World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies

Barcelona, July 19th - 24th 2010

· NOT_DEFINED date: WED 21, 9.00-11.00 am

· NOT_DEFINED institution: University of Miami (USA)

· NOT_DEFINED organizer: Christina Civantos

· NOT_DEFINED language: English

· NOT_DEFINED description: The geographical proximity between Morocco and Spain - barely separated by the narrow band of water of the Gibraltar Strait - and the beckoning of the other shore has led both to positive and negative consequences for the peoples on both sides of the Mediterranean who have chosen, throughout history, to cross the Strait. In a general sense, migrations from both sides of the Strait are a familiar, common historical phenomenon for both countries. But migration today is almost exclusively unidirectional from Morocco to Spain. The Spanish account of migration and transnational movements as ‘invasions’ the ‘norm’ when discussing immigration in the age of globalization is articulated in the familiar language of borders and threats where Spaniards and Europeans, particularly, fear the migrating newcomers from Northern Africa. In this sense, Spanish cultural representations of the encounter between recent Moroccan immigrants and Spaniards betray a number of racial, sexual, and cultural anxieties. Through postcolonial and cultural studies approaches and intersectional analyses of race, sexuality, and gender, the participants in this panel will analyze recent hegemonic and counter-hegemonic cultural representations of Moroccan migrants in Spain produced in various languages by both Europeans and North Africans.

Chair: Gema Pérez-Sánchez, University of Miami, USA

Discussant:Hakim Abderrezak, University of Minnesota, USA

Paper presenter: Ismail El-Outmani, University Mohamed V, Rabat, Morocco, Representing and Misrepresenting the Moroccan Migrant in Spain
In recent decades, hundreds of thousands of Moroccans have moved - by legal or illegal means - to Spain and settled there to work. Most of them are under-educated citizens requiring a special effort to adapt to and be ‘adopted’ by Spanish culture. In the meantime, a set of (mis)representations of Moroccans has appeared in Spanish politics, media, society, and culture. How is the Moroccan individual represented by the ‘hosts’? This is the main question I shall address in my paper. I will deploy the historical background of the Spanish collective memory and popular imagery concerning the ‘Moor’ to analyze and comment upon the different representations of the Moroccan individual in Spain. A deconstruction, à la Edward Said, particularly of relevant discourses and privileged witnesses, such as Juan Goytisolo, sustain my approach as I seek to illustrate where the Moroccan stands between representation and misrepresentation in contemporary Spain

Paper presenter: Gema Pérez-Sánchez University of Miami USA, Queer Stra(igh)t': Francophone-Moroccan Perspectives on Immigration Across the Strait of Gibraltar
I address the cultural manifestations of Spanish racism and expose that they are often intricately enmeshed in forms of Spanish homophobia and sexism that can be traced back to Spain’s first major historical encounter with North African migration in the medieval period. Most Spanish literary and filmic works about the crossing of the Strait of Gibraltar dramatize heterosexist anxieties underpinning Spanish masculinity. These anxieties are projected, often violently, onto the bodies of immigrants, as Carlos Molinero demonstrates in his 2001 film, Salvajes. By contrast, two important Moroccan Francophone writers, Abdellah Taïa (in his novel, L’armée du salut [2006]) and Tahar Ben Jelloun (in his novel Partir [2006]) add gendered and sexualized marks to their representations of Moroccans crossing the Strait of Gibraltar or traversing the Iberian Peninsula on their way to other European destinations - subversive representations that challenge prevalent Spanish anxieties about those immigrants.

Paper presenter: Christina Civantos , University of Miami, USA , Migration and the Invocation of al-Andalus in Contemporary Moroccan Literature
In this paper I examine contemporary representations and invocations of Muslim Spain ’al-Andalus’ in Arabic-language literature from Morocco. In particular I focus on the novel _Nisa' Al al-Randi_ (2000) by al-Miludi Shaghmum, in which two moments in the history of Moroccan - Spanish migration are juxtaposed: late 20th-century emigration from Morocco to Spain and late 15th-century emigration from the fallen Muslim sultanate of Granada to North Africa. I argue that through this juxtaposition, as well as other thematic strands and narrative devices, and the very choice of Arabic as his language of expression, Shaghmum deconstructs the concepts of purity and religious affiliation that are the basis of Spanish rejection of North African immigrants as well as North African idealization of Europe and highlights Moroccans ''and Spaniards'' locations within the system of global political and economic power. In this way, Shaghmum uses al-Andalus to present a post-colonial interpretation of power and difference in the contemporary Western Mediterranean.