Experimental Writing: A Commitment to a Different Morocco

Abstract

Subversive engagement through experimental writing is an arduous mission that has cost intellectuals their lives and even their freedom, all in an effort to envision a "reformed Morocco," a Morocco strong politically, economically, and socially. A Morocco of freedom, a Morocco of culture, a Morocco of quality education and scientific research. A Morocco of pride. This was the mission of intellectuals, and its validity remains a responsibility in the hands of those who truly belong to this country, body and soul, not those who repeat political slogans for their own benefit and who are capable of changing their tune as needed.

An “Other Morocco” demands an inexhaustible energy, an honest spirit, free in its choices but above all responsible for its actions. Laâbi engages in subversive writing that breaks with the falsification of lived experience. He has played the role of a translator, faithfully conveying the social vices, traumas, and tortures of those who dare to go against the grain. Laâbi embarks on a dissident commitment while employing textual violence to convey the oppression of power and the total silence of a subjugated people, delivered to the whims of fate. For Serhane, subversive activism challenges the literary question in relation to the social question. He undertakes a demystification of “sacred” language and sacralizes “poetic” language in a truly paradoxical and conflictual situation.

Khaïr-Eddine's subversion is not achieved through the renunciation of the subverted cult. On the contrary, it is a way of rewriting it, reforging it, recreating it differently through a style of writing that highlights uprooting on a linguistic level as well as on the level of the imagination. He calls upon a subversive imagination to redefine the landmarks of a New Morocco and a New Citizen. For all three writers, subversion is the vehicle for a writing of urgency and exacting standards.