Lecture Chakib Ararou "Al-Thaqāfa al-Jadīda : Cultural Autonomy and Arab Embeddedness in Morocco’s Years of Lead"

AFROPRESS is organizing a lecture by Chakib Ararou on Moroccan magazine culture. The title of the presentation will be "Al-Thaqāfa al-Jadīda : Cultural Autonomy and Arab Embeddedness in Morocco’s Years of Lead."

Abstract

This presentation analyzes the development of the Moroccan journal Al-Thaqāfa al-Jadīda (1974–1984), founded by the Moroccan intellectuals Muḥammad Bannīs, ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Shāwī, and Musṭafā al-Masnāwī following the prohibition of Souffles/Anfās (1972). Drawing upon Bourdieusian field theory and Pascale Casanova’s framework for understanding World Literature as a hierarchically structured positional space, this presentation traces the trajectory of the journal while jointly analyzing the national and transnational dynamics shaping its development. Within the Moroccan national field, the journal represents a turning point due to the autonomy it asserted vis-à-vis the political field, particularly the Moroccan left-wing parties—whether institutional or clandestine—within whose orbit the most important cultural journals, such as Aqlām and Souffles, had evolved so far. In a context of authoritarian reassertion of state control over the cultural field, the creation of Al-Thaqāfa al-Jadīda was driven by the aim of preserving a space of autonomy for cultural production and research, without alignment with any particular political tendency, while simultaneously redefining a cultural policy in Morocco that stood in competition with that of the state. In terms of transnational circulations, the journal pursued a distinctive strategy grounded in Morocco’s doubly peripheral configuration: a Francophone subfield oriented toward Paris and an Arabophone subfield linked to Mashriqi capitals. As an Arabophone review, Al-Thaqāfa al-Jadīda combined the resources of Moroccan plurilingualism, developing research and criticism informed by contemporary French theory, read in the original, translated, and reworked for Moroccan and Arab contexts. This strategy facilitated more horizontal exchanges with the Arabophone literary area’s avant-garde, notably with Mawāqif, a journal edited in Beirut by Syrian poet Adūnīs.

Chakib Ararou (Rabat, 1992) holds a PhD in modern arabic literature from Aix-Marseille University. He is currently teaching at INALCO Paris.