Creativity as a political choice

This essay traces the tense and complex encounter between the postcolonial, political, and cultural spheres in Morocco since the 1960s. The country's repressive regime of the 1970s and 1980s did not manage to silence cultural producers. Rather, these years saw an explosion of literary and cultural creativity; this creativity is marked today with the emergence of new cultural and literary genres and forms. The article advocates creativity or aesthetics practices as 'a political choice', or an intervention in politics as the spheres of the cultural and political are closely interlinked. Fundamental to this cultural creativity is Morocco's multilingualism and a 'free movement of language', a movement between Arabic fusha, Darija, Amazigh, and French. It argues that the diversifying of modes of expression and the circulation of information and knowledge through open, multi-lingual, cross-pollination are in themselves a powerful resource that can be used not only to defend freedoms, challenge the return of traditionalism and religious conservatism, but also to reinvigorate the deferred democratic project in Morocco.