Journal of Literature and Art Studies Volume 7, Number 10, October 2017 (Serial Number 71) David Publishing David Publishing Company www.davidpublisher.com Publication Information: Journal of Literature and Art Studies is published monthly in hard copy (ISSN 2159-5836) and online (ISSN 2159-5844) by David Publishing Company located at 616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-4876 Valley Cottage, NY 10989, USA Aims and Scope: Journal of Literature and Art Studies, a monthly professional academic journal, covers all sorts of research on Literature studies, Aesthetics Criticism, Feminist Literary Criticism, Poetics Criticism, Mythology studies, Romanticism, folklore, fine art, Animation studies, film studies, music studies, painting, and calligraphy art etc Editorial Board Members: Chief-editors: HU Jian-sheng, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China YE Shu-xian, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China WANG Jie, Zhejiang University, China Maya Zalbidea Paniagua, Universidad La Salle, Spain Mary Harden, Western Oregon University, USA Lloyd James Bennett, Thompson Rivers University, Canada Seongho Yoon, Hanyang University, Korea Uju Clara Umo, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria Soo Y Kang, Chicago State University, USA Lorenzo Bernini, University of Verona, Italy Joyce Chi-Hui Liu, National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan Laurie J Wolf, College of William and Mary, USA Eric J Abbey, Oakland Community College, USA Carolina Conte, Jacksonville University, USA Co-editing with the Center of Chinese Literary Anthropology at SJTU Manuscripts can be submitted via Web Submission, or E-mail to literature.art@davidpublishing.org, art.literature@hotmail.com Submission guidelines and Web Submission system are available at http://www.davidpublisher.com Editorial Office: 616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-4876 Valley Cottage, NY 10989, USA Tel: 1-323-984-7526, 323-410-1082 Fax: 1-323-984-7374, 323-908-0457 E-mail: literature.art@davidpublishing.org, art.literature@hotmail.com Copyright©2017 by David Publishing Company and individual contributors All rights reserved David Publishing Company holds the exclusive copyright of all the contents of this journal In accordance with the international convention, no part of this journal may be reproduced or transmitted by any media or publishing organs (including various websites) without the written permission of the copyright holder Otherwise, any conduct would be considered as the violation of the copyright The contents of this journal are available for any citations; however, all the citations should be clearly indicated with the title of this journal, serial number and the name of the author Abstracted/Indexed in: Chinese Database of CEPS, Airiti Inc & OCLC Chinese Scientific Journals Database, VIP Corporation, Chongqing, P.R.C CNKI, China Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory Google Scholar J-GATE Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE) Publicon Science Index Electronic Journals Library (EZB) SJournal Index Scientific Indexing Services Newjour Polish Scholarly Bibliography (PBN) Turkish Education Index Infobase Index CrossRef Subscription Information: Price (per year): Print $840 David Publishing Company 616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-4876 Valley Cottage, NY 10989, USA Tel: 1-323-984-7526, 323-410-1082 Fax: 1-323-984-7374, 323-908-0457 E-mail: order@davidpublishing.com Digital Cooperative: Company:www.bookan.com.cn D DAVID PUBLISHING David Publishing Company www.davidpublisher.com Journal of Literature and Art Studies Volume 7, Number 10, October 2017 (Serial Number 71) Contents Literature Studies Re-examining the Past: Elements of Postmodern Memory in Toni Morrison’s Love Grzegorz Kotecki Retaining Truth, Seeking Goodness and Preserving Beauty: Principles of Translating Tsangyang Gyatso’s Poems Into English YU Yang, LI Zheng-shuan 1229 1238 Visual Representations in Richard Aldington’s London (May 1915) and Eros and Psyche Tzu Yu Allison Lin, Mehmet ầiỗek 1244 The Influences of American Deep Image on the Third-Generation Poets in China YIN Gen-de 1251 Father-Child Relationship in Shakespearean Comedies and Romance Shuyu Yang 1258 Analysing Shakespeare’s Emblem Language in Midsummer Night’s Dream Erdal AYAN 1264 Art Studies Jan Haicksz Steen’s Woman at Her Toilet: “Provocative Innuendos” Liana De Girolami Cheney 1279 Incidents and Accidents in Plein Air Painting: One Path Towards Post-impressionism Lloyd Bennett 1290 A Study on the Artistic Dimension of Modern Chinese Popular Music WANG Jing 1299 Translation Studies Chinese-to-English Translation of Publicity on Chinese Minority Culture: Discourse Ideology and Translation Strategies XIAO Tang-jin, XIAO Zhi-peng 1307 The Translation of Local Historical Allusions in the Perspective of Cross-cultural Communication—With Case Studies SONG Xi-xi, LING Qian 1314 Language Studies An Analysis on Proxemics Phenomenon Between China and America KE Zhuo-ying, LIAN Yu 1320 Positive Discourse Analysis of Hillary Clinton’s Concession Address LI Qi 1326 Teaching the Non-Chinese Speaking Students Origami to Improve Their Interest and Concentration in Learning Chinese Language LEE Kit Fong 1331 Conducting the Task-based Approach With Context Aware Mobile Situated Learning on Learning English for College Students’ Learning Performance Ju-yin Yang 1337 A Study of Students’ Opinions About History Subjects in the Social Studies Curriculum Hamza AKENGİN, Meltem Elif CENDEK 1347 On Foreign Language Creation and Rootless Back Translation —A Case Study of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan GUO Ting 1354 Special Research Ch’en Tu-hsiu: A Powerful Voice for Modern China Kenneth Lee 1365 Nature’s Artistic Narrative Lowell Gustafson 1371 Architectural and Urban Communication in Social Identity: The Case Study of Agadir Morocco: From Colonial Preponderance to Renaissance Which Social Identity? Amal Ben Attou 1383 Journal of Literature and Art Studies, October 2017, Vol 7, No 10, 1229-1237 doi: 10.17265/2159-5836/2017.10.001 D DAVID PUBLISHING Re-examining the Past: Elements of Postmodern Memory in Toni Morrison’s Love Grzegorz Kotecki Institute of English Studies, University of Wrocław, Wrocław, Poland Toni Morrison’s fiction may arguably be characterized as postmodern discourse on memory, history and culture In her novels, the Nobel laureate frequently returns to the past to search for answers to the questions she poses about African American realities in the contemporary United States In doing so, Morrison often creates alternative histories or, more specifically, a usable past—one that allows her to engage in a literary (re-)construction of the Black historical and cultural material which traditional histories have chosen to ignore or disremember Therefore, as a present-day writer of African American descent, Morrison attempts to reassemble all the fragmentary historical and cultural accounts available to her as a novelist and narrate them in the form of a convincing story With regard to the above considerations, this article seeks to discuss some of the mechanisms employed by Morrison for weaving her postmodern, memory-filled narrative on the example of her eighth novel, Love (2003) In particular, the analysis focuses on the book’s central figure, Bill Cosey, and his Southern ocean-side resort—both seen against the backdrop of the pre- and post-World War II racist America, followed by the 1960s decade of the Civil Rights Movement Finally, it is also demonstrated how the author’s use of split narrative as well as the “I” narrator-cum-character technique contribute to recounting in retrospect Love’s main, historicized story—one viewed and judged from a present-time perspective Keywords: history, Love, memory, (the) past, Toni Morrison Introduction The article begins with an introduction of Love by outlining its thematic, compositional structure and mode of narration Although not very long, the novel is one of Morrison’s structurally most complex and challenging works Generally, the book, one of the two that the novelist herself describes as “perfect” (the other being Jazz [1992])1, is a study on the theme of love and its multi-dimensional nature; however, it may also be seen as an attempt at exploring how alive and meaningful the past can be in the present In essence, written predominantly in a non-linear fashion, Love recounts in a series of personal flashback memories the lives of several women (Christine, Heed, May, Vida, L, and Junior/Viviane) and their relationships to the late Bill Cosey The novel is both the story of Mr Cosey, a then much-talked about but presently deceased hotel owner, and of the people surrounding him, all affected by his life—even long after his death In fact, each of the female characters portrayed in the book shows some unique and complicated relation to this, as it turns out later, Grzegorz Kotecki, MA, Ph.D candidate, Institute of English Studies, University of Wrocław Research fields: African American literature, culture and history, African folklore, religions and philosophy Morrison makes this interesting remark in a conversation with journalist Adam Langer in Star Power, Adam Langer, 2003 [in:] Toni Morrison: Conversations, ed Carolyn C Denard, Jackson, University Press of Mississippi, 2008 1230 RE-EXAMINING THE PAST: ELEMENTS OF POSTMODERN MEMORY IN TONI MORRISON’S LOVE infamous black entrepreneur and the novel’s axis Since in private Mr Cosey was a promiscuous man, his relationships with the group of women that surrounded him during his life are the guiding points of the novel All that time those females rivaled for his attention, but following his death, their antagonisms only strengthened, as externalized by arguments and speculations over the legacy of his enigmatic (last) will Nonetheless, all the women, with the exception of L, continue to worship Cosey’s memory years after his demise and idealize him as their own “perfect man.” In doing so, however, they remain blind to his duality, hidden secrets and a troubled past Historical Background and the Narrative Voice(s) in Love It is important to note here that Morrison historicizes Love, as she does her other novels—be it Beloved (1987), Paradise (1997) or, more recently, A Mercy (2008), in an effort to (re-)construct through fiction the often fragmented and incomplete records of African American past This time the Nobel laureate reaches for one of the crucial and most formative periods in modern Black American history, namely the (African-American) Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968), making it her eighth novel’s historical backdrop More specifically, Love presents in retrospect the saga of a well-off, pre- and post-World War II black American family, the Coseys Making temporal shifts, Love’s multi-layered narrative roughly spans the period from the 1930s to the 1990s (with a particular focus on the 1960s), albeit at times circling back in brief flashbacks as far back as to the 1920s As the readers learn from Love’s leading story, for nearly four decades (i.e from the 1930s through the 1960s) Cosey’s Hotel and Resort enjoyed its heyday period as an ocean-side vacation spot in Up Beach, near Silk, at Sooker Bay, being the perfect escape for affluent, upscale black inhabitants of the East Coast in the murky days of segregation.2 Not only did Cosey’s resort offer his guests first-rate entertainment, combined with a sense freedom and untroubled belonging, but it also employed and paid some of the poorly-living local blacks, making the whole community proud of the economic success of one of their own race In result, Mr Cosey’s nonchalant behavior and his philanthropic attitude toward the Up Beach population had earned the wealthy proprietor respect and reverence in the entire neighborhood Love’s narrative present is mid-1990s on the American East Coast; however, making frequent non-linear rotations in the plot’s timeline, this nine-chapter novel narrates, in fact, two parallel stories (parallel narration) The book’s present action (the main text), in which bygone mysteries are gradually revealed, is subordinated to the eventful and vibrant past (the subtext), whose joys and traumas are slowly unraveled in a series of lyrical flashbacks Most importantly, though, in her eighth installment, Morrison uses split narrative, which enables her to move back and forth throughout the story, not fully unfolding the events until the very end Only then does she resolve the conflicts and debunk the enigmas, thereby bringing the past and the present together As such, this particular type of storytelling technique foreshadows a late trend in Morrison’s literature, one that consists in dividing the plot among different time periods Another characteristic feature of Love’s narrative mode, one that puts it among postmodern works of fiction, is that the novel’s leading story is told in a sequence Morrison mentions the existence of such historically-documented prosperous black-owned businesses/enterprises as her fictional Cosey’s Hotel and Resort in pre-civil rights America in conversations with several journalists, for example in Star Power, Adam Langer, 2003 [in:] Toni Morrison: Conversations, ed Carolyn C Denard, Jackson, University Press of Mississippi, 2008; in I Want to Write like a Good Jazz Musician: Interview with Toni Morrison, Michael Saur, 2004 [in:] Toni Morrison: Conversations, ed Carolyn C Denard, Jackson, University Press of Mississippi, 2008; or in Pam Houston Talks with Toni Morrison, Pam Houston, 2005 [in:] Toni Morrison: Conversations, ed Carolyn C Denard, Jackson, University Press of Mississippi, 2008 RE-EXAMINING THE PAST: ELEMENTS OF POSTMODERN MEMORY IN TONI MORRISON’S LOVE 1231 of contrapuntal voices, its component parts being disclosed through the prism of kaleidoscopic viewpoints of the main characters Nevertheless, the overarching narrative voice in Love, one of the lyrical subtext, belongs to a woman named L, who is narrator and character at the same time (the “I” narrator-cum-character) As the narrative conduit, she gives her version of the tale of the ocean-side community of Up Beach, with a once popular, black-owned holiday resort at its heart It is through L’s voice that Morrison introduces the reader to a microcosm of people who react to one man, Bill Cosey, and to one another as the businessman casts his shadow over generations of individuals populating this Sooker Bay locality In fact, L is the wise and quiet former first-class chef of Cosey’s hotel and family arbitrator, whose first-person narration weaves and reweaves through the novel, summarizing and judging other characters’ minds and actions Since L is an insider-narrator, she provides her personal story of the novel’s events that took place over the span of more than forty years She specifically expresses her judgments of the women enamored with Bill Cosey through a series of personal recollections, all the while unfolding her own infatuation with this intriguing man The strong and quiet type, L silently watches everyone and everything, thus witnessing firsthand the dynamic tensions between Mr Cosey and his women Her narration, therefore, is both the bridge to the narrations led by Love’s other characters and the link that binds the multiple story layers together Moreover, while the book’s main narrative is mostly written in the third person, L’s segments are given in the first person and italics Finally, even though she never uses her real name, it can be inferred from the context of her biblical references that L actually stands for Love, and that the novel has been, de facto, written in her name As Hans-Wolfgang Schaller observes in his article Toni Morrison’s Love: Narrating a World of One’s Own Making, Love begins with an eight-page-long, untitled section in italics in which an unnamed narrator presents herself as reticent, detached and almost wordless Unwilling to speak, she takes to quiet humming over the life-changing, morally questionable social habits characterizing modern days Not until later the readers learn that the narrative voice belongs to L, the erstwhile hotel cook, who watches and comments on the proceedings in the Coseys’ household Quite self-contradictorily, reluctant to talk but wishing only to croon, this narrator’s voice introduces itself in these words: The women’s legs are spread wide open, so I hum […] Standing by, unable to anything but watch, is a trial, but I don’t say a word My nature is a quiet one, anyway […] Nowadays silence is looked on as odd and most of my race has forgotten the beauty of meaning much by saying little Now tongues work all by themselves with no help from the mind Still, I used to be able to have normal conversations, […] Not anymore, […] Now? No Barefaced being the order of the day, I hum The words dance in my head to the music in my mouth […] My hum is mostly below range, private; suitable for an old woman embarrassed by the world; her way of objecting to how the century is turning out Where all is known and nothing understood Maybe it was always so, […] (Morrison, 2003, pp 3-4) Furthermore, Schaller (2007) points out that since the whole opening section as well as the other four lyrical passages scattered throughout the novel are printed in italics, there seems to be an indication of a controlling narrative voice in Love This voice may be incapable of words, yet it is one knowing and expressing grief about the current moral life ills Therefore, L might be identified as the novel’s central narrative intelligence, which puts her into a narratological dominant position Given the fact that she is granted the authorial voice (the italics are indicative of her authorial position throughout the narrative), it might be further suggested that L serves as the spokeswoman for the implied author, and that it is actually Morrison herself who acts as Love’s dramatized narrator and the main story-teller (Schaller, 2007) 1232 RE-EXAMINING THE PAST: ELEMENTS OF POSTMODERN MEMORY IN TONI MORRISON’S LOVE Bearing this in mind, it could be useful in this context to recall the reasons that Morrison gave while explaining her motivation for choosing this apparently innovative, postmodern type of a narrative force in Love, especially when she likened the novel’s narrating strategy to the experimental method of narration she had applied in Jazz Thus, in the “Foreword” to the new, 2005 edition3 of her 2003 book, Morrison wrote: I liked so much the challenge that writing Jazz gave