LA GENÈSE DE L’HORREUR. REPRÉSENTATION DE L’ACTE TERRORISTE ET TRAVAIL DE MÉMOIRE DANS LA LITTÉRATURE MAROCAINE D’EXPRESSION FRANÇAISE / THE GENESIS OF HORROR: REPRESENTATION OF THE TERRORIST ACT AND MEMORY WORK IN MOROCCAN LITERATURE OF FRENCH EXPRESSION

Abstract

In the aftermath of the May 2003 attacks, Moroccans were paralyzed by the magnitude of the event. Political scientists, sociologists, journalists took turns on television sets to try to comprehend the incomprehensible, to label the unspeakable. The trauma was such that society took refuge in denial, arguing the age-old tolerance of Moroccans and their legendary pacifism. Years later, young novelists seize the event; put it in fiction, initiating a work of memory likely to reconcile the community with its painful past. In order to get out of denial, suggest these novelists, one must have the courage to face reality in the front. The terrorist is here. Instead of pretending to ignore him, it would be more judicious, to approach him, to give him the floor, to access the intimacy of his conscience. Hence, amazingly we will discover the limits of our ability to interpret. In the terrorist act, there is nothing to understand. Above all, we must not go back to the usual thought patterns and easy causalities conveyed by the media. This crisis of meaning is expressed aesthetically by challenging the reading grids of the realistic novel. We must not believe that the genesis of horror can be explained by a kind of social determinism. Certainly, information about real allow us to understand, in part, the fact of acting out, of falling into barbarism. But, let's recognize that our understanding emains incomplete. The deep motivations of the terrorist will always escape us. Shifted in his habits, the reader is invited to approach the problem differently and manages to grasp the real dangers of the situation. Basically, the economic and social crisis of Moroccan society is only the tip of the iceberg. Above all, our society suffers from a crisis of the imagination since young people from outlying districts are deprived of the possibility of building their relationship with the world other than through mechanical tasks, which are often degrading. Fragilized by the symbolic misery, they become easy victims of jihadist rhetoric. Other facets of the terrorist emerge then and with them narrative possibilities never updated, including that of a love story endearing in its depth and simplicity. Morality: the story of terrorism could have been different if we had known how to negotiate the education of the imagination of a lost youth; this education is also inexpensive if we know how to go about it. In short, for Moroccan novelists, this reinvigoration of the meaning to which the reader is cornered is the, sine qua non, of any salutary memory work.