Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Visual Reconfigurations of Casablanca in Nour-Eddine Lakhmari's Casanegra

2013; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 30; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/10509208.2011.563217

1543-5326

Mohammed Hirchi,

African Studies and Geopolitics

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. Nicole Brossard, She Should Be the First Sentence of My Next Novel. Toronto, Canada: The Mercury Press (1998), 57. 2. Susan Ossman, Picturing Casablanca: Portraits of Power in a Modern City. Berkeley, Los Angeles; University of California Press (1994), 1. 3. C.R. Pennell, Morocco: From Empire to Independence. Oxford, UK: Oneworld (2003): 9. 4. Some recent films set in Morocco such as Alejandro González Iñárritu's Babel (2006), Bernardo Bertolucci's The Sheltering Sky (1990), Gillies MacKinnon's Hideous Kinky (1998) and André Téchiné's Changing Times (2004) still concentrate on Western characters but do incorporate local characters (played by Moroccan actors) and local culture to a greater extent. For analyses of representations of Arabs in American cinema, see Jack G. Shaheen's analyses Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People, Interlink Publishing Group (2001) and Guilty: Hollywood's Verdict on Arabs After 9/11, Olive Branch Press (2008). Another rich study of depictions of Morocco in film, fiction, journalism, and anthropological and historical texts is Brian T. Edwards' Morocco Bound: Disorienting America's Maghreb, from Casablanca to the Marrakech Express, Durham, N.C. Duke University Press, 2005. 5. Mohamed Zafzaf, "Une nuit à Casablanca." Trans. Abdellatif Gourighate and Jawida Khadda. Onze histoires marocaines. Ed. Mohamed Saad Eddine El Yamani. Paris: Institut du Monde Arabe (1999). 6. Specific examples of contemporary Casa-centric literature include Abdelkrim Jouiti, "Medina Nuhhas." Al-Mutawasidiat 11 (1999/2000): 98–101; Idriss Al-Khoury, Youssef fi butn umhu. Rabat: Dar Nashar Al-mu'arifa, 1994; Reda Lamrini, Les Puissants de Casablanca, Casablanca: Marsam (1999); Fouad Laroui, Méfiez-vous des parachutistes. Paris: Julliard, 1999; Abderrahim Wafdi, Dérive à Casablanca, Casablanca: Afrique-Orient, 2001; Mahi Binebine, Les Etoiles de Sidi Moumen, Paris: Flammarion, 2010. Katarzyna Pieprzak offers an astute analysis of literary representations of Casablanca by Moroccan arabophone writers in her article "Ruins, Rumors and Traces of the City of Brass: Moroccan Modernity and Memories of the Arab Global City" in Research in African Literatures 38. 4 (Winter 2007): 187–203. 7. For a succinct presentation of the ways in which the city is depicted in film noir, see Andrew Spicer, "The City" and "City Exposé Films." Historical Dictionary of Film Noir. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press (2010), 45–48. 8. Stephen Crofts, "Concepts of National Cinema" In World Cinema: Critical Approaches, ed. John and Pamela Church Gibson, Oxford University Press (2000), 2. 9. Allan Siegel, "After the Sixties: Changing Paradigms in the Representation of Urban Centers" in Screening the City, Mark Shiel and Tony Fitzmaurice, Eds. London: Verso (2003), 138. 10. Ahmed Radi. "Visual Representation and Cultural Geography:" Constructing Linkages—a Reading of Fatima Quazzani's At My Mother's House (2001). Faculty of Letters, Kaddi Ayyad University, Marrakech, Morocco. . January 5, 2011. 11. Morocco's population today is around 34 million, while there are 4.5 million Moroccans in the Diaspora. Migration Information Source, Migration Policy Institute. . January 5, 2011. 12. Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), 9. 13. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 7. 14. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 114. 15. Barbara Mennel, Cities and Cinema, (London and New York: Routledge, 2008): 15. 16. Mennel, Cities and Cinema, 6. 17. Mennel, Cities and Cinema, 154. 18. Orr, Screening the City, 186. 19. Michel Foucault, "Questions of Geography," Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews. Ed. Colin Gordon, (New York: Pantheon, 1980), 68. 20. Pierre Vermeren, Le Maroc (Paris: Le Cavalier Bleu, 2003): 60. My translation of this passage : «C'est à Casablanca où se construit le Maroc de demain. La ville est traversée par les contrastes sociaux et culturels abyssaux. Les terroristes du 16 mai 2003 et du 10 mars 2007 sont issus du bidonville de Sidi Moumen, alors que la jeunesse dorée se consume dans les boîtes de nuit de la corniche. C'est à Casablanca que les forces islamistes sont les plus conséquentes du pays, et cotoient aussi les forces vives de la modernisation et de la créativité. C'est peut-être ce chaudron casablancais, où s'élabore le nouveau Maroc, qui tient les touristes à distance … Car le touriste, désireux d'exotisme et d'authenticité, est par essence conservateur. » 21. Vermeren, Le Maroc. My translation of this passage: "[…] la ville inspire des écrivains […] et de jeunes cinéastes […]. La ville héberge les plus grandes galeries d'art et de peinture du royaume, ses réalisations architecturales les plus osées, ses meilleurs cinémas, ainsi que la presse contestataire et la jeune scène musicale alternative. Elle prend actuellement conscience de la richesse de son patrimoine architectural. En dehors de la Grande Mosquée Hassan II, le patrimoine hérité du protectorat est impressionnant. Outre un ensemble monumental néo-mauresque assez somptueux, Casablanca compte le plus grand ensemble immobilier d'art déco hors de France (400 villas et immeubles malgré les destructions), ainsi que le quartier de la "nouvelle médina", qui réinvente après-guerre une architecture marocaine pour loger les musulmans hors les murs de la médina." (60) 22. Saskia Sassen, Globalization and Its Discontents, Essays on the New Mobility of People and Money (New York: The New Press, 1998), XXXIV. 23. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 150.