10.17192/meta.2020.14.8259
Biondi, Martina
Martina
Biondi
Body, Gender and Pain in Moroccan Prison Memoir Ḥadīth al-‘Atama
Middle East - Topics + Arguments : Vol 14 (2020)
Philipps-Universität Marburg
2020
Prison Memoirs, Years of Lead, Hunger Strike, Corporeal Memory
Morocco
Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies (CNMS)
2020-07-14
2020-07-13
JournalArticle
https://archiv.ub.uni-marburg.de/ep/0003/2020/240/8259
urn:nbn:de:hebis:04-ep0003-2020-240-82596
https://archiv.ub.uni-marburg.de/ep/0003/2020/240/8259/8259.png
2196-629X
application/pdf
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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.