Body, Gender and Pain in Moroccan Prison Memoir Ḥadīth al-‘Atama

The article explores the themes of body, physical pain, and corporeal memory as framed by Fatna El Bouih’s and Latifa Jbabdi’s prison narratives contained in Ḥadīth al-‘Atama (Tale from the Dark). Members of the Marxist-Leninist movement, El Bouih and Jbabdi were subjected to sensory annihilation, b...

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Veröffentlicht in:Middle East - Topics & Arguments
1. Verfasser: Biondi, Martina
Format: Artikel (Zeitschrift)
Sprache:
Englisch
Veröffentlicht: Philipps-Universität Marburg 2020
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Zusammenfassung:The article explores the themes of body, physical pain, and corporeal memory as framed by Fatna El Bouih’s and Latifa Jbabdi’s prison narratives contained in Ḥadīth al-‘Atama (Tale from the Dark). Members of the Marxist-Leninist movement, El Bouih and Jbabdi were subjected to sensory annihilation, brutal tortures, practices of gender erosion, and sexual abuses during the Moroccan Years of Lead (1965 – 1999). The article provides a critical reading of the memoirs by identifying a trajectory from a gendered inflicted suffering (abuses and tortures) to an agentive self-inflicted pain (hunger strike). Drawing on Banu Bargu’s perspective on the manipulative use of corporeality in the carceral framework, the article emphasizes the weaponization of women’s bodies in undertaking a hunger strike which ultimately improves the inmates’ conditions of detention. Furthermore, the body is defined as a crucial medium of memory as the two women approach the recollection of violent past experiences to restore historical truth about Moroccan state violence of the Years of Lead.
DOI:10.17192/meta.2020.14.8259