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Focaal—Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology 92 (2022): 64–81
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doi:10.3167/fcl.2020.072005
GENERAL ARTICLES
Di ssenting poses
Marginal youth, viral aesthetics, and a ective politics
in neoliberal Morocco
Cristiana Strava
Abstract: In the spring of 2014, an unprecedented wave of police raids swept over
every lower-class (sha‘abi) neighborhood across Morocco. Dubbed “Operation
Tcharmil,” the raids targeted young, lower-class men that matched viral online
images in which track-suit-wearing teens boastfully displayed status objects and
white weapons. Drawing on the theoretical apparatus of the “a ective turn,” in this
article I unpack the structural and historical factors that shaped both popular reac-
tions and policing actions toward the sudden, online visibility of a politically and
economically disenfranchised group. I situate this episode within current debates
about the entanglement of neoliberal disciplinary regimes and the reproduction
of particular social orders, and argue that attention to such outbursts can help us
revitalize and rethink existing notions of class.
Keywords: a ect, margins, neoliberal, policing, sel es, Tcharmil, urban, youth
It was a late Saturday a ernoon in the spring of
2014 when I was leaving the neighborhood of
Hay Mohammadi a er having spent the day at
a local jam‘iyya (community organization) ob-
serving the activities of their “street arts” youth
club. As I stepped out onto the curb and headed
for home, I noticed that an unusual level of
commotion had overtaken the area. Four police
vans were parked at the top of the street and po-
licemen in riot gear were running up and down
the narrower alleys that branched out from the
one I was on. Surprised, I asked Samir,
1
one of
the young boys I recognized from the derb (al-
leyway), what was going on. Seeming to share
my confusion, he shook his head, also staring
in the direction of the police vans. “Maybe they
are chasing away the street vendors?” he mused,
as we continued to watch the incomprehensible
presence of such a show of force. Another boy
ran up and edi ed us: “ ey are picking up ev-
eryone without an ID,” he breathlessly managed
to say. Trying to make light of what seemed like
an unusual situation, I said I might get in trou-
ble because I always forgot to carry my ID. e
second boy answered: “No. ey’re only picking
up the boys. Especially the ones who have the
banda haircuts.” What he meant was the fash-
ionable cut all teenage boys had been getting
Dissenting poses | 65
that year, a Mohawk style that emulated football
players’ haircuts and had become a signature
look, rst among the local Ultras (organized
football supporters) then for young sha‘abi
(lower-class) men around the country ( gure 1).
In the following days and months, similar
raids swept every lower-class neighborhood in
large cities across Morocco, drawing national
media attention. An o cial report later claimed
that a staggering 103,714 arrests had been car-
ried out nationally in the rst three months of
2014 (El A as 2014). O cially, the action was
described by the authorities as a ght against
a growing “sense of insecurity due to delin-
quency,”
3
which was presumably getting out of
hand in these neighborhoods. In the press, the
timing of the state’s action was linked to the in-
tervention of King Mohammad VI a month a er
the armed robbery of a hair salon in an upscale
neighborhood of Casablanca, followed by the
mobbing of a local professional football player
(Jaabouk 2014). Although the aforementioned
crimes were not unprecedented and there had
been no o cial statement from the monarch,
according to speculation in the media, the King
had demanded the Interior Minister increase
Figure 1. Young man sporting a banda haircut. Source: Tch â rmi l Public Facebook Group.
2
66 | Cristiana Strava
e orts to ensure that citizens feel safe in their
cities.
4
Before the authorities unleashed this
wave of arrests targeting male youth from pre-
carious neighborhoods, a growing clamor of
voices on online forums and Internet groups
had also been demanding an end to what they
described as the “war” that was raging on the
streets of Casablanca, claiming that a new class
of youth were threatening the everyday life of
“honest citizens.” How was it that an apparent
youth fad triggered not only an intense episode
of public alarm but also a sweeping police op-
eration? And what can this episode illuminate
about social and political dynamics in contem-
porary Morocco?
is article draws on ethnographic mate-
rial gathered through sixteen months of eld-
work between 2013–2014 (and shorter visits
between 2016–2018) in and around Hay Mo-
hammadi, a mythicized but maligned area of
Casablanca. It is part of a broader project inves-
tigating the (re)production and spatialization of
socio-economic di erence in urban Morocco
since colonial times, using long-term partici-
pant-observation and online ethnography that
prioritizes the experience and practices of mar-
ginalized communities, while also attending to
governmental and non-governmental actors.
