Moroccan Colonial Soldiers: Between Selective Memory and Collective Memory

Abstract

OVER THE LAST DECADE, there has been an increasing interest in colonialism a subject of scholarly inquiry. Whether in the field of anthropology, literary criticism, Feminist studies, or cultural studies, there has been a significant amount of rethinking about the colonial past and the politics of colonialism and empires. A new set of concepts such post-orientalist, subaltern, and post-colonial which are now in vogue have been more closely associated with the work of the Studies Group on colonial India. An interdisciplinary organization of South Asian scholars, the Studies Group focused on the histories of the Subaltern which Ranajit Guha identifies as a name for the general attribute of subordination in South Asian society whether this is expressed in terms of class, caste, age, gender, and office or in any other way.1 For the historian to rethink may be understood to challenge accepted paradigms and engage historical research in new directions by using new methodological tools. This has been very much the goal of the Study Group: a challenge not only to the orientalist discourse, but also to the nationalist and Marxist conceptualization of colonial India.2 Historians of North Africa have been equally concerned with the impact of colonial expansion on the colonized and its influence on the social and economic organization of indigenous peoples. The colonial history of the Maghrib and the Middle East in general has certainly seen similar challenges and witnessed its own decolonization and reevaluation, but not to the same extent and with more theoretical basis, and institutional organization has been the case in India. French colonialism has often been explained in abstract terms and