Authenticity and its Discontents: Abdallah Laroui on the Moroccan and Arab Subject

This article examines the topic of postcolonial subject formation in the work of Moroccan historian and theorist Abdallah Laroui (1933–) by analyzing his evaluation of the notion of authenticity. I trace understandings of self-identity for Moroccans and other Arab populations that Laroui articulates in his work from the 1960s through the 2000s, and situate his interventions in relation both to relevant political developments and to contributions of other Arab intellectuals on this question, across this time period. Rather than interpret Laroui as a proponent of undifferentiated universalism in his reading of modern history, as many of his critics and commentators do, I demonstrate how he departs from such an approach by calling attention to the notion of particularism, which he defends as a counterpoint to authenticity. The article concludes with a discussion of Laroui's abandonment of a positive, alternative conception of cultural and political subjectivity by the late twentieth century, and considers what the implications of this shift in his thought are.