Ibn Zohr University, Agadir

Faculty of Letters and Humanities

Department of English Studies

Re-thinking the Bi-lingual Self: Abdelkebir Khatibi’s Amour bilingue as a study-case

A paper submitted in partial fulfilment of Bachelor Degree

In Literary Studies

Supervisee

BOUZAIN ABDELAZIZ

1311007056

Supervisor

Dr. BENLEMLIH BOUCHRA

Academic Year

2015—2016
 Acknowledgments

I could not live without testifying

Abdelkebir Khatibi

Language is Incapable of Expressing my Sincere Debt and Warm Thanks To

Dr. BENLEMLIH BOUCHRA who guided, helped and made this paper a success

My Family who encouraged and supported me along the way

My Classmates who commented, criticized and excited discussions during our meetings
If we believe that we belong to a certain origin, or that we possess

a pure language that secures our identity, then we should

consciously realize that we have structured a fancy of who we are.

My Words
 Table of Contents

I. Acknowledgments

II. Table of Contents

III. Abstract

IV. Introduction …………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 1 – 3

Theoretical Part

I. Bilingualism, a By-product of Colonialism …………………………………………………….. 4 – 7

1.1. Linguistic Hybridity and its Representation …………………………………… 8 – 10

1.2. Bi-lingualism, an Attempt at Self-refashioning ……………………………… 11 – 13

II. Fighting for a post-colonial space ………………………………………………………………. 14 – 15

2.1. Writing the Bi-lingual Self across Languages ……………………………….. 16 - 17

2.2. Bi-langue, De-centring the Maghrebi Narrative …………………………… 18 – 19

Practical Part

I. Experimenting Bi-lingualism ………………………………………………………………………… 20 -- 22

1.1. Bi-lingualism, Moments of Clash …………………………………………………… 23 – 26

1.2. Thinking and Writing Bi-lingualism ………………………………………………… 27 – 29

II. Un-translating the Bilingual Self ………………………………………………………………….. 30 – 32

2.1. Inhabiting Untranslatable Bi-lingualism ………………………………………….33 – 35

2.2. Blurring the Borders ……………………………………………………………………… 36 -- 38

V. Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………………………………. 39

VI. Works Cited ………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 40 -- 41

 Abstract

This paper is an attempt to critically rethink the bilingual self through Abdelkebir

Khatibi’s novel Amour bilingue. This paper provides critical reception of how Khatibi perceives

of bilingualism and how Khatibi gives it a modern look when put in the post-colonial context.

Furthermore, the paper explores the modern views of bilingualism apropos of identity—

including language and culture. In addition, the paper is an exploration of bilingualism at two

main levels: the self and the text. Studying critically the phenomenon of bilingualism is of a high

importance in post-colonial theory as well as cultural studies. What makes bilingualism critical is

that it is a fact, experienced and seen in our society. Khatibi’s Amour Bilingue is not a mere

shallow example, but rather it is an actual experience of me and you. Tackling this concept and

its complex implications in the context either of post-colonial studies or cultural studies makes it

more knotty, given its intersections with other important concepts such as identity, culture,

language etc. The paper actually is meant to provide a plus to post-colonial as well as cultural

studies concerns; it is meant to rethink and revalue an indispensable fact, which is distinctive of

Me and You.

Key Words: Bilingualism, identity, culture, language, bilingual self

 1

Introduction

The current status quo of the Maghrebi countries in relation to broad structures of

cultural and linguistic interactions with many other countries, with somehow different sets of

cultures , demands a new revived look into what is going on now in the Maghrebi world . But,

we need first to inquire briefly back into the history of linguistic and cultural confrontation with

the colonizer, and decide on how it still affects the Maghrebi World. The colonial practices of the

French and British Empires have brought about in the colonized world new sets of values,

traditions cultures, and strived by whatever means to institutionalize them, the thing they

succeeded in. The Francophone and Arabo-Berber confrontation in Morocco brought with it a

new way of looking at the Moroccan culture, and with it correspondingly complex results in the

process of self-identification. This new way is defined by the ambivalent mixture of cultures

which many generations experienced and still undergo in the same home. Many hybrid persons

have been, ever since the colonial presence in Morocco, born to hold different identities

simultaneously. This confrontation with the colonial culture mad ‘‘the self [to] indulge in a

process of becoming [culturally and linguistically] other than self ‘‘(p96)1. The self took new

dimensions of identification based only on the restlessness of the painful experience of double-

identity and of dual experience of thought. This restlessness drove many; among them are

authors, as we will see later, to look forward to a new place of the in-between, a place that blurs

the border of identity and of culture. An escape from a world of uncertainty marked with

pluralistic and ambivalent existence, but still neither to us nor to them.

1
Jacques, Derrida. Writing and Difference. Trans. A. Bass. The University of Chicago Press: 1978. Print.
 2

Owing to post-colonial criticism, a new awareness has raised among scholars,

writers, and critics, who have at a certain time felt a sense of alienation of the self, a blurred

vision of their identity. They have therefore made several attempts at questioning the truth, purity

and origins of their culture, of their linguistic, social and political codes and of their identity. In

this paper, I would analytically and critically re-think the bilingual self. I would cast the light on

arguments of linguistic hybridity as an after-math of the colonial experience and as the Moroccan

novelist Abdelkebir Khatibi represents it in his novel. I will methodologically deconstruct this bi-

lingual self at the level of self as a lived experience and the text as a record of this experience. In

addition, this paper is a critique of linguistic identity; that is, it investigates how Khatibi and all

the Moroccans hold differing cultures. Furthermore, this paper is an elaboration on the third

space as a refuge from the colonial experience of mixed culture and identity; it also discusses the

pluralistic existence in narration; namely, text as a hostage for the bilingual writer.

Abdelkebir Khatibi introduced his ideas about bi-lingualism and bi-culturalism of

the Maghrebi world, because he was at the heart of this experience. The question of language and

identity faced him very early, and his choice to write in French despite the fact that he is a

Moroccan posed for him many questions of identity and culture. All his ideas of the cultural and

linguistic hybridity shaped his deconstructive view about his self. His ideas on this issue are

contained in many of his works Maghreb pluriel, Monolinguisme d’autre, Ou la Prothèse

D’origine, etc., to name but a few. Hence, his novel Amour Bilingue is a brand of his colonial

and post-colonial, cultural and linguistic experience, A novel in which “you really feel that

you're inside the confused mind of "He" Who is speaking two languages... the mother language //

the language he loves "She"... ’’.

 3

In analyzing the novel, I will make use of various outputs such as critiques of the novel, modern

post-colonial critical works, works on modernity and modern identity, personal comments and

arguments on the work etc. I will try to use modern works so as to revive our outlook of identity

and culture and give it new contemporary reading.

I admit that this paper is not definitely an over-arching deal with the topic, as so

many points will be excluded and others included. It is unfortunately sad that this topic is

constrained only to one part of the Maghreb and to only one specific colonial result in this world.

