Experimental Writing in the Works of Abdellatif Laâbi, Mohammed Khair-Eddine and Abdelhak Serhane: Approaches and Commitment to a "Different Morocco"

Abstract

Establishing experimental writing as a site of literary dissent is a perilous endeavour: for some Moroccan intellectuals, it has cost their livelihoods, or at the very least their freedom. Nevertheless, they persevered, driven by the vision of a "Morocco of reform": a strong, free, and cultivated nation with high-quality education and scientific research. Their struggle stems from a sincere patriotism, in contrast to the bombastic, self-serving rhetoric of those who merely pay lip service to reform.

This "Other Morocco" requires free and responsible agency, as well as sustained commitment. Abdellatif Laâbi's experimental writing embodies this wager by dismantling taboos, both those surrounding lived reality and those concealing its falsification. It exposes social ills and the suffering of those who resist dominant discourse, while mobilising textual violence to confront the violence of power in the face of a populace resigned to its fate. Abdelhak Serhane, for his part, articulates literature with the social question and interrogates the sacralised, including "poetic" language itself. In Khair-Eddine's work, revolt does not repudiate tradition: it rewrites it and draws on a subversive imaginary to forge a new Morocco and a new citizen.

Together, these three writers pioneered a path in which experimental writing becomes a legitimate and urgent means of representing society as it is.