me: breaking or dismissing conventional rules of composition to replace them with other, stricter rules In that work, the narrative voice was the book itself, its physical and spatial confinement made irrelevant by its ability to imagine, invent, interpret, err, and change In Love, the material […] struck me as longing for a similar freedom—but this time with an embodied, participating voice The interior narrative of the characters, so full of secrets and partial insights, would be interrupted and observed by an “I” not restricted by chronology or space—or the frontier between life and not-life (Morrison, 2005, pp x-xi) In her illuminating essay “I’ll Tell”—The Function and Meaning of L in Toni Morrison’s Love, Wen-ching Ho discusses at length the employment of these two distinct, parallel narrators in Morrison’s eighth novel Ho (2006) observes, among others, that the stream-of-consciousness, non-linear, third-person limited narrations of the nine roman-type chapters are supplemented with the five first-person italicized soliloquies before Chapter and at the end of Chapters 3, 4, and 9, respectively More specifically, the point-of-view, interior monologues of May, Christine, Heed, Vida, Sandler, and Junior provided by the third-person, anonymous narrator are indeed “interrupted and observed” by the alternating, first-person narrator and agent—L By this token, it can be argued that apart from being an important character and narrator in her own right, the “nameless woman” helps drive the novel’s narrative structure as well as the plot development (Ho, 2006) With reference to the above findings, it needs reiterating that L the character plays a pivotal role in the stormy Cosey saga, while L the narrator performs several vital functions in the process of telling the story First of all, her unique narratological construction gives the fictional L the upper-hand at having the full knowledge of the family secrets Besides, as character-cum-narrator, L is granted an almost unlimited access to internal and external knowledge of the novel’s events, which provides her with a relatively panoramic, inside and outside, view of the narrative Ultimately, she is even allowed to transcend the ravages of time and, in consequence, her mortal physicality Serving as Morrison’s narrative framing device (she begins and ends the story), this ageless cook who dies as a character in 1975, yet still lives in her ghostly form as narrator in the novel’s fictional present of mid-1990s, being “not restricted by chronology or space,” recounts in lyrical episodes the whole history of the Coseys’ and brings to light several key questions about Love, all the while speaking from the perspective of “the frontier between life and not-life.” Love’s Main, Historicized Story From L’s opening, italicized segment at the start of Love the readers learn that she has been silent for the past twenty years (from the fictional 1970s to the 1990s) In this part, L expresses in a lyrical voice her personal memories about her race’s past and shares a series of observations about its present She puts in a stark contrast the moderate and meaningful life before the 1970s with the roaring and sex-orientated 1990s After that, L comments on the differences between the black women of previous decades and those of now In her view, the women of the past were less talkative but much wiser, while today’s females have a different mindset: they Toni Morrison, Love (First Vintage International Edition), 2005, Alfred A Knopf, Random House, New York RE-EXAMINING THE PAST: ELEMENTS OF POSTMODERN MEMORY IN TONI MORRISON’S LOVE 1233 speak loud nonsense, they expose themselves to male promiscuity and, prone to material gains, they worship consumerism Finally, L describes herself as being only the background of the story that the modern world has been making since it decided to take on new, bold directions Therefore, over time, L has become life’s mute observer and commentator; she remains almost speechless in her detachment from the altered, meaningless reality, and so she can only hum to that After this introductory fragment in which she compares the past and the present of her race, thus setting Love’s mood, L weaves in retrospect her private story of the original success and ultimate failure of Cosey’s Hotel and Resort She tells her tale of this segregation-time, black-run business against the backdrop of the crucial political and social changes taking place in 1960s America, ones which are mirrored and retained in the history of the local Up Beach community It is in this intimate past story told in non-linear flashbacks from the present perspective that L reconstructs from her personal memories the living image of this once-flourishing, ocean-side Southern resort, one that would promise its guests for several decades “[t]he best good time this side of the law” (Morrison, 2003, p 33) Speaking from the present, beyond-the-grave, perspective, L stands at the crossroads of the world of the living and the world of the dead.4 Having this privileged “life and not-life” narratological position, her ontological world becomes a fusion of past and present Subsequently, not being subject to the limitations of time, L is capable of producing a blended, circular account in which the past and the present events, escaping a traditional temporal trajectory, are free to occur in a “present past” temporum Therefore, after her death as one of the novel’s characters, she assumes the form of a ghostly figure inhabiting her mother’s old, wooden cabin in Up Beach (now submerged under water), at times visiting the presently decrepit hotel and resort Upon one of such visits, gazing nostalgically at the remnants of the once vibrant holiday venue, L describes its decaying condition in the following words: […] with no more big bands or honeymooners, with the boats and picnics and swimmers gone, […] Sooker Bay became a treasury of sea junk and Up Beach itself drowned […] But it’s forty years on, now; […] Except for me and a few fish shacks, Up Beach is twenty feet underwater; but the hotel part of Cosey’s Resort is still standing Sort of standing Looks more like it’s rearing backwards—away from hurricanes and a steady blow of sand Odd what oceanfront can to empty buildings (Morrison, 2003, pp 6-7) However, a little later in this fragment of her soliloquy, looking around the empty spaces and premises inside and outside of this wind-bitten, half-fallen building, L still cherishes her vivid memories of the resort’s life-throbbing past; she recalls the long-gone days when she championed in the hotel kitchen, while Cosey’s guests crowded the dance floor, listening cheek-to-cheek to the band’s “Harbor Lights” under the star-studded, evening sky Therefore, after a while, she lets on: No matter the outside loneliness, if you look inside, the hotel seems to promise you ecstasy and the company of all your best friends And music The shift of a shutter hinge sounds like the cough of a trumpet; piano keys weaver a quarter note above the wind so you might miss the hurt jamming those halls and closed-up rooms […] There used to be white wicker chairs out here where pretty women drank iced tea with a drop of Jack Daniel’s or Cutty Sark in it Nothing left now, so I sit on the steps or lean my elbows on the railings If I’m real still and listening carefully I can hear his [the ocean’s or, in fact, Bill Cosey’s] voice (Morrison, 2003, pp 7, 106) The problem of frequent (and natural) interconnectedness and interpenetration between the world of the living and the world of the dead, as seen from the traditional (African) perspective, is discussed in detail in African Religions and Philosophy, John S Mbiti, Heinemann, Oxford, [1969, 1989], 2006 NATURE’S ARTISTIC NARRATIVE 1377 The Story of Earth The story of Earth did not stay constant after our planet was formed or after the first life appeared (Hazen, 2012) Earth has its own narrative Many of those single cells soon learned how to produce their own food by mixing light, air, and water, releasing free oxygen into the atmosphere The oxygen first connected to iron, causing it to rust and produce beautiful reds in layers of rock Then, the oxygen started to build up in the atmosphere, making it possible for new, more complex cells to evolve the means to burn carbohydrates Continents moved Slow, inexorable rivers of magma from deep in the Earth dragged parts of Earth’s surface slowly along Supercontinents like Pangaea were formed Then tectonic plates, sections of the Earth’s surface like North and South America, were separated The Indian tectonic plate gradually crashed into Asia, driving up the Himalayas and altering all of Earth’s climate In twenty million years, Los Angeles will have been a suburb of San Francisco The Earth has been continually transforming itself for over four and a half billion years Chapters From LUCA to Humans When life reproduces itself, offspring are usually similar if not almost identical to their parents But sometimes, there are mutations during reproduction Call the outcome imperfections or mistakes, they are essential for survival in changing environments Most of the time, the result is not helpful for the offspring Once in a while, the result helps it adjust to some new condition, enabling it to produce more of