Journal Articles by Brahim El Guabli
MERIP, 2021
Forthcoming in MER issue 298 "Maghreb From the Margins" Brahim el-Guabli 03.9.2021 orocco's newly... more Forthcoming in MER issue 298 "Maghreb From the Margins" Brahim el-Guabli 03.9.2021 orocco's newly acquired status as a destination for tens of thousands of sub-Saharan migrants has spurred a sub-Saharan African turn in Moroccan literature. Morocco's current reality is seeping into the country's multilingual cultural production, which has begun to capture the complex social and cultural dynamics of this migratory shift over the past decade. Until recently, literary Moroccans usually turned their gaze toward Europe and the Middle East, at the expense of the African continent. Divided along linguistic lines between Arabic and French, the vibrant Moroccan (and by extension Maghrebi) literary output largely ignored sub-Saharan Africa.
Drawing on testimonial writings by the wives of Tazmamart prisoners and two documentary films (do... more Drawing on testimonial writings by the wives of Tazmamart prisoners and two documentary films (docu-testimonies) about this notorious disappearance camp, I argue that Tazmamart-induced traumas are intergenerational. Approached as a continuum, Tazmamart-induced traumas reveal the intergenerational transference of trauma from mothers to children in the pre-discursive period. In this article, I specifically focus my analysis on the pre-discursive period—a time when families did not articulate their traumas in spoken words in the presence of the children and during which Tazmamart was not a matter of public discourse in Morocco. This theorization of intergenerational transference of traumatic experiences will shift scholarly attention from individual experiences to the collective memory of the “Years of Lead” in its intergenerational dimensions.
The Journal of North African Studies, 2018
A guiding premise of this collective project is that Maghrebi writers, artists,
filmmakers, and a... more A guiding premise of this collective project is that Maghrebi writers, artists,
filmmakers, and activists are – as they have long been – important theorists
and critics of violence. The articles that make up this special issue of The
Journal of North African Studies consider from multiple perspectives the transformative
potential of aesthetic expression in political and social contexts
defined by intersecting forms of violence. Together, these scholars explore
new terrain for literary and aesthetic study in a disciplinary space that has
been determined by the prerogatives of area studies and conditioned by discourses
of terror and state security. We live and work in precarious and
dangerous times. To put the central question of this project plainly: in such
times, what difference do art and literature make?
Journal of North African Studies, Jan 6, 2015
Moreover, I engage the question of the novelisation of the revolution and how The Knights of Assa... more Moreover, I engage the question of the novelisation of the revolution and how The Knights of Assassinated Dreams is a fresh contribution to the ongoing debate about novelisation and aesthetisation of current events. Ṭāha Ḥussein was probably the first Arab literary critic to have discussed the relationship between literature and the revolution as early as 1954. Ḥussein was writing in the aftermath of the Egyptian revolution and his opinion has come to shape the discussion of the literary depiction of the Arab revolutions.
