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Moroccan Other-Archives: History and Citizenship after State Violence
Moroccan Other-Archives investigates how histories of exclusion and silencing are written and rewritten in a postcolonial context that lacks organized and accessible archives. The book draws on cultural production concerning the “years of lead”―a period of authoritarianism and political violence between Morocco’s independence in 1956 and the death of King Hassan II in 1999―to examine the transformative roles memory and trauma play in reconstructing stories of three historically marginalized groups in Moroccan Berbers/Imazighen, Jews, and political prisoners.
The book shows how Moroccan cultural production has become an a set of textual, sonic, embodied, and visual sites that recover real or reimagined voices of these formerly suppressed and silenced constituencies of Moroccan society. Combining theoretical discussions with close reading of literary works, the book reenvisions both archives and the nation in postcolonial Morocco. By producing other-archives, Moroccan cultural creators transform the losses state violence inflicted on society during the years of lead into a source of civic engagement and historiographical agency, enabling the writing of histories about those Moroccans who have been excluded from official documentation and state-sanctioned histories.
The book is multilingual and interdisciplinary, examining primary sources in Amazigh/Berber, Arabic, Darija, and French, and drawing on memory studies, literary theory, archival studies, anthropology, and historiography. In addition to showing how other-archives are created and operate, El Guabli elaborates how language, gender, class, race, and geographical distribution are co-constitutive of a historical and archival unsilencing that is foundational to citizenship in Morocco today.
The book shows how Moroccan cultural production has become an a set of textual, sonic, embodied, and visual sites that recover real or reimagined voices of these formerly suppressed and silenced constituencies of Moroccan society. Combining theoretical discussions with close reading of literary works, the book reenvisions both archives and the nation in postcolonial Morocco. By producing other-archives, Moroccan cultural creators transform the losses state violence inflicted on society during the years of lead into a source of civic engagement and historiographical agency, enabling the writing of histories about those Moroccans who have been excluded from official documentation and state-sanctioned histories.
The book is multilingual and interdisciplinary, examining primary sources in Amazigh/Berber, Arabic, Darija, and French, and drawing on memory studies, literary theory, archival studies, anthropology, and historiography. In addition to showing how other-archives are created and operate, El Guabli elaborates how language, gender, class, race, and geographical distribution are co-constitutive of a historical and archival unsilencing that is foundational to citizenship in Morocco today.
- GenresMorocco
272 pages, Paperback
Published April 25, 2023
About the author
Brahim El Guabli
14 books2 followersI am Black, Amazigh Indigenous scholar from Morocco, but I live and teach in the United States. I am the author of Moroccan Other-Archives: History and Citizenship after State Violence, which received L. Carol Brown AIMS Best Book Award in 2024. I am also the author of the forthcoming Desert Imaginations: A History of History of Saharanism and Its Radical Consequences, which explains why deserts are dismissed and mistreated globally. My third book is entitled Amazighitude: Essays on Living Amazigh Indigeneity in the World, and it is an essay about being Amazigh and navigating life from that perspective.
I have also coedited the two volumes of Lamalif: A Critical Anthology of Societal Debates in Morocco During the “Years of Lead” and Remembering Jews in Maghrebi and Middle Eastern Media.
I have also coedited the two volumes of Lamalif: A Critical Anthology of Societal Debates in Morocco During the “Years of Lead” and Remembering Jews in Maghrebi and Middle Eastern Media.
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