Paradigms and Plurality: Rddad’s Dis-Orienting the Maghreb as a Critical Refinement of Said’s Orientalism

Abstract

This paper argues that Sadik Rddad’s Dis-orienting the Maghreb (2025) provides a critical refinement of Edward Said’ seminal work, Orientalism (1978) for somehow neglecting the Maghreb (Morocco) in his work, and excluding it form the world orient. Henceforth, with regard to Said’s rudimentary thesis on the Western   powerful discourse and its widespread seam. Rddad reshapes the classical model of homogenous Orientalism through highlighting two crucial hypothetical step forwards. First, the identification of certain paradigms. Such as, Nationalist, secular, imperial, geographical and transnational. In the sphere of travel writings and uncovering the inherent plurality and juxtapositions within colonial discourse via a close study of the Anglo-American travel accounts and writings on Morocco in the era of 1880s to 1920s.  Second. Rddad’s in his recent work ‘Dis-orienting the Maghreb’ offers a foregrounded insight on how Orientalism functioned not as monolith, but an arguable battle of ideologies, as it did not give a credit to the elements of geography and history to grasp a comprehensible and holistic view of the world orient.