“The Exiles”: An American’s Eyes on Tangier

“The Exiles”: An American’s Eyes on Tangier

Based on “The Exiles”, by Richard Harding Davis

 

       

 

The orient has been a mythical, looming presence since the foundation of Islam in the 7^thcentury. It has always been the “Other” that Edward Said wrote about in his book “Orientalism”(1978)[1]. Since then, a large interest has arisen in studying the “Other” and discovering it. Many researchers, sociologists, and even tourists have been traveling to the other world for that aim. As Edward Said puts it, “anyone who teaches, writes about, or researches the Orient-and this applies whether the person is an anthropologist, sociologist-either in its specific or its general aspects, as an Orientalist, and what he or she does is Orientalism”(1978: 2)[2]. Said’s theory of Orientalism as a mode of thought for defining, classifying and expressing the presumed cultural inferiority of the Orient is a part of the vast control mechanism of colonialism, designed to justify and preserve European dominance. The supposed superiority is depicted through many texts and travel accounts written by travelers during their experiencing the East or the Orient.

 

Towards the end of the eighteenth century, many texts appeared describing Morocco as an exotic land with a different civilization. For many westerns, travel to Morocco was not a mere holiday. It is to discover the Other so as to determine the Self. For them, such land is a source of knowledge that they need. In fact, such knowledge about the East has two aspects. For Edward,

There is a difference between knowledge of other peoples and other times that is the result of understanding, compassion, careful study and analysis for their own sakes, and knowledge that is part of an overall campaign of self-affirmation. There is, after all, a profound difference between the will to understand for purposes of co-existence and enlargement of horizons, and the will to dominate for the purposes of control. It is surely one of the intellectual catastrophes of history that an imperialist war confected by a small group of unelected US officials was waged against a devastated Third World dictatorship on thoroughly ideological grounds having to do with the world dominance, security control, and scarce resources, but disguised for its true intent, hastened, and reasoned for by Orientalists who betrayed their calling as scholars[3].

 

This leads to think of Orientalism as a machine that controls imperialism. It is its underlying strategy put in the form of an academic discipline. The political reason behind this study is clearly understood if we take the Renaissance into consideration. To explain, after the Renaissance period Europewitnessed great development in its economy and this led to find other consumers of its productions and to look for new resources of the raw materials like oil and gold. Such reason paved the way for Napoleon Bonaparte to invade Egypt; this was the beginning of modern colonialism and imperialism.

The study of the Orient includes many aspects of culture and society and history. The notion of the Self and the Other, as argued by Edward said, is the key issue in any study or any literary work on the Orient. Many theories used to reveal many themes while representing the Other. The concern of this paper is to read some passages from a travel account and show how this literary genre serves as a way of representation. The account I chose is written by Harding Davis Richard and titled by “the Exiles”. My motivation to read such a book arose out of my interest in works on Morocco, especially Tangier, and this city has been experienced by many people who made it a melting pot of cultures and languages.

  Richard Harding Davis : Biography

Richard Harding Davis is one of the most popular authors and journalists in America. Born in Philadelphiain 1864, he was the son of Rebecca Harding Davis (1831-1910), one of the most renowned female authors of the 19th century. His declining health caught up with him in early 1916, and he died in the same year. His stories and articles were soon attracting attention, and with the publication of Gallegher and Other Stories (1891), a collection of tales about a newsboy-detective, his reputation as a fiction writer was established. In 1890 he became managing editor of Harper's Weekly and began making trips on its behalf to various parts of the world. As a foreign correspondent, he covered all the wars of his day and published several books recording his experiences; some of his writings are The West from a Car Window(1892), The Congo and the Coasts of Africa (1907), and The Rulers of the Mediterranean (1894) in which he recorded his impressions of Tangier. Such impressions were the result of his contact with the Moors during his visit to Tangier that lasted about a week. The whole period was formed in a travel account titled by The Exiles (1894), the subject of this paper.

 

“The Exiles”: an Orientalist’s Text

Davis’ aim in his visit to Africa and the East in general is to discover the new life there and how much life is affected by the people who visited it. He says that

The most interesting places of all to study are those in which the savage and the cultivated man lie down together and try to live together in unity. This is so because we can learn from such places just how far a man of cultivation lapses into barbarism when he associates with savages, and how far the remnants of his former civilization will have an influence upon the barbarians among whom he has come to live. (p: 9)[4]

“The Exiles” is about a western that is going to encounter another civilization in the other end of the world. That person is actually Davis’ eyes on the East, and he reflects his view of the Moors and Tangier as a different civilization. The person, named Holcombe goes to Tangier for the sake of his health as his doctor advised him to go to such a place to have a rest. But while there, Holcombe is shocked by the real-life of Tangier as represented by other Westerns. Tangier, like many other cities of the Orient, is seen as “a save haven for outlaws, fugitives, renegades, prostitutes, and deserters” (page 6)[5]. This view is echoed by the story of four commissioners who are convicted by law and flee to Tangier as “a save haven”; those commissioners feel complete freedom and do what they cannot do in their homeland.