But, I am also happy, for it is a precious chance to read through the colonial experience and its

results that fortunately I did not then witness. What I really expect from conducting this research

is to enlighten myself about the enriching field of post-colonialism, to give new dimensions to

how we look at our identities and cultures, to right up personal and impersonal views about

ourselves and origins and finally to make a successful head-start to conduct more broad

researches on the Maghreb and simultaneously to open a gate to post-graduate studies.

 4

I. Bi-lingualism, a By-product of Colonialism

Morocco has been throughout history an interface on which diverse lines of

cultures meet. But, this fact has not mattered a lot until the arrival of colonialism. The drastic

aftereffects – cultural and socio-political--that this painful experience triggered off were at the

centre of post-colonial attention. The French colonial existence in Morocco has given rise to a

complex scene concerning the linguistic identity; the everyday experience of lapsing between

two linguistic codes has been a second-nature of the Moroccans. This linguistic hybridity is

doubtless regarded as the spin-off of the colonial existence in Morocco. One who observes the

Moroccan scene finds what the Moroccan philosopher Abdefettah Kilito, commenting on that,

describes as “split tongue .” Namely; people at once perambulate between multiple linguistic

systems. The linguistic clash between the colonized subject’s language—Arabic or Berber—and

the colonizer’s—French—has resulted in a linguistic and cultural hybrid identity. As the cultural

diffusion between the two differing and conflicting cultures has taken place, within the colonial

era in Morocco, this very diffusion has spawned new postcolonial-angled views of the Moroccan

cultural and linguistic identities, a space of plurality in which bi-lingualism and multilingualism

lie2.

2
Morocco is a multilingual country in which Berber—in its three types, Arabic—Standard and dialectical, French
and Spanish are at work in Moroccan’s dialogues.
 5

Regarding Morocco a place of living in an in-between space; that is to say, one lives in two

cultures and makes use of two languages all at once puts accent on the outcome of this

experience which is actually living in a third space marked with traces of belonging to both

cultures. This experience leads to a re-consideration of critical concepts, a re-consideration of

one’s possible native culture and identity. Linguists believe in the importance of language as a

determinant of one’s belonging, identity and thus a whole body of culture. Correspondingly,

claiming an identity does necessarily mean to subscribe oneself to a language which per se

requires one to accept the rules of its culture.

Verily, the colonial experience in Morocco has not stopped at the political or

economic or even assumingly (for the sake of argument) the civilizing mission; the experience

has exceeded that and brought about a whole multi-layered form of cultural and linguistic

existence, or rather what is known as hybridity. Bi-lingualism as seen as a by-product of

colonialism puts forth another momentous and sensitive argument, which is language choice as

an essential element in determining one’s self-perception and a sense of belonging. The

Francophone writer is torn between the usage of the two languages either “Mother tongue or the

colonizer’s language .”Some of the Maghrebi writers maintain that the language that delimits

one’s identity and demarcates the borders of their belonging is the Mother tongue, by extension

Yasmine Yildiz argues:

Individuals and social [sic] are imagined to possess one ‘true’

language only, their ‘mother tongue’, and through this possession

to be organically linked to an exclusive, clearly demarcated

ethnicity, culture and nation. (Yildiz, 2)

 6

Yildiz’s argument goes that everyman has by nature a legitimate language known as Mother

Tongue and that their mother tongue defines their belonging to a certain nation, ethnicity and

descent. Contrariwise, by the confrontation of Arabophone and Francophone cultures, the notion

of having a pure Mother Tongue has been impossible. The intrinsic clash of the two differing

cultures has effaced the connotation of Mother Tongue as an inborn language and as legitimately

an exclusive property of the self to which one subscribes and identifies with. In Morocco, for

instance, the newly-born children acquire essentially two languages. The fact that counters the

view of the mother tongue as essentially a property which by extension determines one’s

belonging and identity. Another instance of the hybridity3 of the Moroccans at the level of

linguistic codes is that Moroccans do travel unconsciously from one language to another, or

sometimes they make use of a mixture of both.

Writers, Moroccan by up-bringing but taught in French schools, have faced the

question of bilingualism in their writings. Bilingualism has meant for them more than a mere

question of a fact; their deep understanding of the term and its complex ramifications have

brought with it a sense of mutation of thought, of double existence and of a burden in writing and

articulating their original identity, belonging and culture. For the Moroccan writer, writing in

French and being hybrid denote what Walter Benjamin describes as:

3
Homi .K. Bhabha’s terms that refers in principle to the ‘’ cross-breeding of two species by grafting or cross-
pollination to form a third, ‘’ hybrid’’ species. Hybridization takes many forms: linguistic, cultural, political, racial
etc. ‘’ (qtd. In Post-colonial Studies: The Key Concepts .108)
 7

Thinking involves not only the movement of thoughts but their

arrest as well. Where thinking suddenly stops in a constellation

saturated with tensions, it gives that constellation a shock . . . In

this structure . . . a revolutionary chance in the fight for the

oppressed past [is happening]. (Qtd in selected writings. 396)

It is a time of tension marked by sensing oneself between a separate relationship of an Other

Tongue and Mother Tongue. When one writes crossing two languages, one feels a sense of non-

belonging, of being an internationalist4 and of being a linguistic transvestite5.

4
This is a Khatibian term that occurred in his literary review L’Intertextuel. This term implies ‘’ Subjects who do not
fit anywhere in particular, but who are, paradoxically, always at home ‘’ ( Qtd in Time Signatures p 274)
5
Isabelle de Courtivon’s term denoting someone who is at crossroads between two identities—including culture
and language.
 8

1.1. Linguistic Hybridity and its Representation

The protracted existence of colonialism in the Maghrebi World has left drastic

traces—on socio-political and linguistic levels-- which have been dappling the past and the

present consciousness of the colonized. Most of the Maghrebi inhabitants feel a sense of

linguistic duality and thus a responsibility of thought. Maghrebi writers who choose to make

their identity, culture, and existence voiced through writing in the colonizer’s language feel a

sense of loss and of being between two different sets of cultures and identities. The emergence of

Francophone literature cracks a subversive fissure in the colonial discourse; the use of the

colonizer’s language does not limitedly voice the sense of otherness but simultaneously cracks

open the hybrid voice that is expressed therein. The textual fact of adapting the language of the

colonizer to the culture of the colonized and vice versa foregrounds the subversive outlook that

Francophone literature takes on, and it shows the view the Maghrebi writers propose to the

language of the colonizer—writers subvert the French language through adapting it to their

cultures. However, the interdependent adaptation of French and Arabic in Francophone literature

brings forth a space6 of cultural conflict, a space of hybrid existence of the writer and of his or

her text. The hybridity of the post-colonial texts lies in the fact that writers clothe the French

language with hidden sets of native cultural expressions, proverbs and idioms.

