Identity Poetics in Modern Amazigh Poetry: Dramatizing History and Memory in Ali Sidki Azaykou's Poem “Taketbiyt”

Abstract

A pioneer of the Amazigh Cultural Movement and modern Amazigh poetics, and one of the first intellectuals to interrogate – from the margin – Moroccan official historiography, Ali Sidki Azaykou has produced two collections of poetry, Timitar (Signs) and Izmuln (Scars), in addition to a posthumous collection, Indguiguen Aghaman (“Eternal Sparks”), appearing in 2019. The present article examines “Taketbiyt” (1971), a poem about the Koutoubia Tower in Marrakesh. While considering the poem, I use Pierre Nora's notion of “site[s] of memory” and Paul Ricœur's “trace of memory” to probe the significance of this centuries-old tower in Azaykou's poetry. I argue that Taketbiyt is evoked as a “site of memory” or a “trace of memory” to both remember and celebrate the forgotten Amazigh ancestry and history. I demonstrate that Azaykou's central concern, through such an act of remembrance, is to interrogate the biased representation of the Moroccan past in the present. As such, the poem complicates Amazigh cultural identity vis-à-vis the hegemony of Moroccan official historiography. Along with an abundance of metaphors, the poem displays an unparalleled allusive diction and a copious array of historical and geographical symbols. I conclude that, with its intellectually-informed theme and its self-consciously weaved form, “Taketbiyt” is a quintessential architype of modern Amazigh poetry.