Early on in my eldwork, I began volunteering
twice a week at the above-mentioned commu-
nity-based organization (CBO),
5
and had been
following the activities of their youth programs
for a year when the police raids began in 2014. I
did not work with the youth who were arrested
during the raids or who were involved in local
crime. Moulay Maarouf and Tayeb Belghazi’s
(2018) work based in Rabat complements mine
in this regard. Instead, my analysis here is pri-
marily focused on the socio-cultural categories,
anxieties, and debates that emerged around and
were co-productive of the moral panic mobi-
lized throughout this policing episode.
I draw on the rich theoretical apparatus of
the “a ective turn” (Ahmed 2004; Berlant 2011)
to make sense of the intensely moralizing re-
sponses elicited by the visibility of a perceived
violent “other,” and the wider urban context in
which both are embedded. e “turn to a ect”
has allowed urban ethnographers working in
places marked by violence to home in on the
productive force of concepts like “threat” (see
Caldeira 2000). As Brian Massumi points out,
by paying attention to how a “felt reality of threat
legitimates preemptive action” we can elucidate
how actual facts become superseded by “a ec-
tive facts of fear” (2010: 54). In Morocco, as
elsewhere, the expansion and entrenchment of
urban inequality has been accompanied by a
proliferation of such “a ective facts” across so-
cio-economic classes. Middle and upper-class
voices, their anxieties and the a ective econ-
omies they mobilize have become particularly
instrumental to how social fears are dealt with
in Morocco. In this article I consider the inter-
play between these voices and the institutional
popularization of neoliberal logics that shape
not only o cial policies addressing inequality,
but increasingly feed o and back into popular
conservative discourses about civic rights.
I begin by situating the episode of the police
raids against the background of historical and
political forces responsible for the spatialization
of inequality and the production of particular
a ects about urban lower-class areas and the
communities that inhabit them. I then recount
the unfolding of the police raids and reconstruct
the main debates they helped to fuel. I argue
that these debates are rooted in a narrative shi
that promotes a reductive view of “responsibi-
lization,” particularly with regard to the lower
classes. As I elaborate below, this shi has been
aided by the progressive delegitimization of
social justice discourses and their replacement
with agendas framed by a politically neutraliz-
ing human-rights approach as a consequence of
the (incomplete) neoliberalization of Moroccan
spaces and forms of governance. I use neolib-
eralism both in the sense of a structural force
and as an ideological agenda that prescribes
models for economic and socio-political sub-
jectivities (Ganti 2014). In exploring how in this
context discussions about class and associated
struggles and grievances become displaced onto
other markers of di erence—such as embodied
Dissenting poses | 67
ways of being in space, tastes, and education (or
the perceived lack thereof)—my aim is to revi-
talize debates on class and its usefulness for a
historical anthropology of lived neoliberalism.
e unprecedented role of online spaces and
“viral” images during this episode leads me to
argue that online platforms are emerging as
a signi cant discursive space through which
claims about belonging are increasingly medi-
ated and negotiated in unstable and a ect-laden
ways. I conclude that both the moral panic and
heightened policing of young, urban lower-class
male bodies as a consequence of their apparent
sudden (online) visibility point to growing ten-
sions inherent in the reproduction of local and
global social orders, while also highlighting the
unsettling a nity between neoliberal logics and
authoritarian practices.
Situating the margins
Currently home to more than ve million in-
habitants living in an increasingly socially and
spatially fragmented urban landscape marked
by stark economic disparities (United Nations
Habitat 2008: 74; see Haut Commissariat au
Plan 2018), Casablanca bears little resemblance
to its Hollywood aura. In the contemporary
Moroccan social imaginary, the city is fre-
quently associated with urban sprawl, pollution,
a high degree of socio-economic decay and ano-
mie, but also wealthy enclaves sporting names
like Prestigia (Fr.) and a spirit of ruthless indi-
vidualism and market liberalization connected
to the city’s semi-o cial identity as Morocco’s
commercial capital. A twenty- rst-century “neo-
liberal metropolis” (Bahmad 2013: 17), the
history of Casablanca’s development is synon-
ymous with colonial industrial expansion and
extraction of cheap labor, technocratic methods
of urban planning, and attempts to control po-
tentially volatile populations (Rabinow 1995;
Rachik 2002).