6
When considering Bilingualism in the context of post-colonial theory, the bi-langue, Khatibi talks about, is a
necessary tool in reading the Bilingual text, without it the text cannot be understood nor interpreted.
 9

This new way of writing in French but not as French offers a multitude of

possibilities for writers to intermingle their texts with linguistic and cultural codes; thus, offering

a third voice formulated in French syntax but with Native colouring. Writings of the Maghrebi

writers in French language are symptoms of the process of decolonization, which is a claim to

the Maghrebi identity and culture in the other-French culture. This claim is stated by Assia

Djebar in her L’amour la Fantasia:

I felt myself taken away most often by non-French voices; they

haunt me and were often the foe to the French voices since it was

for so long the language of the occupying force. To bring them

back, just by writing them, and while I felt constrained, finding the

equivalence without distortion, but hastily translate them . . . yes to

touch upon traditional cultures, abused and long-time despised, to

inscribe them in a new text graphically which becomes ‘’ my

French. (Djebar. 29) [Emphasis is mine]

Djebar asserts a mental existence of the Bi-lingual, a dual responsibility of thought.

The Bi-lingual self perambulates between the Mother tongue and the colonizer’s language

without frontiers. This self forms a new literary space for its identity and belonging; it subverts

so as to represent itself. The bi-lingual self represents its self—identity, culture and language—

by appropriating the French into their semantic and expressive forms of native traditions. A

novel voice and unique language have been created to rethink one’s past and present in a state of

unrest and malaise, in which, as Assia Djebar puts it, “the French language, body and voice,

moves in me like a proud leader, while the mother tongue, smacks with its oral, uneducated

tradition, resists and fights back while catching its breath" . (Ibid. p46)
 10

Writing in Bilingualism, I would call it, is a deconstructive corrosion that steeps

into the colonizer’s language through incorporating the Mother Tongue into French; it is as well

a decolonizing process in which one rethinks and rewrites their own self. This bilingualism

actually posits problems of languages, French and Arabic, and how they are related to the

collective identity. To have a language is to identify the self to a culture, and in the case of

bilingualism one is faced with a double being, a hybrid existence, and a conflict of thought.

Accordingly, Bi-lingualism is one phase of what Abdelkebir Khatibi calls “the plurality’’ of the

Maghreb.
 11

1.2. Bi-lingualism, an Attempt at Self Re-fashioning

It is mandatory for the Bi-lingual writer to choose a language whereby he puts

forth his ideas and thoughts. The fact of being Bi-lingual does not stop at merely adapting one’s

ideas to a language, but the whole process of language choice determines for the Maghrebi writer

a set of meanings, or simply what is known as culture. It is this, in the case of the Maghrebi

writer, which matters a lot when it comes to self-identification and culture. Choosing to write in

French makes them question their identity, for choosing French means selecting not only a

linguistic code but a cultural structure which speaks for the self. The choice of writing in the

French- the Other’s language—brings to the fore a series of conceptual constructs that have been

associated with the colonized – marginal, schizophrenic, alienated, hybrid, treacherous, separated

from the Mother Tongue etc. Correspondingly, this fact of Bi-lingualism evinces the plurality of

the Bi-lingual writer not only at the level of language or linguistic code but also at the level of

identity question. Who am I? Where do I live? Can I determine my identity and my home even if

I am between two worlds? Identity in the Maghreb World is defined by hybridity or a collective

identity7. The cross-breeding of Arab and French cultures in the Maghreb reinforces the fact of

loss and alienation. The bilingual writer who holds double identity finds him/her self in a space

of non-identity, non-belonging; He or She finds him/her self vacillating between two languages,

two identities and two cultures, mingling in a world of indecisiveness, un-centred-ness, in an

overlapping space of cultures. And again, reading the Bi-lingual texts is not only a reading of

fiction, but this reading is a form of packed texts in which the plurality of the writers is at play. It

informs us about and makes us realize a conflicting world of two different cultures.

7
Collective identity refers to the state of holding two different identities; it is a Khatibian term that nears Bhabha’s
term hybridity.
 12

The Bi-lingual fact of Francophone writer informs on their “crisis of identity

" and on what Stuart Hall in his book Modernity: An Introduction to Modern Societies elaborates

as being a process of “dislocating the central structures and . . . undermining the frameworks

which gave individuals stable anchorage in the social world ”(Stuart Hall p596).

The Bi-lingual writer feels a sense of fragmentation brought about by living between two

cultures, utilizing two languages. We can say that the Bi-lingual undergoes

Transformations . . . shift[ing] [the Bi-lingual’s] personal

identity[s], undermine[ing] [the Bi-lingual’s] sense of [them]

selves as integrated subject. This loss of a stable sense of self is

sometimes called the dislocation or de-centring of the subject. (Ibid

596-7) (My emphasis)

Bi-lingualism marks a space of ‘doubleness’ and of duality; bi-lingualism thus

turns out to be a state of malaise and of uncertainty. However, many Maghrebi writers try to blur

the borders of Arab and French cultures; they try by means of writing to articulate their native

identity and culture through incorporating their traditions and customs into the French language.

By doing thus, they try to be unlimited writers, without borders. They refrain from attributing

themselves filiatively to any established set of culture. A new look at the double existence of

identity is marked with effacing the oppositional and binary thinking of the West/East,

Native/foreigner etc.
 13

This new look aims at combining the two sets of cultures and wedding the colonial and post-

colonial eras to form a ‘‘new identity’’ in the midst of Bi-lingual and Bi-cultural identities. In the

middle of this forgetful hybrid condition, the Maghrebi writers liberate themselves from the

effaced origins and place themselves in the privileged position of negotiating between cultures.

In modern words, the Maghrebi writers adopt a dynamic and hybrid sensibility

about bi-cultural and bi-lingual identity; it is a cross-cultural transaction between peoples. The

fact of Plurality allows them to penetrate into the colonialist discourse and re-fashion the self as

an in-between and pluralistic subject that dismantles the cultural divide. This allows the

Maghrebi writers to announce that

If we feel we have a unified identity from birth to death, it

is only because we construct comforting story or narrative of the

self about ourselves. The fully unified, completed, secure, and

coherent identity is a fantasy, Instead, as the systems of meaning

and cultural representation [of colonialism] multiply; we are

confronted by a bewildering, fleeting multiplicity of possible

identities. (See Hall, 1990) (My emphasis)

On the other hand, the experience of multiple cultures and hybrid structures of identity lead the

Maghrebi writers to consider a new form of writing, in which their language—Arabic—

deconstructs the French language and distends it from within with words. Expressions and

sentences are filled up with traditional and folklore epithets and idioms. For the Bi-lingual self,

this form of language, bi-langue8, is an emancipation from the troubling experience of being split

between two cultures, identities and selves.

