Plural Maghreb

Plural Maghreb (in French: Maghreb pluriel) is a book of critical essays written by Abdelkebir Khatibi first published in 1983. The book, containing six theoretical essays, presents and applies the concepts of other thought and double critique, addressing issues of language, translation, orientalism, knowledge, power, domination, and decolonization. In his essays, Khatibi conceives of the Maghreb "as a horizon of thought" and a model for plurality, alterity, difference, and alternative thought, calling for a "radicalization of the margin." While each essay can work as a standalone piece, the six essays are united by the theme of a "plural Maghreb," presented by Khatibi as both a historical reality and a desire restrained by the dominance of both theological-nationalist authorities and Orientalist colonial forces. Khatibi's thinking in Plural Maghreb is grounded in culture theory and philosophy of language, and it is influenced by the thinking of Jacques Derrida on deconstruction and alterity. Maghreb pluriel begins with a quote from the final chapter of The Wretched of the Earth, in which Frantz Fanon implores that Europe be left behind and that its legacies be rejected for the sake of finding "something different." Khatibi agrees that there is an urgent need to find "something different," but asks: "must we not first postulate that this Europe is still a question that shakes us to the core of our being?" In recognizing that Europe has rearranged the most intimate aspects of the colonized, he insists that disentangling from Europe is no simple matter, and that the call for decolonization must be reformulated. The opening essay Pensée - autre—a version of which was first published as "Le Maghreb comme horizon de pensée" in a 1977 special issue of Les Temps modernes entitled Du Maghreb produced by North African intellectuals—provides a theoretical framework for the rest of Maghreb pluriel. In this essay, Khatibi identifies the "Western legacy and our very theological, very charismatic, and very patriarchal heritage" as the subjects of critique.