its own offspring The changes survive and we see a species evolving Given enough time—and 3.8 billion years is a very long time with very many generations—a single celled organism can become a eukaryote cell, a jelly fish, flatworms, fish, amphibians, mammals and, in some cases, hominins The process leads to all kinds of fabulously different forms of life Life keeps transforming itself over and over again But we can’t be blamed too much for being particularly grateful that it also led to our kind, humans, in East Africa about 200,000 years ago And we can’t be blamed too much for naming ourselves homo sapiens—wise men We had drawn so much on the emerging complexity of the universe Quarks had combined into protons and neutrons These combined with electrons to make atoms Atoms had combined to make chemicals Chemicals combined to make life Life forms developed from single cells, to multicellular life forms, to life forms with ever more complex structures In our case, a hundred billion neurons connected by a trillion synapses formed the most complex matter in the universe of which we are aware—the three pounds of brain in our skulls This complex brain matter is what enables us to form ever more complex social units, from kinship groups, to multi kin villages, to populous cities, to nations and empires (Wilson, 1975, 2012) It has been said that hydrogen is an oderless, colorless gas that, given enough time, becomes us, among everything else Perhaps we could also say that given enough time, vibrations and quarks become symphonies and the Louvre At each stage of transition, few could have predicted with confidence that there would be a transformation that would lead to greater complexity At each stage, few if any could have even imagined it But with the development of consciousness and then self-consciousness, the ability to choose between options, develop symbolic thinking and memory, and the ability to imagine and intentionally create, an ability to transform ourselves emerged from previous natural transformations 1378 NATURE’S ARTISTIC NARRATIVE This increasing complexity was by no means a steady progression There were periods of destruction, catastrophes, extinctions, famines and wars But sometimes there was also social cohesion, empathy, and caring And now we are faced with a new reality whose future is in part of our own choosing We have sometimes been transformed into enormous national communities Will we choose paths that will resist transformation or lead to increased simplicity, such as exclusive commitment to kinship? Will we find ways to nurture increased complexity, of cultures and systems that will demonstrate that humans are indeed wise and not merely cleverly and selfishly calculating? Can we take pride in our common origins, that we are all descended from the same hardy group in Africa? We really are all family, however dysfunctionally we often behave The Story of Human Globalization As far as we know now, humans first evolved in Africa and then, about 70,000 years ago, began migrating out of that continent (Oppenheimer, 2003) Homo Erectus had done so previously, but apparently like most other species, had gone extinct The great migration of humans from Africa to Asia, Australia, Europe, and eventually the Americas is an amazing one No maps existed Transportation was likely mostly on foot or perhaps canoes Our ancestors frequently encountered and had to adjust to new environmental conditions through developing new technologies We did not wait to evolve thick fur to survive Siberia, we sewed fur coats made from animals whose skins had previously evolved We did not wait to evolve fins, we built boats We did not wait to evolve fangs and claws, we fashioned stone points This is a story of courage, innovation, perseverance, and self-transformation And the result was that from a small band tenuously holding onto survival in Africa, we spread out to populate the entire globe A New Story to Support Emerging Relationship or Complexity A few people started combining the evidence and analyses produced by generations of physicists, astronomers, chemists, geologists, and biologists with disciplines that studied humans Expertise in specific disciplines was transformed by synthesizing it The written record of the human past was integrated with the natural record of the entire known past An account that could not have been told even decades before was possible by the latter part of the twentieth century For the first time in human history, an evidence based account of the past from 13.8 billion years ago through various stages to the present was possible David Christian, Fred Spier, Eric Chaisson, Walter Alvarez, Cynthia Brown, Barry Rodrigue, Craig Benjamin, and others put together this new account that was originally told by light, rocks, bones, and blood (Brown, 2007; Chaisson, 2006; Christian, 2004; Christian, Brown, & Benjamin, 2014; Spier, 2015) A group of people from Italy, the Netherlands, Australia, and the United States who shared a passion for this new synthesis met in 2010 at the Coldigioco Geological Observatory run by Alessandro Montanari for a seminar organized by Walter Alvarez He brought the group to the location just outside the nearby Italian town of Gubbio where he had first found evidence for a meteor that had perhaps caused the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs 65 million years ago, opening the way for mammals to evolve The group was well aware of how important association, exchange, and communication networks had been in human development There may have been a positive feedback loop between these behaviors and the development of the human brain and then society The natural result at Coldigioco was the decision to form an association devoted to the new synthesis They called the group the International Big History Association A quarter of a century before, David Christian had been a junior history professor who thought his university NATURE’S ARTISTIC NARRATIVE 1379 should offer a course about the past that began at the start of time History in this course did not begin with the advent of writing a number of thousand years ago, but with the Big Bang billions of years ago Historians could no longer restrict their research to primary written documents in archives Big Historians needed to interact and learn from the natural scientists who had so transformed our understanding of time The new synthesis was intellectually fascinating It was also socially important Humans needed to better understand how fully dependent they are—how much they had emerged from and were sustained by nature As Earthlings, we needed to better understand and learn how to care for our common home if we are to survive In a period of potentially civilization ending nuclear weapons and belching smokestacks, we needed to find support for the transformation of political and economic systems The international association needed ways to foster exchange and development of ideas and strategies for transformation The group at Coldigioco included people who had been trained in geology, history, political science and other fields We realized that many people who came from many intellectual backgrounds shared a passion for learning from each other to produce a fuller account of where we and the rest of our universe came from Members of the IBHA from around the world share this value Enjoying the personal association, learning from it, are the purposes of the bi-annual conferences that the IBHA has sponsored in Michigan, California, the Netherlands, and Pennsylvania.1 We hope to meet before long in India IBHA members who live in different countries around the world often have shared their views and initiatives in Origins, a regularly produced bulletin of the new IBHA.2 Another was to create a website at bighistory.org.3 To develop new knowledge aimed at answering some of the many still unanswered questions, an academically rigorous Journal of Big History has just been initiated.4 In all of these efforts, the IBHA recognizes the value of association, the exchange of ideas, the building of relationships, the uneven process of emergent complexity and the very real possibilities of decreasing complexity, and the need for self-transformations if humanity is to survive and thrive Can relationship between North and South Korea be restored after decades of separation and hostility? Will some spark set off a devastating war between them, Japan, and the United States? Can each of us find our place in this grand story that has been written for billions of years? Can we see ourselves as that part of the universe that can self-consciously consider itself? Can we see all of what the story has bequeathed us and now how we can write its next chapters together? Can we see the increasingly complex set of relationships that have developed over time, and now self-consciously imagine even more complex relationships that are sustainable? The Earth and the universe will go on telling their own stories even if we fail to create a future that we want If the picture that we paint is one of wars and the breakdown of our environment, then the earth and life will tell a different story than if we had done otherwise (Hamilton, Bonneuil, & Gemenne, 2015; Schwaሷgerl, 2014; Vince, 2014) The universe will not