5 - Strategies for the Present

Summary

In this chapter, the author argues that the invention of the Maghreb was imposed and accepted by local politicians and ideologues despite their fierce opposition to the colonial discourse and its regime of truths. The colonial discourse, he further argues, because it was a discourse of impressive power, could not be opposed without being reproduced. The author considers several major Muslim reformers, authors of a modern historiography that engages the colonial one, to show that despite the reversal of historiographic truths, the Muslim discourse is produced as a colonial discourse, with a logic that confirms the colonial representation. The discourse of nationalism further entrenches this representation. However, the invention of the national discourse is not a replica of the colonial discourse, but a variant that became an official version of the state in the region.