Questions of Existence and Culture in the Gnostic Novel of Abdelilah Ben Arafa: Towards an Interpretative Model

Abstract

Talking about Gnostic discourse in general, and about Gnostic narration in particular, is a turning towards those existential, metaphysical worlds that inevitably produce spiritual relationships between the self and its reality, and between the self and existence, with the aim of touching upon the reality of the act of identification between the ego (human being) as a part, and the absolute as a whole in a transcendent, luminous crucible. Therefore, through this research paper, we endeavor to shed light on the Gnostic narrative project of the Moroccan novelist “Abdel-Ilah Ben Arafa”, in which we touched upon existential implications through which he wages the battle of memory and establishes a project he called “new literature” with a religious reference and cognitive Gnostic goals that achieve a transformation in the reader’s conscience, behavior, and knowledge by reconnecting the self with its memory, history, and cultural, intellectual, as well as Gnostic heritage in particular. Since the Gnostic novel transcended and combined the magic of writing through adopting the path of allusion and using Sufi language, the depth of contemplation, the confusion of the question, and the pursuit of the luminous path with the aim of taking the reader out of the crucible of intellectual confusion, historical ignorance, and the chaos of concepts in the cultural heritage, it became a real model that calls for interpretive consideration that goes beyond superficial meanings and searches for the inner purposes. Hence, we pose the following question: To what extent was the Gnostic novel of “Ben Arafa” able to represent a true transcendent model of the discourse of the self through reconsidering Sufi thought, its aesthetic angles, philosophical approaches, and civilizational stakes, and destabilizing cultural contexts in order to achieve sublime spiritual values?