end if—or when—we go extinct, as almost all other species have throughout the past The loss will not be the universe’s, it will be ours We so hope that in the future, we will have permitted future generations of humans who like us can delight in observing a sunset, who can relish discovering new parts of an amazing reality, find joy in the presence of https://ibha.wildapricot.org/2018-Conference https://bighistory.org/members/origins-bulletin/ https://bighistory.org/ https://journalofbighistory.org/index.php/jbh 1380 NATURE’S ARTISTIC NARRATIVE new friends, imagine how to transform themselves into an even more complex form of association than what we have experienced before, and tell their own story that is ever ancient and ever new Each of us knows that our individual stories will end We know that at some point, the story of the human race will itself come to an end We have existed only for two or maybe three hundred thousand years There is no good reason to think we will be telling our story after another million or two, even if we are very fortunate The story of all of life on Earth will end as the sun becomes a red giant and swallows up the Earth Within about billion years, the story of Earth will end Our galaxy and indeed even our known universe will come to an end I will admit that I rather hope that the idea of multiple or even infinite universes, or infinitely recurring universes, turn out to be true When the story of our universe comes to an end, perhaps many more will just have begun But whatever that case may be, I find it to be a marvel that I get to be conscious of the universe now I am grateful that I can see light and color and line in a myriad of forms I can understand some of the past from which I have come I am proud and humbled to be part of such a magnificent story And when I think of all of the virtually endless number of things that had to go as they did for 13.8 billion years in order for me to be able to share with you these thoughts in this article, I am profoundly grateful for the miracle of the narrative that has let us write and paint and sculpt and think and act creatively Conclusion Nature tells us a narrative of creativity Many people have exerted great skill and effort to learn how to understand what nature is saying about the often surprising events that have occurred since the big bang until now (Alvarez, 2017) This narrative covers 13.8 billion years; it is a great epic told by light, stones, bones, and blood A story in which not only are things under the stars new, but the stars themselves have been new Many are still being born It often has been natural to move beyond what is found at any given time in nature Nature is steady over long periods of time, but new relationships with new properties have frequently appeared There have been many beginnings The beginnings of the universe, of stars, then of planets, then of life, then of humans, of so many other things It is a story of inclusion Everything you can see, every person, every rock, every star, has their origin in the same single point Every living creature on Earth shares a common ancestor Every human being alive today has the same ancestors who lived in Africa It is a narrative of diversity Out of each origin developed great variety There are many types and sizes of stars, galaxies, planets, and life forms It is a story about how, at least in certain pockets and at certain times, relationships among units become more and more complex After almost 14 billion years, one result was a small part of the universe that could reflect self-consciously on itself We are one result of the narratives who are now able to write our own story of increased complexity We can build closer, more complex relationships—if we choose Even though there often seems to be little reason now to expect greater political complexity, we may be surprised by our learning how to relate more fully We may choose to return to simpler relationships too It may be beyond us to forge sustainable global, human relationships out of more tribal and national ones It is a narrative of majesty and humility Tonight, after you are done reading, go outside and look up If the light pollution is not too bad, it is possible to see the star Cassiopeia without any telescope What you see is the star as it was before the Roman Empire existed, before the pyramids, before the Great Wall of China was built You see it as it was 16,308 years ago With telescopes, you can look back in time long before that, as you look NATURE’S ARTISTIC NARRATIVE 1381 deeper into space Look up at a black spot in the sky where it may be that a long-dead star exploded billion years ago to produce the gold or silver that is in the ring on your finger Look at yourself, and think of the time and generations it took to produce a shoulder that permits you to skim a rock across the surface of a quiet pond Think of how long it took for 37 trillion cells to figure out how to work together so that your body can function Look beneath your feet at an Earth that is almost 11,000 degrees Fahrenheit at its core You stand on two feet under a magnificent sky, on an awesome planet It is amazing what we are a part of We are humbled by being such a small part of the story, and ennobled by being part of such a grand one The story will change We will continue to understand better what nature is telling us We may be misunderstanding important parts of it now What we are being told—what we are telling—will change Nature has not been rigidly set It is often inventive and malleable; that is one of its legacies for us And the story will end My story The story of humanity Of life Of Earth Of the universe Nature tells us that everything dies Creativity and destruction, life and death, beginnings and endings: they all go together Galaxies and atoms may ultimately come apart Just as there have been many beginnings over long periods of time, there will be many endings Almost certainly, my ending will come long before humanity’s will And the Earth will end long after that We are in the middle of space time, between the big bang and the darkness, between quarks and super clusters of galaxies For a time, we can help to write the next parts of our own story We can marvel about how we were written into the narrative We can care about—and care for—the nature that wrote us into its script And for our brief shining moment, we can share nature’s wonder References Alvarez, W (2014) We are stardust… Concentrated by earth! Expositions: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities, 8(1) Retrieved from http://expositions.journals.villanova.edu/issue/view/130 Alvarez, W (2017) A most improbable journey: A big history of our planet and ourselves New York: W.W Norton & Company Brown, C S (2007) Big history: From the Big Bang to the present New York: New Press: Distributed by W.W Norton Chaisson, E (2006) Epic of evolution: Seven ages of the cosmos New York: Columbia University Press Christian, D (2004) Maps of time: An introduction to big history The California World History Library Berkeley: University of California Press Christian, D., Brown, C S., & Benjamin, C (2014) Big history: Between nothing and everything New York, NY: McGraw Hill Education Deamer, D W (2011) First life: Discovering the connections between stars, cells, and how life began Berkeley: University of California Press Greene, B (2000) The elegant universe: Superstrings, hidden dimensions, and the quest for the ultimate theory New York: Vintage Books Greene, B (2011) The hidden reality: Parallel universes and the deep laws of the cosmos New York: Alfred A Knopf Hamilton, C., Bonneuil, C., & Gemenne, F (2015) The anthropocene and the global environmental crisis Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge Hazen, R M (2005) Genesis: The scientific quest for life’s origin Washington, DC: Joseph Henry Press Hazen, R M (2012) The story of earth: The first 4.5 billion years, from stardust to living planet New York: Viking Lederman, L M., & Hill, C T (2011) Quantum physics for poets Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books Lederman, L M., & Teresi, D (2006) The god particle: If the universe is the answer, what is the question? Boston: Houghton Mifflin Oppenheimer, S (2003) The real eve: Modern man’s journey out of Africa New York, N.Y.: Carroll & Graf Pross, A (2012) What is life?: How chemistry becomes biology Oxford: Oxford University Press Schwaሷgerl, C (2014) The anthropocene: The human era and how it shapes our planet Santa Fe, NM: Synergetic Press Singh, S (2004) Big Bang: The origin of the universe New York: Fourth Estate 1382 NATURE’S ARTISTIC NARRATIVE Spier, F (2015) Big history and the future of humanity Chichester, West Sussex, UK: John Wiley & Sons Inc Steinhardt, P J., & Turok, N (2007) Endless universe: beyond the Big Bang New York: Doubleday Tyson, N deG., & Goldsmith, D (2004) Origins: Fourteen billion years of cosmic evolution New York: W.W Norton & Co Vince, G (2014) Adventures in the anthropocene: A journey to the heart of the planet we made Minneapolis, Minnesota: Milkweed Editions Wilson, E O (1975) Sociobiology: The new synthesis Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press Wilson, E O (2012) The social conquest of earth New York: Liveright Pub Corporation Journal of