Insurgent citizenship: Youth, political activism and citizen cinema in post-2011 Morocco

Abstract

Abstract The uprisings that swept across North Africa and the Middle East in 2011 brought to world attention the revolutionary potential of youth in the face of social injustice and political repression. This article explores how the so-called Arab Spring foregrounded Moroccan youth's alternative conceptions of citizenship and being young in the MENA region today. Using the emergence of citizen cinema as a case study, I will examine the subjective politics of Moroccan youth's alternative to dominant political and social authority. Made, self-produced and distributed online free of charge by a young and self-avowed citizen filmmaker, Nadir Bouhmouch's debut documentary My Makhzen and Me (2012) does not pretend to offer an objective account of Morocco's so-called Arab Spring. Instead, the filmmaker focuses on relating his own personal story as a young upper-class Moroccan student in San Diego, who returned to the country in the summer of 2011 armed with a camera as his weapon in the February 20 Movement's battle for democratic citizenship and social justice in Morocco. In this article, I will show how the subjective point of view structuring this documentary offers a unique perspective not only on Morocco's Arab Spring but also on the impossibility of representing citizenship objectively on the documentary camera. The article ultimately argues that because the personal is always already political in North African documentary filmmaking since 2011, the subjective point of view allows for the emergence of the insurgent citizenship of the region's youth.