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Rethinking Archives, Rewriting History: Other-Archives and the Interdisciplinary Approaches to Moroccan History of the “Years of Lead”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2022

Brahim El Guabli*
Affiliation:
Williams College, Williamstown, MA, USA
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: be2@williams.edu

Abstract

Archives are loci of power where state (and archive creators’) hegemony is reproduced and sustained through the stories they allow to be told and the ones they suppress. However, this applies only to contexts in which archives actually exist and are organized. I argue that Morocco’s postcolonial history challenges Western notions of archives and begs for a conceptualization of “other-archives” in which silenced stories find their way to the public arena and resist authoritarian amnesia. Not only do other-archives liberate history (re)writing from archival hegemony, but they also open up space for an interdisciplinary study of history. Other-archives, as I theorize them, allow the inscription of the voices of the subaltern into the other-archival documents while also helping to decenter history and historiographical discourses by creating the need for historians to collaborate with specialists in other non-history-focused disciplines, such as cinema, literature, sociology, and political science. This article reveals how the existence and wide dissemination of other-archives within the context of the Equity and Reconciliation Commission’s work in Morocco (2004–2005) spurred transformative debates among Moroccan historians and incited them to push the boundaries of their discipline through the use of tārīkh al-zaman al-rāhin (history of the present).

Résumé

Résumé

Les archives sont des lieux de pouvoir où l’hégémonie de l’État (et des créateurs d’archives) est reproduite et entretenue à travers les histoires qu’ils permettent de raconter et celles qu’ils répriment. Cependant, cela ne s’applique qu’aux contextes dans lesquels les archives existent réellement et sont organisées. Je soutiens que l’histoire postcoloniale du Maroc défie les notions occidentales d’archives et demande une conceptualisation des « autres-archives » dans laquelle les histoires trouvent leur place dans l’espace public et résistent à l’amnésie autoritaire. Non seulement les autres-archives libèrent la (ré)écriture de l’histoire de l’hégémonie archivistique, mais elles ouvrent aussi un espace pour une étude interdisciplinaire de l’histoire. Les autres-archives, telles que je les théorise, permettent l’inscription des voix des subalternes dans les autres documents d’archives tout en contribuant à décentrer l’histoire et les discours historiographiques en créant la nécessité pour les historiens de collaborer avec des spécialistes d’autres disciplines non centrées sur l’histoire, comme le cinéma, la littérature, la sociologie et les sciences politiques. Cet article révèle comment l’existence et la large diffusion d’autres-archives dans le cadre des travaux de la Commission Équité et Réconciliation au Maroc (2004–2005) ont stimulé débats transformateurs parmi les historiens marocains et les a incités à pousser les limites de leur discipline par l’utilisation de tārīkh al-zaman al-rāhin (histoire du temps présent).

Type
Artifacts and Archives Anew
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the African Studies Association

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