Literature and Art Studies, October 2017, Vol 7, No 10, 1383-1390 doi: 10.17265/2159-5836/2017.10.020 D DAVID PUBLISHING Architectural and Urban Communication in Social Identity: The Case Study of Agadir Morocco: From Colonial Preponderance to Renaissance Which Social Identity? Amal Ben Attou Laboratoire LARLANCO, Université IBN ZOHR, Agadir, Morocco This paper proposes the architectural communication as a socio-spatial identification, and a channel for the politico-patrimonial dialogue in a determined territory which is in this case the south Moroccan city of Agadir By analyzing Agadir’s urbanistic and architectural content thorough ages, we find ourselves involved in an enthralling and passionate debate concerning two important aspects The first is the historical temporality of the city’s architectural and urbanistic changes In other words, it is the different architectural transformation related to the political transmutations that Agadir has witnessed since the Portugal settlement until the after earthquake of 1960 While the second is about the perception toward the architectural oeuvre deeply settled in the territory and the memory of the city’s designers This aspect is linked to the society’s perception toward the architectural-urban transformations in their territory In our paper, we are going to focus on two major architectural and urbanistic ages in the history of Agadir The first period we are going to approach is the architectural and urbanistic features of Agadir during French settlement The second period is Agadir’s architectural renaissance after 1960s earthquakes Since the core of our study is the architectural acts, it is definitely a matter of interpretation related to the philosophical, mental and ideological representation of the city’s architecture and urbanism either by those who artistically invented Agadir during colonialism or those who reinvented Agadir after 1960s earthquakes Do urbanism and architecture represent for Agadir, a power, a doctrine or a savoir-faire? Can we affirm that Agadir’s architecture is truly reflecting the image of its society? Is this society in itself immersed sufficiently in its architecture? Several hypotheses are possible in this research Nevertheless, the fact that in this paper we use communication as a vehicle to establish a dialogue between arts, politics and socio-ideologic and territorial governance makes us recognize the different bridging relationships between the architectural action, the political and urbanistic content represented in the architectural expression It also helps us to discover and analyze the ideologies that lead the architects during their conception Finally, is this architecture which normally must represent the society in tempo-spatial territory admitted by the local citizens? All these are lines of research we are going to shed light on in this paper Keywords: territory, architecture, urbanism, communication, re-composition, identity Amal Ben Attou, Ph.D Student, Researcher, Architectural and Urban Communication, IBN ZOHR UNIVERSITY, LARLANCO laboratory 1384 ARCHITECTURAL AND URBAN COMMUNICATION IN SOCIAL IDENTITY Introduction The concept of architectural communication is a discipline through which we are going to analyze the thesis of our paper The era of colonialism represents in terms of architecture and urbanism the first real flourishment During the French settlement Agadir and for the first time has owned an international reputation as a stop-over city for the air-mail connecting Europe to America before the famous Atlantic crossing Indeed St-Exupéry symbolized Agadir’s worldwide reach as the city of future and modernism Under the French protectorate, Agadir’s architecture has progressively taken the aspect of a miniaturized “NICE”; this comparison has been based on the city’s characteristics such as its littoral This specific point will insert Agadir in a touristic sphere in the future However, this illustration is not utterly genuine, for the simple reason that the “KASBAH” is still existing, carrying implicitly and explicitly architectural traditions of an Arabo-Musulman medina renowned across Europe From this stage, we ask ourselves if this double imaging is in fact a double architectural stamp or it is a medina splinted into European conglomeration? How can we communicate this double identity? The littoral or the mountain where can we localize the territorial stakes? The reconstruction of Agadir after the 1960s earthquake is it going to communicate the modernist vocation or is it going to put down the roots of a skillful society capable to reborn from its ashes? Finally, does Agadir’s agglomeration today, throughout its architecture and urbanism identify either its citizens, national or international visitors? Is the local society able to communicate about their city’s architectural and urban identity? The Architectural Appreciation Under the French Protectorate Under the protectorate, Agadir’s urban morphology headed to architectural discontinuity and identity crisis We notice this assessment through the double urban and architectural situation in this period From one hand, defensive sites in which we find the working-class community: FOUNTY and AGADIR OUFELLA, invading the piedmont of IDA OUTANANE to a funnel opening to the coast From the other hand, new European verdant districts that are senselessly converted and organized The quarter of TALBORJT was the junction between two urbanistic and architectural styles Nevertheless, between the two urban entities it was not a question of Arabo-European architectural transmutation; it was rather an economical strategy We have to mention that the 50s was the era of important economic dynamism: fishery development, canning industry, agriculture and mining exploitation without taking into consideration the growth of tourism For this reason, as much as Agadir inclined toward globalization as much as the architectural and urban contrast was increasing In 1952, it was Michel Ecochard who set up a new urban planning compliance for Agadir This new layout was designed for the reorganization of TALBORJT and ABATTOIR The stated purpose was the blow out of the urban conglomeration as a result of post-war property speculation and disharmonious urban growth Another implicit objective was the intention to decrease the original architectural identity which was magistrate as “Primitive” to switch to another architectural model the one of European center extension parallelly with the littoral This colonial strategy makes us in front of two different trajectories and not in front of architectural and urban models transition In view of its geographical situation, Agadir’s harbor resumption along with the naval activities development integrated once again Agadir in an international commercial traffic Bensergao aerodrome implementation for military purpose, decreed Sous as a military zone, once more this standardization is going to contribute to the amplification of the military staff positions The French nobles was ARCHITECTURAL AND URBAN COMMUNICATION IN SOCIAL IDENTITY 1385 in need of entertainment space besides Paris gates (5 h from Agadir and h 30 from Casablanca) It is for this reason that Agadir was projected to become a seaside resort in Maréchal Lyautey’s politic To serve this aim Lyautey hired Henri Prost to consolidate and to erect the new born city of Agadir to a characterized coastal resort It was at this time that the “Moroccan Nice” emerged The urbanism designed by general Lyautey the creator of Modern Morocco, was a dual urbanism1 that is going to stamp the city forever by a sort of special apartheid Initially the urbanism practiced was assimilating a form of doctrine, a supreme administration power The utile Agadir was exclusively the harbor, the new designed city and by the littoral; the exact same thing was also experimented in Rabat, Casablanca and Kenitra Such urbanism primary protected colonist’s interests, then secured the European touristic presence Behind the avowed modernity of Henri Prost (1912-1922) an architectural conservatism is hided This observation is disseminated by the prefectural architecture This urbanistic model was adapted to Agadir’s touristic function (Gautier Hotel, Marhabat, Assaade, Provincial center) The monumental urbanism had as a principle mission to luxuriously address the modern cities, and also to keep them under the strict authority symbolized in architectural layouts The second aspect of this decided urbanism is that the industrial districts “ABATTOIR” and the rest of indigenous areas, suffer from the lack of equipment, sanitation, and high ways The life style and the physiognomy of the miniaturized touristic “Nice” expressed that Agadir is a modern outward city through organizing car races Some sub-Saharan managers have not hesitated to qualify Agadir of that period as the Miami of North Africa For Lyautey, it was not enough for Agadir to be a strategic military zone; for him it was more important to internalize the city by the resort in this way one projectile which is Agadir is going to guarantee a double objective To more explain this idea, Lyautey aimed to both valorize the modernization imported from Europe and at the same time separate the new touristic city from the conglomeration of the two