Narrating Tazmamart: Visceral Contestations of Morocco's Transitional Justice and Democracy

This article argues that Tazmamart narratives, relating the experience of Moroccan inmates disappeared and unlawfully detained for eighteen years in a secret camp, are exemplary within literary and visual accounts of the Years of Lead. Despite their different styles, genre, and media, stories inspired by Morocco's most hostile detention and torture centres under King Hassan II's reign (1961-1999) form a distinct ensemble that encompasses significant issues pertinent to the discussion of the country's dark past and its memorialisation. Memoirs, fictionalised memoirs, and documentaries produced by survivors, activists, and cultural actors and their reception pose urgent questions that haunt Morocco's post-Years of Lead transitional democracy and justice: who has the right to tell stories of sate sponsored human rights abuse? In what form? For whom? How many times? What sociopolitical lessons should be learned from the past? The different language and storytelling techniques they deploy also urge us to rethink the interconnection between local and universal aesthetics and their role in the emancipation of individual and collective bodies within specific local contexts.