Moroccan Berberity, Representational Power and Identity in Video Films

Abstract

A long-term struggle between the Moroccan state and its large Berber culture-groups lies at the heart of this article about Moroccan Berber-language media, specifically video films in Tachelhit. The article analyzes the historical context of Moroccan nation-state constraints on Berber identity, with a special focus on the repression of media, particularly audiovisual media, in Berber languages. Included is discussion of a newly emergent form of Moroccan alternative media - Tachel-hit-language video films - and their multiple functions for Berbers. Berber-language video films recuperate marginalized Berber speakers into nationally and internationally circulating media as both producers and consumers, and break the stranglehold of Moroccan state-controlled media and culture. They help support the Berber ethnic revival/national heterogeneity movement, they represent and valorize within context cultural forms that are `folklorized' at the national level, and they insert new representers, representations and subjects into Berber cultural memory.