the challenge of moroccan cultural journals of the 1960s

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The Challenge of Moroccan Cultural Journals of the 1960s

Gonzalo Fernández ParrillaUniversidad Autónoma de Madrid

[email protected]

Abstract

A few years after Morocco’s much longed-for achievement of independence (1956), a new generation of intellectuals too young to have participated in what is widely called the nationalist movement burst onto the cultural and political scenes, and shifted the focus of debate from the “glorious” past towards social and international realities. The 1960s witnessed the appearance of a diverse group of political, scientific and especially cultural and literary journals that changed the course of intellectual life in Morocco. The creation of these new channels of expression out of the emerging institutions of independent Morocco meant a rupture with the prevailing patterns dominated by nationalist and salafī ideals. This article intends to highlight the role and spirit of these generally overlooked journals within their contextual and historical framework.

Keywords

Cultural Journals – Moroccan Literature – Manifestos – Francophone literature – Press – Souffles – Aqlām

I Introduction

In the last few decades a variety of processes involving the rewriting of the history of Arabic literature and culture have taken place, affecting paradigms, categories, concepts, boundaries and sources. From within the more tradi-tional field of literary studies, as well as from newly emerging fields like post-colonial, gender or cultural studies, fresh approaches have been generated to tackle the history of Arabic literature and culture. These new disciplinary

105The Challenge of Moroccan Cultural Journals of the 1960s

Journal of Arabic Literature 45 (2014) 104-128

perspectives provide useful tools for examining and contesting the still hege-monic Orientalist, nationalist and pan-Arabist discourses and canons. Shifting away, for instance, from the idea of inḥiṭāṭ or literary “dark ages” that has for decades affected our understanding of centuries of Arabic literature, the field has moved on to embrace categories like post-classical, with all the implica-tions which derive from such a change.1 Peripheral literatures—such as those from the Gulf and the Maghreb, or the work of women writers2—that have been marginalized since the canonization efforts of Jurjī Zaydān and the Orientalists, are increasingly being re-integrated into new canons that revise and expand those earlier versions. While these processes of rewriting canonic-ity affect the general or transnational canon of Arabic literature, they operate more intensely on the national level, where the earliest orthodox histories of national literatures are being constantly re-evaluated and expanded to encom-pass longer periods and more genres.3 Nonetheless, despite all these method-ological innovations, historians of “national” Arabic literatures have tended to pay exclusive attention to Arabic texts, while postcolonial approaches have generally disregarded texts in Arabic.4 This is certainly true in the field of Moroccan literature, where there is a lack of integrated views between Arabic and “Francophone” literatures (not to mention Amāzīgh) that fails to reflect

1 Key works that have advocated for this reconsideration are The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature’s volume, Arabic Literature in the Post-Classical Period ed. Roger Allen (Cambridge: Cambridge, 2006); Essays in Arabic Literary Biography, 1350-1850 ed. Joseph Lowry and Devin Stewart (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2009). Also important are the works of Thomas Bauer and many others on Mamluk literature, or the many recent works on popular literature in Arabic.

2 For the past couple of decades, the reintegration of women writers into the canon has been crucial to the process of revising the canon. See Joseph Zeidan, Arab Women Novelists (New York: State University of New York Press, 1995), and these three works by Buthaynah Shaʿabān: 100 ʿām min al-riwāyah al-nisāʾiyyah al-ʿarabiyyah (Beirut: Dār al-Ādāb, 1999), Dhākirah li-l-mustaqbal: Mawsūʿat al-kātibah al-ʿarabiyyah (Cairo: al-Majlis al-aʿlā li al-thaqāfah/Muʾassasat Nūr, 2005), and Arab Women Writers (Cairo: American University of Cairo, 2008) in its (incomplete) English version. For more recent works, see Hoda Elsadda, Gender, Nation and the Arabic Novel: Egypt 1892-2008 (Edinburgh/New York, Edinburgh University Press and Syracuse University Press, 2012).

3 On new approaches to rewriting national identity formation, one should mention Joseph A. Massad, Colonial Effects: The making of National Identity in Jordan (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001) and Christopher Stone, Popular Culture and Nationalism in Lebanon: The Fairuz and Rahbani Nation (London/New York: Routledge, 2007).

4 See Waïl Hassan, “Postcolonial Theory and Modern Arabic Literature,” Journal of Arabic Literature, 33, no. 1 (2002): 50-61.

106 Fernández Parrilla


the interrelation between the many diverse facets of the complex process of postcolonial identity formation.5

Placing the debates in that disputed frontier between the “field of cultural production and the field of power”6 framed by Pierre Bourdieu, and having as reference the work that Elisabeth Kendall has done for Egypt, I would like to contribute to the reconstruction of the “vibrant dynamic”7 powered by inde-pendent journals in Morocco. Kendall’s statement on the Egyptian scene that the cultural field has been “broadly reliant on and inseparable from the greater field of power”8 is fully applicable to the Moroccan case. In Morocco, the field of cultural production has been crucially dependent on the field of power since colonial times, and journals have played a unique role in the close intertwine-ment of the cultural and the political. Moreover, despite the importance of cultural journals, they have very often been ignored as a source for investigat-ing intellectual and literary history.9 As is the case with Arabic literature, the

5 In regards to this rewriting process in Morocco, see Adria Lawrence for the political perspec-tive: “Rethinking Moroccan Nationalism, 1930–44,” The Journal of North African Studies, 17, no. 3 (2012): 475-490. In the literary realm, see Roger Allen, “Rewriting Literary History: The Case of Moroccan Fiction in Arabic,” The Journal of North African Studies, 16, no. 33 (2011): 311-324. For the revision of the literary canon in relation to women writers, see Rashīdah Bin Masʿūd, al-Marʾah wa-l-kitābah (Casablanca: Ifrīqiyā al-Sharq, 1994). For other pivotal institu-tions, see Sandra Carter, “Constructing an Independent Moroccan Nation and National Identity through Cinema and Institutions,” The Journal of North African Studies, 13, no. 4 (2008), 531-559; and for the emergent Amāzīgh literary field, see Stéphanie Pouessel, “Writing as Resistance: Berber Literature and the Challenges Surrounding the Emergence of a Berber Literary Field in Morocco,” Nationalities Papers: The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity, no. 40-3, (2012): 373-394.

6 Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature, ed. Randal Johnson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 43.

7 Elisabeth Kendall, Literature, Journalism and the Avant-Garde: Intersection in Egypt (New York: Routledge, 2006), 1. I will rely also on the ideas of Richard Jacquemond, who has devoted special attention to the state’s tendency in Egypt to “control the intellectual market” (Richard Jacquemond, Entre scribes et écrivains. Le champ littéraire dans l’Égypt contemporaine (Arles: Sindbad-Actes Sud, 2003), 32), in addition to Yasmine Ramadan, Representing the Nation: Spatial Poetics in the Literature of the Sixties Generation in Egypt (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2012).

8 Kendall, 1.9 In her book on Spanish literary journals, Las revistas poéticas españolas (1939-1975) (Madrid:

Turner, 1976), Fanny Rubio tackles the double neglect of literary journals by academia and libraries. She emphasizes the crucial role played by these “unusual collective enterprises,” a medium that she considers unique for reconstructing cultural history, especially in situations involving a literary vacuum, such as postwar Spain, or, in our case, post-independence Morocco. Because of the real risk of even physical loss, some historians of Arab media have



Arabic journals that have attracted academic attention are mostly Lebanese and Egyptian, while their Moroccan counterparts have usually been neglected by panoramic historical works.10

I argue that the nationalists who fought for independence were the hege-monic “national” until the 1960s, when a new generation of young intellec-tuals—in a clear attempt to distance themselves from the nationalist elites installed in power—founded several journals that contested the official- institutional model.11 As was also the case in Egypt, independent journals were to play a key role, becoming a site for contestation and a hotbed of innovative cultural, literary and political practices. The creation of these journals out of independent Morocco’s emerging institutions meant a rupture with the pre-vailing patterns dominated by nationalist and salafī ideals. Moreover, with the rise of this “counter-hegemonic”12 generation came a displacement in the meaning of “nationalist,” which acquired new nuances and at the time became synonymous with political transformation and cultural renovation.13 Many of these Moroccan journals—imbued with a sense of mission—published

highlighted the urgency of rewriting the history of Arab news papers and journals from before the age of online journals. See, for example, Tarik Sabry, “Introduction: Arab Cultural Studies: Between ‘Reterritorialisation’ and ‘Deterritorialisation’ ” in, Arab Cultural Studies: Mapping the Field, ed. Tarik Sabry (London: I. B. Tauris, 2012), 1-31. Historians of Moroccan culture, such as Abderrahman Tenkoul, have also complained that cultural journals have not been taken seriously in academic research, and that due to this preju-dice researchers have disregarded crucial elements in the cultural and literary history of Morocco. See Abderrahmane Tenkoul, “Les revues culturelles,” Regards Sur la Culture Marocaine, no. 1 (1988), 10. I will be retaining the spelling of authors’ names as they appear when they publish in French or other languages.

