The Souffles magazine published in Rabat from 1966-72. Souffles had long been unlocatable, for it was banned in Morocco in 1972. Its editor, Abdelatiff Laabi, was imprisoned for eight years before being released following international pressure in 1980 and going into exile in Paris. The magazine is now accessible online thanks to his efforts and an international network. It was digitalized in 1998 by the City University of New York, USA and is since 2010 accessible at the National Library of the Kingdom of Morocco. A review of its history was recently provided by the French-Moroccan literary scholar and journalist Kenza Sefrioui in the frame of her doctoral thesis.[1] Articles by the Rome-based art historian Toni Maraini in the Springerin periodical and the online journal Red Threat[2] have contributed to familiarizing a younger generation of writers, academics and cultural producers with Souffles. They include the Bidoun magazine, the South African project Chimurenga, the publicly accessible library of SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin-Neukölln and the l’appartmenet 22 art space in Rabat, as well as with the projects Action! painting/publishing and Aesthetics of Decolonization initiated from 2012 in Paris and Zurich.[3]
Souffles is regarded as one of the most influential Moroccan literary magazines of the 20th century. Editors and collaborators generated 22 issues in French, and 8 in Arabic, that were titled Anfas. While the assessment about its high literature quality must be endorsed, what it omits is the magazine’s transnational and interdisciplinary character. Whether its national setting (Morocco) and orientation toward one discipline of art (literature) suffices to cover and describe Souffles’ scope of activities between poetry, visual art, theory and activism is a question that we as editors of the tricontinentale.net platform were highly concerned with in the last years.
Rereading Souffles today, one can equally call it an internationalist, Pan-Arabian, Pan-African, and tricontinental culture magazine shaped by Maghreb, European and Creole writers, fine artists, and activists. What unfolds in the 24 issues are discussions on Negritude, the Pan-African festivals in Dakar and Algiers, debates on culture and revolution in the tricontinental solidarity movement and in Third Cinema, as well as the protest movements of 1968 in Europe.This prospect include as well insights of new studies in the anglophone context that have been recently published relating to the Tricontinental dimensions of Souffles by Clare Davies and Olivia Harrison as well as a critical anthology of selected writings that will be coming out end of 2015. For the 50ties celebration of the magazine in Rabat 2016 the former editor Abdellatif Laâbi has created a cultural foundation to bring international researchers together, in which we will be all part of.
The #02 edition of tricontinentale.net aims thus to celebrate on the one hand the impressive imaginative work of the former editors, writers and artists of the Souffles magazine and on the other asks about its contemporary readings and interpretations that are growing in the very moment. Before this background we will ask with this edition authors, artists and researchers to reflect about the relevance of the concept of a Decolonization of Culture, that was proposed by the radical intellectuals of the Souffles network and if and how this would be applicable under the contemporary condition and in our work practices today.
The action committee of #02 Don’t breath normal, read Souffles! consist of Olivier Hadouchi, Serhat Karakayali, Kenza Sefrioui and Marion von Osten
[1] Kenza Sefrioui: Souffles (1966-1973), espoirs de révolution culturelle au Maroc (Éditions du Sirocco, 2013).[2] See: http://www.springerin.at/dyn/heft_text.php?textid=1869&lang=de; und http://www.red-thread.org/en/article.asp?a=41 (05/15/2015) [3] See: http://www.leslaboratoires.org/en/projet/architectures-de-la-decolonisation/architectures-de-la-decolonisation ; and https://www.zhdk.ch/index.php?id=73291 (05/15/2015)