El Guabli, a professor of Arabic studies and comparative thought and literature at Johns Hopkins University and, without a doubt, one of the brightest scholars, has written a masterpiece with Desert Imaginations. His previous book, Moroccan Other-Archives: History and Citizenship After State Violence (2023), constitutes the best and most original study of postcolonial Moroccan politics and society since John Waterbury’s 1970 study, Commander of the Faithful.

Born in southern Morocco, El Guabli is a self-described Black, Amazigh, and Sahrawi scholar, whose native language is Tamazight. These intersecting identities inform his scholarship, pedagogy, and advocacy, as well as the high-quality journal he founded, Tamazgha Studies Journal, a publication dedicated to fostering an understanding of the Tamazgha (or Maghreb) through indigenous-informed approaches.

Desert Imaginations inquires into the history of an idea about deserts—Saharanism—and its various manifestations over nearly two centuries, with roots stretching back to Roman times. What is Saharanism? The author defines it as a set of tropes “that created a universalized image of deserts as empty, uninhabited, sandy, and unowned lands; such notions have reduced a rich universe and its biome to a set of clichés and superficial images.” Saharanism thus constitutes a “universalizing, trans-desert ideology . . . that fosters or even incentivizes the treatment of deserts as spaces available for and suited to all manner of exploitative, inhumane, and ecocidal endeavors. . . . Things that are inconceivable in ‘ordinary’ places are not only incentivized but also considered inherent to deserts.”

Most of El Guabli’s evidence comes from France’s conquest and domination of Algeria, a story retold from new angles, with the aid of French- and Arabic-language sources. He draws on the writings of key figures in the colonization of Algeria, including the infamous Cardinal Charles Lavigerie, to reconstruct a view of the Sahara as a place “infested by brutal enslavers and godless criminals who had to be fought and subdued through the re-Christianization of the Sahara.” Whether motivated by humanitarian concerns or by explicit ambitions to conquer and colonize, El Guabli deems Saharanism “violent, racist, and deeply hostile to Islam.” The result is a profoundly personal and deeply informed account of the desert’s diverse communities, including the delicate yet rich ecosystem they inhabit.

Following the preface’s revealing exploration of the massive solar energy project in the author’s hometown and its impact on the local population, and a first chapter laying out the book’s main themes, the author takes a deep dive into the various foundations of Saharanism. Chapter 2 presents the desert as a place purely to be exploited. In the past, it served as a transit zone for slavers; in modern times, it is valued primarily for its natural resources. The ubiquitous, seemingly inescapable power of the capitalist world economy casts a long shadow over desert civilizations. Chapter 3 focuses on the little-known story of French nuclear tests and their horrific and lasting impact on the indigenous, predominantly Tuareg populations.

Chapter 4 portrays deserts as places where societal norms do not apply and sexual transgression is permitted and even celebrated. According to the author, this transgression took the form of pedophilia and prostitution in colonial Sahara and has even found echoes in contemporary U.S. counterculture and popular culture (the Burning Man festival; HBO’s Westworld).

Chapter 5 focuses on indigenous literary, film, and social activist figures resisting the destruction wreaked on their environment. The unfamiliar Arabic- and French-language sources on which El Guabli draws make this chapter especially valuable.

A brief epilogue brings together examples from other desert areas and calls on each reader “to consider how Saharanism might have informed any aspect, big or small, of their existence and the way they approach deserts.” This applies, for example, to Israel with its romantic ideal of “making the desert bloom,” the state’s complicated relationship with its Bedouin citizens, and the need to balance competing priorities in an area that constitutes roughly 60 percent of Israel’s landmass.

Bruce Maddy-Weitzman
Tel Aviv University