The “Jewish Question” in Postcolonial Moroccan Cinema

Dados Bibliográficos

ID8967907
AutoresOren Kosansky (Lewis & Clark College, autor correspondente), Aomar Boum
Ano2012
Volume44
Fascículo3
Páginas421-442
Data de publicação2012-07-26
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoInternational Journal Middle East Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0020-7438 • E-ISSN: 1471-6380
EditoraCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0020743812000402
OpenAlexW2115139570
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas10
Referências citadas29

In this historically and anthropologically oriented article, we situate the recent wave of Jewish-themed Moroccan films within the context of the liberalizing transformations and associated nationalist narratives promoted by the current Moroccan regime. Reflecting Mohammed VI's commitment to widening the space of civil society, the task of enacting these transformations and producing these narratives devolves increasingly to nonstate agents in the public sphere. Previously monopolized and managed more comprehensively by the state, the “Jewish Question”—that is, contestations over representations of Jews as authentic members of the Moroccan body politic—is now taken up in a range of public media less subject to direct government control. We demonstrate that the role of cinema in this process reflects the shifting relationship between state and civil society in the late postcolonial period. More specifically, we argue that the production, circulation, and reception of Jewish-themed films is diagnostic of the state's ability to open new spaces of public representation and debate that foster precisely those images of the state and nation promoted by the current regime in regional and global contexts

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Body politic · Civil society · Context (archaeology · Judaism · Literature · Media studies · Movie theater · Narrative · Nationalism · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Public sphere · Representation (politics · Sociology · State (computer science · Subject (documents · Gender Studies · History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Law · Middle East Politics and Society · North African History and Literature