8
This term is the centre of this paper; it is a term that refers to the constant interchangeable motion between
different layers of languages.
 14

II. Fighting for a Post-colonial Space

The malaise, which the Maghrebi writers feel when writing in the French

language, makes them re-think their linguistic and cultural identities. Linguistic choice is a

crucial to voicing native identity as Jacque Derrida suggests in his book Monolingualism of the

Other: Or, The Prosthesis of Origin that " language is for the other, coming from the other, the

coming of the other " (68). Post-colonial language therefore is a voicing structure of the other, a

claim for existence of the other and a yearning to a recognizable oneness of the other. The

appropriation of French language is a packed device to deconstruct it along with its hegemonic

dichotomy of Self/Other, Colonized/Colonizer. Francophone writers, we can say, manipulate to

some extent the language of the colonizer; they make it a space for the bi-lingual oppressed,

hybrid subject and for those who are ‘‘almost the same but not quite’’. The act of writing is seen

by many critics, Ashcroft for instance, as a resisting process which confirms the existence of

binarism, yet the post-colonial language straddles between two poles of different languages and

cultures; namely, abrogation and appropriation. The former is an utter call to a native and pre-

colonial form of language and the latter is a manipulating and conforming form of the

colonizer’s language to one’s native traditions and cultural practices. The colonial aftermaths

have shaped the hybridity of Maghrebi languages; the Francophone writers seek through this

hybridity to infiltrate their identity with different linguistic substratum while adapting the French

language.
 15

However, the bi-langue in itself, even if it wreaks havoc in the mind-set of the bi-

lingual, is a post-colonial linguistic innovation that serves as a post-colonial place of hostage and

a new deconstructive form of expressing the bi-lingual self. Assia Djebar’s L’amour, la fantasia

is a compelling example of the post-colonial space of the Bi-lingual subject. Her text embeds the

conflicting subtexts of Arabic and French not only at the level of morphology and syntax but the

inability of each of these languages to utter the functioning of the bi-lingual body. In this

manner, Abdelkebir Khatibi asks how can a single language [French] articulate the secret

functionings of a bilingual [Arabo-francophone] body? We can thus say that, bilingual space is a

new linguistic innovation which asserts the infiltration of the colonized language within the

colonizers. This form of Bi-lingual space created in the post-colonial texts inform on the cultural

heterogeneity that is at motion in the text. This linguistic phenomenon, of Bi-lingualism,

establishes an original hybrid cultural space in which Bi-culturalism and Bi-lingualism offset the

colonial hegemony over a language. The Maghrebi writers efface the binary constructs and

switch their gazes back into concepts of hybridity and third place. These concepts per see show

up from an ambivalent contact zone between multiple structures of sets of meanings. The in-

between locus of the Bi-lingual self in the text instigates a source of meaning production, and in

this way the Maghrebi writers can amalgamate both discursive systems without any production

of a new unity. The emergence of the bi-lingual space breaks the rigid structural tissues of both

languages and decentres the writing; this process results in ‘‘La français de la France’’ or a

French language that is dislocated, deconstructed and undone by the bi-lingual body.
 16

2.1. Writing the Bi-lingual Self Across Languages

Language is of a high importance in post-colonial literatures. We should note at

this stage that the colonial discourse with its effects on the colonial African countries has

subverted the widely-held linguistic view of language. Most linguists used to perceive of

language as a system of mutable elements through the use thereof people can understand and

communicate with their world. The plurality of the Maghrebi World, the argument developed

above, renders this system, language, not only an abstract system independently existing in the

unconscious mind of each of us; but a system that has roots at the core of our culture and

identity. By that, language becomes a means through which we read in post-colonial literatures

not only the words but the soul, the mind and the culture of the writer. As the heading title

suggests, the questions that bring themselves up are: how can a bilingual self write in two

languages? And to what language does this self have recourse, Mother Tongue or the language of

the Other? The bilingual self vacillates between two languages; he or she subverts the

boundaries of one language and gets into the territory of the other. In writing, the bi-lingual self

voices consciously or unconsciously their linguistic indecisiveness. Their writing in two

languages results in different culturally-stuffed layers of thoughts; and shows the travelling of

words between the two languages. The Arabo-Francophone writings are marked by disruptive,

discontinuous narratives not because of linguistic incapacities but because of the tearing

experience of bilingualism and of what Kafka calls ‘’ self-tormenting usurpation of an alien

property [language] . . . which remains someone else’s possession ‘’.( qtd in Walter Benjamin:

Illuminations 30-31)
 17

In this way, writing for the Arabo-Maghrebi author turns out to be not articulating

an original experience but a translation of a colonial experience felt and lived in two languages,

one is the Mother Tongue and another is French. Maghrebi literatures in the French expression

re-mould the two languages; they cut their origins off and wed them together. Writing across two

languages ends in hybrid or ‘‘métisse’’ literatures that inform on the maddening experience of

writing in two languages. The Bi-lingual writer thus comes up with post-colonial literature

whose language defies the conventionality of the indigenous and confounds the structures of the

colonizer’s. It follows from this that writing across languages turns out to be writing in an in-

between language. The Maghrebi Writer feels that his writing through two languages

simultaneously bears the burden of his Arabo-francophone experience. For many critics, writing

in bilingualism is in itself an act of translating oneself. Given this argument, the post-colonial

bilingual author suffers in rendering his experience in two languages because the two languages

are unable to assimilate the lived experience. What results then is a perpetual suffering from the

failure of both languages to articulate a double self. Despite this view, their writing achieves

some gains in regard with de-centring the colonial discourse from within; they dislocate the

binary discourse by writing in bi-linguistic system.

 18

2.2. Bi-langue: De-centring the Maghrebi Narrative

Given the linguistic and cultural collision that is at work in the Francophonie

texts, there emerges a linguistic space for the Maghrebi writer. Bi-langue, on the one hand,

comes out of the maddening experience of loss between two languages and a need for a language

that can, if possible, articulate the inner voice. The Maghrebi writer infuses his maternal

linguistic codes into that of the colonizer’s. Thus, Bi-langue corrodes the Frenchness of French

language and reduces it to a multi-layered form of Arabic and French. Correspondingly, the new

linguistic space is levelled at dismantling the structures of the French language from within. The

Maghrebi writer sets through Bi-langue his maternal language at work in the French text,

whereby a French text is filled up with subtexts corresponding to the maternal culture and

identity. On the other hand, the Maghrebi writer feels the remote chance of an attainable pure

origin or at least a sense of ‘’ retour aux sources’’. Hence, Bi-langue works at both sides; it

provides a textual space for the bi-lingual subject, and at the same time it brings out the

impossibility of retaining a pure point of beginning. Bi-langue is a refusal-call for the concept of

binarism. The Maghrebi writer claims that there is no return to something called origins, and

about this Abdelkebir Khatibi rhetorically wonders where is such a site? To what spatial and

temporal zone must one travel to reach it? The concept of bi-langue in this sense deconstructs the

concept of purity and originality; it suggests that the Maghrebi writer’s culture, identity and

language are not based on the notion of one native origin. The bi-langue just like the bi-lingual

self, neither stands inside nor outside but in an in-between position of multiple languages,

cultures and identities.

 19

The Bi-lingual self who drinks from the cups of multiple languages, identities and

cultures, and’’ who speaks French but does not write it, Writes standard Arabic but does not

speak it and speaks dialectic Arabic without reading or writing it’’9, only finds themselves in a

state of aporia and in a world of loss. Bi-langue is a manifestation of the linguistic alienation.

