Abdelkebir Khatibi

• Thesis Title — Le roman maghrébin d'expression arabe et française depuis 1945 • Thesis Year — 1965 • Doctoral Advisor — Albert Memmi • Alma Mater — University of Paris • Native Name — عبد الكبير الخطيبي • Born — 11 February 1938 • Birthplace — El Jadida, Morocco • Died — 16 March 2009 • Place of death — Rabat, Morocco

Khatibi was born on 11 February 1938, in the Atlantic port city of El Jadida. By the age of 12, he began to write poems, in Arabic and French, which he sent to the radio and newspapers. He studied in the French colonial school system, at Lycée Lyautey. He earned his doctorate in sociology under the French-Tunisian intellectual Albert Memmi at the Sorbonne in 1965. His dissertation, Le Roman maghrébin [The Maghribian Novel], which examines the question of how a novelist could avoid propagandizing in the context of a postrevolutionary society, and its follow-up, Bilan de la sociologie au Maroc [Assessment of Sociology Concerning Morocco] were both published shortly after the Paris Spring unrest of May 1968. The “abstruse prose” employed by Abdelkebir Khatibi and the young generation of Maghribian authors reflects “the desire to refuse French culture by destroying and recreating the French language, thus attacking the heart of the culture from within, with what Khatibi calls a littérature sauvage”, according to Encyclopædia Britannica. Two plays, La Mort des artistes (1964; “The Death of the Artists”) and Le Prophète voilé (1979; “The Veiled Prophet”), and a novel, Le Livre du sang (1979; “The Book of Blood”),“ demonstrate Abdelkebir Khatibi's theoretical approach to literature”. He taught at Mohammed V University in Rabat and worked as a director of the Institut de sociologie (Institute of Sociology) from 1966 until the institute's closure in 1970. In 1968, Roland Barthes was in Rabat and befriended and was influenced by Khatibi. His sociological studies include works on Moroccan social life such as Bilan de la sociologie au Maroc, 1968; Études sociologiques sur le Maroc, 1971; and La Blessure du nom propre, 1974. He was editor-in-chief of the journal Bulletin économique et social du Maroc; he renamed it Signes du présent in 1987. His landmark collection of critical essays Maghreb pluriel was published in 1983. He was a member of the Moroccan Communist Party and participated in the student activist organization the National Student Union of Morocco.

In his later years, Abdelkebir Khatibi suffered from a chronic cardiac condition which led to his death in the Moroccan capital, Rabat, five weeks after his 71st birthday. During the final stages of his illness, a measure of the high regard in which he was held was seen in the personal concern of King Mohammed VI who directed his transfer to Morocco's premier medical facility, Sheikh Zayed Hospital. Khatibi is survived by his widow and their two children.

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* • * * • De la mille et troisième nuit [From the Thousand and Third Night] (1980) * • * • Un été à Stockholm [A Summer in Stockholm] (1992), Flamarion • Triptyque de Rabat [Rabat Triptych] (1993) *

• La Mort des artistes [The Death of the Artists] (1964) • Le Prophète voilé [The Veiled Prophet] (1979)

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* * • Études sociologiques sur le Maroc [Sociological Studies Regarding Morocco] (1971)

Abdelkebir Khatibi is recorded with the occupation sociologist. Recorded as having studied at Faculty of Arts of Paris, École pratique des hautes études and Lycée Lyautey. Khatibi studied at Faculty of Arts of Paris, École pratique des hautes études, Lycée Lyautey and University of Paris. The record notes the qualification doctorate in France.