(Re)thinking the Rif and Morocco: Critical approaches to plural ways of being and being in the world in the contemporary world.

As stated in the abstract, this panel will address, from critical theoretical and epistemological perspectives from the field of Social Sciences and Humanities (postcolonial and decolonial studies, feminisms and gender studies, ontological turn, new materialisms, animal studies and others), social and political practices that concern the plural forms of being and being in Morocco, with special attention (but not only) to the events of the recent past and present in the territory of the Rif. We are particularly interested in proposals that reflect innovative working perspectives that allow us to go beyond hegemonic colonial and postcolonial approaches, and proposals that propose critical revisions and revisitations of what has been researched and sustained to date.
Our panel aims at making visible the critical research that is currently being done and that explores, from the Social Sciences and the Humanities (including the Digital Humanities), forms of being and being in the world that have been invisible to date: subalternized and marginalized human and non-human lives; (re)emerging human identities: religious, political, linguistic, gender and any others; beings and being related to the migratory fact and transnationality; pasts and presents of minorities in diasporic situation; agency of collectives that intensify their political expression in contemporaneity; gender relations and relations between humans and non-humans….
In this line, we are interested in a) works that explore the forms of agency of those who want to break with binarisms and hegemonic essentialisms; and b) works that explore the forms of agency of those who want to break with binarisms and hegemonic essentialisms. b) the forms of individual and collective resistance articulated in Morocco and in the Rif. In general, the panel aims to be a space for dialogue to deepen the study of intersubjective, intercollective and interspecific relations in the Rif and Morocco, and a productive space for plural debate in which to freely share new theoretical and methodological perspectives of social and historical research.
In recent decades, postcolonial, decolonial and feminist studies on interpersonal and intercollective relations in the Rif and Morocco have highlighted the urgency of critically reflecting on the construction of innovative objects of study, which account for the diversity and superdiversity that are the hallmark of the present moment, and which allow us to better understand the intense changes that are taking place locally.
Although the bibliography on the Rif is quite extensive, and it would exceed the framework of this panel proposal to examine it in all its variety, important critical contributions have been detected in the last two decades that have facilitated the visibilization of subjects and objects of research subalternized or traditionally minorized and ignored. Logically, in relation to the Rif and to the modernized Morocco of contemporaneity, the approaches to the forms of political and social protest, and the visibilization of local or transnational political and politicized actors stand out among all the contributions (vid., among others, Suárez Collado, 2017, 2023a and 2023b; Sánchez García et al., 2021). Critical views are also provided by classic works (Pennell, 1987) and highly innovative research, especially concerning the colonial period (among others, Aixelà-Cabré, 2019 and 2020; Torres Delgado, 2023), as well as reflections on the political question and social movements today (among many others, Aziza, 2003 and 2023; Joffé, 2014; Saadi, 2021; Nahhass and Bendella, 2022; Rhani et al. 2022; El Ghalbzouri, 2022). In line with the studies cited above, this panel, precisely entitled “(Re)thinking the Rif and Morocco”, could be an interesting academic space to think together and debate on the (re)emerging cultural diversities, and on the social and political practices that make visible the forms of inequality and oppression in the Rif and in Morocco.
The cited bibliography and the brief state of the question presented are intended to underline the enormous interest involved in the use of ethnographic and autoethnographic practices, and the exploration of local and translocal ethnohistorical sources different from those usually employed.