Said Graiouid

... View all references, at-Tabi'a rebels against Moroccan traditional aesthetics and pays allegiance to the Middle-Eastern mode of representation as pioneered by Nawal Saadawi, Leila Ba'albaki and Ghada Samman. However ...

This article analyses patronage as the context and framework for the functioning of cultural production in postcolonial Morocco. In particular, it focuses on the ideological and the political underpinnings of different state patronage schemes before and in the aftermath of the Arab Spring and the accession to government of the Islamist Party of Justice and Development (PJD). The argument is that the power struggle between the state (spearheaded by the monarchy) and the PJD translates in the field of culture into a debate about al-fān anādhīf (‘clean art’) versus obscurantism. While the PJD activists proclaim al-fān anādhīf as the conceptual framework for assessing art and cultural production, their secular opponents accuse them of plotting to curb creative freedom and institutionalize an obscurantist cultural project. The article discusses the ambivalent relationship between cultural workers and state institutions, contextualizes the politics of state patronage as it relates to music festivals and film, highlights a sample of alternative forms of patronage, and reflects on the future of cultural production in the post-Arab Spring environment.
ملخص
تتناول هذه الورقة مسألة الرعاية باعتبارها سياقا وإطارا لاشتغال الإنتاج الثقافي في مغرب ما بعد الكولونيالية. وتركز
بالخصوص على الأسس الإيديولوجية والسياسية لمختلف مشاريع الرعاية التي تدعمها الدولة في فترة ما ما قبل و ما بعد
الربيع العربي ودخول حزب العدالة والتنمية للحكومة. وتدافع الورقة على الأطروحة التالية وهي أن صراع السلطة بين
الدولة بزعامة الملكية والإسلاميين بقيادة حزب العدالة والتنمية تتم ترجمتها في الحقل الثقافي من خلال التقاطب الذي
يحصل بخصوص الفن النظيف والظلامية. فبينما يسعى الإسلاميون إلى إشاعة مفهوم الفن النظيف كإطار لتقييم الإنتاج
الثقافي، يتهمهم خصومهم بالعمل على تقويض حرية الإبداع والعمل على مأسسة مشروع ثقافي ظلامي. وتناقش الورقة
كذلك العلاقة الملتبسة بين العاملين في الحقل الثقافي ومؤسسات الدولة، وتقف عند سياقات سياسة رعاية الدولة في
علاقتها بمهرجانات الموسيقى والسينما، وتتطرق إلى نماذج من أشكال الرعاية البديلة مع إبداء بعض الملاحظات
بخصوص مستقبل الإنتاج الثقافي في أجواء ما بعد الربيع العربي.

This paper analyses processes through which informal association and unstructured co-mingling in Moroccan cafe´s mediate the emergence of group solidarity and subversive practices.
The paper approaches the cafe´ not as a site of Habermasian ‘ideal speech situations’, but as a set of spatial practices shot through with conflicts and contradictions. The point is made that cafe´ mediated communities are imagined in the space in between the public and the private, performance and spectatorship, the explicit and the implicit, and the dominant and the subversive. The paper builds on findings of a qualitative ethnographic research to map the position of the cafe´ within the general cultural, spatial and gender politics which regulate Moroccan society. In particular, the paper explores the interface between the cafe´ and the street and examines the interaction between cafe´ communities and media texts. Cutting across these arguments, the point is made that the cafe´ institution is better viewed as a nexus where solidarities are built but also where social contradictions are played out.