However and for some critics, Bi-langue can be said to be a decolonizing tool whereby the

colonized bi-lingual subject frees themselves from the Other by thinking and making inquiry into

multiple linguistic systems. But the fact is that the Bi-langue raises crucial queries such as: does

not a bi-lingual self practice a mere translation of their experience? Do we write ourselves or

merely translate them. We should not negate the painful inflictions that Bi-langue in itself

catalyzes. A departure from one’s mother tongue is a separation from the Mother, from a whole

body of culture and identity. It is turning one’s back on their maternal cultural and linguistic up-

bringing. It is a facet of confusion between Me and the Other who have colonized me; inflicted

on Me disgraces; tainted My culture, identity and language. Is not Bi-langue another form of

desiring the colonizer’s linguistic and cultural identities? Does not the dislocation of French

language ironically mean re-location of the French vis a vis the Mother Tongue in the sense that

it calls for diminishing the differences between Us and Them? Bi-langue is not only, at least for

me, a call for accepting the Bilingual Maghreb, but it is a critical look at the implications of this

fact in relation with the struggling experience between the colonized and the colonizer and in

coincidence with their culture and identity.

9
Khatibi’s words
 20

I. Experimenting Bi-lingualism

After we have showed in the previous sections accorded to the theoretical part of

this paper, now we will embark on a critical reception of Bilingualism as a practice. Khatibi’s

novel ‘‘Amour Bilingue’’ translated into English as ‘‘Love in Two Languages ’’10 is considered

by many critics as a good manifestation of the plurality of the Maghreb and of the linguistic

conflict that takes place in a bi-lingual text. Before I get into in- depth analysis of the novel vis a

vis its correspondences with Bilingualism, experimenting Bilingualism is meant to turn the gaze

back into the plurality of Maghreb—More importantly Morocco. This is a modern view of

Bilingualism; a critical consideration of language, culture and identity in the context of post-

colonial times. To be specific, Khatibi is taken as a symbol of every Moroccan and his novel as

well is taken as an embodiment of Bilingual experience. To put it more clearly, Khatibi serves as

an example of millions of Moroccans who are born naturally into Bilingualism and who grow in

its arms.

Experimenting Bilingualism is more than a textual experience in a novel, but it is a

fact seen and viewed in Morocco and amongst Moroccans. Accordingly, I take Khatibi’s novel

as an allegory that stands for a linguistic and cultural experience of me, you and of a country that

is regarded in the first place a node across which Bilingualism and Biculturalism traverse.

Rethinking the Bilingual self thus is a question of language, culture and identity. Bilingualism, I

should stress, is not limited to language, rather Bilingualism borders on culture and identity.

Experiencing Bilingualism is a both a microcosm of experiencing doubleness in identity and a

problematic solution for those who claim one-single national identity.

10
The only translation that was made by Richard Howard, I note here that I have detected an example in which
Howard fell short of accurate rendering or translating , see p 37 in the novel as an example
 21

Amour Bilingue represents in clear terms what I really mean by a problematic

solution of what we dare to hold proudly in our hearts as I am either black or white, colonized or

colonizer11 , my language is either this or that, or I belong purely to this or that etc. Bilingualism

shows in a censorious way that all you think you belong to is only a mere structured fallacy of

yourself. In this regard, I cite Khatibi’s words ’’ I name myself in two languages while un-

naming myself ’’ (Love in two languages 89). Khatibi was aware of what he put forth. By

claiming my identity to be so-and-so, I really deconstruct who I am. In the sense that I discover

that that single national identity that I once believed in and held darling to my heart is but a

phantasmagoria.

Amour Bilingue is as well a vivid representation of the Bilingual self that I try to

analyze. The term Bilingual is suggestive of plurality, doubleness, un-centeredness, and in-

betweenness of the Bilingual desire. All of these terms are paramount in the post-colonial

conception of language, culture and identity. But, each of these concepts targets a specific region

in this Bilingual self. Plurality goes in opposition with the fancy of belonging to one single

identity; it goes against the so-called legitimate right of having a mother tongue. Consequently,

this Bilingual self feels torn in the moment of self-identification, a moment of shattering the

fallacy of a unique centre and of precipitating an uprooted, deracinated self. The outcome is a

state of non-belonging; the bilingual self tries to inhabit itself between two differing and

conflicting identities. However, Bilingualism is more complicated when put in the context of

colonialism. The novel shows how much it is difficult to be linguistically and culturally hybrid,

Obstacles that lay the ground hard to communicate and to voice one’s self in form of love. Being

Bilingual does mean to blur the ‘‘I ’’ and soil its purity with a revived tolerant acceptance of

being two things at once just like the ‘‘I ’’ and the text per se in the novel.
11
I am personally critical of this dichotomy when it is linked with Bilingualism in Khatibi’s standpoint. See p23
 22

Considered in the context of colonialism, Bilingualism is more complex in its

relation with the colonized and colonizer. Khatibi discusses his theory of Bilingualism as a fact

of the Moroccans and stresses by that the plurality of identity in Morocco. Khatibi, along with

many other Maghrebi writers, Assia Djebar, Abdelwahab Meddeb to name but few, finds ease in

reconciling French to Arabic and thus opens a new friendly relationship of these two languages.

For Khatibi, Bilingualism is a decolonizing process that decentres the dichotomy of the Same

and Other, Superior and Inferior etc. My point which counters Khatibi’s conception of

Bilingualism lies in the failure of Khatibi in: first, considering Bilingualism to be ironically the

opposite of what he claims to be; that is to say, Khatibi stresses that bilingualism dislocates the

French language and calls for diminishing the differences between the two languages.

Bilingualism is not only a fact, but it is ironically a relocation of the colonizer’s language, culture

and identity. Consequently, the decolonizing mission fails in rendering its goals of liberating the

self from living between the borders of Same and Other; Bilingualism welcomes the colonizer’s

language to be at play within the colonized language. And thus, the colonizer’s language wreaks

havoc in the colonized language as it has already done with their culture and identity. Secondly,

Bilingualism, for Khatibi, frees the colonized subject from the dichotomy of the centre and

margin. But, Bilingualism12, at least for me, embroils the colonized subject not in the dichotomy

but, to put it in Bhabha’s words, in a state of ‘‘almost white but not quite’’; namely, the

colonized subject finds themselves clothed in the identity, culture and language of an Other who

used to be an enemy or let us say who has tainted their identity, language and culture. This is the

Bi-langue.

12
I am considering my critical point in the context of postcolonial theory.
 23

1.2. Bi-lingualism: Moments of Clash

It is vital to state at the very beginning of this entry that Abdelkabir Khatibi’s

novel Amour Bilingue is not concerned much with the theme of love than it does with the

complex ramifications and questions of languages. Let us begin our critical discussion herein

with the Bilingual character as a symbol of the every Moroccan. Khatibi chooses for his novel a

character that is a manifestation of his theory of Bilingualism. A character that is notably

unnamed; this fact stresses the relationship between language and identity that Khatibi

establishes not only in the novel but also in many of his works. A character that is Bilingual;

namely, Bilingualism is not limited to language, but instead it has links with many other critical

terms as we shall see. First of all, the character’s use of the pronoun “I’’ indicates the state of

undecidability that he experiences. The “I’’ is blurred and made unclear by the conflicting

linguistic codes that travel through his mindset and disturb his state of forgetfulness.