10 See, for example, Ami Ayalon, The Press in the Arab Middle East: A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). See also the volume edited by Rosella Dorigo in the journal Quaderni di Studi Arabi, 18 (2000).

11 Richard Jacquemond has examined this same rupture between the state and intellectuals in Egypt and recalls how, in Egypt, “le processus de distanciation vis-à-vis de l’Etat engagé a partir de 1967” ended up with the foundation of independent journals (Jacquemond, Entre scribes et écrivains: Le champ littéraire dans l’Égypt contemporaine, 43).

12 Dina Matar, “Rethinking the Arab State and Culture: Preliminary Thoughts” in Arab Cultural Studies: Mapping the Field, ed. Tarik Sabry (London: I. B. Tauris, 2012), 125. On the “multifaceted interplay of power, co-optation, and dissent” on the Moroccan cul-tural scene, see the special issue of Journal of African Cultural Studies: Contemporary Moroccan Cultural Production: Between Dissent and Co-optation, 25:3, (2013), coordinated by Karima Laachir.

13 Saʿīd Yaqṭīn, “al-Ibdāʿ al-adabī al-maghribī wa-tanwīʿāt al-huwiyyah wa al-intimāʾ,” al-Ḥayāt, November 14, 1997, 20.



manifesto-like opening editorials that constitute a key element in the forma-tion of a new literary space.14 It is the content of these editorials that I tackle throughout this article in order to reconstruct the ideas and ideals of Morocco’s “sixties generation.”

II From Nationalist to National Journals

The press is usually considered to have started in Morocco in the city of Tangier with the 1889 foundation of the first local newspaper published in Arabic, Al-Maghrib (Morocco). Other journals—such as Al Moghreb Al Aksa (1883)—had been published before in Tangier, although they were in English and Spanish. Due in part to an active community of Lebanese émigrés, Tangier maintained its pioneering journalistic role until 1912, with newspapers such as Al-Saʿādah (Happiness) (1904),15 Iẓhār al-Ḥaqq (Revelation of Truth) (1904), Al-Fajr (The Dawn) (1908)—a sort of official newspaper of the Makhzen and linked also to the al-Qarawīyīn mosque-university circles—or Lisān al-Maghrib (Morocco’s Mouthpiece) (1907), which published the draft of the first constitu-tional project.16 With the proclamation of the protectorate in 1912, many news-papers and journals were banned, and the main focus of journalistic activity shifted to the capitals of the double protectorate, Rabat and Tetouan. Together with these newspapers, cultural journals began to be published, the first of which was Al-Ṣabāḥ (Morning) in 1908.

Historians of the Moroccan press distinguish between two periods: before and after 1930, when the so-called Berber Dahir was issued. The Dahir gave birth to what it is broadly referred to as the Nationalist Movement (al-ḥarakah al-waṭaniyyah), as well as political structures such as Kutlat al-ʿAmal al-Waṭanī/

14 Pierre Bourdieu refers to the relevance of manifestos to the “space of literary” (The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature, 30). Hayden White, meanwhile, consid-ers the manifesto “a radical genre. It presupposes a time of crisis [. . .] And it usually calls for action” (Hayden White, afterward to Manifestos for History, by Keith Jenkins (London: Routledge, 2007), 220).

15 Transferred to Rabat in 1913, al-Saʿādah became the official newspaper of the French protectorate.

16 See Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn al-Kattānī: al-Ṣiḥāfah al-maghribiyyah: nashʾatuhā wa-taṭawwuruhā (al-juzʾ al-awwal) (Rabat: Nashr Wizārat al-Anbāʾ); Muḥammad al-Mannūnī, Maẓāhir yaqẓat al-Maghrib al-ḥadīth, 2ª ed. vol. 1 (Casablanca: al-Madāris, 1985), 283-284, and C. Souriau-Hoebrechts, La presse maghrébine: Libye, Tunisie, Maroc, Algérie (Paris: CNRS, 1962). See also Muḥammad Qāsimī, “al-Ṣiḥāfah al-maghribiyyah fī ʿahd al-ḥimāyah,” al-Naqd al-shiʿrī al-ḥadīth bi-l-Maghrib, (PhD diss., Oujda: Mohamed I University, 2000).



Comité d’Action Marocaine, an umbrella for different religious groups and lit-erary clubs demanding reforms,17 which was founded in 1934 by prominent nationalist and religious leaders, such as ʿAllāl al-Fāsī, and backed by the Sultan. The Nationalist Movement generated journalistic initiatives mostly in Arabic, but also the creation of the French-language magazine Maghreb (1932) in Paris, and L’Action du Peuple (1933) in Fes (often referred to as the first Moroccan nationalist journal in French).

In the 1930s, Morocco experienced an indigenous flowering of cultural journals, starting in 1932 with the foundation of al-Maghrib (Morocco). This phase of peak activity was to some extent due to the difficulties in founding regular newspapers during the protectorate period, when colonial authorities imposed obstacles on the publication of political information.18 As was the case with sport and theater associations, cultural journals served as a means for nationalist activities and became spaces for political action.19 Besides the very relevant monthly Al-Maghrib20 (1932-37), other key newspapers and journals were published from the 1930s onward such as Al-Maghrib al-Jadīd21 (The New Morocco) (1935-36), founded by the nationalist leader ʿAbd al-Khāliq al-Ṭurrīs (Torres) and directed by al-Makkī al-Nāṣirī and Muḥammad al-ʿArabī b. Jallūn; Al-Maghrib (1937-1938), promoted by Saʿīd Ḥajjī;22 Al-Nubūgh (The Genius)

17 To this respect, see Ẓāhirat al-andiyah al-adabiyyah fī al-Maghrib (Rabat: Manshūrāt al-Nādī al-Jarārī 14, 1998).

18 See Amina Aouchar, La presse marocaine dans la lutte pour l’indépendance (1933-1956) (Casablanca: Wallada, 1990), and Amina Ihraï-Aouchar, “La presse marocaine d’opposition au Protectorat,” Hesperis Tamuda 20-21, no. 1 (1982-1983): 333-348.

19 See for instance ʿAbd al-Jabbār al-Simīḥī, Nashʾat al-masraḥ wa-l-riyāḍah bi-l-Maghrib (Rabat, Maktabat al-Maʿārif, 1986).

20 Considered the first cultural journal to call for the reform and defense of the Arabic lan-guage, Al-Maghrib was founded in Rabat by the Algerian Muḥammad al-Ṣāliḥ Mīsah. In its forty-three published issues, it paid special attention to subjects related to women and education. See ʿAbd al-Raḥīm al-ʿAllām, Min al-iṣlāḥ ilā al-tanwīr. Qirāʾah fī al-mashrūʿ al-thaqāfī li-majallatay “Majallat al-Maghrib” wa “al-ʿArabī ” (Rabat: Manshūrāt al- Mawjah, 2007).

21 Published with the subtitle of Majallah ʿilmiyyah li-khidmat al-thaqāfah al-maghribiyyah (Scientific Journal in Service of Moroccan Culture).

22 Ḥajjī had already promoted journals such as Al-Widād in 1927. In 1937 he launched both a cultural supplement with the daily newspaper Al-Maghrib that was considered the first of its kind, as well as the printing house al-Maghrib. Najāt al-Marīnī recalls that after colo-nial authorities rejected the petition of Saʿīd Ḥajjī to publish the journal Marrākush in 1935, a committee was created in 1936 in favor of the Arab press in Morocco (“Mafhūm al-iṣlāh fī al-kitābah al-ṣaḥafiyyah bi-madīnat Salā” in al-Adab al-maghribī al-ḥadīth: ʿalamāt wa-maqāṣid (Rabat: Manshūrāt Rabiṭat Udabāʾ al-Maghrib 2006), 21).



(1939-40); and the most influential of all, Risālat al-Maghrib23 (Morocco’s Message) (1942-52), launched by the faqīh Muḥammad Ghāzī. The latter’s first issue appeared on October 1st 1942, and from its inception it was connected with the nationalist milieu and the embryonic stage of the Ḥizb al-Istiqlāl/Parti de l’Istiqlal (Independence Party), founded in 1944. After his return from study-ing at Cairo University and working later at the Bureau du Maghreb Arabe in Cairo,24 ʿAbd al-Karīm Ghallāb became editor-in-chief of Risālat al-Maghrib, which became an intellectual and literary school for nationalists and the Independence Party.25

If Risālat al-Maghrib was one of the first journals to have a cultural and lit-erary vocation combined with the inevitable political dimension of any such project in the late colonial period, for al-Shāwī the first genuinely and strictly cultural journal was Al-Thaqāfah al-Maghribiyyah (Moroccan Culture) (1941-45), directed by Muḥammad b. Ghabrīṭ, on the pages of which were under-taken the first steps to develop “culture independently of politics.”26 There are many other journals that, despite their importance, are not usually taken

23 Risālat al-Maghrib was published with the subtitle of “Fī al-ʿilm wa-l-adab wa-l-ijtimāʿ” (Morocco’s message on science, literature and society). Due to censorship and economic troubles its publication was very often interrupted.