             In this paper, I will show how tangier, as an Orient[6], was experienced by Richard, as an Orientalist in Edward’ sense, and the way this place was expressed and reported in the form of a text and represented to the world.

 

Analytical reading of the text

 

            For Richard Harding Davis, Tangier was not a mere holiday. Tangier was a place where exotic dreams are fulfilled; it is a place more than a city, a place of adventures and explorations. It is an interesting place in which, as Richard says, “the savage and the cultivated man lie down together and try to live together in unity.” He adds that “this is so because we can learn from such places just how far a man of cultivation lapses into barbarism when he associates with savages, and how far the remnants of his former civilization will have an influence upon the barbarians among whom he has come to live.”(Page 9)[7].

 

             In fact, Tangier was-and is- an attractive place because of its geographical position. The way it was approached and encountered by its many visitors is illustrated in the many travel accounts written over centuries of crossings and re-crossings of the Straits of Gibraltar between Europe and Africa. It serves as the link between Africa and Europe. It was the main gate of Morocco and he doorstep of Africa for European visitors.  An examination of the different discursive representations of tangier shows the existence of a range of attitudes to the encounter, ranging from wonderment and marvelous surprise to frustrations and cultural shock. In fact, Richard’s travel to Tangier is an East-West encounter; this means two different cultures come into contact. The inevitable questions are what happens in such a case? and how the culture of the Other will be represented? And what is the epistemology behind this representation?

 

            For Richard, both space and society are informants about the Other’s culture. Tangier was a source of pleasure and relief. He writes in his book, “He (Holcombe) felt at ease with the world and with himself, and turned his eyes to the white walls of Tangier with pleasure so complete that it shut out even the thought that it was a pleasure.”Parenthesis added (page 15)[8]. His main aim to visit tangier was tourism, but the space and the geography of the city turn to be a counter between two civilizations. The approach in this paper is also concerned with geography and tourism. Richard Harding was impressed by the people and space; hence tangier is the frame of spacionarratological frame of the experience of tourists when it is put as a text.   Richard gives a minute description of the people and space by which he was impressed. He writes in his book:

After three days Holcombe climbed the streets more leisurely,
stopping for half-hours at a time before a bazaar, or sent away his
guide altogether, and stretched himself luxuriously on the broad wall
of the fortifications. The sun beat down upon him and wrapped him
into drowsiness. From far afield came the unceasing murmur of the
market-place and the bazaars, and the occasional cries of the priests
from the minarets; the dark blue sea danced and flashed beyond the
white margin of the town and its protecting reef of rocks where the
sea-weed rose and fell, and above his head the buzzards swept heavily,
and called to one another with harsh, frightened cries. At his side
lay the dusty road, hemmed in by walls of cactus, and along its narrow
length came lines of patient little donkeys with jangling necklaces,
led by wild-looking men from the farm-lands and the desert, and women
muffled and shapeless, with only their bare feet showing, who looked
at him curiously or meaningly from over the protecting cloth, and
passed on, leaving him startled and wondering… (A)nd in the farm-lands
behind Tangier, where half-naked slaves drove great horned buffalo,
and turned back the soft, chocolate-colored sod with a wooden plow….They were rather foolish people, men at whom he had laughed and whom he had rather pitied for having made him do so, and women he had
looked at distantly as of a kind he might understand when his work was
over and he wished to be amused. (P: 21-23)[9]

 

Space, as represented in the passage, is not only that place of buildings and all the three-dimensional objects. Rather, it accommodates human consciousness, and its description is actually the description of the inhabitants’ consciousness. This is what Gaston Bachelard tries to explain in his book “The Poetics of Space”. For Bachelard, as argued by Joan Ockman, the aim of visiting space is not describing the houses or itemizing their picturesque features, but space represents, as already stated, the adobe of human awareness or the half-dreaming consciousness that Bachelard calls “reverie”[10]. Hence, Tangier for Davisboth a city and space in is that beloved that is considered as Bachelarian reverie.

