Lamalif: A Critical Anthology of Societal Debates in Morocco during the “Years of Lead” (1966–1988)

Book excerpt: 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.