24 The Bureau du Maghreb Arabe was founded in Berlin in 1943 and later established in Damascus and still later in Cairo with the creation of the Arab League, launching the journal Al-Maghrib al-ʿarabī (The Arab Maghreb) in Berlin in Arabic and German. See Toumader Khatib, Culture et politique dans le mouvement nationaliste marocain au Machreq (Tetouan: Publications de L’Association Tétouan-Asmir, 1996). Khatib recalls that one of the missions of the Bureau was the “dénonciation du système colonial” through the publication of books by authors such as ʿAllāl al-Fāsī and ʿAbd al-Majīd ibn Jallūn (91).

25 In 1949 ʿ Allāl al-Fāsī published different articles in the journal that would later become his famous book, al-Naqd al-dhātī, published in 1951 (Aḥmad Ziyādī, Al-Maktabah al-maghribiyyah fī ʿahd al-ḥimāyah (Rabat: Manshūrāt Ittiḥād Kuttāb al-Maghrib, 2003), 239). Besides poetry, Risālat al-Maghrib was also a vital platform for new prose genres, which were at the time broadly termed qiṣṣah. Literary works so relevant for the develop-ment of new narrative genres as the historical narratives of Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn ʿAbd Allāh or ʿAbd al-Majīd ibn Jallūn’s pioneering autobiographical work, Fī al-ṭufūlah, were first published on the pages of Risālat al-Maghrib in serialized form. Fī al-ṭufūlah was published between 1949 and 1951. For the development of narrative genres, see Gonzalo Fernández Parrilla, La literatura marroquí contemporánea. La novela y la crítica literaria (Cuenca: Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, 2006).

26 Its subtitle was “Majallah fikriyyah shahriyyah” (Monthly Journal of Thought). See ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Shāwī, “al-Thaqāfah wa al-siyāsah, waẓifah am tabʿiyyah,” Al-Mulḥaq al-Thaqāfī, Al-Ittiḥad al-Ishtirākī, 10 April, 1993.



into account by historians of Moroccan culture, the probable reason being that they were published in the decades before independence in the capital of the Spanish protectorate of Tetouan, where the foundation of newspapers and journals was at times easier for nationalists than in territories under the French mandate.27

In his pioneering article on cultural journals in Morocco, Abderrahman Tenkoul argues that most publications before independence were character-ized by their clear nationalist and salafī vocation, a stance also predominant in most of the articles published. According to Tenkoul, these journals were an instrument “to express national cultural values and to show readers the material and symbolic richness of their patrimony.”28 In fact, one of the main goals of these publications was to contest the establishment of colonial cul-ture, confronting the growing presence of the French language. As Yaqṭīn has pointed out, the usual adjective for literature and culture during the colonial period was “nationalist” (waṭanī), which to a large extent meant anti-colonial.29

27 Among them, many of which were short-lived, we might recall Al-Salām (Peace) (1933-34) edited by Muḥammad Dāwud in Tetouan, Al-Rīf (Rif) (1936), Al-Waḥdah al-Maghribiyyah (Moroccan Unity) (1937), Al-Ḥayāt (Life) (1937), Al-Taqaddum (Progress) (1938), Lisān al-Dīn (Religion’s Mouthpiece) (1946-56), Al-Anwār (Lights) (1946-56), Al-Anīs (The Confidant) (1946-56), Al-Maʿrifah (Knowledge) (1947), Al-Iṣlāḥ (Reform) (1952), and Al-Ḥadīqah (The Garden) (1955). See ʿAbd al-Raḥīm al-ʿAllām, 20. Defined by some Spanish historians as “rachitic,” the Spanish colonial venture in Morocco was nevertheless marked by cultural initiatives such as the magazines Ketama and Al-Motamid, which pub-lished the first translations of modern Arabic literature into Spanish. The aim of Al-Motamid, under the editorship of Trina Mercader, was to acquaint Spanish readers with Arabic poetry. The magazine was published in Larache from 1947 to 1952 and in Tetouan from 1953 to 1955. Ketama, the literary supplement of Tamuda, a colonial maga-zine published by the Delegación de Educación y Cultura de la Alta Comisaría of Spain in Morocco between 1953 and 1959 under the editorship of the Spanish poet Jacinto López Gorjé. See Ketama, edición facsimil (Valladolid: AECID/Fundación Jorge Guillén, 2011. Among the many Moroccan writers involved in these initiatives, it is worth recalling the name of Muḥammad Sabbāgh.

28 “Un instrument dont la vocation principale est d’exprimer les valeurs culturelles du pays, de révéler aux lecteurs toute la richesse matérielle et symbolique de leur patrimoine” (Abderrahmane Tenkoul, “Les revues culturelles,” 10). See also David Stenner, “Networking for Independence: the Moroccan Nationalist Movement and Its Global Campaign against French Colonialism,” The Journal of North African Studies, 17, no. 4 (2012): 573-594.

29 Saʿīd Yaqṭīn, “al-Ibdāʿ al-adabī al-maghribī wa tanwīʿāt al-huwiyyah wa-l-intimāʾ,” Al-Ḥayāt, November 14, 1997, 20. Adria Lawrence engages in a more complex analysis of this period, which was characterized by a diversity of responses to French rule. She distin-guishes reformist demands from sheer nationalist aspirations and proposes a “dynamic



The resort to titles that often included terms such as al-Maghrib was a clear sign of the sheer political character of these initiatives that aspired to rehabili-tate “national culture.”30

Following independence, most Moroccan intellectuals involved in the Nationalist Movement and the Independence Party had to assume duties in the new administration and institutions. From the ministries, predominantly those of Culture, Education and Islamic Affairs, as well as from other insti-tutions created in independent Morocco, they pursued a cultural and ideo-logical project that was characterized by the amalgam of further territorial aspirations31 and salafī religious tenets that continued to dominate the intel-lectual scene.32 I argue that the cultural field and the launching of new jour-nals remained controlled by the nationalists, for whom Arabic language and Arabic literature were considered key features of Moroccan national identity as much as Islam.

The first publication to see the light of day after independence and to incarnate the discursive practices of the new state was Daʿwat al-Ḥaqq (The Call for Truth). Founded in 1957 and still published today, this journal was supported by the new Ministry of Islamic Affairs (close to the most conserva-tive sensibilities within the Independence Party) and, in what would become a new ritual, also symbolically backed by the monarchy.33 During its first years,

understanding of Moroccan anti-colonialism,” since it adopted multiple forms. Together with the nuances of this distinction, the ideological background of what is called the Salafīyyah movement in Morocco should be taken into account (“Rethinking Moroccan Nationalism, 1930–44,” The Journal of North African Studies, 17, no. 3 (2012): 475-490). In this respect see ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Shāwī, al-Salafīyyah wa al-waṭaniyyah (Beirut: Mu ʾassasat al-abḥāth al-ijtimāʿiyyah, 1985) and Mukhliṣ al-Sabtī, al-Salafīyyah al-wahhābiyyah bi-l-Maghrib (Rabat: Manshūrāt al-Majallah al-Maghribiyyah li-ʿIlm al-Ijtimāʿ al-Siyāsī, 1993).

30 ʿAbd al-Raḥīm al-ʿAllām points out that the central subject of all these journals was al-Maghrib (Min al-iṣlāḥ ilā al-tanwīr, 34).

31 This aspect of Moroccan nationalism—the unfinished independence of “Greater Morocco” including Mauritania, parts of Algeria and Mali and of course the Western Sahara—is usually referred to as “irredentism.” One of its ideologues was again ʻAllāl al-Fāsī, and the Independence Party was deeply involved. What is often called “the ques-tion of the Sahara,” is probably the most delicate issue in Moroccan politics, one that has conditioned national and foreign policies for decades.

32 For Tenkoul, this set of journals was “l’organe privilégié de propagation des idées fonda-mentales du mouvemente salafīste, dont les principaux ténors et adeptes occuperont à l’Independence des postes-clé dans les Ministères de la culture, de l’enseignement, des affaires islamiques.” See Tenkoul, “Les revues culturelles,” 10.

