Khatibi, Abdelkebir (b. 1938). One of the most influential contemporary Maghrebian writers. He was born in El Jadida, Morocco, and from 1949 to 1957 attended the Collège Sidi-Mohammed in Marrakesh. While a student there, he became interested in French literature and culture as well as creative writing. He then studied sociology at the Sorbonne and in 1965 defended a thesis on Le Roman maghrébin (1968). He directed the Institut de Sociologie in Rabat from 1966 until 1970 and currently holds a position of university research professor at the Institute of Scientific Research at the Université Mohammed V.
As an adolescent, Khatibi wrote under a pseudonym poems in Arabic and in French which were published and read on the radio in Rabat, as well as plays which were produced. His first novel, La Mémoire tatouée (1971), signalled a new approach to writing in Morocco. The discontinuity of the discourse is quite different from that of earlier works by Maghrebian writers such as Chraibi, Feraoun, Dib, Mammeri, and Memmi.
In his novels and such major socio-critical works as La Blessure du nom propre (1974), Amour bilingue (1983), and Maghreb pluriel (1983), Khatibi pays special attention to the impact of the Maghrebian writer's mother tongue upon the acquired French in which he or she writes, coining a ‘third code’ or discourse based on an ‘interior calligraphy’ and reflecting an aesthetics of the ‘palimpsest’, or what Khatibi has termed a bi-langue, prominent in francophone and other bilingual literatures. Khatibi's aesthetic preoccupations with bilingualism, biculturalism, and inter-semiotic activity (including what he has called bi-pictura) surface frequently in his works and constitute the focal point of such books as his L'Art calligraphique arabe (1976; in collaboration with M. Sijelmassi), Le Livre du sang (1979), and Ombres japonaises (1988). He is also deeply concerned with social relations on a number of levels, from male-female courtship to international understanding. In recent years he has been formulating a concept of human emotional interaction, or aimance, that relies on the individual's heightened ability to capter, or tune into, the feelings of others. On a broader scale, Khatibi's interest in other cultures—particularly their urban spaces—and in the transcendence of cultural differences is explored in such works as Figures de l'étranger dans la littérature française (1987), Le Même Livre (1985, in collaboration with J. Hassoun), and his most recent novel, Un été à Stockholm (1991).
[Eric Sellin]
Bibliography
- C. Buci-Glucksmann et al., Imaginaires de l'autre: Khatibi et la mémoire littéraire (1987)
