Conclusion: The Future of Moroccan Women's Auto/Biography and Testimony

Summary

Auto/biography and testimony in Morocco have developed across media and languages and have been shaped by various encounters with transnational and global modes of identity and subjectivity formation. Former prisoners, writers, artists, filmmakers, journalists, bloggers, and activists have in recent decades produced a significant archive that bears witness to individual and collective attempts to inscribe personal, personalized, and marginalized voices in the public space. To be convinced of the importance of this trend, one need only consider cultural productions originating from Morocco and/or staging Morocco in the last decade. Despite an elaborate process of state-sponsored truth-seeking, reconciliation, and reparation conducted under the IER in 2004, former victims of the Years of Lead like Aziz Binebine, author of Tazmamort: Dix-huit ans dans le bagne d’Hassan II (Tazmamort: Eighteen Years in Hassan II's Prisons) (2009), and Driss Chberreq, author of Le Train Fou: Mémoires d’un Rescapé de Tazmamart, 10 juillet 1971 au 29 octobre 1991 (The Mad Train: Memoirs of a Survivor of Tazmamart, July 10, 1971–October 29, 1991) (2014), continue to publish memoirs, sometimes more than twenty years after the end of their ordeal. Moroccan writers, filmmakers, and artists have also been using the stories of victims of the Years of Lead to produce an alternative archive and engage in modes of memorialization that depart from state-sponsored processes.

This is the case for Leila Kilani's Nos lieux interdits (Our Forbidden Places) (2009), a documentary that borrows many techniques from Claude Lanzmann's Shoah (1985) to relate the Years of Lead through the voices of the victims and their families, and their interactions with members of the IER. The conflation between auto/biography and testimony goes beyond the narration of the Years of Lead and is marked by its pervasiveness in the cultural milieu. Artists like late Leila Alaoui use their art to archive the lives of contemporary Moroccans. For instance, in 2008, Alaoui spent months traveling through Morocco and following migrants to Europe and the routes they take to get there, which resulted in a photographic series entitled No Pasara, meaning ‘entry denied,’ in which she captures the hopes and despair of the Moroccan youth who regularly risk their lives to illegally cross the Mediterranean. Other artists use their personal histories or their bodies to tell exemplary stories of Moroccan socialization processes and explore the tensions between collective and individual identities.