Considered a mythical neighborhood in the
history of Morocco, Hay Mohammadi epito-
mizes many of the problems deemed symptom-
atic of a global condition of urban marginality.
Home to North Africa’s oldest and once larg-
est slum, and celebrated for its dynamic labor
unions that played a crucial role in the an-
ti-colonial struggle, the neighborhood fell into
disfavor during the reign of King Hassan II
(1961–1999), who ushered in a period that is
now commonly known as the “Years of Lead”
(Sanawāt ar-Rus
.ās
.) due to the unprecedented
brutality with which all forms of dissent were
repressed (Miller 2013: 162–184). e 1965
student riots constitute a turning point in this
timeline. Sparked by new education regulations
meant to limit the access of an estimated 60
percent of high school students to a Baccalau-
reate degree, and thus a lifeline out of poverty
and into the middle class, the riots began with
school strikes and sit-ins and ended in city-wide
unrest that brought together laborers, bidonville
(slum) dwellers, and students. In the a ermath,
union and student activists alike were forcefully
disappeared and sent to secret detention centers
where they were either killed or held and tor-
tured for years. Hay Mohammadi is infamous
for housing one of a few urban subterranean
torture centers in the country. Militants were
held mere feet away from residential quarters,
while their jailers lived in modernist apartment
blocks above ground (Slyomovics 2012).
e o cial acknowledgement of these crimes
in the late 1990s and the subsequent process
of truth seeking and communal and individ-
ual reconciliation (Dennerlein 2012) has led
to the area’s association with a variety of af-
fective registers (see Navaro-Yashin 2012). In-
habitants have found the opportunity to speak
and re ect not only on the history of violence
marking neighborhood spaces, but also on the
continuities between the current state of ma-
terial and social degradation and past regime
actions meant to punish and ghettoize the com-
munity (Strava 2017: 333). ese conditions
were further exacerbated by the introduction of
structural adjustment policies and market lib-
eralization reforms in the 1980s, which led to
massive job losses in local industry and a signif-
icant growth in informal activities (see Cohen
68 | Cristiana Strava
2004). So while outsiders can safely commend
o cial commemoration e orts (oral history
projects, heritage initiatives), they are less likely
to consider the impact of economic reforms on
the community, and frequently fault the inhab-
itants of the neighborhood for what they see
as the degradation and involution of the area.
With youth unemployment on the rise,
6
inhab-
itants from Hay Mohammadi have had to con-
tend with an image of the neighborhood that
is colored by such epithets as “open air prison”
or “cemented slum” (bidonville en béton). ese
maligning stereotypes were particularly re-en-
forced a er the suicide attacks of 2003 and
2007, which targeted upscale hotels, restaurants
and night clubs in the city center. Perpetrated by
un(der)employed, radicalized youth from the
impoverished and disenfranchised slum quar-
ters adjacent to Hay Mohammadi, the attacks
heightened state and popular discourse crim-
inalizing lower-class areas (Cavatorta 2006).
is has been accompanied by the re-emergence
of a powerful popular argument linking a re-
surgence in Islamic extremism with “disenfran-
chised urban youth” (see Bayat 2007). It is thus
that at the time of the raids, like in other places
in the region, people between the ages of 15 and
30 constituted almost two-thirds of the neigh-
borhood’s demographic make-up, posing both
local concerns about their proper place and role
in society, as well as signi cant educational, po-
litical and economic issues for the Moroccan
state (Bogaert and Emperador 2011).
Posing dissent
At the time of the raids, it was di cult to disen-
tangle the ideas and perceptions of those who
decried a lack of safety on the streets of Casa-
blanca and their identi cation of a particular
typology of the male aggressor from the actual
emergence of a new masculine youth subculture
on the urban margins, as prevailing discourse
seemed to suggest. Very soon, though, a term for
designating this “new type” of male delinquent
appeared. is term was Tcharmil, quickly gain-
ing in currency thanks to the eponymous police
raids (o cially named “Operation Tcharmil”).