proletarian axes: ABATTOIR and ANZA This is why he did not impose Moorish architecture as Casablanca, Rabat and Marrakech He did not also express the need to keep vernacular symbols because it can oppose his vision and subsequently sentence monumental urbanism as an artificial urbanism This architectural “No man’s Land” is going to create for the reconstruction architects the need to find picturesque Amazigh motifs, even Moorish symbols Those architects preferred to decline through a multiple variation toward an architecture more or less tattooed traditionally in terms of art but based on a revisited modern technique The industrial and touristic dynamics were the manpower attracting sources, this situation represented a threat for Lyautey’s urban politic While he always attempted to transmit athwart architecture the notion of the “Ville Vitrine” the vision of a new modern city using tourism to take a universal posture For this reason, Michel Ecochard, under Lyautey’s instructions, replaced Prost to instore a new popular strategy of the famous neighborhood unity applying the technique of building sanitary frames “Trames Sanitaire” (10X6M = 60M²) which allows Lyautey and his staff to anticipate the mass urbanism management Obviously, the assigned objective was to restore balance in Agadir’s urbanization and to avoid anarchic growth The approved framework in 1952, had another mission that of separating the down town from the new extensions The three aisles proposed for mass urbanization could not be organized in coherent manner This urban planification caused the city’s dissipation into three distinct parts: The down town near the littoral, industrial and insalubrious sectors around the Abattoir At this period, the city started to enroll in critical urbanism The It is about a sort of Clubbisaction of the urban life which is going to grantee for a long time the fragmentation of the city concerning the urban practice For this aspect see Eric Charmes, 2011: La Ville Emiettée, Série la Ville en Débat, Edit PUF, p 288 (The Squandered City, City in Debate collection, Edit.PUF, p 288) 1386 ARCHITECTURAL AND URBAN COMMUNICATION IN SOCIAL IDENTITY popular urbanization of Eric Labonne and Ecochard (1947-1953) raised a form of conflictual urbanism than a critical one The neighborhood unity propelled by Ecochard is a theoretical model supposing the existence of immobile space and homogenic society Nonetheless, neither the space was immobile nor the society was homogeneous The harmony esteemed through the sanitary trames had in fact created tension Thus, it appears that it is complicated to take hold of architectural objects because it is full of poetic images, experiences lived by society and through urbanism It is about expressions regulated in time and space, it is not enough to be able to transpose an urban model in superiority or inferiority according to the society of origin Risking artificiality, the approach of urban architecture through technicity, and housing sector or real-estate market is not always a sufficient solution for urban crisis When we force autochthones lives, we instore a bursting even if we are opting for a modern project either architectural or urban The cities are produced by both architectural and urban processes The neighborhood unity, anticipated in Agadir in the end of the 40s and the beginning of the 50s shanty towns phenomenon 1960 Earthquake: Architectural Rupture or a Chance for the City’s Renaissance Through Architecture? From an architectural period to another, or from a simple architectural act to another, communication rises from a global dimension that opens horizons to ecology and ethics (Romano, 2001, 1990) Even if the ecology of communication is a recent science in Morocco, strictly in media, we can affirm that Agadir’s reconstruction has promoted a global communication concerning both the seismic tragedy, and the reconstruction efforts Agadir is a crises communication or crises management? It is hard to decide By closely observing that epoch and the breadthens of the dram, we can fittingly accord ourselves with Hervé Renaudin (2004) when he attests that the critique of communicational strategy stays a recurrent element (pp 2-9) The tragedy’s perception differs from logic to another and from a culture to another Agadir’s earthquake, then reconstruction is going despite the international mobilization efforts to bring out the rupture between society and institutions It is also going to create tension between world’s stakeholders that run developing countries Who is going to build Agadir? Americans, Europeans or Moroccans? If Moroccans get the task, which logic are they going to follow? Which architectural and urbanistic trend are they going to adopt? The reconstruction project is it in itself sustainable? Which destiny? Which importance? Which actors? This globalized rupture presents the dizziness between the needs of a damaged society and the way in which public power is going to manage it A chess game is activated between seism and reconstruction in a crisis communicational sphere Desires and logics are opposed This opposition is represented by three intelligences The first branch of those three streams is the one which seeks the continuity of the Ecochar’s architectural and urbanistic conception, the second is the American model of Miami conceived by Bartholomew and the third and last one is the French urbanism practiced by Moroccans The basic elements constituting the pivotal point of this chess game are: Modernism, orientalism and the reconstruction financial sources Crises communication had also been omnipresent in the media by reinforcing the nobility attributed to the rebuilt city (Villarreal, 2007, pp 2-10) This chess game’s metaphors are widespread in modernist reflections and orientalist identity concerning the back and forth between Occidentalism and orientalism in terms of architecture (Libaret, 2005, pp 2-16) Those powers are also manifested in the politic identification to Islam and to expressive Musulman art They are also positioned visa vis the international financing for ARCHITECTURAL AND URBAN COMMUNICATION IN SOCIAL IDENTITY 1387 developing countries Even if the Moroccan team has owed the bet even if this team has produced collective work which was imposed as a natural necessity in which the whole city was embodied (Nadau, 1992, pp 174-175) It is almost impossible to reconcile modernism to tradition in Agadir’s architectural layout Agadir has already chosen a touristic vocation before seism The state in itself did not have the means to initiate a stylistic adventure concerning the city’s architecture, that is to say that the reconstruction of Agadir could not initiate any type of architectural décor, miniatures or Islamic esthetics (Lucien, 1982, p 2) The chess game ended to become an issue of providing shelter for mass population This diagnostic sketched today refers us after 57 years of reconstruction to the chess game that becomes lead footed more and more by the fact that Agadir has been metropolises, and also by the fact of the urban spread of the “Grand Agadir” If today we consider Agadir’s failure, we will notice that it is related to two major facts The first, concerns the demographic urbanization emerging from rural areas The second is the economic growth model based on the real estate bulimia in the 80s These are two croisé phenomenons that have contributed to Agadir’s urban collapse The capitalist growth desired to insert Agadir in a closed economic system; consequently, instead of working in an incorporate strategic procedure, Agadir is under the pression of opportunism The bourgeoisie which now constitutes the new rich population gets its benefits from estate speculation and illustrates it on the ground (Illigh District) However, in the 60s and 70s, there was a matching temptation to incorporate modernism in the Moroccan context This project has been professed by Zevaco through the organized villas in the Swiss quarter in 1964, for which he received the Aghakhan trophy in 1980 Zevaco’s modern architecture was adopting the patio style, economic habitations on the ground floor lightened from all angles, does this architecture represents renaissance? At first sight the answer seems to be mitigated Certain observers2 qualify the 60s architectures as being puritan That is to say that the architectural oeuvre even if it is negligible it still represents an insurmountable challenge even contradictory: those of customers’ requests bringing together a wrong identification of esthetic nostalgia and a will to produce images imported from different continents It is a matter of evanescent cultural identity that hunted both the intellect and the work of the resigned architects to overcome the contradictions Concerning the political power diffused in media spheres it is as well placed in opposition to the architects revindications If politic stakeholders refuse the architectural style they not come to term with the sense of this style We also have the critique position of the architects who find themselves shaded of contradictions For the most gifted designers such as Zevaco, the architectural language is poorly understood Although, he highlighted transparence, consistence and puritan white, his dream raised from a utopia