33 Daʿwat al-ḥaqq—with the subtitle of Majallah shahriyyah taʿnī bi-l-dirāsāt al-islāmiyyah wa-bi-shuʾūn al-thaqāfah wa-l-fikr (Monthly journal devoted to Islamic studies, culture



Daʿwat al-Ḥaqq was directed by prominent figures related to the Nationalist Movement and the salafīyyah, such as al-Makkī Bādāw and ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Ṣaḥrawī. Described as a “guardian of Arab-Islamic values,” it dealt predomi-nantly with religious and moral subjects, but also tackled literary and cultural issues from a “literary conservative” perspective.34

In addition to Daʿwat al-Ḥaqq, another of these cultural-literary-religious journals immersed in Qurʾanic allusions and backed by State institutions was Al-Bayyinah35 (The Evidence), founded in 1962 and also supported by the Ministry of Islamic Affairs.36 Its first editor was none other than ʿAllāl al-Fāsī, who published widely in the journal, where many of his poems appeared for the first time. The editor-in-chief was again the younger but already prominent ʿAbd al-Karīm Ghallāb. In 1964, other figures similarly representative of the political and cultural scene created Jamʿiyyat Shabāb al-Nahḍah al-Islāmiyyah (Youth Association for Islamic Renaissance) and its organ, the monthly “Islamic” journal Al-Imān (Faith). Among the usual collaborators behind these magazines (besides those already mentioned) were figures such as Muḥammad al-Fāsī, Muḥammad al-Ḥalwī, ʿAbd Allāh Kannūn, Ḥasan al-Sāʾiḥ, Aḥmad ʿAbd

and thought)—was supported by the Ministry of Islamic Affairs then known as Wizārat ʿumūm al-awqāf wa-l-shuʾūn al-islāmiyyah. Until the 1980s it was a pulpit for salafī ideals with roots in the Nationalist Movement, when it started to give voice to the emerging fundamentalist trends. In a groundbreaking study of the journal, Lidia Fernández Fonfría affirms that Daʿwat al-ḥaqq, which started mainly as a cultural project but shifted in the 1960s to become a means of consolidating the monarchy, reveals the relationship between the state, the monarchy and the religious establishment (Llamada de la verdad (Daʿwat al-ḥaqq). Análisis de una Revista official del Marruecos post-colonial (BA Memoire, Universidad de Salamanca, 2012), 44). Access to the more than four hundred issues may be found here http://www.habous.gov.ma/daouat-alhaq/.

34 The original descriptions are, “Gardienne des valeurs arabo-islamiques,” and “conserva-trice sur le plan littéraire” (Abdelkebir Khatibi, Le roman maghrébin (Paris: Maspero, 1968), 34).

35 Published under the motto Majallat al-risālah al-khālidah wa-l-thaqāfah al-mutaḥarrirah (Journal of the Eternal Message and the Liberated Culture).

36 Aḥmad Shirrāk distinguishes between three kinds of cultural journals: institutional, professional-associative and properly cultural See Aḥmad Shirrāk, “al-Majallāt al- thaqāfiyyah bi-l-Maghrib (mashhad al-tarākum wa al-asʾilah)” in Masālik al-qirāʾah (Rabat: Manshūrāt Ittiḥād Kuttāb al-Maghrib, 2001), 31-66. For other state-produced peri-odicals and institutional journals established at the time, such as Jaridat al-shurṭah in 1961, see Jonathan Smolin, “Didactic Entertainment: The Moroccan Police Journal and the Origins of the Arabic Police Procedural,” Internatonal Journal of Middle Eastern Studies (IJMES) 45 (2013): 695–714. The official press agency Wikālat al-Maghrib al-ʿArabī li-l-anbāʾ/Maghreb Arab Press was founded in 1959 and the official newspaper of the Ministry of Information Al-Anbāʾ (The News)—still published today—was founded in 1963.



al-Salām al-Baqqālī, Muḥammad al-Mannūnī and ʿAbd al-Hādī al-Tāzī, all of whom were involved in the characteristic amalgam of patriotism, religiosity, journalism and literature of the time. In fact, all the contributors to these insti-tutional journals and initiatives came largely from the same group. Invested with charismatic legitimacy, their writings had already been present in previ-ous decades in the publications of the nationalists.

Together with these purely official initiatives, one of the most important platforms established in the 1960s was the cultural supplement of Al-ʿAlam (The Banner) newspaper, Al-ʿAlam al-Thaqāfī (The Cultural Banner) that started publication in 1969 and is still published today. It should be remem-bered that since its foundation in 1946, Al-ʿAlam served as the mouthpiece of the Independence Party, itself a sort of second state residing in the shadows during the early years of independent Morocco and soon becoming an opposi-tion party as a result of the hegemonic role of the monarchy (especially after the assumption to the throne of Hassan II in 1961); the journal had been very open to publishing literature (mainly poetry and literary criticism).37

Despite all these official and institutional initiatives, many critics are of the opinion that Moroccan culture suffered a backlash during the early years of independence.38 This was due to the priorities of the political agenda, which was still saturated by patriotic and religious attitudes. However, a few purely cultural and independent journals were launched, such as Risālat al-adīb (The Message of the Man of Letters). Founded in Marrakech in 1958 by the asso-ciation al-Adīb and Muḥammad al-Ḥabīb al-Furqānī, Risālat al-adīb has been highlighted for its primarily literary orientation, and for being an open space for young writers and women writers.

III From Institutional to Independent Cultural Journals

As in many colonized countries, the end of colonial rule in Morocco cre-ated high hopes that were relatively short-lived and quickly displaced by a

37 For the close relation of politics, literature and literary criticism, see Muḥammad Khirmāsh, al-Naqd al-adabī al-ḥadīth fī al-Maghrib (Casablanca: Dār Ifrīqiyā al-Sharq, 1988), 261.

38 Even authors deeply involved in the nationalists’ project such as Ghallāb recognized this cultural drought in the first issue of one of the initiatives aimed to palliate it (ʿAbd al-Karīm Ghallāb, “Malāmiḥ al-adab al-ʿarabī al-ḥadīth bi-l-Maghrib,” Āfāq 1 (1963), 24).



growing disillusionment and disenchantment..39 The ultranationalist-religious spirit that had remained hegemonic in state promoted cultural projects after independence began to lose touch with the younger generation. After being dominated by the “nationalists” before and after independence, the cultural field shifted in the 1960s from the institutional to the independent realm. If the political had been the prevailing factor (for obvious reasons) before inde-pendence, the cultural field became even more reliant on politics after inde-pendence. The cultural-political overlap was intensified, although the heart of debates concerning the “glorious” past and the struggles of nationalists tended towards social and political issues. As in Egypt, journals were to play—yet again—a key role in the emergence of a new political and literary generation outside the control of the State.40

Since the end of the 1950s, Moroccan intellectuals had started to debate the need for a national association of writers that would deal with their profes-sional concerns and forward the longed-for goal of Moroccan cultural devel-opment. What is known today as Ittiḥād Kuttāb al-Maghrib (Morocco Writers’ Union) was created by intellectuals from Morocco and other countries of the Maghreb under the name of Ittiḥād Kuttāb al-Maghrib al-ʿArabī (The Arab Maghreb Writers’ Union), with its first conference convened in Rabat in 1961.41 The organization’s original title was retained until 1968, when it became exclu-sively Moroccan due to political differences among Maghreb countries. The

39 The idea of disillusionment with the post-colonial nation-state and its reflection in cul-tural life has also been developed by Yasmine Ramadan, Representing the Nation: Spatial Poetics in the Literature of the Sixties Generation in Egypt (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2012). I thank Laura Casielles for referring me to the following meaningful meditation of Abdellatif Laâbi to this respect: “L’indépendance se fit attendre. Puis elle fut. Quelques semaines de fête, quelques mois tout au plus, et les musiciens, les danseuses, les saltim-banques et les vendeurs de potions magiques ont plié bagage. Le ciel ne s’est pas ouvert exceptionnellement comme pour une nuit du Destin. La manne attendue a dû tomber en plein jour et elle est allée directement dans les poches de quelques malins bien informés des caprices du ciel et de la vénalité des devins. Dans ma ville natale, où les espérances avaient été des plus violentes, pour la majorité des gens la vie d’avant reprenait, plus sou-vent gris que rose. Qui parmi les miens aurait pu m’enseigner clairement que ce que nous avions vécu collectivement ressemblait à un avortement, que la porte de l’avenir à peine entrouverte était en train de se refermer?” (Abdellatif Laâbi, Le livre imprévu (Paris: Éditions de la Différence, 2010), 44-45).

