"A modern civilization is only possible when it is accepted that singular beings exist and express themselves freely"
About this Quote
Modernity, for Ben Jelloun, is not a skyline or a GDP graph; it is a political and moral wager on the irreducible person. The phrase "only possible" is the tell: this isn’t a soft plea for tolerance, it’s a hard condition. A civilization that can’t stomach singularity may have roads and ministries, but it’s running on borrowed time.
As a poet who has spent decades writing across Moroccan, French, and broader postcolonial terrains, Ben Jelloun knows how quickly "civilization" becomes a decorative word used to justify conformity. His insistence on "singular beings" pushes back against the tidy categories societies love: citizen, believer, immigrant, woman, respectable. The subtext is that modern states often offer rights as long as you fit the template. He’s arguing the opposite: the template is the problem.
"Accepted" matters as much as "express". Freedom here isn’t just private selfhood; it’s social permission, the public recognition that difference won’t be punished, pathologized, or politely erased. That nods to the pressures of censorship, religious orthodoxy, nationalist identity policing, and the quieter coercions of assimilation in Europe as much as in North Africa.
The line works because it reframes modernity as an ethic of risk: letting people be themselves means tolerating discomfort, dissent, and unpredictability. Ben Jelloun’s poetic authority is doing civic work - making individuality sound not like indulgence, but like infrastructure.
As a poet who has spent decades writing across Moroccan, French, and broader postcolonial terrains, Ben Jelloun knows how quickly "civilization" becomes a decorative word used to justify conformity. His insistence on "singular beings" pushes back against the tidy categories societies love: citizen, believer, immigrant, woman, respectable. The subtext is that modern states often offer rights as long as you fit the template. He’s arguing the opposite: the template is the problem.
"Accepted" matters as much as "express". Freedom here isn’t just private selfhood; it’s social permission, the public recognition that difference won’t be punished, pathologized, or politely erased. That nods to the pressures of censorship, religious orthodoxy, nationalist identity policing, and the quieter coercions of assimilation in Europe as much as in North Africa.
The line works because it reframes modernity as an ethic of risk: letting people be themselves means tolerating discomfort, dissent, and unpredictability. Ben Jelloun’s poetic authority is doing civic work - making individuality sound not like indulgence, but like infrastructure.
Quote Details
| Topic | Freedom |
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