We have also to precise that the utopia was that Agadir symbolizes the new Morocco The Morocco that must be built or rebuilt normally should have included qualified tradition of outmoded quality South Mediterranean countries such as Morocco represent a sensitive object as much as an economic, social, cultural and professional field of interest Their symbolic signification and their heritage are aspects of voluntary mobilization The case of Agadir as an architectural project is a must to combine between functional and relational urbanism The tradition vehiculated through vernacular is not only a cultural patrimony or a simple civilizational reference but also a model of urbanism; appreciated as an essential element for balance in the process of social, political and economic development Despite the double penalty attributed to vernacular architecture, its impact on modern architectural production is obvious This assessment allows us to confirm It is about architects such as Henri Tastemain, Elian Castelnau, Pierre Mas, Jean Challet, Louis Riou, and others 1388 ARCHITECTURAL AND URBAN COMMUNICATION IN SOCIAL IDENTITY that the transition to modernism is significant As the historians say “tradition is not inevitable and compulsory, old style or outdated it can always be recent” (Fathy, 1970, p 310) We can understand that modernism does not imperatively mean that ideal life is a fruit of change Thus, cities seem presenting an incredibly rich particularity of architectural patrimonies The urban areas indicate deep syncretism that have generated common melting pot and a sort of connected world in which influence by context, exchange and borrowing styles are supplied by human circulation However, some failures exist: lack of reference points, symbolic deficit, excessive functional approach, regionalism obsession, deletion of tempo-socio-spacio process, intuitive speech production based only on hypothetic and subjective hints In territories like Morocco, it is not hard to proceed in patrimonial reinterpretation to find identity or to adopt a morphologic approach in order to discover the organization laws From the moment that urbanism and architecture are considered as luxury flows or as the only symbols of social promotion, this is displayed on the urban landscape in which we not find any coherence or unity between tradition and modernism, there is no urban identification Do modern architecture parameters exist in Agadir? The answer is affirmative Nevertheless, the fact that modernism is not a simple outcome of architects’ personal conviction, makes this notion of “modernism” inserted in a political frame; yet, the fact of having a varied population of architects in the reconstruction site, public sensitization toward anti-seismic buildings, strictness in term of infrastructures elaboration, the inauguration of contracting authority and the quest of public edifice monumentality encouraged by public requests have made possible an architectural production able to be related to modern styles in terms of landscape, society and economy We have to precise that Agadir’s earthquake was an international tragedy in which solution finding was a Moroccan concern The establishment of the high commissariat for reconstruction in 1962 assured legal means, land and financial mobilization (35 million DH) apart from the solidarity taxes created in 1960 In 1960, Agadir’s downtown is already achieved by Moroccan urbanistic team composed from Abdessamad Faraoui and Mourad Ben Embarek disciples of Ecochard, Louis Riou, Claude Verdugo, Elian Castelnau, writers and creators of the city’s plan The communications concerning reconstruction have been strongly diffused by Ben Himma (health minister and future governor of Agadir) Other communicational manifestations have been initiated to promote Agadir’s reconstruction and its architecture “Casa Mémoire” is one of those events that aimed to be associated to the 50th anniversary of Agadir reconstruction by presenting its architectural history Also, a co-memo ration of the same event will be organized by the city council on February 26th to 28th of every year In addition to these two manifestations there is also Docomo-Maroc association and the regional council of architects of the south (CROAS), it organizes a series of workshops that are supposed to make objective assessment concerning the city’s development in order to prepare for future challenges Therefore the contemporaneous architectural production of Agadir had emerged as an adoption of a certain eclectic movement characterized by heterogeneous variety of modern and ancient styles This is why we can affirm, today and without risk through the architectural monuments that Agadir’s architectural modernity is at the same time a choice, an adaptation and an obligation We have the post-seism Agadir which does not represent the complete start from starch as the majority of people think This fact of rebuilding a city that still keeps some aspects of past created a certain necessity of adaptation to a new urbanistic strategy We have the reconstruction of Agadir on the plain out of ARCHITECTURAL AND URBAN COMMUNICATION IN SOCIAL IDENTITY 1389 the prohibited zone of reconstruction in the north3, which have created a lot of constraints in terms of special rationalization and the infrastructures disposition Between obligation and adaptation, some rebel architects opened the horizons to their creative mind in order to create independent edifices separated from any tradition or any religious architecture It is the case of Zevaco and others who take refuge in the free rein, Amazigh motifs and the simple straight forms However, this escape to modernity was not the general rule, some other architects used the style of vein domes (Central Market), other came back to the Greek classic theory4 of geometry The emblematic image of Agadir’s reconstruction ingrown the dream of a modern Morocco through the reconstruction architectural philosophy Conclusion We can affirm without doubt that the architectural conceptualization of Agadir has been through three ages: pre-seismic age, during which architecture has taken a conflictual aspect with inversed trajectories The second age confounded with reconstruction period until the middle of the 1980s Agadir owes a lot to the transactional urban models of architectures Such as Zevaco, Moroccan architects enrolled themselves in a restyled modernism inspired by the universal values experiences propelled by the Corbusier However, the fact that concerning the recommended architectural elements, these same architects adopted a new property attitude through the arrangement, dimensions and materials, also their submission to the solar rule confirm their attachment to Arabo-Muslim architectures We are here in front of a circular urbanistic and architectural model A third age impacted by a commercial urbanism in which architecture is professed without architects In the three ages, communication is struggling to face these constant changes Indeed, the communicational deficit from which suffers Agadir’s architecture is related to urban society By default, by ignorance or by positioning, citizens are not informed, not comfortably placed in their architectural and patrimonial context The article temps to fill this gap by bringing out the different architectural ages, the various architectural expressions in terms of conceptions, characteristics and ideologic affiliations The objective is also the reconciliation between the architects and their background, their ideal, their tendencies and their limits Far away from any virtual conceptualization, the article shows clearly the cross referencing of communication as a science and architecture in the urban scene, shedding lights on its crises and victory moments Using different qualitative approaches, socio-spatial and tempo-geographical, it was a matter of proving how much a multiform communication platform is necessary to manage, orientate and sensitize about the patrimonial approach Identity roots are not only on rocks but also in sprits An effective communication map of architectural signatures can help the society to rediscover a reconstruction patrimony It not enough to see and to make others see what is important is to make them feel The need of a social and urban identification through architectural communication requires a social positioning The purpose is to find what gathers us What is a historical monument? How to identify ourselves according to this monument? How can we read and detect the architectural ages? How to verify the architectural information? How can we share it in the most optimal manner? 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Cottage, NY 10989, USA Aims and Scope: Journal of Literature and Art Studies, a monthly professional academic journal, covers all sorts of research on Literature studies, Aesthetics Criticism,... like Foreign Literature, World Literature, and Foreign Literature and Art could be regarded as a splendid experience Moreover, at that time, the break of traditional literature and art, and the declining... www.davidpublisher.com Journal of Literature and Art Studies Volume 7, Number 10, October 2017 (Serial Number 71) Contents Literature Studies Re-examining the Past: Elements of Postmodern Memory