Voices from the Prison: an Analysis of Abdellatif Laâbi's 'The Poem Under Gag' as a Post-Colonial Testimony

This analysis examines Abdellatif Laâbi's "The Poem Under Gag" (1978) as a major work that advances prison literature and post-colonial poetry. The poem, composed during the author's incarceration in Kénitra Central Prison in Morocco, functions both as a personal narrative and a means of political dissent. It converts physical constraints to ways of creativity by merging individual resistance with a collective resistant narrative. This paper examines how Laâbi turns his physical imprisonment to a form of creative freedom by using complex poetic techniques like metaphors, time shifts, and fragmented structures. The poem's fourteen asterisk-separated sections create a fragmented unity that illustrates the prison experience while articulating the evolving nature of consciousness. This analysis explores the challenges of translation in representing cultural and linguistic differences, with a specific emphasis on the intertextuality of "le temps des cerises." This research utilizes theoretical frameworks from Michel Foucault, Gaston Bachelard, and post-colonial criticism to place the work within the broader context of prison literature. It further highlights its unique position in the intellectual resistance of North Africa and the innovation of modernist poetry.