The “Jewish Question” in Postcolonial Moroccan Cinema

Datos Bibliográficos

ID8967907
AutoresOren Kosansky (Lewis & Clark College, autor de correspondencia), Aomar Boum
Año2012
Volumen44
Número3
Páginas421-442
Fecha de publicación2012-07-26
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaInternational Journal Middle East Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0020-7438 • E-ISSN: 1471-6380
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0020743812000402
OpenAlexW2115139570
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas10
Referencias 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