Tahar Ben Jelloun’s La Punition, or the (re)presentation of incarceration as lived experience

Abstract

This article examines Tahar Ben Jelloun’s La Punition (Gallimard, 2018), his first memoir about his imprisonment in 1966–68, but not his first foray into la littérature carcérale; in 2001, Ben Jelloun published Cette aveuglante absence de lumière, a fictionalized account based on the experience of Aziz Binebine, a former prisoner in Tazmamart. Cette aveuglante absence de lumière received much critical acclaim internationally, but attracted as much controversy in Morocco. I describe the conditions of ‘les années de plomb’, then I examine the debates surrounding Cette aveuglante absence de lumière before analysing his testimonial La Punition, written over five decades after his release. How does La Punition differ from Cette aveuglante absence de lumière in style and approach? What does Ben Jelloun write about candidly, so many years after the fact, and what does he elide? After addressing these questions, I demonstrate there is no serious reckoning with the structural systems that constrain Moroccan society, namely the monarchy and the army. While Ben Jelloun describes his imprisonment in detail, there is no unequivocal critique of royal power; while he criticizes the abuse of power by the army in the 1960s, he never overtly denounces the continued muzzling of detractors in contemporary Morocco.