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4 Making Tazmamart a Transnational Other- Archive

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Moroccan Other-Archives
This chapter is in the book Moroccan Other-Archives
1154Making Tazmamart a Transnational Other- ArchiveTazmamart prison has never existed in Morocco. “Th is alleged jail only exists in the imagination of the enemies of our democracy,” unabashedly declared a member of the Moroccan parliament.1 Nevertheless, and despite persistent denial of its existence for eighteen years, twenty- eight survivors of this secret prison, which had been in operation since 1973, magically reappeared in 1991. Now that the tides of political and public opinion have turned, Moroccan of-fi cials have found refuge in silence, in the hope that this embarrassing symbol of their authoritarianism would just recede from collective memory. Th ey were mistaken, because amnesia proved to be elusive even thirty years aft er the fact. Th e serialization of Tazmamart survivor Mohamed Raïss’s prison memoirs, Min Skhirāt ilā Tazmamart, tadhkiratu dhahāb wa iyyāb ilā al- jaḥīm (From Skhirat to Tazmamart: A Roundtrip Ticket to Hell) in the social-ist daily newspaper al- Ittiḥād al- Ishtirākī (Th e Socialist Union) in 2000 was a watershed moment that kindled the Moroccan people’s curiosity about their collective memory of political disappearance, state violence, and repres-sion, and established this jail as an icon for a burgeoning of other- archives.2Against all expectations of forgetting, Tazmamart, by the sheer quantity of literary, fi lmic, and journalistic publications generated by the plight of its survivors, has shift ed boundaries of authorship, and instituted novel ways of thinking about archives and recording histories of forcible disappearance in Morocco.3Th is chapter demonstrates that the trajectory of Tazmamart’s eponymous prison from a site utterly denied to a transnational literary phenomenon has produced three complementary and interconnected sets of other- archives
© 2023 Fordham University Press, New York, USA

1154Making Tazmamart a Transnational Other- ArchiveTazmamart prison has never existed in Morocco. “Th is alleged jail only exists in the imagination of the enemies of our democracy,” unabashedly declared a member of the Moroccan parliament.1 Nevertheless, and despite persistent denial of its existence for eighteen years, twenty- eight survivors of this secret prison, which had been in operation since 1973, magically reappeared in 1991. Now that the tides of political and public opinion have turned, Moroccan of-fi cials have found refuge in silence, in the hope that this embarrassing symbol of their authoritarianism would just recede from collective memory. Th ey were mistaken, because amnesia proved to be elusive even thirty years aft er the fact. Th e serialization of Tazmamart survivor Mohamed Raïss’s prison memoirs, Min Skhirāt ilā Tazmamart, tadhkiratu dhahāb wa iyyāb ilā al- jaḥīm (From Skhirat to Tazmamart: A Roundtrip Ticket to Hell) in the social-ist daily newspaper al- Ittiḥād al- Ishtirākī (Th e Socialist Union) in 2000 was a watershed moment that kindled the Moroccan people’s curiosity about their collective memory of political disappearance, state violence, and repres-sion, and established this jail as an icon for a burgeoning of other- archives.2Against all expectations of forgetting, Tazmamart, by the sheer quantity of literary, fi lmic, and journalistic publications generated by the plight of its survivors, has shift ed boundaries of authorship, and instituted novel ways of thinking about archives and recording histories of forcible disappearance in Morocco.3Th is chapter demonstrates that the trajectory of Tazmamart’s eponymous prison from a site utterly denied to a transnational literary phenomenon has produced three complementary and interconnected sets of other- archives
© 2023 Fordham University Press, New York, USA

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter i
  2. Contents vii
  3. Preface ix
  4. Note on Transliteration xiii
  5. Abbreviations xv
  6. Introduction 1
  7. 1 (Re)Invented Tradition and the Performance of Amazigh Other- Archives in Public Life 27
  8. 2 Emplaced Memories of Jewish- Muslim Morocco 63
  9. 3 Jewish- Muslim Intimacy and the History of a Lost Citizenship 89
  10. 4 Making Tazmamart a Transnational Other- Archive 115
  11. 5 Other- Archives Transform Moroccan Historiography 150
  12. Conclusion 177
  13. Acknowledgments 189
  14. Notes 193
  15. Bibliography 253
  16. Index 281
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https://doi.org/10.1515/9781531501471-008

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter i
  2. Contents vii
  3. Preface ix
  4. Note on Transliteration xiii
  5. Abbreviations xv
  6. Introduction 1
  7. 1 (Re)Invented Tradition and the Performance of Amazigh Other- Archives in Public Life 27
  8. 2 Emplaced Memories of Jewish- Muslim Morocco 63
  9. 3 Jewish- Muslim Intimacy and the History of a Lost Citizenship 89
  10. 4 Making Tazmamart a Transnational Other- Archive 115
  11. 5 Other- Archives Transform Moroccan Historiography 150
  12. Conclusion 177
  13. Acknowledgments 189
  14. Notes 193
  15. Bibliography 253
  16. Index 281
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