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Hafid Zghouli is a PhD candidate and associate member of the research network “Re-Configurations. History, Remembrance and Transformation Processes in the Middle East and North Africa” at the Centre for Near and Middle Eastern Studies (CNMS), Philipps University of Marburg. He is currently writing a doctoral dissertation on the narratives of resistance in Bensalem Himmich’s historical Fiction. He studied German as a Foreign Language, Arabic, and French literature at the University of Fez, Morocco. Between 2003 and 2010, he studied German Literary Studies and Oriental Studies at the University of Freiburg, where he graduated in July 2010 with a Master thesis on Heinrich Heine’s poetical representation of the orient and the occident: “Spiegelverhältnisse zwischen Orient und Okzident bei Heinrich Heine.” In 2011/12, he was assistant and lecturer at the CNMS.Hafid Zghouli's project:Narratives of Resistance in Benalem Himmich’s Historical FictionMy PhD project explores the historical novels of the Moroccan writer and poet Bensalem Himmich. It investigates the aesthetic strategies of representation and reflection on authoritarian regimes and their impact on society from a historical perspective. Due to violent political and social struggles during the course of Moroccan post-colonial history and the subsequent weakening of oppositional forces to a hegemonic monarchy, culture in general and literature in particular has become the most strident voice of socio-political critique. By examining Himmich’s historical fiction within the socio-political context of its genesis as well as in the context of the ‘Arab Spring’, this project intend to contribute to scholarship on the role of literature in the creation and consolidation of resistance narratives.One of the most distinguished literary experiences in the Moroccan literary field is Bensalem Himmich’s fictional work, particularly his historical novels The Theocrat (1989), The Polymath (1997) and A Muslim Suicide (2007). Ever since the publication of his first historical novel The Theocrat in 1989, authoritarian regimes and political power have represented some of the constant themes throughout Bensalem Himmich’s literary work. In his essay Ṯaqāfat ar-riwāya. Šahāda [Culture of Novel: A Testimony], Himmich states that one of the aims behind writing about (authoritarian) power in his fictional work is primarily to show the way it functions in the Arab world in order to demystify it (Himmich 1998). This claim sums up the preoccupation of the Arab writers and intellectuals in the aftermath of the 1967 defeat. After the “end of illusions” (Pflitsch 2010) in the post-1967 era, critique was directed towards the authoritarian structures and social grievances the Arab societies were and are still facing. This was also the case in the Moroccan intellectual and literary scene, especially after the Moroccan monarchy reached the apogee of its power. The king, as “commander of the faithful”, had the monopoly over both secular and spiritual authorities, weakened political opposition during the period known as the “lead years,” either through persecution or cooptation, and brutally crushed many revolts between 1956 and 1990 (such as the revolts in the rural regions of Rif and Atlas in 1950s, the urban riots in Casablanca in 1965, and the uprising in several Moroccan cities in 1984) (Brown 1989; Iskander 2010).In this context and long before the outburst of the so-called Arab Spring in 2011, culture and precisely literature had become the most effective voice of socio-political critique, trying to establish gradually and despite the despairing political and social situation an “aesthetics of resistance”. The literary work of several Moroccan writers such as Mohamed Choukri, Abdellatif Laabi and Mohamed Zafzaf – to name but a few – can be understood in this framework. Denouncing absolutist power, repressive state politics along with social grievances and the corruption of the political elite, they also shaped the social and political demands expressed by the February 20 movement, a Moroccan youth movement inspired by the Arab Spring and which organised demonstrations throughout the kingdom to protest against corruption and absolutism, and to demand social justice, radical constitutional reforms and particularly the establishment of a true parliamentary monarchy. Though the targets of criticism are often similar, the strategies applied by each writer in doing so differ from case to case. While the events in the novels of the aforementioned writers are situated in contemporary Moroccan society, Himmich’s novels reflect on the problems of modern Moroccan society (and by extension of the other societies in North Africa and the Middle East) from a historical perspective. This feature enables his novels not only to deal with crucial questions concerning Moroccan society with a striking frankness, but also to identify past structures and discourses – such as theocracy and the monopolisation of secular and spiritual power – which still shape the present and to show socio-economic hindrances to any emancipatory movement.Using historical material and fictionalising it allows the writer to transgress political taboos and to avoid both institutional and self-censorship. Crucially, it opens a repository of historical experiences and events which literature can refer back to in order to conceive in fictional terms an alternative revolutionary world. By the same token, this fictional world alludes continuously to its own probability and real character in that it still refers to a historical reality. Himmich’s novels thus transcend the boundaries of the one-dimensional culture imposed by despotic political structures and promote a culture of resistance in two ways: first, by dealing with revolutionary experiences against social injustice and despotism in Arab history and, secondly, by questioning official History and, in so doing, narrating history from the perspective of the oppressed.&#160;