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Paper short abstract:

This communication seeks to capture the movements of inversion from a heroic Rif to a victimized Rif, and vice versa. We will show how the hirak serves to renew memory, and how the actors innovate in their action by making memory dynamic.

Paper long abstract:

Based on the orality and experience of the hirak actors, we conducted a series of semi-structured interviews and field observation, as well as web content analysis of the hirak actors, in order to nuance the relationship to the protest memory of the Rif. This memory does not present a logical sequence of events, but functions as a rhetorical approach to the past where the real and the imaginary move as elements that constantly shape the "market of memory". As such, this paper seeks to capture the movements of inversion from a heroic Rif to a victimized Rif, and vice versa. We will show how the hirak serves to renew memory, and how actors innovate in their actions by making memory dynamic.

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Paper short abstract:

Recent historical research reports that Spanish military forces used chemical weapons in the Rif (1921-27). The oral tradition had incorporated such violence and its memories. Several testimonies link the high prevalence of cancer in the region to the effects of these chemical gases.

Paper long abstract:

Recent historical research reports that Spanish military forces frequently used chemical weapons during their colonial invasions in the Rif (1921-27). The oral tradition had incorporated and perpetuated such violence and its memories. Several testimonies link the high prevalence of different types of cancer in the region to the effects of these chemical gases. It is with the aim of understanding these processes that the purpose of this talk is to analyze the embodiment of colonial chemical violence, experienced as a chronic disease, or how cancer emerged as a chronic disease or the embodiment of colonial violence? In addition, how the link has been made between cancer and chemical warfare? We will expose how this question has evolved, under its double registers or dimensions: political and social, under the prism of the work of memory. On the one hand, we will examine the actions undertaken by local social actors for recognition, justice and reparation as well as the care of the sick. On the other hand, we will analyze how cancer is not only a social demand, but also a political object, a matter of State or States putting into account competing memories.

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Paper short abstract:

The aim of my paper is to study how marginal Riffian memories approach contemporary Moroccan history. Some legacies contested in Al-Hoceima through graffiti showed how they are contesting the memory of the Spanish occupation, rejecting what Riffians define as the postcolonial Moroccan occupation.

Paper long abstract:

The aim of my paper is to analyse how Riffian memory remembers the Spanish colonial past. I analysed graffiti that appeared in Al-Hoceima in 2016 as examples of contested cultural heritage that seek to make visible individual and collective actions of socio-political reclaiming, given that contested cultural heritage is a form of protest that is exercised in emblematic places. Studying contested cultural heritage from a postcolonial and decolonial studies point of view shows the weight of memories in local histories. This is the way to understand the appearance of anonymous graffiti in emblematic colonial sites in Al-Hoceima. My research suggests that Riffians accepted the Spanish colonisation and the rhetoric of Hispano–Moroccan brotherhood from the 1970s onwards in spite of the labour abuses and segregation that followed the violent pacification process, as the 2016 graffiti denounces, to challenge their current integration in the Alawite kingdom: graffiti constitute expressions of a collective reclaiming that confronts a colonised past with an uncomfortable present, inasmuch as they are actions that accept Spanish colonialism to question the current political regimes.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how memory is evoked and produced in musical practices to engage with the violent (post)colonial history of the Rif. It particularly considers how the music circulates between the Netherlands and Morocco, forming a trans-national acoustic community of re-membering.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the ways in which Riffians re-member and re-construct the (post)colonial past through music. We explore the different ways in which events from the (post)colonial past are articulated (and listened to) in the work of Amazigh (Berber) musicians. Ranging from old cassette tapes, spontaneous jam sessions, to professionally produced music in recording studios and concert halls, we ask: what does this music express and enable in terms of identity claims, hopes and aspirations, and community formations?

In particular, we center on the transnational circulation of contemporary Riffian music between Morocco and The Netherlands, where 65% of Dutch people with a Moroccan background are of Riffian origin (van Heelsum 2008). Most Moroccan organizations in the Netherlands, therefore, focus their activities on the culture and history of the Rif. Music plays a vital role in this and (re)orientates the Riffian community towards their Riffian roots in the homeland as well as towards The Netherlands.

We draw on theories about music's sensory and symbolic power to understand how these musical practices serve as a tool for retrieving and producing memories and collective identities. Through music's ability to evoke feelings of nostalgia, anger, or sadness, it does not only serve as a way to make meaning of personal and collective memories of the (post)colonial history of the Rif, but also as a means to form a transnational community of ‘rememory’ (Morrison 1987). In this way, the musical memory work carves out "the Rif" between remembering and forgetting, beyond its territorial boundaries.