Haunting the future: narratives of Jewish return in Israeli and Moroccan cinema

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper investigates the common theme of haunting in recent cinematic works from Morocco and Israel that thematize Jewish-Moroccan immigration and identity. While this theme is usually explored (onscreen and in theory) with the discursive devices of trauma and melancholia, this paper proposes an alternate definition of haunting bound to futurity and possible return to the home country, thereby offering a discursive escape from the traumatic repetition of the past.