Ourika

This article investigates racial melancholia as a comparative literary device in Claire de Duras’s Ourika (1823) and Hugh Clifford’s Saleh (1904). Racial melancholia refers to the process whereby racial self-knowledge becomes a site of psychological trauma for colonized subjects. In both novels, the European educations of Ourika, a West African girl, and Saleh, a Malay prince, lead to their development of racial melancholia and their eventual deaths. European education is blamed as the cause of this deadly melancholia. Yet both stories have different moral centres: one uses racial melancholia to argue for a universal humanism, while the other asserts that cultural difference is fixed and unchangeable. This article draws on psychoanalysis, race theory and postcolonial theory to analyse the charged symbols of racial melancholia and European education across the Francophone and Anglophone colonial empires.

Claire de Duras jest autorką nieznaną na gruncie Polskim. Żyjąca na przełomie XVIII i
XIX wieku, poruszyła w swoich trzech krótkich nowelach (Ourika, Edouard i Olivier)
bolesną kwestię rasizmu i nierówności płci, ukazując ją z perspektywy pisarstwa kobiecego.
Podejmując ową tematykę, na swoich bohaterów wybierała postacie zepchnięte na margines,
oddając im tym samym głos szukający sprawiedliwości.
Czytając nowelę Ourika (pl. Uryka), trudno nie dostrzec między wierszami poglądów
politycznych i społecznych autorki, a sam fakt, iż akcja książki toczy się w czasach, w
których żyła, umacnia jej wiarygodność. Przełom wieków to czas rewolucji francuskiej, a co
za tym idzie zderzenia wielu wartości. De Duras reprezentuje ruch emancypacji i propagacji
liberalnej równości wszystkich ludzi. W noweli Ourika autorka stara się zatrzeć podział na
„białych” i „czarnych” poprzez wprowadzenie pogłębionego portretu psychologicznego
tytułowej bohaterki.

While Claire de Duras’ 1823 novel Ourika is commonly considered one of the most penetrating portrayals of racism in the nineteenth century, this essay argues that a deeper examination of the novel’s marriage plot bears revisiting. Specifically, it claims that a close reading of marriage, race and citizenship in the novel reveals an unexplored degree of colonial anxiety towards the potential equality of black and white women.  The politically charged elements of race and citizenship in the main character’s potential marriage has been mostly neglected by the majority of critics, who mostly consider it a benign aspect of the form and function of the Romantic novel. The article contends that Duras breaks narrative coherence in her construction of the main character to prevent the possible representation of a black woman who could possess the rights, responsibilities and citizenship of adult white French women. It constructs its argument through an examination of the legal changes made to marriage after the French Revolution and its effects, a survey of the history of prohibitions against mixed-race marriage in the French Empire, and close readings of the marriage trope in Ourika. By rehistoricizing marriage, race and métissage in the novel, this essay contributes to a growing ambiguity on race relations within existing Duras criticism.

Cet article poursuit les premières études sur le racialisme tel qu’il apparait dans le moment post—révolutionnaire, 1799-1830, période de retour à l’ordre voulu par les notables et rendu possible par des régimes autoritaires, dont un des objectifs consiste en la mise en ordre d’une société bouleversée au sortir de la Révolution. Les changements de hiérarchie à l’intérieur du corps de la nation ont profondément transformé les modes de distinctions, de reconnaissances, voire des identités des nouvelles élites. Comment voir une personne de couleur noire après 1794 , et l'abolition de l’esclavage , comment la RE-voir en 1802 après la réintroduction de l'esclavage. le concept d'iconoirlogie est proposé sous la forme d'une hypothèse de recherches à approfondir

Abstract Aghmat, medieval city of the Haouz region (Marrakech), is described by textual sources as a prosperous commercial city, surrounded by fertile lands. Located at the foot of the High Atlas, at the opening of the Ourika valley, it benefited from a geographical situation favourable to the development of an important irrigated agriculture. However, Aghmat was hit by the great crisis that struck Morocco at the end of the 14th and during the 15th c., and was abandoned. It is only in the course of the 16th c. that the locality found a new dynamism, while knowing a deep spatial, demographic and economic reorganization. Indeed, Aghmat seems to take at this period the shape of a dispersed habitat, entirely dedicated to a new agricultural development. Since 2005, the extensive excavation of the medieval urban centre and of its levels of abandonment makes it possible to locally approach this transitional period between two socio-economic systems. Thus arises the question of the agricultural evolutions and of the role played by the various socio-economic components on lands management. The recent creation of an archaeobotanical program that includes both carpological and anthracological analysis seems to be the most promising way to document these questions. Based on nearly fifty archaeological samples extracted from varied contexts (hearths, dumps, plantation pits), dated between the 11th and the 17th c., this work allows proposing a first review on cultivated/gathered plants.

This article investigates racial melancholia as a comparative literary device in Claire de Duras's Ourika (1823) and Hugh Clifford's Saleh (1904). Racial melancholia refers to the process whereby racial self-knowledge becomes a site of psychological trauma for colonized subjects. In both novels, the European educations of Ourika, a West African girl, and Saleh, a Malay prince, lead to their development of racial melancholia and their eventual deaths. European education is blamed as the cause of this deadly melancholia. ...