مجلة الواحات للبحوث و الدراسات

Reclaiming The Silenced Voice: Identity, Hybridity, And Storytelling As Resistance In Laila Lalami's The Moor's Account

Auteurs : Zeghoudi Imane .

Résumé

In The Moor’s Account (2014), Laila Lalami offers a compelling postcolonial reimagining of the 1527 Narváez expedition by restoring narrative agency to Mustafa ibn Muhammad al-Zamori (Estebanico), a marginalized African Muslim slave. Drawing on postcolonial theory—specifically Said, Bhabha, Spivak, and Fanon—and New Historicism, this study examines how the novel exposes the violence and selective nature of Eurocentric colonial archives. Mustafa’s forced renaming to "Esteban" symbolizes imperial erasure, yet his self-reconstruction highlights cultural negotiation and resilience amid displacement. By positioning intercultural encounters and hybridity as tools for survival, Lalami destabilizes rigid binaries between colonizer and colonized. Ultimately, the novel transforms storytelling into an emancipatory act of subaltern resistance, using memory, ethical responsibility, and cultural plurality to reclaim Estebanico’s humanity and challenge traditional historical authority.

Mots clés

Laila Lalami ; The Moor's Account ; postcolonial literature ; hybridity ; identity ; storytelling ; subaltern studies ; colonial discourse ; new historicism ; cultural memory ; resistance