School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemThe politics of memory and transitional justice in Morocco( 2017)This thesis examines the process of history and collective memory formation in Morocco by contrasting the narratives of its violent past from two ‘truth-telling’ projects: the official truth and reconciliation commission Instance Equité et Réconciliation (IER), and the unofficial public audiences of human rights victims ‘Testimonies without Chains for the Truth’ organized by a Moroccan non-governmental organization. The research first presents official accounts by the Moroccan regime of its nation’s post-colonial history, with a special focus on victims’ testimonies in IER public audiences in 2004 and 2005. In so doing, the research seeks to understand and measure the implication of the regime in elaborating and framing the official discourse about decades of repression as relayed through the publication of IER final report, historical accounts and through what the state has termed ‘positive preservation of memory’ exemplified in cinema, educational programs, historical publications and memorial sites. Thanks to alternative truth-telling initiatives, including unofficial public hearings, victims’ memoirs and oral histories, the modern history of Morocco is leavened by additions from opposition groups, victims and their families that contest the hegemony exercised by the regime’s master narrative about the past. The thesis concludes that, although the transitional justice experience in Morocco helped shed light on a dark period in its history, the regime, which consolidated itself thanks to transitional justice, controls this truth-telling and history-making, by either imposing its own version of the past, hijacking some independent and alternative stories, or by simply labeling other alternatives as radical and extreme and not in favor of reconciliation and moving forward. Morocco thus presents a unique case of transitional justice whereby two truth-telling projects occurred in parallel and at the same time to provide two narratives about the violent past and whereby the regime implemented transitional justice mechanisms to avoid actual transition, unlike in most historical cases where truth commissions were part of a transition.