Moroccan Facebook Visual Narratives and Cultural Production

Abstract

In this paper, I argue that the creation and circulation of the visual narratives within Facebook groups by Moroccan Facebookers largely entail and substantiate a stronger process of cultural production that has its own logic and praxis. I argue that this process of cultural production has two major facets: an aestheticization of everyday life and promulgation of specific modes of consciousness. Through the aestheticization of everyday life, I posit that Moroccan youth’s acts of cultural production increasingly blur the formal boundaries between the Internet, art, and popular culture; an aspect which fundamentally empowers their creative online input. Through the promulgation of specific modes of consciousness, I argue that the visual narratives attempt to develop and enhance the cultural sensibilities which better champion their perceptions and stances. Taken together, I claim that these major manifestations of the process of cultural production, while being deeply wedded to the Gramscian and Foucauldian perception of power dynamics, set the tone for an underlying struggle over power and meaning-making in the Moroccan society, thus seeking to intervene and exploit the gaps and contradictions in these power dynamics in society.