The proposed contribution aims to examine Souffles/Anfas, a French- and Arabic-language quarterly literary and political magazine published in Rabat between 1966 and 1971, as a key site of radical cultural and political production in post-independence Morocco. Founded in the aftermath of Moroccan independence by writer Abdellatif Laâbi—a prominent figure in Morocco’s post-independence revolutionary left—Souffles first emerged as a critical cultural project that sought to break with the lingering French colonial epistemologies through a decolonial break of language, aesthetics, and literary practice. The magazine initially functioned as an intellectual space in which writers, artists, and thinkers articulated and shared new anti-colonial cultural production grounded in autonomy and linguistic experimentation. The arrival of the review came at a time of massive upheaval, of strikes, protests and arrests and most notably as well with the murder of leftist revolutionary politician and political dissident Mehdi Ben Barka in 1965.

Over time, Souffles underwent a decisive transformation from a primarily cultural review and site  into an explicitly political and revolutionary platform. Influenced by anticolonial thought, most notably Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, the magazine increasingly engaged with transnational solidarities and tricontinental struggles. This shift became particularly pronounced following the Arab defeat of 1967 and the arrival of activist and writer Abraham Serfaty as editor in 1968, which propelled the journal toward a more radical Marxist-Leninist orientation. Together with Abdellatif Laâbi, Serfaty helped position Souffles as a conduit for and disseminator of revolutionary language and ideas at the heart of Morocco’s revolutionary student and leftist movements, including the founding of the underground organization Ila al-Amam and its connections to the March 23 movement.

By revisiting Souffles/Anfas, we argue for the recovery of a suppressed history of Moroccan anticolonial and tricontinental solidarity that was violently curtailed during the Years of Lead. Situating the magazine within its historical and political context helps demonstrate how revolutionary periodicals functioned as spaces of counter-hegemonic contestation that fostered radical political engagement in line with the anticolonial wave of its time. In doing so, the proposed text would highlight the enduring relevance of Souffles/Anfas as a short-lived but vital experiment in African and Arab revolutionary imagination and political praxis.