 

             A close reading of the same passage, actually a romanticized description of exotic otherness, reveals a deeper issue more than the meaning given. Even the Moors were not aware of this description or they were familiar with the vision that Richard sees strange and attractive. In fact, this passage shows the power of language and rhetoric in representation. One of the rhetorical models that are used in this passage is “negation”. Negation shows how the Other is different from the Self. The people of Tangier were seen as “wild-looking men” who lived in the “farmlands and the desert”. These adjectives denied the civilized state of the Moors. Even more important is the uncivilized use of language by the inhabitants; the people do not speak but call “one another with harsh, frightened cries.” This negation appears in another passage when one describes those people as “ignorant black savage”(page 29)[11]. Within the same passage comes another model of rhetoric called “classification”. The people whom Richard saw at his stance before a bazaar were classified in relation to his people in New York. For him, the former is “foolish people, men at whom he had laughed, and whom he had rather pitied for having made him do so.” This classification is more strengthened by another passage:

It is a funny place because, in spite of the fact that it’s a prison, you grow to like it for its freedom. You can do things here you can’t do in New York, and pretty much everything goes there, or it used to, where I hung out. But here you’re just your own master, and there’s no law and no religion and no relations nor newspapers to poke into what you do nor how you live. (p: 26)[12]

This passage classifies the Moors, or more generally the East. For the West, the East is a place of fulfilling the temptations, and a place to escape the law as there is no law here and no one to blame them. It is a better place for exiles. This is how Tangier and Moroccoare orientalized by the West.

As has been mentioned before, the relationship between Europe( West) and the Orient( East) has been historically defined primarily in terms of authority and power. Edward asserts, in his book Orientalism[13], that Western representations of the Orient in literature were not just indicative of, but also instrumental in establishing and perpetuating an ideology of Western domination over the Oriental Other. By this fact, the orientalist pieces of literature are more valuable as representations of European power ambitions to dominate the Oriental world than authentic depictions of that world.[14]Edward maintains that all representation must necessarily differ from objective reproduction and that any particular representation is guided by hegemonic ideology.[15] The following passage will be a clear example of such a claim.

“But the Moors themselves?” protested Holcombe. “And the Sultan? She’s one of his subjects, isn’t she?”

“She is a woman, and women don’t count for much in the East, you know; and as for the Sultan, he’s an ignorant black savage. When the English wanted to blow up those rocks off the western coast, the Sultan wouldn’t let them. He said Allah had placed them there for some good reason of His own, and it was not for man to interfere with the works of God. That is the sort of a Sultan he is…”[16]

The context of the passage is a part of a dialogue between Holcombe and other American visitors who are reporting to Holcombe and incident about a Moorish woman. Such a woman was tortured to death by a foreigner, and Holcombe was discussing her situation with his friends. The dialogue reflects a kind of theorized barrier between the West and the East in their treatment of women. The orient woman is always represented as being disregarded and unequal to man; this view is supported by a comparative example given by Caroll; the Sultan would rather worry about a rock if it is going to be blown up than care about one of his subjects if it is a woman.  As far as a theoretical framework is concerned, this is generally known as grand-scale theory, a theory that most orientalist uses in his writing while representing the other. This theory creates a powerful representation of the East by maintaining the differences and barriers between the West (as developed) and the East (as primitive).

 

Within the context of East-West encounters, “The Exiles”, like many other travel accounts that were concerned with representing or texturizing the East, is a colonial discourse that contains stereotypes and images of the Near Eastin the Western colonial mind. This is what Edward Said discusses in his book Orientalism. For him, such a colonial discourse always presents the theme of Western superiority over the Orient. Besides, western civilization made a big influence on the local culture. As acknowledged by Richard Davis himself, “Morocco, as it is, is a very fine place spoiled by civilization. Not nice civilization but the dregs of it…. I love the Moors. They seem to carry all the mystery and dignity of Africa and of foreign conquests about them, and they are wonderfully well made and fine-looking and self-respecting.”(page 6)[17].

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bibliography

Davis, Richard Harding. (2005). The Exiles. Moroccan Cultural Studies Centre, Fez.

Said, Edward W. (1978). Orientalism: Western Representations of the orient.Harmondsworth, Penguin.

Spurr, David.(1993). The Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial discourse in Journalism, Travel Writing, and Imperial Administration. Duke University Press.

 

 

 

 

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[1] Edward Said, Orientaliusm,  Penguin, 1978

[2] ibid

[3] http//weekly.alahram.org.eg/2003/650/preface_orientalism.htm

[4] Davis, Richard Harding, The Exiles, Moroccan Cultural Studies, Fez, 2005.

[5] Ibid. (This sentence is actually expressed by the editor of the book in his introduction to the text, and it is a paraphrasing of Davis’ view of Tangier)

[6]  By this word, I  mean the eastern hemisphere or the near East.

[7] Davis, The Exiles.

[8] ibid

[9] ibid

[10] Joan Ockman, review of the Poetics of Space, Harvard Design Magazine, http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/research/publications/hdm/back/6books_ockman.html

[11] Davis, The Exiles.

[12] Davis , The Exiles

[13] Said, Edward, Orienatilsm ; 3 ,5

[14] ibid, 6 ;21

[15] Ibid 20-21

[16] The Exiles ; 29

[17] Davis, The Exiles