Of texts and textiles … : colonial ethnography and contemporary Moroccan material heritage

Abstract

Conducting ethnographic research on ‘traditional’ craftsmanship and its objects in contemporary Morocco, one cannot help but acknowledge an uncomfortable proximity to French colonial scholarship. In no small part current constructions of ‘traditional’ handicrafts reflect the discursive residues of colonial knowledge production. The massive Protectorate project of ethnographic documentation and description focused in large part on mapping out craft guild structures, handicraft techniques, types of objects and regional styles of dress. These earlier French models treat handicrafts as expressions of collective identities, categorised in terms of gender, ethnicity, religious beliefs, residency, and tribe. Present day representations of artisans and handicraft objects recapitulate these early definitions and standardisations in multiple ways. This is particularly true in the case of ‘traditional’ textiles and dress, which are defined in relation to the nation's past but whose forms and iconography are drawn heavily from early twentieth century documentation. This paper explores ethnographically how colonial knowledge production continues to play a role both materially – that is, in the ways in which artisans and their objects are discussed and represented – and conceptually, in terms of the policies and economic initiatives that embrace a particular way of characterising the crafts and the identities that go with them.