Souffles-Anfas: A Critical Anthology from the Moroccan Journal of Culture and Politics

by Olivia Harrison (Editor), Teresa Villa-Ignacio (Editor)

A Critical Anthology from the Moroccan Journal of Culture and Politics introduces and makes available, for the first time in English, an incandescent corpus of experimental leftist writing from North Africa. Founded in 1966 by Abdellatif Laâbi and a small group of avant-garde Moroccan poets and artists and banned in 1972, Souffles-Anfas was one of the most influential literary, cultural, and political reviews to emerge in postcolonial North Africa. An early forum for tricontinental postcolonial thought and writing, the journal published texts ranging from experimental poems, literary manifestos, and abstract art to political tracts, open letters, and interviews by contributors from the Maghreb, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. The essays, poems, and artwork included in this anthology―by the likes of Abdelkebir Khatibi, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Albert Memmi, Etel Adnan, Sembene Ousmane, René Depestre, and Mohamed Melehi―offer a unique window into the political and artistic imaginaries of writers and intellectuals from the Global South, and resonate with particular acuity in the wake of the Arab Spring. A critical introduction and section headnotes make this collection the perfect companion for courses in postcolonial theory, world literature, and poetry in translation.

Genres: Poetry, Africa

303 pages, Hardcover

First published November 16, 2015

Reviews

[Stuart Ahn Sones · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Souffles/Anfas reader provides anglophone audiences a strong introduction to the evolving literary work and political thought of progressive (mostly francophone) Moroccan writers of the postcolonial era, (Abdellatif Laâbi, Mostafa Nissabouri, Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine, to name a few). Poetry, cultural critiques, interviews, book reviews, and even pop art published in the influential journal serve as a window to the major currents and debates surrounding revolutionary maghrebi literature, Moroccan identity, and third-wordlist decolonization and solidarity. The historical context and critique the editors offer helped a lot in digesting the work, especially in drawing out the Laâbi’s gradual turn from promoting a Moroccan francophone “terrorist literature” to championing Arabic as the only way to decolonize the Moroccan literature from “linguistic alienation.” I only wish there were more Arabic texts included in the anthology, though I know Anfas, the Arabic counterpart, was only founded a year or two before editors were jailed for their leftist politics and the journal was discontinued.

[dathomira]

this was fine.