40 Richard Jacquemond has examined this same rupture between the state and intellectuals in Egypt.

41 See Ittiḥād Kuttāb al-Maghrib. Khamsūn sanah min al-ḥuḍūr al-mutajaddid 1961-2011 (Rabat: Manshūrāt Ittiḥād Kuttāb al-Maghrib, 2012). See also the official web of the Union, http://www.unecma1.net/.



Union soon became a pillar of cultural life in independent Morocco, playing an important role in the development of modern Moroccan literature and cul-ture. Following the “cultural drought”42 experienced after independence, some critics regarded the creation of the Union as an attempt to revive the cultural and literary efflorescence generally called the Nahḍah, which had (arguably paradoxically) been experienced during the colonial period.43 One of its presi-dents, Aḥmad al-Yabūrī, has described the Union in such terms: “it is not an artificial plant, but rather a cultural institution that opened itself to modernity in order to enrich our creative and ideological traditions.”44 The first president of the Union (1961-68) was philosopher, professor and writer (in Arabic and French), Muḥammad ʿAzīz al-Ḥabābī (Lahbabi), creator of the concept of per-sonnalisme musulmam.45 After the versatile Lahbabi, some other prominent figures in intellectual and political life became presidents of the association, including ʿAbd al-Karīm Ghallāb (1968-1976), Muḥammad Barrādah (1976-83), Aḥmad al-Yabūrī (1983-89), Muḥammad al-Ashʿarī (1989-96), and the most recently elected (in 2012), ʿAbd al-Raḥīm al-ʿAllām.

One of the Union’s essential contributions was undoubtedly its creation of the journal Āfāq (Horizons). Launched in 1963 and published to this day, this organ of the Union devoted a good deal of energy to developing and dissemi-nating Moroccan literature and culture in Arabic, “our national (qawmiyyah) language.” It soon became one of the most prestigious channels of expression for Moroccan writers. In an anonymous foreword-editorial to the first issue of the journal, it was stated that its goal is “the faithful expression of thought in the Maghreb.”46 The first issue also contains the manifesto-like “Ilā al-amām” (“Onwards”) signed by Lahbabi, who finds in the man of letters a duty “to cre-ate consciousness” and, quoting Qur’anic expressions, argues for a universalist nation, open both to the cultures of the world, as well as self critique. Evoking the development of other societies such as China, the USA and the USSR, Lahbabi complains that, while other peoples in the world “adopt the future,

42 ʿAbd al-Karīm Ghallāb, “Malāmiḥ al-adab al-ʿarabī al-ḥadīth bi-l-Maghrib,” Āfāq 1 (1963), 24.43 In this respect see, for instance, Muḥammad al-Mannūnī, Maẓāhir yaqẓat al-Maghrib

al-ḥadīth (Casablanca: al-Madāris, 1985) and ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Shāwī, al-Takhalluf wa-l-nahḍah (Casablanca: Manshūrāt al-Mawjah, 1998).

44 Aḥmad al-Yabūrī, “Tajribat muʾassasah thaqāfiyyah,” Al-Ittiḥād al-Ishtirākī, October 25, 1996, 2.

45 This is the title of his book, Le personnalisme musulmam, published in 1964.46 It is curious that, although the editorial considers Libya, Tunis, Algeria and Morocco to be

countries of the Maghreb, Mauritania is not mentioned. Indeed, for certain nationalists it was a natural part of the historic “Greater Morocco,” and had even been claimed as such at the United Nations.



we spend all our time reciting the glories of the past,” simply because “it is the past, or our past.”47

In an epoch marked by profound political transformations and growing social tensions and unrest, Lahbabi tried to unify the different intellectual trends within the Union. Lahbabi’s real aspiration for Āfāq was for it to become a meeting point for an array of initiatives and tendencies reflecting the diver-sity of Moroccan society. In the opening editorial of the second issue (with the same title, “Ilā al-amām”), Lahbabi states that the editorial in the first issue could be considered a manifesto for the Āfāq project. When referring to the many reactions caused by the publication of the journal, he claims that Āfāq is not another “official” journal.48 However, since its inception, the Union has maintained an ambiguous relationship with state powers and political parties. Critics like Tenkoul have argued that the hopes pinned on Āfāq were rapidly dissipated, as it became no more than another journal promoted by nationalist and salafī elites installed in state institutions (at least until the mid-seventies with the presidency of Muḥammad Barrādah,49 when it moved closer to the leftist opposition sensibilities of the Union Socialiste des Forces Populaires, a 1975 split-off from the Union Nationale des Forces Populaires). Nonetheless, beyond ideologies, Āfāq tried always to be a “free pulpit” (minbar ḥurr), and critics recognize that it was indeed “an open tribune for the publication of Moroccan literary production.”50

In a clear attempt to distance themselves from the conservative elites installed in power, young intellectuals got together and founded several jour-nals that contested the institutional model. A new set of cultural journals, such as Aqlām, Majallah li-l-Qiṣṣah wa-l-Masraḥ (Journal of Narrative and Theater) and Al-Mawqif (The Stance), were founded in 1964. Others appeared in 1966, such as the very influential journal Souffles (Breaths), written in French, and later also in Arabic. The publication of these journals constituted not just a challenge, but also a clear rejection of the earlier cultural models and canons

47 Muḥammad ʿAzīz al-Ḥabābī ,“Ilā al-amām,” Āfāq 1 (1963): 10.48 Muḥammad ʿAzīz al-Ḥabābī ,“Ilā al-amām,” Āfāq 2 (1963): 3.49 Tenkoul, “Les revues culturelles,” 10.50 Like the Union itself, Āfāq has gone through very different stages according to the politi-

cal situation and depending on the presidents and executive committees. In 1968, in the context of a growing institutional identification of independent Morocco with Arabic (and coinciding with the presidency of Ghallāb), the journal’s French title, Revue de l’Union des Ecrivains du Maghreb, which had been retained since its foundation, disap-peared forever from the back cover of Āfāq. See Muḥammad Barrādah and ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Shāwī, “Ḥālat al-Maghrib: nadwat al-dawriyyāt al-thaqāfiyyah,” Al-Ādāb 8-9, Beirut (1990), 50.



established on the premises of nationalist-salafī ideology that had been hege-monic since before independence.

If during the first half of the twentieth century cultural and literary models had started to distance themselves from classical and colonial patterns, during the 1960s the young generation aspired to create a new culture and literature vis-à-vis the “official.” These cultural and political projects were linked to self-named “progressive” tendencies inspired by Existentialism and Marxism, and aspired to contribute to the development of literature and society. As Yaqṭīn has pointed out, “nationalist” in the 1960s and 1970s continued to be a frequent designation, but had then become synonymous with literature attached to those who yearned for social and political transformation; the shift in the term’s meaning reflected the “difference between progressive and reactionary, com-mitted and bourgeois.”51 As also happened in Egypt, these journals—existing on the margins of newly established institutions—became the “ ‘ traditional’ forum for avant-garde literature.”52

The creation of Majallah li-l-Qiṣṣah wa-l-Masraḥ, founded by ʿAbd al-Jabbār al-Siḥīmī (acting as director), al-ʿArabī al-Misārī and Muḥammad Barrādah, was a first attempt to break away from trends predominant since the years of the protectorate. Despite the fact that only three issues were published in 1964, this journal is considered a landmark in the cultural renewal that started at the time. The first editorial-manifesto of Majallah li-l-Qiṣṣah wa-l-Masraḥ, entitled “Kilāb al-ḥarāsah wa-ṣāniʿū al-qiyam” (“The Guard Dogs and the Value Makers”), was signed by “the editors.” The manifesto describes the writers of the previ-ous generation in explicitly Sartrean terms, as the guards and servile dogs were confronted with the “authentic committed intellectuals” of the “avant-garde” (al-ṭalīʿah). According to the manifesto, one of the main goals of Majallah li-l-Qiṣṣah wa-l-Masraḥ was to establish a meeting space for the “young genera-tion” and new channels that would lead away from the “religious and cultural associations and political parties” that did not satisfy them. After drawing a picture of the political and technological situation in the world going back to the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, the manifesto states that “politics are an obligatory responsibility.” They presented themselves as “the new generation” (al-jīl al-jadīd ): an “inevitably political generation” aspiring to grapple with the realities of their society. The ideological gap separating this generation and the previous one ( jīl al-shuyūkh, the elders’ generation) was characterized in very postmodern terms as one between certitude and uncertainty. Stated in almost

51 Saʿīd Yaqṭīn, “al-Ibdāʿ al-adabī al-maghribī wa-tanwīʿāt al-huwiyyah wa-l-intimāʾ,” Al-Ḥayāt, 14 November, 1997, 20.

52 Kendall, 2.



messianic terms, the journal’s goal was to contribute to the process of emerg-ing from the intellectual crisis that it saw Morocco experiencing.

