Lamalif: A Critical Anthology of Societal Debates in Morocco During the "Years of Lead" (1966-1988) - by Brahim El Guabli & Ali Alalou (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The LAMALIF anthology presents a wide variety of articles from LAMALIF, Morocco's longest-serving Francophone journal. Active between 1966 and 1988, LAMALIF covered the most critical periods of Moroccan history and engaged in crucial debates about democratization, feminism, culture, education, Third World relations, and decolonization. However, LAMALIF was not just a journal; it was a real school, where Morocco's, North Africa's, and the developing world's emerging and established writers, artists, and thinkers found a space to disseminate their ideas and address readerships across different cultures and geographical areas in French. This anthology is the first comprehensive translation into English of a wide selection of LAMALIF's articles covering literary and art criticism as well as critical theory, feminism, Islam, and emigration. In addition to making available to Anglophone readerships articles about transnational solidarities and connections between North Africa and the rest of the world, LAMALIF anthology historicizes this sociocultural and political project within the painful period of authoritarianism in Morocco and reveals how culture worked as a trenchant weapon in the struggle against repression and silence.

Review Quotes

'Brahim El Guabli and Ali Alalou... emphasise the significance of this two-volume anthology as a crucial archival source for understanding Morocco's Years of Lead.... The act of translation of these voices of sociopolitical opposition emerges as an act of memory in the age of post-Arab Uprisings... It is therefore an invaluable source not only for historical and historiographical insight, but also for cultural and sociological analysis.' Aomar Boum, The Journal of North African Studies