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February 20th Movement’s campaign Videos: Collective Identity as a Political Constitutive Rhetorical Strategy for Change and Action
Abstract
The political legitimacy of the February 20th prodemocracy movement is grounded in cultural belief, values, and local political cultures. Their online campaign videos send a message of not only what a Morocco should look like but also what constitutes a ‘Moroccan’. All of their online campaign videos start with “I am Moroccan and I will take part in the protest” while providing their personal reasons for joining the movement; ranging from freedom, education, equality, end to corruption, labor rights to Amazigh and other minority rights. The use of three simultaneous languages in these videos calls for a new Moroccan collective identity that includes all ethnicities, all languages, all religions and all socioeconomic classes. With the high illiteracy rate and the historical marginalization of Berber language, the movement targets different audiences by utilizing Daarija instead of classical Arabic and simultaneously uses Berber and French in their campaign videos. All these woven together in a cultural driven discourse invite empathy, patriotism, and identification. Political desire is articulated from a position that recognizes a lack of power in relation to the state and encourages a reformulation of power relations. The rhetoric within these videos call for universal values of diversity in terms of ethnicity, language, gender, and class while simultaneously making claims to Moroccan identity and “Moroccan values” such as freedom, education, economic social justice, and ethnic and gender equality. These videos exemplify the rhetorical tactics February 20th movement deploys to bring together diverse segments of the population that is ready to mobilize. Identity becomes redefined where the ‘I am’ with its defensive closure and insistence of fixity on position is now a more nuanced collective understanding of Moroccanness. The immediate rhetorical exigencies the February 20th movement faced within the larger Moroccan society makes these campaign videos increasingly important. These videos enable us to think about ways in which we read the language of reform in a divided audience where identity becomes of critical importance. This paper will examine how these online campaign videos functioned rhetorically in the negotiation and navigation of vernacular dialectics of inclusion and exclusion and in constituting a sympathetic and engaging public that function on the everyday politics. In particular, this paper will argue that these video campaigns deploy a “collective identity” for mobilization, empowerment, and collective action by deconstructing ‘Moroccanness’ and reconstructing and shaping a new constituted public that is engaging and sympathetic to the cause.
Discipline
Anthropology
Geographic Area
Morocco
Sub Area
None