The manifesto also called for a break with the literature predominant up to that moment. The very title of the magazine reflected what was understood at the time as the most efficient literary instruments for establishing connec-tions with the public and achieving these young intellectuals’ unambiguous aspirations of “reaching the masses”: the short story and theater.53 As in Egypt, journals in Morocco became an effective medium for experimentation, and the short story genre also became “the hub of experimentation in the 1960s.”54 Although many have considered the foundational manifesto of the journal—written by Barrādah, though backed by the other editors—as a “rupture” with the previous generation, al-Misārī has recently adjusted that verdict by noting that they did not intend such a rupture, but simply wanted to “give the word back its warmth.” However, he also recalls the way in which three friends of very different ideological tendencies “sharing dreams”55 engaged in this adven-ture in a Morocco where journals, radio, television, arts, theater and academic research were flourishing.56

That very same year, 1964, another group of young intellectuals and writers (Aḥmad al-Siṭātī, Muḥammad Ibrāhīm b. ʿAllū and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. ʿAmrū) of the same generation founded Aqlām (Pens). Edited by b. ʿ Amrū, Aqlām was ideologically close to the Union Nationale des Forces Populaires, which split from the Independence Party in 1959 and—led by Mehdi Ben Barka—moved further to the left.57 Aqlām quickly became one of the most important plat-forms for young intellectuals to express their ideas and complaints, being able to assemble many “new cultural and literary sensibilities.”58 It has been argued that Aqlām contributed decisively to the emergence of aof new intellectual elite that was “more open to free poetry, experimentation and ideological discussion.”59 If Risālat al-Maghrib was a kind of school for nationalists, Aqlām emerged as the school for these young progressives, usually associated with the

53 “Kilāb al-ḥarāsah wa-ṣāniʿū al-qiyam,” Majalla li al-qiṣṣa wa al-masraḥ. 1 (1964): 1-11.54 See Kendall, 5. 55 “Qiṣṣat al-mugāmarah” by al-ʿArabī al-Misārī, to be published in Dhakhā’ir al-Maktabah,

(Rabat: Faculté des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines, Université Mohammed V, forthcoming).

56 At the national radio they also launched the journal Ṣawt al-Maghrib (The Voice of Morocco).

57 There was a nationalist leftist government with ʿAbd Allāh Ibrahīm from 1958-1960. The leader of the party, Ben Barkah, was killed by the Moroccan secret service in Paris in 1965.

58 Kamāl ʿAbd al-Laṭīf, “Min Aqlām ilā Fikr wa nadq,” Fikr wa-nadq 38 (2001), 19.59 Khatibi, 34.



socialist and liberation trends in vogue at the time. Kamāl ʿAbd al-Laṭīf, who has underlined the historical importance of this journal for Morocco’s cultural and intellectual life, deems it “impossible to separate the cultural aspirations of the journal from the political and societal aspirations”60 of this generation.

Aqlām failed to appear with regularity due to economic troubles and the many political upheavals that Morocco experienced during the time. Further complicating matters, a new series of the journal appeared starting in 1972 and 1978. And yet, between 1964 and 1982, fifty-six issues were published; some of them were double issues. In Aqlām, whose subtitle was “Majallah thaqāfiyyah” (“Cultural Journal”), articles on philosophical, ideological, social and political issues occupied a significant place. Some of the most prominent thinkers and philosophers of the future, such as Muḥammad ʿĀbid al-Jābirī, Sālim Yafūt, ʿAbd al-Kabīr al-Khaṭībī, ʿAbd al-Salām b. ʿAbd al-Lālī and ʿAbd Allāh al-ʿArawī (Laroui),61 were regular contributors to the journal. The space devoted by Aqlām to literary creativity—mostly poetry and short stories—was minor compared to the contributions of the journal to the realms of thought and translation. However, literary issues and literary criticism came to increasingly appear in the journal’s pages. Additionally, a new generation of prominent literary critics, such as, Ibrāhīm al-Khaṭīb, Idrīs al-Nāqūrī, and ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Shāwī published their first contributions to printed intellectual discourse on the journal’s pages.62

In the collective manifesto of the journal’s first issue, signed “Aqlām,” the editors and promoters addressed those special citizens known as “intellectu-als,” highlighting the unique role that the “true intellectual” (al-muthaqqaf al-ṣādiq) can play in society. They summoned him in a very Gramscian style to play an avant-garde role (dawr ṭalīʿī) and let his voice be heard, calling for the establishment of an authentic culture (thaqāfah aṣīlah).63 After acknowledg-ing that an important cultural movement was taking place in Morocco at the time—with the proliferation of newspapers, magazines, books, conferences,

60 ʿAbd al-Laṭīf, 19. Ramadan, referring to the sixties generation in Egypt, states: “Their expe-rience of the political and social upheavals of the decade of the sixties incited literary innovation that transformed the aesthetic” (Ramadan, 245).

61 In 1967, Laroui published his influential L’ideologie arabe contemporaine.62 ʿAbd al-Laṭīf recalls that around Aqlām, editorial projects were launched that involved the

translation of authors such as Louis Althusser. Other innovative initiatives—such as the journal for children, Azhār, launched by Muḥammad Ibrāhīm b. ʿAllū. Kamāl—were also started (ʿAbd al-Laṭīf, “Min Aqlām ilā Fikr wa-nadq,” Fikr wa-nadq 38 (2001), 22).

63 In fact, many of the articles of the first issue dealt with the role of the intellectual, such as one by Aḥmad al-Siṭātī calling for the “formation of a new mentality” (al-Mabādiʾ 1 (1961): 7).



etc.—they state in a second manifesto, “al-Muthaqqafūn . . . wa-al-kalimah” (“The Intellectuals . . . and the Word”) published in the second issue, that the “intellectual’s only weapon is the word,” and that Aqlām aspires to protect the word from the “reactionary apparatus of culture,” prompting an intellectual resurgence that will lead to the establishment of “an authentic and free cul-ture.” The key concepts of the journal were “intellectual,” “culture” and, espe-cially, “authenticity,” identifying features of the discourse both of this journal and of its founders’ generation.64

From 1964 onwards, other relevant journals started up, such as Al-Baḥth al-ʿIlmī (Scientific Research). This journal was the initiative of a group of pro-fessors at the Faculté des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines, which was then newly-established in 1957 at the Université Mohammed V, an institution curi-ously set up on the facilities of the Institut des Hautes Études Marocaines—the scientific branch of earlier colonial institutions. Other journals of the 1960s that contributed to the opening-up of new spaces for creativity and debate were Al-Mawqif (1964), promoted and directed by Khālid Mishbāl, and Al-Ahdāf (Goals), founded in 1967. The monthly Al-Mabādiʾ (Principles) had also appeared in 1961, invoking “progressive ideas” and “public opinion” in its first editorial.65

One particular aspect of this public sphere as represented by cultural jour-nals—even among the most progressive groups of intellectuals—that has been duly noted is the total absence of women.66 Even so, the “feminist/women’s” journal Shurūq (Dawns) appeared in 1965, directed by one of the most promi-nent writers in Morocco, Khanāthah Bannūnah,67 though she did not officially figure as such due to the many bureaucratic obstacles mentioned in a final note of apology in the first issue. In the first editorial-manifesto of Shurūq—the subtitle of which was “Majallah nisā’iyyah dawriyyah taʿnī bi-shu’ūn al-marʾah wa al-fikr” (“Women’s Journal Dealing with Issues of Women and Thought”), under the title of “La-nā raʾī” (“We Have an Opinion”)—a new role for women was claimed in all spheres of society outside the home. Addressing mainly

64 On the evolution of the concept of aṣālah in debates of this kind see Mohamed-Salah Omri, Nationalism, Islam and World Literature: Sites of Confluence in the Writings of Mahmud al-Masʿadi (London: Routledge, 2006).

65 al-Mabādiʾ 1 (1961): 5.66 Rashīdah bin Masʿūd has underlined the total absence both of women and any discourse

about women’s liberation since the time of the nationalist movement with the exception of the nationalist Akhawāt al-ṣafā, founded in 1947 and considered the first organization of women (Rashīda Bin Masʿūd, al-Marʾah wa-l-kitābah, 4).

67 He authored a collection of short stories, Li yasquṭ al-ṣamt (1967), and a novel, al-Nār wa-l-ikhtiyār (1969).



issues related to the situation of women, although dealing also with cultural and literary topics, the second editorial states in feminist terms the social problems of women in Morocco, and the need for mixed–sex education. Most militant of all, the third issue’s editorial is addressed to “intellectual woman.” Although many of the articles were published anonymously or under a pseud-onym, other prominent writers of the generation, such as Rafīqat al-Ṭabīʿah, also contributed to the journal.68 After the publication of only four issues (two in 1965 and two in 1966) and the journal’s rejection of official funding, Shurūq disappeared, mostly due to economic reasons.

