The moroccan colonial soldiers: Between selective memory and collective memory

Abstract

Over the last decade, there has been an increasing interest in colonialism as 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 as “post-Orientalist, " “subaltern, " and “postcolonial” that are now in vogue have been more closely associated with the work of the Subaltern Studies Group on colonial India. An interdisciplinary organization of South Asian scholars, the Subaltern 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 as 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 Subaltern Study Group: a challenge not only to the Orientalist discourse but also to the nationalist and Marxist conceptualization of colonial India.2.