaltern Speak?” Says that:
“The oppressed, if given the chance and on the way to
solidarity through alliance politics, can speak and know
their conditions”.
In a nutshell, the concept of the “Other” in George Orwell’s essay on “Marrakech”
goes beyond its conventional limitation. At this stage one has to speak and make voiced the
situation of oppressed ceded people. This action, of course, will end, or at least cease, the
intentionally made second-hand opinions about Orients, in general, and Moroccan people, in
particular. George Orwell remarkably regurgitates what other Orientalists said about Oriental
countries. Last, but far from least, fortunately, so many critics paid attention to Orwell’s
paradoxical discourse: his satirical study of the society and imagery, symbolic and
metaphysical fiction (second-hand opinion) said about Marrakech.
References:

George Orwell. “Marrakesh” 1939.

Said, Edward. Orientalism. London: Routledge & Kegan LTD, 1978. print.

Said, Edward. Culture & Imperialism. London: Vintage books.1994. print

Spivak GS (1988). “Can the Subaltern Speak?” In Marxism and the
Interpretation of Culture. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (eds.).
Urbana/Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
5
273 pages.