[1][2] The book, containing six theoretical essays, presents and applies the concepts of other thought and double critique, addressing issues of language, translation, orientalism, knowledge, power, domination, and decolonization.
[1][4][5] Maghreb pluriel begins with a quote from the final chapter of The Wretched of the Earth, in which Frantz Fanon implores that Europe be left behind and that its legacies be rejected for the sake of finding "something different.
[7] The essay engages with the thinking of Ibn Khaldun, arguing that it had been misappropriated by both Western and Islamic schools of social theory.
[13] In L'orientalisme désorienté, originally published in 1974,[14] Khatibi criticizes the work of Jacques Berque, a 20th century French sociologist and Arabist at the Collège de France.
[15] Khatibi felt compelled to address the "silent questions" in Maghrebi society as part of his sustained dedication to subversive literature.
[16] In Bilinguisme et littérature, Khatibi's concept of bi-langue ('bi-language'), a play on words suggesting bilingualism as well as a bifurcated tongue, is—as a process of constant translation and movement between center and periphery—a project of decolonization and questioning the established order.