SOURCE: Fuchs, Anne. “The Dignity of Difference: Self and Other in Elias Canetti's Voices of Marrakesh.” In Critical Essays on Elias Canetti, edited by David Darby, pp. 201-12. New York: G. K. Hall and Co., 2000.

In the following essay, Fuchs examines Voices of Marrakesh in the post-colonial milieu, finding that Canetti neither appropriated nor colonized his subjects.

For a long time Elias Canetti's Die Stimmen von Marrakesch (The Voices of Marrakesh) was considered marginal in relation to Canetti's major publications, such as Die Blendung (Auto-da-Fé) or his autobiography. The critical attention the book has received came largely from admirers of Canetti's works who praised it for its poetic quality without, however, placing the narrative in the context of current theories of travel writing.¹ This paper addresses the fallacious innocence of much of the literature on Canetti's The Voices of Marrakesh by reading the book with reference to several...