Theorizing Intergenerational Trauma in Tazmamart Testimonial Literature and Docu-testimonies

Drawing on testimonial writings by the wives of Tazmamart prisoners and two documentary films (docu-testimonies) about this notorious disappearance camp, I argue that Tazmamart-induced traumas are intergenerational. Approached as a continuum, Tazmamart-induced traumas reveal the intergenerational transference of trauma from mothers to children in the pre-discursive period. In this article, I specifically focus my analysis on the pre-discursive period—a time when families did not articulate their traumas in spoken words in the presence of the children and during which Tazmamart was not a matter of public discourse in Morocco. This theorization of intergenerational transference of traumatic experiences will shift scholarly attention from individual experiences to the collective memory of the “Years of Lead” in its intergenerational dimensions

Moroccan Society’s Educational and Cultural Losses during the Years of Lead (1956-1999)

In this article, I argue that political repression during the Moroccan Years of Lead (1956-1999) engendered myriad losses in the fields of education and culture. However, the scholarly focus on the embodied effects of state violence on former prisoners and forcibly disappeared individuals has overlooked the intangible damages both education and culture sustained during this period. In investigating the imbrication of political conservatism, educational reform and censorship, the article opens a more critical space for the conceptualization of the broader implications of the Years of Lead for education and culture. Drawing on several primary sources in Arabic and French, including documents of the Moroccan Student Union (UNEM), Lamalif issues, and ERC’s final report, I examine how educational and cultural loss was constitutive of the experience of Years of Lead. Combining close readings with historical analysis, this article is an invitation to broaden the scope of scholarly investigation of the multilayered ramifications of statal political violence on socio-economic and cultural fields in Morocco

Gender-Unaware History: Ordinary Women as the Forgottens of Moroccan Historiography of the Present

This article probes the significance of Moroccan historians‟ oversight of ordinary women's experiences of state violence during the Years of Lead (1956-1999) throughout their discussions of conceptual and methodological ways to implement the histoire du temps présent or tārīkh al-zaman al-rāhin (history of the present) for the study of Morocco‟s recent history between 2004 and 2007. A branch of history, the history of the present examines recent histories characterized by trauma and memory, and of which the witnesses are still alive and could confront academic historians. Taking place in the context of hay’at al-inṣāf wa-l-muṣālaḥa (Equity and Reconciliation Commission, henceforth ERC), which the king of Morocco established on January 7th, 2004 to investigate and find the truth about the violence committed during the Years of Lead (1956-1999), these historiographical meetings sought to reconfigure the Moroccan historiographical school by delving into topics that historians avoided prior to King Hassan II‟s passing in 1999. Despite the diversity of the topics they examined at their meetings, Moroccan historians showed no interest in gender despite the existence of a rich, gendered testimonial literature. I contrast the lack of gender awareness in Moroccan historians‟ debates with the testimonial literature of Moroccan women in order to demonstrate the productivity of a more inclusive and gender-conscious Moroccan history of the present. My goal is to show that history is pivotal to any political, educational, and civic project that aims to prevent social violence, especially that directed at women. This article demonstrates the importance of a historiography that recognizes the role of women in societal and political transformation in post-1956 Morocco.Keywords: Historiography, memory, state violence, Morocco, women, ER

Other-Archives: Literature Rewrites the Nation in Post-1956 Morocco

This dissertation is a comparative study of the literatures concerning the Moroccan people’s traumatic loss of participatory citizenship during the authoritarian “years of lead” (1956-1999). I theorize the production of novels about Jewish life in Morocco as “mnemonic” literature and the production of literature about political detention as “testimonial” literature, using them to address how Moroccan literature grapples with the memory of loss. The Moroccan state foreclosed the promise of a citizenship-based democracy in post-independence Morocco through three acts of silencing: facilitating Jewish emigration, disappearing its political opposition, and institutionalizing historiographical and mnemonic silence about the state’s contested past. Since the early 1990s, however, the explosion of mnemonic and testimonial literature has challenged these myriad forms of silencing under Hassan II and rewritten taboo histories in an effective exercise of the right to citizenship. More than ever before, Moroccan literature has become the site in which oppressed people’s historiographical agency produces what I call other-archives, texts whose producers work through direct or inherited traumas of loss by rewriting the silenced pasts from outside state-controlled institutional structures. Specifically, this dissertation formulates a theory about how the exercise of citizenship in Morocco has shifted to the production of other-archives. Mnemonic literature’s rehabilitation of Moroccan Jewish memory reactualizes a Morocco that could have been. By (re)connecting places and peoples, authors anchor memory and reinscribe Moroccan Jews in the cartography of the national memory. Testimonial literature aboutTazmamart, a secret prison (1973-1991), depicts physical and societal disappearance, embodying an utter disregard for law and citizenship. The scale of Tazmamart’s cruelty has lent itself to fictionalization, which lent itself in turn to translation and global circulation in multiple languages, thus posing vital questions about other-archives’ local, global, and intergenerational functions. Finally, the cultural dynamic triggered by other-archives’ widespread dissemination in Moroccan society has led the state and professional historians to experience historiographical anxiety. Departing from existing analyses of Moroccan literature, I argue that mnemonic and testimonial literatures about both political disappearance and Jewish emigration not only rehabilitate the voices of the oppressed but also perform acts of citizenship by producing other-archives