Conference Papers by Brahim El Guabli
Other by Brahim El Guabli
CfP for the inaugural issue of TAMAZGHA STUDIES JOURNAL
The last four decades have witnessed a phenomenal upsurge of interest in memory and memory studie... more The last four decades have witnessed a phenomenal upsurge of interest in memory and memory studies. Spurred on by the unprecedented destruction of World War II, memory studies as many know it today has evolved in a largely Euro-centric context. But the last two decades have seen groundbreaking work in overcoming regional as well as disciplinary boundaries. Many scholars now reject the so-called "competition" model of trauma, which implicitly pits one community's suffering against another, finding instead that the study of commemoration can affirm and encompass the full diversity of human experience and loss. Scholars have also taken new interdisciplinary strides, blending critical study of the arts with the study of memory as well as personal narrative, as our keynote speaker, Jonathan Holloway, does in Jim Crow Wisdom. Recent developments in the study of memory, from Michael Rothberg's Multidirectional Memory to Benjamin Stora's La gangrène et l'oubli, highlight the struggle between the desire to remember and the need to forget, which has taken center stage in discussions about memory and its uses. Pierre Nora's concepts of lieux and milieux de mémoire have inspired both praise and controversy regarding the relationship between memory and history; memory and space; and memory and artifacts in societies' efforts to institute archives or commemorate important events. Between the preservation of sites of commemoration, such as Ground Zero and Parque de la Memoria, and the state-imposed silence on commemorative spaces under repressive governments, memory has become a much more self-conscious societal focus. All these developments have strong aesthetic dimensions. The third annual conference of the Department of Comparative Literature at Princeton will undertake a two-day reflection on these issues of memory in artistic works and practice, broadly conceived. We see opportunities for new exploration of the way memory is preserved, transmitted, changed, resignified, and reinvented in works of art, and especially in "translation" from one work or medium to another. We invite conference participants and community members to join us in considering such questions as: How is the memory of a war or violent event reconceptualized in aesthetic representations? How does kitchification transform the memory of an original event? How does mnemonic intertextuality change memories? How do artists transmit one another's work, and extend one another's reach (or their own) in posterity? In what ways does a painting or photograph establish the afterlife of its subject, or does a composer extend the life of a text or image "translated" into music? Can the various art forms do justice to one another? Can they do without each other? How do different translators rewrite or change texts and memories? How does the artistic medium transform, change or adapt the memory of an event, experience, person or another work of art? What is the role of the scholar in the commemoration of the dead, and the living? How do issues of memory figure in the Public Humanities movement? These questions concern us not only as scholars, but also as citizens and human beings, and they can inform our approach to the scholar's ideal role in society.
Papers by Brahim El Guabli
Fordham University Press eBooks, Apr 24, 2023
This article rereads the works of Carlos de Nesry and Abraham Serfaty, two important Jewish intel... more This article rereads the works of Carlos de Nesry and Abraham Serfaty, two important Jewish intellectuals from Morocco, to conceptualize their theorization of state and society in post-1956 Morocco. The article argues that Moroccan Jews’ striving for an inclusive citizenship in and belonging to the independent nation took several forms, but the most salient of which were the two embodied in the work of de Nesry and Serfaty. Although there is a robust literature on Moroccan Jews, these theorizations have not received the scholarly examination they deserve nor have they been put in dialogue with each other to tease out their significance for the situation of Jews in the Moroccan context. This article is an attempt to bring attention to the implications of a locally produced Jewish political theory for the larger Moroccan nation. By examining de Nesry’s and Serfaty’s writing against the background of political repression and increasing authoritarianism, I show how Jewish intellectuals navigated their place in a fast-changing post-independence country, furnishing ideas and projects that could have created a different Morocco.
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Journal Articles by Brahim El Guabli
filmmakers, and activists are – as they have long been – important theorists
and critics of violence. The articles that make up this special issue of The
Journal of North African Studies consider from multiple perspectives the transformative
potential of aesthetic expression in political and social contexts
defined by intersecting forms of violence. Together, these scholars explore
new terrain for literary and aesthetic study in a disciplinary space that has
been determined by the prerogatives of area studies and conditioned by discourses
of terror and state security. We live and work in precarious and
dangerous times. To put the central question of this project plainly: in such
times, what difference do art and literature make?
Conference Papers by Brahim El Guabli
Other by Brahim El Guabli
Papers by Brahim El Guabli
filmmakers, and activists are – as they have long been – important theorists
and critics of violence. The articles that make up this special issue of The
Journal of North African Studies consider from multiple perspectives the transformative
potential of aesthetic expression in political and social contexts
defined by intersecting forms of violence. Together, these scholars explore
new terrain for literary and aesthetic study in a disciplinary space that has
been determined by the prerogatives of area studies and conditioned by discourses
of terror and state security. We live and work in precarious and
dangerous times. To put the central question of this project plainly: in such
times, what difference do art and literature make?