Collective Voices in Individual Testimonies

Scholars of the Years of Lead have overemphasized the collective dimension of Moroccan women's testimonies (Slyomovics 2005a, 81; Slyomovics 2005b, 144; Slyomovics 2012, 42; Orlando 2009, 88; Orlando 2010, 283–284; Dennerlein 2014, 24; Menin 2014, 58). Their studies often draw on the well-established criticism of testimonial writing in the context of Latin America, advancing that individual testimonials represent the experience of and/or can speak for exploited and oppressed communities (Beverley [1989] 2004; Yúdice 1991; Sommer 1991; Harlow 1986; Harlow 1991). Slyomovics's above statement refers to narrative and political strategies that women developed to counteract ways in which state repression and social stigma collude in Morocco to silence women and undermine their experiences of violence. Slyomovics underlines this reality in the title of the book chapter she dedicates to women: ‘Rani nimhik: Women and Testimony.’ Rani nimhik, Moroccan Darija for ‘I will erase you,’ is a phrase that Youssfi Kaddour, police chief and torturer, said to Fatna El Bouih while she was held in custody in secret after she was kidnapped by the authorities. From a gender perspective, Kaddour's phrase is also symbolic of the authorities’ attempts to erase women from the political sphere. Juxtaposing this brutal statement with women's testimonies, Slyomovics illustrates how women used testimony, literally and figuratively, to wrestle their way back, after they were forcibly removed by the state, into the public sphere of politics and into Morocco's history of resistance.

Generally, for political prisoners, writing for public consumption is a transgression of the state's attempt to isolate opponents and contain their opinions within controlled and regulated spaces such as the torture room, the prison cell, or secret camps.