Abstract
During the French “protectorate,” in Morocco which lasted from 1912 to 1956, France built hospitals, midwifery clinics, puerperia and infant care centers, dispensaries and psychiatric institutions in Morocco. Under the umbrella of the colonial enterprise, several metropolitan and international medical organizations (e.g. Louis Pasteur Institutes, Red Cross, etc.), as well as Jewish medical international organizations (e.g. the medical branch of the Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU) and the International Jewish medical organization OSE) engaged in a "medical race" to cure local populations according to the legal colonial division, that is "Muslims," "Jews," and "Europeans." A few youth groups and movements with different political and religious orientations (e.g. Mouvement du Scoutisme Marocain, Shabiba al-Istiqlaliyyah, Département Éducatif de la Jeunesse Juive (DEJJ), Charles Neter) emerged concomitantly in Moroccan society under the influence of Moroccan nationalism and Zionism. Although the political agenda, religious background, and world vision of these youth movements were different, they all put the cult of the body at the center of their interests as a means to achieve their ideological and political goals.
In this paper I examine how, in the context of colonial modernity, the body was chosen to be the “field of experience” in which modern ideas and ideologies (such as “Westernization”, Moroccan nationalism, Zionism) were adopted, negotiated, adapted, contested, etc. How the (medical) care of the body became a political act to identify or misidentify with one’s social and/or political group. How medicine (e.g. “social hygiene” and vaccination campaigns organized by the French Public health service) became a colonial tool of disciplining and civilizing the body of the nascent Moroccan political subject. To what extent bodily medical practices and hygienic culture (re)fashioned both the physical body of the political subject and his/her self, that is, his/her political and social consciousness. How, by taking care (medically) of one’s body, the individual could (re)represent his/her self socially, politically, and ideologically. How Moroccans (Muslims and Jews alike) very gradually adopted the modern discourse and practices of biomedicine and hygiene, and interlaced them with traditional counterparts to physically (re)shape their bodies, (re)conceptualize them and (re)imagine their relationship to central power. Special attention will be been given to the role of youth movements (Mouvement du Scoutisme Marocain, Shabiba al-Istiqlaliyyah, Charles Neter, Département Éducatif de la Jeunesse Juive (DEJJ), and medical campaigns.
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