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Moving beyond mobility: the aesthestics of exile and becoming in Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine’s Légende et vie d’Agoun’chich

ABSTRACT In 1979, Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine returned to Morocco after a long exile in France. Five years later, he published Légende et vie d’Agoun’chich, a striking novel about the legend of a Berber rebel and wanderer who turns his avenging spirit against colonialism. Beyond the character and the destiny of Agoun’chich, this novel marks the reconnection of the Moroccan francophone writer with his homeland and questions his experience of exile and return. Khaïr-Eddine’s work, set within a colonial context, embodies the ideas of movement and displacement. The current article seeks to demonstrate that Légende et vie d’Agoun’chich offers a multifaceted representation of mobility in relation to space, time and culture, and establishes a fruitful dialogue with theories of exile, notably Edward Said’s reflections on the concept. I argue, however, that Khaïr-Eddine’s novel goes beyond particular experiences of mobility and ultimately launches a broader call for self-reconstruction informed by the idea of ‘becoming’.