This bilingual character rejoices instead in “ learn[ing] the Braille and the language

of the handicapped ’’ (Love in two languages 24). His learning of the Braille could palliate his

suffering, and could help voicing his self away from the complexity of thinking in two

languages. His state of linguistic bewilderment is also evinced in the Bilingual love that has

taken place in Damascus between two Bilingual lovers

I was trembling the whole time: in front of me, a boy and a girl,

both deaf-mutes. They talked to each other with dancing hands. A

scene of deaf-mute love . . . . Now I am ashamed: I did not dare to

embrace those two deaf-mutes in Damascus. They were certainly

bilingual otherwise I wouldn’t be of the same race (23-4).

 24

The question of language for the character does not stop at that of linguistic code,

but of course exceeds it to questions of culture and identity. Blurring the “I’’ implies taking a

vague picture of one’s identity. For this regard, Frantz Fanon states that:

I ascribe a basic importance to the phenomenon of language.

To speak means to be in a position to use certain syntax, to grasp

the morphology of this or that language, but it means above all to

assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization. (Black

Skin White Masks p17)13 [Emphasis is mine]

Fanon is really clear about what it means to acquire a language. Language acquisition is an

acceptance of a body of beliefs, customs, traditions and religion. For the Bilingual character,

living in Bilingualism is not only a matter of speaking, thinking or writing in two languages, but

it is a problem of identity that lays itself in the forefront. Thus, we find the character keeps

undecided and guarded in subscribing himself to an identity; will it be the identity of his mother

or that of his lover? Is it that of his colonized people or that of his colonizer—the French

woman? These questions keep him day and night in a state of malaise, and he tries to seek a state

of forgetfulness in which he could free himself from the maddening experience of language as

Khatibi calls it.

13
Frantz, Fanon. Black Skin White Masks ‘’ The Negro and The language ‘’ Trans. Charles Lam Markmann, France:
Pluto Press. 1986
 25

This Unnamed Bilingual Self feels the embittered loss of his legitimately acquired

language the “ Mother Tongue’’, loss of his identity and his existence becomes akin to that of a

vagabond and a traveler, no place of belonging, no language to which he could inherently

identify himself but all he is aware of doing is:

Separated from my mother tongue, I knew that when I spoke to

her, my speech came back to her from outside of my love and in

this language I loved her. . . . If I had to substitute one word for

another (I knew it was on my own behalf) I did not have the

impression that I was making a mistake or breaking a law but

rather that I was speaking two words simultaneously. (28)

[My emphasis]

Speaking, thinking and, as we shall see later on, writing in two languages is simultaneously

oscillating between conflicting linguistic codes that bear different cultural backgrounds. When

the word “mot’’ conjures up into his mind, he automatically thinks of death. For reading the

French word “mot’’ following dialectic Arabic implies death.

All we have been so far discussing regards the Bilingual self which we try to

rethink and revalue. Now, we will discuss the text in itself. Khatibi takes the theme of love as a

mould in which he forges his theory of Bilingualism. The text per se informs on how

Bilingualism works and how it affects the writing of the bilingual self. In Amour bilingue, the

character fills the French syntax with words and expressions rooted in his native culture and

language. The bilingual text entails subtexts which talk about the indigenous culture of the

bilingual self, a culture which presents itself regardless of suppression.

 26

As an example, the unnamed character of Amour Bilingue once thinks of the word “ sin’’, and

this very word reminds him of his cultural background; he reminds the Arabic letter “‫ ’’ س‬and

he is reminded of the meaning of the same word in Berber which is number “ two ’’.

What is at play in a text written by Bilingual self is what Assia Djebar best describes in her

L’amour la fantasia

I felt myself taken away most often by non-French voices; they

haunt me and were often the foe to the French voices since it was

for so long the language of the occupying force. To bring them

back, just by writing them, and while I felt constrained, finding the

equivalence without distortion, but hastily translate them . . . yes to

touch upon traditional cultures, abused and long-time despised, to

inscribe them in a new text graphically which becomes ‘’ my

French ‘’ (29) [My emphasis]

It is a conflict between voices of the native and foreign identities; it is actually what Khatibi best

delineates as madness of language. A madness represented in the violent crossing of signs in the

bilingual subject’s mind, when a word is stirred by another without belonging to the same

language.
 27

1.2. Thinking and Writing Bilingualism

It is explicit that Khatibi’s Amour bilingue is a new deconstructive consideration

of language in its relation with culture and identity. Questions of Identity ,which ever since the

emergence of post-colonial theory, have been taking either one side or the other; that is to say,

either you define yourself as black and thus wage war against the white and their claim of the

mastery over you or you side with the white and sustain your prominence anyways. The novel

comes to reshuffle the biased order of this dichotomy and maintains that people are essentially

hybrid. The unnamed character is a symbol of a failing struggle to reclaim a fanciful origin “I am

he without being either him or me’’14. In the text, Bilingualism is at work subverting hierarchies

of Manichean dichotomies of Self and Other; the Bi-langue in the text is in a decolonizing

process which turns:

Space[s] in which body and language, voice and writing,

feminine and masculine sexualities, native and foreign languages,

hegemonic and marginalized cultures mingle without merging to

form a new unity [but a third place] (Transfigurations of the

Maghreb. Winifred Woodhull. IV)15

Bilingualism is thus an attempt of stitching the rents and mingling the opposites and all that

really matters is not unity but multiplicity. The unnamed character feels at the very beginning

that he has been sacrificed to languages; he believes himself to be an adopted son of his mother

and foreign languages.

14
Love in two languages p.81
15
Winifred, Woodhull. Transfigurations of the Maghreb: feminism, decolonization, literatures; University of
Minnesota Press, 1993. E-book
 28

Moreover, the unnamed bilingual self, I would call it, expresses its joy when it made love with

its lover; the character says “when we made love, two countries made love ’’. (18)

Having said this, bilingualism diminishes the differences and puts every culture,

language and identity on equal terms. Texts formed in the Maghreb, like Amour Bilingue, and by

the Maghrebi writer are really ‘’ speaking in tongues ‘’ (Le Maghreb Pluriel, p.186). But, what is

really the outcome of this Bilingualism if any? Of course Bilingualism creates for its holders a

new space in which cultural and linguistic differences are not any more considered. In other

words, this space is marked by an overlay of mixed linguistic codes where the mother tongue is

ever present and at play within the French syntactic systems. This fact is viewed in the work of

Abdelkebir Khatibi Amour Bilingue as well as in his book Maghreb Pluriel where he puts:

From one to the other [he means Maghrebian narratives] there

plays out a constant translation and a dialogue en abyme,

extremely difficult to bring to the light

To put it clearly enough, this kind of texts stirs violence amongst the signs, violence which takes

place when signs cross and intersect each other. It is a struggle to bring the master language

down to a state of equity with the so-called marginalized one. Bilingualism shatters to pieces the

bifid thinking of colonial discourse and renders the whole into an even middle ground where

French is no longer French but it becomes french; that is to say, postcolonial subjects are co-

owners of its structures.

