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Contesting Comrades. Orthodoxy, Negotiations, and Disengagement of the Moroccan Marxist-Leninist Women (1965-1992)
Abstract
In light of recent interest in the historical Arab Lefts (Leopardi 2020, Bardawil 2020, Guirguis 2020), where the Maghrebi radical experiences are receiving increasing attention (Guabli 2020, Bennani-Chraïbi 2022), and in consideration of the large lack of focus regarding women’s political participation in the Left, this paper aims to discuss the role of women in the Moroccan Marxist-Leninist movement in the Seventies and beyond. In her groundbreaking study on the case of the militant Arwa Salih, Hanan Hammad (2016) shed lights on how women’s militancy in the Egyptian radical Left was frequently undermined by various form of abuse. A similar, although not exclusive, reading can be applied in the Moroccan case. The gender perspective on the historical Left, which has yet to be undertaken in many other Maghrebi contests, constitutes indeed a viable approach to provide a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of the Arab Lefts. Drawing on memoirs, Marxist-Leninist documentation, and personal interviews, this contribution examines the female participation in the Moroccan Marxist-Leninist groups and the reasons of their later disengagement. It demonstrates how, on the one hand, the organizations conceptualized women’s contributions to the proletarian cause by negating gender identity, while on the other, women militants saw the need to integrate class struggle with the gender component of oppression. For this aim, the emergence of the first female cellule inside the Marxist-Leninist movement, which was entirely formed of women quite critical of the Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy, will be traced back to its inception. The history of the Moroccan radical Left is inextricably linked to the regime’s heavy political persecution during the Years of Lead. The contribution investigates how Marxist-Leninist cellules operated in clandestinely, revealing the peculiarity of women’s political imprisonment. Here a very strong intellectual output arose, sustaining the search for the gender question inside the class struggle (El Bouih, 2001; Menebhi, 1978). Finally, the contribution provides a reading of how women militants disengaged following the Marxist-Leninist movement’s collapse, only to reactivate their activism within the Moroccan women’s rights movement in the 1980s and early 1990s. It will be emphasized that, also in this new political context, continual confrontations, and negotiations with the successor factions of the Marxist-Leninist movement occurred, in the continuing effort to further the inclusion of women’s issues in the political agenda of the Moroccan Left.
Discipline
History
Geographic Area
Morocco
Sub Area
None