The year 1964 is not only a date of reference for intellectuals who promoted journals in the Arabic language in Morocco, it was also the moment when a very influential literary group appeared that founded crucial journals in French. The use of the French language as a distinctive identity feature for a cultural movement was a new phenomenon in independent Morocco. Moreover, until that time, only a few voices—such as writers Ahmed Sefrioui with La Boîte a merveilles (1954) and Driss Chraïbi with his controversial Le Passé simple69 (1954), or politicians like Ḥasan al-Wazzānī and journals such as L’Action du peuple—had opted for French as their language of public expression. In an atmosphere still dominated by nationalist-salafī orthodoxy, for which French was the main language associated with colonial powers (along with, to a lesser degree, Spanish), these journals’ publication incited heated controversy.70

The young writers, mainly poets, who encouraged this Francophone move-ment, burst harshly–even violently—onto the cultural scene of the epoch, aspiring to play an active role in the reformulation and redefinition of national culture. The rupture caused by the group of young intellectuals who chose French as their language of literary expression meant a rift and open clash with the nationalist-salafī hegemonic trends. It also marked a break with cul-tural initiatives promoted or directly linked to neocolonial institutions, such as Cercle des amitiés poétiques et littéraires and its curious organ of expression,

68 On the history of this journal, see Guadalupe Sáiz Muñoz, “Shurūq, primera revista femenina en Marruecos,” Homenaje al Profesor Jacinto Bosch Vilá, II (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 1991), 811-822. A testimony by the editor can be found in Khanāthah Bennūnah, “Min talāfīf al-wāqiʿ ḥattā taḍāris al-ḥulm,” Āfāq 3-4 (1984).

69 For the interaction of this literary work and politics, see Said Graiouid, “We Have Not Buried the Simple Past: the Public Sphere and Post-colonial Literature in Morocco,” The Journal of African Cultural Studies 20, no. 2 (2008): 475-490.

70 See Abderrahman Tenkoul, Mouvement poétique et intellectuel de la revue “Souffles” (PhD diss., Université de Provence, 1982).



La revue de l’automobile, or the journal of the same kind, Confluent, published in Casablanca.

The first manifesto-like declaration of intellectuals linked to this new cul-tural group advocating the French language as their means of expression was the journal Poésie toute, presented in 1964 by Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine71 (Muḥammad Khayr al-Dīn), who the same year published his collection of poetry, Nausée noire (1964), and Mostapha Nissaboury (Muṣṭafā al-Nisābūrī). Poésie toute signaled its clear stance against neocolonial “alliances” and “cer-cles;” as stated in the first editorial, “this journal is the result of our will to con-cretize our struggle.”72 In 1964 Nissaboury also supported the creation of the poetic journal, Eaux vives, because, as stated in the first editorial, “la nécessite se fait sentir d’une revue de poésie au Maroc” (“there is a clear need for a jour-nal of poetry in Morocco”).73

IV The “Souffles-Anfās” Movement: Poetics and Politics

Despite the importance of Eaux vives and other relevant French language jour-nals such as Lamalif (founded in 1966 by Zakia Daoud and Mohamed Loghlam) that played a significant role in cultural and political life,74 the most influential cultural journal of French expression was without a doubt Souffles.75 Founded

71 His novel Agadir appeared in 1967.72 “Cette revue, c’est parce que nous voulons concrétiser notre lutte.”73 Only two issues of Eaux vives were published. See Jean Dejeux, “Poésie marocaine de

langue française depuis 1964,” Francofonia 5, no. Automne (1983), 75-88. 74 It was finally banned after many ups and downs in 1988, after two hundred issues had

been published. Bernabé López García recalls the lasting enmity between Souffles and Lamalif, despite their many common ideological stances. See Bernabé López García, “Marruecos. Los años de plomo,” Revista de Estudios Internacionales Mediterráneos 4 (2008) http://www.uam.es/otroscentros/TEIM/Revista/reim4/BLG_ZDaoud.htm) (accessed 30 Nov. 2013). See also Zakya Daoud, Maroc. Les années de plomb 1958-1988. Chroniques d’une résistance (Houilles: Mémoire de la Méditerranée, 2007). Writers such as Khatibi or Chraïbi were also closely involved in Lamalif, as well as others claiming a new role for women in Morocco, such as Fatima Mernissi or Abdessamad Dyalmi.

75 In 1982 the first attempts to recover the contribution of the Souffles-Anfās movement took place: Abderrahman Tenkoul, Mouvement poétique et intellectuel de la revue “Souffles” (PhD diss., Université de Provence, 1982); and Cecilia Fernández Suzor, Aproximación a la historia cultural de Marruecos en los años sesenta: “El movimiento Souffles-Anfās” (BA Memoire, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 1982). The title of this epigraph is in homage to her and to the more recent research of Laura Casielles, Souffles: una apuesta política y poética (Masters diss., Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 2012). The other important



in 1966 and directed by Abdellatif Laâbi (ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Laʿabī), and also rely-ing on the active participation of the previously mentioned poets Nissaboury and Khaïr-Eddine, among others, Souffles immediately became a significant platform for Moroccans who expressed their creativity in French. Souffles was a kind of laboratory for independent intellectuals, artists and writers, most of them poets, among whom were the most prominent French-language writers of the future, including the now well-known Tahar Ben Jelloun, and the previ-ously mentioned Khatibi and Chraïbi.76 Before closing down in December 1971, Souffles published twenty-two issues.77 If the Aqlām group referred to them-selves as muthaqqafūn (intellectuals), the Souffles group referred to themselves mainly as poètes (poets). It is also important to emphasize the active partici-pation of young artists led by Muḥammad Shabʿah. Coming mostly from the School of Fine Arts of Casablanca, some of them, such as Muḥammad Mallāḥī, were responsible for the design and layout of the journal.78

The experimental magazine Souffles, or in broader terms, the Souffles move-ment—a valid designation that reflects the group’s cohesion and activities, which went far beyond the journal—was characterized by a continuous advo-cacy of the decolonization of Morocco and the establishment of “une véritable culture nationale par une réhabilitation rigoureuse de ses formes d’expression” (“an authentic national culture through the rigorous rehabilitation of its means of expression”).79 The editorial of the first “numéro-manifeste” of Souffles, signed by Laâbi, states its wish to become “un lieu névralgique de débats

research on the subject is by Kenza Sefrioui, La revue Souffles (1966-1973), espoirs de révolu-tion culturelle au Maroc (PhD diss., École Doctorale de Littératures Françaises et Comparées, Université Paris, 2010). This last work was recently published as La revue Souffles: 1966-1973. Espoirs de révolution culturelle au Maroc (Casablanca: Éditions du Sirocco, 2013).

76 After the scandal caused by the publication of his already mentioned novel Le passé sim-ple (1954), Chraïbi was first rehabilitated by Souffles. See Souffles 6 (1967).

77 The whole run of Souffles is today accessible at the site of the Bibliothèque Nationale du Royaume du Maroc: http://bnm.bnrm.ma:86/ListeVol.aspx?IDC=3.

78 Souffles also shared with these young artists their rejection of naïve art, considering it problematic due to its colonial and “ethnographic” implications. At the same time, they devoted attention to popular culture. Souffles paid special attention to art criticism, devoting a double issue (7/8-1967) to the arts, theater and cinema.

79 Tenkoul, “Les revues culturelles,” 11. In the foreword of Kenza Sefrioui’s book, La revue Souffles : 1966-1973. Espoirs de révolution culturelle au Maroc, Laâbi states “Souffles avait un projet culturel, celui de la décolonisation des esprits, de la reconstruction de l’identité national revendiquée dans la diversité de ses composants” (8). On the problematics of and debates surrounding the definition of “national culture” at the time see Laura Casielles, Souffles: una apuesta política y poética, 59, and Farid Laroussi, “When



autour des problèmes de notre culture” (“a neuralgic space for debates on the problems of our culture”), clarifying that Souffles “ne se réclame d’aucune niche ni d’aucun minaret et ne reconnait aucune frontier” (“does not claim any niche or minaret nor acknowledges any frontier”). According to the manifesto, Moroccan culture’s real problem lay in “la contemplation pétrifiée du passé, la sclérose des formes et des contenus” (“the petrified contemplation of the past, the sclerosis of forms and contents”). That is why the manifesto of Souffles encouraged not only a renewal in both theme and form, but also “une nouvelle littérature caractérisée par la déconstruction des langages constitués et la sub-version des genres” (“a new literature characterized by the deconstruction of established languages and the subversion of genres”).80 For these reasons, the attitudes of the Souffles group towards language and established literary genres have been described as “textual violence” and “linguistic and poetic guerilla [warfare].”81

The Vietnam war, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Third World Marxism, Ché Guevara, the May 1968 student movement, and, above all, Palestine—which emerged after 1967 as one of the journal’s central issues, culminating in a special issue (Souffles/Anfās 15, 1969) that was totally in Arabic—are key factors that contributed to shaping the internationalist conscience of this generation.82 There are also references to and evidence of the influence of Frantz Fanon, Anouar Abdelmalek, and Leopold Senghor’s negritude.83 At the same time, important yardsticks of political struggle on the local scene must be taken into consideration. These include the revolts in the Rif in 1959 and in Casablanca in 1965, after which a state of emergency was declared; the

Francophone Means National: The Case of the Maghreb,” Yale French Studies, no. 103, (2003): 81-90.