 29

The character in the novel resides in the middle-ground of two languages, cultures

and identities. Recalling a French word in his mind stirs a fluctuation of other words in Arabic

and vice versa, and at that moment the character loses his words and jumbles up the languages in

which he utters them. About this confusion of sentences, Khatibi in many of his books stresses

this semiotic violence that subverts the thinking of the bilingual self as well as their writing.

In La memoir tatouée, Khatibi comments on what we just said as:

In rereading myself, I discover that my most finished “French’’

sentence is a calling to mind. The calling to mind of an

unpronounceable entity, neither Arab nor French, neither dead nor

living, neither man nor woman: generation of the text. Wandering

topology, schizoidal state, androgynous dream, [and] loss of

identity- on the threshold of madness (207) [My emphasis]

Bilingualism turns out to be, for the character, a joyful experience in the sense that he is capable

of speaking the language of the other without being other. The bilingual self is liberated from the

constraints of speaking a single language; this self is educated in “thoughts of the void ’’ (11).

The bilingual self, like the character in the novel, feels to belong to no one. He imagines

himself/herself to be “a detour of a being, an affective decentring of the language, one voice

among other voices’’ (45-6). We can say that the Bilingual self is an example of linguistic and

cultural androgyny. It is notable that Bilingualism is two things at once: it is a relief from the

binarism found in the colonial discourse, and it is ironically a relocation of the French language

in correspondence with the Arabic one, when it is considered in the context of colonialism.
 30

II. Un-translating the Bilingual Self

After we have been through an important facet of Bilingualism as an experience—

at the level of thinking, writing and speaking, now we move to another aspect that is of equal

importance in studying Bilingualism. The title might strike the reader strangely: Why is it un-

translating and not translating? Actually that is the core question of this section and which we

will try to answer. Before we delve deep into the implications of the title in relation with Amour

bilingue, let us see the title of the novel first. Khatibi’s novel is entitled in French ‘’ Amour

Bilingue ‘’, in English “Love in Two Languages ’’ and in Arabic “‫’’ عشق اللسانين‬.

The first impression we take from the title is that even Richard Howard16 has fallen short of

accurate translation of the title and the same is to be said about some instances in the text.

In Arabic, the word “Ishq’’ exceeds in enormity the words “Amour and Love ’’ in French and

English respectively. Second is the difference between the meanings of the Arabic title versus

that of the English translation. Khatibi is not concerned with love as a theme in itself, he said in

the novel about Bi-langue “The Bi-langue, the Bi-langue herself, a character in this story ’’ (98),

and just because his novel does not follow suit the conventionality of novel-writing; he is

strongly concerned with “‫’’ اللسانين‬or languages. Conversely, Howard’s translation is concerned

more with the theme of love other than the underpinning theory of Bilingualism. Careful reading

of the two titles shows clearly the gap between the novel and its translation.

While Khatibi in his novel is engrossed in Bilingualism through “ love ’’17 of tongues, Howard

fell short of noticing this Khatibian turn of mind, and he fell into trap of considering love other

than tongues or languages.

16
Richard Howard is the translator of ‘’ Amour Bilingue ‘’ from French into English
17
Can be used since there is no delicate one-to-one word in English for the word ‘’ Ishq ‘’
 31

Another example in which not only Howard has mistaken and passed off the word

“ attribute ’’ to be synonymous with the word “ name’’ but also Khatibi has made the same

mistake and considered the Arabic word ‘’ ‫ ’‘ اسم‬to mean ‘’ attribut ‘’ in French.

Khatibi states in Amour bilingue:

Alors, Allah se multiplia dans ce chaplet de ses qautre-vingt-dix-

neuf attributs. (In French edition p 44)

He counted off the ninety-nine attributes of Allah every time he

told his beads. (In English translation p 37)

In Arabic language, there is a huge difference between the word ‘’ ‫ – اسم‬name ’’ and the word ’’

‫ – صفة‬attribute ’’. For an attribute can be derived from a name but not the other way round.

Maybe because Khatibi has been affected with Bilingualism, he has taken the two different

words to be analogous to each other. Throughout Khatibi’s novel, the Bilingual character is

maddened by the untranslatable.

The character feels incapable of translating his self into his lover’s tongue; Words

fall short of translation. He does not summon the linguistic capacity to comprehend her; he links

this incomprehensibility with untranslatability. We should note here that because of the actual

ramifications of Bilingualism—I mean those cultural and linguistic differences between the two

languages, translation becomes impossible as the character tells us:

 32

I was a talking book who tore itself out of palimpsests, to succeed

in making itself understood, to be accepted. I am therefore a text of

that tearing out. And I am perhaps the first madman of my mother

tongue: to mute one language into another is impossible. And I

desire this impossibility. (AB.35)

It is the maddening experience of finding out that languages are unable and incapable of voicing

one’s cultural and linguistic identity; languages cripple the thoughts of the character.

Bilingualism leads to a double existence of the thought, words, self and text which question ’’

what is a bilingual desire that ends in a doubling? ’’18; it is this to which the character responds “

a double that translates the other without coming back to either the one or the multiple, they say,

so they say ’’19. An experience of turning and turning in a circular fly of signs in which the mind

grabs a word which evokes another without intention.

18
Khatibi’s words in Amour bilingue
19
Khatibi’s words in Amour bilingue
 33

2.1. Inhabiting Untranslatable Bilingualism

Considering how Bilingualism works and the extent to which it liberates the

bilingual self, Khatibi postulates that Bilingualism is a better resort. Bilingualism is so because it

deconstructs the bilingual self and in the meantime it wreaks havoc in its written narratives, like

in Amour bilingue. At the level of the bilingual self, Khatibi inhabits Bilingualism; he finds

rejoice in being himself without really being it. He is a hybrid entity that derives its being and

existence from two different sometimes conflicting, within the context of colonialism, identities,

languages and cultures. In this regard, Reda Bensmaia comments:

It is no longer a question of knowing whether one must write in

Arabic or French, if that is necessary or contingent, politically

correct or not, but of making emerge in writing and thought a level

of “ otherness’’ (subliminal) that nullifies the problematic dualistic

opposition.20

It is from the advantages of Bilingualism that different identities—including culture and

language—blend into one. Multiplicity turns out to be unity, except for when this blend is

considered in the context of colonialism. Post-colonial theory is still immured by the dichotomy

thinking of centre and margin. Khatibi criticizes deconstructively this long-held attitude about

the colonized and colonizer and subverts this discourse into a hybrid existence of Bilingualism

and Biculturalism.

20
Reda, Bensmaia, Experimental Nation: or the Invention of the Maghreb. Trans. Alyson Waters, Princeton
University Press; United States of America: 2013, Print see p. 18
 34

Khatibi, like Jacques Derrida, believes in the non-existence of a single pure identity. Identity

here means language and culture in the first place. For instance, Derrida assumes that all

languages are essentially colonial; that is to say, any language in the world shares with another

certain words and roots. Correspondingly, it is a fancy to envisage the possibility of having a

pure origin or identity. And again this is the idea Khatibi insinuates in his novel when he strongly

puts “Languages so pure as to be almost untranslatable ’’ (20).

