The urban and virtual rhetoric of tcharmil: display, violence and resistance

Abstract

ABSTRACT‘Three years after the “Arab Springs”, “operation tcharmil” resembles a postrevolutionary suspense, a police enigma where the culprits are known and the crime has yet to be discovered’ (Florence Aubenas, Le Monde, 4 August, 2014) This paper revolves around Tcharmil, whose spatial and structural manifestations (i.e. in urban and internet spaces) signal a paradigmatic shift in the existing simple and straightforward meanings of youth violence. It recommends a way to link youth subcultures with the rising spirit of banditry, while minding the broad context of social resistance to political stagnancy as well as the deterioration of fundamental sectors, such as health, education, security, etc. In so doing we could further intensify the diverging symptoms of Moroccan youth’s being in the world as well as register the characteristics worth deriving from youth phenomena. By the same token, we aspire to contribute to a far more adept reading of urban youth practices and new (sub)cultural stipulations. The accounts of mcharmlin are therefore vigorous texts for the inspection of conceptual categories like street violence, urban dynamics, youth resistance and counter-power.