80 Tenkoul, “Les revues culturelles,” 11. 81 Marc Gontard, Violence du texte—la littérature marocaine de langue française (Paris/

Rabat: L’Harmattan/S.M.E.R., 1981), 13.82 Bernabé López García contends that for the Souffles group, Palestine became a “national

problem.” See “Marruecos. Los años de plomo” http://www.uam.es/otroscentros/TEIM/Revista/reim4/BLG_ZDaoud.htm (Last accessed November 30, 2014). On the Souffles group’s complex and rich rhetorical turn to Palestine, see Olivia Harrison, “Cross-Colonial Poetics: Souffles-Anfas and the Figure of Palestine,” PMLA 128, no. 2 (2013): 353-369. For Harrison, it was no coincidence that Palestine played such a pivotal role in the journal and that Palestinian poetry of resistance came to be regarded as the vanguard on both political and aesthetic levels, since, she argues, it had to do with the postcolonial disillu-sionment of the generation with essentialist nationalist Morocco.

83 On this point see Andy Stafford, “Tricontinentalism in Recent Moroccan Intellectual History: the Case of Souffles,” Journal of Transatlantic Studies 7, no. 3 (2009): 218-232.



miners strike in Khouribga in 1968; and the strikes in the education sector that culminated in the early 1970s. All these elements, duly interwoven, shaped the ideological background of this very politically conscious generation. Equally important were the failed 1971 and 1972 military coups, which conditioned the political atmosphere and unleashed a wave of political repression that extended far beyond the military.

Starting mostly as a literary and cultural journal, Souffles went through dif-ferent stages and soon became increasingly politicized, attracting intellectu-als such as Abraham Serfaty.84 A group of artists and writers of the Souffles movement, led by the Marxist Serfaty, founded the Association de Recherche Culturelle (ARC) in 1968.85 In the editorial of Souffles, the ARC was presented as an “action group” whose aim was to foster real debate in Morocco, a country living a situation of so-called “false independence”—a provocation that chal-lenged the vision of the nation-state espoused by the nationalist parties and the monarchy alike.86

Coinciding with a moment of intense Arabization of the educational sys-tem and society, certain intellectuals and traditional nationalists held Laâbi responsible for playing to neocolonialist hegemony with Souffles. Nonetheless, they were aware of the limitations and ambivalence of writing in French—“problème très délicat” (“a very delicate issue”), according to the first editorial-manifesto—in independent Morocco. Attempting to deal with the ambiguities of their project in relation to what they considered to be an issue of “national language,” they had already included in Souffles (issues 10 to 14) some texts in Arabic, not to mention the special issue 15 on Palestine totally in Arabic. Finally, given their decidedly “nationalist” vocation and their sincere aspira-tion to contribute to the cultural decolonization of Morocco, Laâbi and his colleagues, after a profound debate between Arabophone and Francophone intellectuals, undertook a Marxist style exercise in self-criticism and ended up establishing another journal in Arabic.

84 It is argued by Casielles that from the start Souffles can also be considered a political jour-nal, but one that remained a poetic publication until the end despite its increasing politi-cization. To show this evolution of the journal, Fernández Suzor posits the changing subtitles of the journal over time: Revue poétique et littéraire, Revue littéraire et culturel maghrébine, and finally Revue culturelle Arabe du Maghreb (45).

85 Manifesto published in Souffles, 12 (1968): 3-9.86 The ARC group created the publishing house Atlantes, and a poetry collection with the

same name. Laâbi’s first novel, L’Oeil et la nuit, was published by Atlantes in 1969.



In consequence, the Souffles group initiated the homonymous journal Anfās,87 (Breaths) in 1971. Until its closure in January 1972, eight issues were published, two of them double. The contents of both journals, published simul-taneously, were different: from the start, the monthly Anfās was more politi-cal than Souffles and more centered on Moroccan realities.88 Since the very first issue’s publication (to coincide with May 1st Workers’ Day), Anfās became increasingly politicized on the national level.89 In the first manifesto, signed by “Anfās,” the founders discussed categories such as the working class, social struggle, peasants, the proletariat and Zionist imperialism, with very marked ideological stances in favor of trade unions in Morocco. Although many of the contributors used pseudonyms, Laâbi and Serfaty as well as some young critics and thinkers (such as Salīm Raḍwān, Idrīs al-Nāqūrī, ʿ Abd al-Fattāḥ al-Faqihānī and ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Shāwī, who were all regular contributors of the journal), signed with their names.

Despite their short lives, Souffles and Anfās became symbols of the new Moroccan Left. Many of the participants were active militants of leftist par-ties, mainly of the Parti de la Libération et du Socialisme—heir of the Parti Communiste du Maroc that had been banned in 1960, renamed Parti de la Libération et du Socialisme in 1968, banned again, and legalized in 1974 as Parti du Progrès et du Socialisme. Moreover, the revolutionary idealism of the period ended with the foundation of a Marxist-Leninist movement embraced mostly by university students in which many from the Souffles group—Laâbi included—became militants. In March 1970 the organization 23 Mars (an allusion to the Casablanca revolts of March 1965) was created, with members emerging mainly from the orbit of the Independence Party’s leftist splinter group, Union Nationale de Forces Populaires. Another organiza-tion, the legendary Ilā al-amām (Onwards), was constituted clandestinely on August 30, 1970, with members coming mainly from the Parti de la Libération et du Socialisme, as well as from the section of progressive students in the Union Nationale des Étudiants du Maroc, which dissolved in 1973. The organ of expression shared by these organizations was the short-lived clandestine leaflet Ilā al-amām, though Souffles and Anfās acted also as unofficial organs

87 The subtitle of Anfās was “Majallah fikriyyah ʿarabiyyah maghribiyyah” (Maghrebi Arab Ideological Journal). The whole of Anfās is accessible at the site of the Bibliothèque Nationale du Royaume du Maroc, http://bnm.bnrm.ma:86/ListeVol.aspx?IDC=4.

88 Aproximación, 145.89 One of those many red lines that this group crossed had to do with the Western Sahara;

see for instance the last issue of Anfās, that included an article entitled “Filisṭīn jadīdah fī arḍ al-Ṣaḥrāʾ.”



of the movement. As an act of reprisal for the growing political involvement of the members of the group, Laâbi was imprisoned for the first time in January 1972. Many of those contributing to these journals ended up in jail, tortured, and forgotten for many years, even by the institutional parties of the Left. In his book al-Yasār fī al-Maghrib90 (The Left in Morocco), ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Shāwī, writer and active protagonist of the events, offers a self-critical analysis of the Marxist-Leninist movement. He writes that the movement—despite its self-assertion as the tactical critical avant-garde for workers and peasants—was no more than a minority student movement with no real roots in other sectors of society.

In 1971, a group of writers and artists abandoned the Souffles-Anfās group because of its increasing politicization and founded the journal Intégral in French, exclusively devoted to literary and artistic issues. Farid Belkahia, one of the most important artists of Morocco and someone deeply involved in the Souffles project, was probably right when he argued that the excessive politici-zation of the group not only hampered the journal’s project, but also affected the development of the artistic avant-gardes in Morocco.91 Nevertheless, it was thanks to Souffles, Anfās, Aqlām and the rest of the new journals that a fresh generation of thinkers, critics, artists, poets and prose writers in Arabic and French emerged in Morocco. These journals constituted an attempt to coun-ter the hegemony of the previous generation—installed at the forefront of the institutions of independent Morocco—and advocated for new relations with the past and the world. The call for “the authentic” was to become a constant, almost identifying feature in the discourse of these journals, implying that the lack of authenticity, the unauthentic, was located in the institutional realm. It is fair to consider the journals that marked the cultural and political life of the 1960s in Morocco as at least a successful failed project. Over the span of that tumultuous decade, they managed to open spaces for contestation, challenge and change, and today they remain an important point of reference.

90 ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Shāwī, al-Yasār fī al-Maghrib 1970-1974 (Casablanca: Manshūrāt ʿalā al-aqall, 1992).

91 Casielles, 67.

the challenge of moroccan cultural journals of the 1960s

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