At the level of the text itself, Khatibi calls for a break with the myth of writing

back in terms of preserving one’s own pure language ( about which he says it is impossible to

procure one as pure as fancied ) in a narrative. But, Khatibi rather looks forward to finding ease

and forgetfulness in the untranslatable, in the violent crossings of signs. What Khatibi really

desires is an example of a bilingual self as this:

[A] Multilingual man with a stammer . . . who offers us

dissociative phrases and constructions throughout the narrative . .

. French as the language he stammers and mumbles, Replete with

traces of his mother tongue. (Islam and Post-colonial Narrative

p121)21

This makes another considerable point about Bilingualism; that is, Bilingualism is a space in

which the two – Arabic and French—cultures and languages are inhabited, put together and

mingled without the emergence of any hierarchical standing of these languages.

21
John, Erickson. Islam and Postcolonial Narratives, Cambridge University Press. United Kingdom: 1998. Print
 35

It is a place22 of hybridity and interbreeding of languages, in which a sign provokes another sign

and brings it to the consciousness while thinking about another word corresponds to another

language. It is a mutation of thought.

The bilingual character rejoices in decentring the transcendental signified23 and

turning everything into an even space of hybrid existence. In this respect, the unnamed character

in Amour bilingue states his favourable end in the act of writing Bilingualism and in living or

experiencing it:

My objective was also to maintain myself in this gap, carrying it

into a listening where all appositions between dead language and

living language would be forbidden, where everything that unites

through separation and everything that separates by continually

translating itself would be affirmed. (28) [Emphasis is mine]

As we already said, it is the hybrid gap that weds the differences into commonalities and never

procreates anything past unity through multiplicity. Notable is the idea that a bilingual subject

does not limit itself to one history, one place or one people, but rather this subject transcends that

into another time-space. Moreover, Bilingual subject does desire to expose itself to the Other, to

be a foreigner or in Khatibian words to be “a professional traveller ’’ who does not have to know

who he is, where he is from, where he is going to , but wants to encounter the other, and to be

with the Other.

22
There is a difference between space and place, in Rudyard Kipling’s novel “ Kim ’’, he says ‘’ You can occupy two
places but not two spaces simultaneously ’’
23
A term used in deconstruction which refers to the master narrative that holds sway over other elements in the
same text. For instance, the so-called unequal dichotomy of man versus woman in this sentence: ‘’... he touched
her and laid his hand over her...’’ in this example, the transcendental signified is ‘’ He ‘’ who exerts power over ‘’
She/Her’’ in the act of laying his hands over her and touching her.
 36

2.2. Blurring the Borders

The untranslatable is a term which gives translation a new critical turn. Morocco

and the untranslatable is a relationship of collision and of what we already said, moments of

clash. In a Bilingual text as well as tongue; words, expressions, and meanings are at loss. In a

Bilingual tongue, languages invade each other. Codes switch relentlessly between cultures. The

tongue gives in to the pressure of being “entre- deux- langues ’’. The mother language is at work

in the other language. Assia Djebar describes best what is at motion in the bilingual tongue in her

book Ces Voix

The multiple voices that besiege me—those of my characters in my

texts of fiction—I hear them, for the most part, in Arabic, in

dialectical Arabic, or even in Berber which I speak poorly, but

whose husky breathing and respiration inhabit me in immemorial

fashion. (29)

It is very clear that the bilingual tongue is split between multiple voices. The hidden implication

of this is probably another split of origins. Origins are, in Bilingualism, at stake and even more

they never matter. How can a bilingual self claim an origin when his language is at crossroads

with another language, when his culture is spoken through another language? In Bilingualism,

borders are blurred and the territory of other languages is transcended; Bilingualism is an

invader.
 37

The bilingual tongue infiltrates secretly the unity of the Other’s langue24 and

seeds therein the native’s cultural background.

In this regard, French language 25is no longer peculiar to the Frenchmen, but it is as well a

possession of the Moroccans. Nevertheless, we should remind ourselves that it is not French

language but french. Khatibi is very explicit in his idea of blurring the borders between

identities—including language and culture when he says that each language of these “makes a

sign to the other ’’ which

Calls upon it to maintain itself as outside, each language affirms its

singularity, rigorous alterity and irreducible nature (Erickson p 99)

At the level of the bilingual text, things are more complicated. It is the same

process of cracking open the syntactic structures of the French language and filling them up with

Arabic idioms, expressions and proverbs. The text speaks in two tongues. Bilingualism at this

level bridges the cultural and linguistic gap between the two differing identities—Arab and

French. The text’s identity is unknown just as the bilingual subject’s is as well ambiguous and

flitting between Arab/Berber and French:

When I speak to you, I sense my mother tongue moving in a double

fluctuation, one silent (a so gutteral silence) and the other turning in the

void. Undoing itself in a collapsing bilingual disorder. I do not know how

to speak, even with the whole chain of names and sounds of my native

speech . . . at that moment I lose my words, and I confuse the languages in

which I utter them. (AB. pp. 48-9)

24
The use of Other’s language does not indicate any racist view, but it is just a matter of following the post-colonial
line of argument that is based on binary oppositions. However, Bilingualism does, as I will declare by the end, turn
these dichotomies upside down and provides an equal ground for all languages.
25
Not only French language, but Spanish too, Moroccans use French because it is more common than Spanish.
 38

What actually rises out of this violent interplay of these languages is a space between inside and

outside, a space of blurred borders that is a manifestation of the bilingual self and text. A

bilingual self that is akin to the unnamed character in the novel, who has a blurred vision of his

past—origin, and present—identity, but has only one clear vision that is a future of being a

bilingual, inhabiting the middle ground and laying at the threshold of languages like that black

spot that resides faintly in your eyes when you look at the sun but when averting them it

disappears. And what remains is “translate me in your subconscious’’.

 39

Conclusion

This paper takes as a burden to explore the hidden significations of what it means

to be bilingual as a person and its reflection in the narrative. Rethinking Bilingualism is not only

a gross and humdrum regurgitation of a concept, but it is a deep and critical revaluation of a fact

that started with many Maghrebi writers, such as Khatibi. Bilingualism, as the paper discusses, is

a question of identity and what it entails. In addition, it revisits many other critical concepts that

are held sensitive in post-colonial and cultural studies arenas. The paper goes further to receive

critically some of the ideas that many critics fall short of considering.

This paper is an exploration of Bilingualism and its implications at the level of the

colonial spin-off in Morocco and how it is at motion in the everyday life. It is as well a

subversive process of the dichotomy thinking of Me and Other, Native and Foreigner, Colonized

and Colonizer etc., an endless process of differences and opposites which Bilingualism turns

upside down. Bilingualism draws our full attention to what goes within the bilingual self and

text; that is to say, Bilingualism considers the interplay of Arabic/Berber with the French

language. It makes clear how Moroccans travel while speaking or writing from one language to

another.

Another preoccupation of Bilingualism, which the paper discusses, is translation and

how it works in the context of Bilingualism. This issue raises the idea of the untranslatable as an

in-between space for the Bilingual self. A space of impossibility in which, we need a cultural

translator before a linguistic one. The maddening experience of language, Bilingualism, lays the

ground hard in front of translating, and all that remains instead is Un-translating.
 40

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