While it was di cult to accurately date the
term’s appearance, its spread was aided by the
use of online social networks for the display
and circulation of photos intended to capture
what appeared to be a dress-style. In colloquial
Arabic, charmoula signi es a marinade or sea-
soning used for the preparation of meat. Most
of my interlocutors speculated that the reason
why the term mcharmil (someone taking on the
Tcharmil style) caught on was owed to its deri-
vation from the butcher knives employed in the
preparation of charmoula and donned by some
of the youth in the circulated photos as a way of
impressing viewers ( gure 2).
As the raids went on for months and both
online and conventional media continued to
report on them, I spoke to young men in Hay
Mohammadi about how they saw the unfolding
debates and panic. Youness, one of the skillful
break-dancers from the neighborhood who reg-
ularly attended the “street arts” program and
favored a dress style that might identify him as
mcharmil, claimed that in his understanding
Tcharmil was merely a new label for an exist-
ing fashion. e banda haircuts were paired
with tracksuits, visible white socks sticking
from brand-name sport shoes, and large gold
watches.
7
Youness concluded it was a fad and a
new one would soon replace it, and thus did not
take seriously the boastful self-association with
crime displayed in some of the circulated pho-
tos. e general consensus seemed to be that at
some point in 2013 young, mostly lower-class,
men began posing in these “out ts” for photos
that they would then upload to their own so-
cial media pro les or several “fan groups.”
8
e
availability and a ordability of smartphones in
recent years meant that youth from places like
Hay Mohammadi were now also producers and
not just consumers of “social photography” (see
Jurgenson 2019). e aesthetic e ect and look
displayed in these images was far from novel
in its reference to global hip-hop culture, cap-
tured in boastful display of status symbols like
gold watches, “gangsta” dress styles, and hyper-
Dissenting poses | 69
masculinized poses against derelict urban ar-
chitectures ( gure 3). e originally intended
audience for the images seemed to mainly
consist of youth from similar socio-geograph-
ical contexts—lower-class, densely populated
neighborhoods on the outskirts of large cities—
places that ordinary Moroccans circumvent or
avoid, unless they inhabit them. With the viral
spread of this sel e-meme, these spaces now ex-
tended into shared online platforms and assert-
ively claimed their presence.
As such, Tcharmil was overwhelmingly de-
ned by its viral and virtual visibility. is is
not to suggest that the young men involved in
or associated with Tcharmil had been invisible
either on- or o ine before. But as increasing
socio-spatial fragmentation and “enclavization”
has come to mark urban space in Morocco
(Newcomb 2017: 126), and the proximity of
(undesirable) social “others” can be managed
by carefully maintained degrees of economic
and physical barriers (see Schielke 2012: 47),
young lower-class men in Casablanca are both
frequently con ned to their neighborhoods and
must carefully curate their appearance when en-
tering spaces that are associated with the (upper)
middle classes (see Ghannam 2011). Among my
young interlocutors in Hay Mohammedi, “sel-
e” photography in general and Tcharmil poses
in particular, they claimed, was a way of doc-
umenting their lives and experimenting with
fashions outside of school or parental control.
As eresa Sen and Nancy Baym (2015) argue,
such internal “sel e-economies” are produced
by a complex entanglement of motivations that
cannot be reduced to pathologizing labels like
“narcissism” or straightforward rebellion. Deniz
Yonucu’s (2011) and Pascal Menoret’s (2014)
analyses of rebellious youth have suggested that
such provocative appropriations and ostenta-
tious displays of what the state labels delinquent
behavior need to be understood as an ambiva-
lently articulated response and a ective reaction
to the violence that neoliberal forces, coupled
with the local presence of authoritarian regimes,
in ict on young lower-class male bodies and
lives. Certain Moroccan journalists reporting
on the raids seemed to share this view, asking
that this fad be critically read for ways it spoke
to growing social inequalities in the country
(Majdi 2014). Most reports in the media, how-
ever, were more inclined to describe the mcharm-
lin (plural) as engaging in acts of intimidation by
displaying butcher knives and stolen goods (as
was speculated about the smartphones and gold
watches). Some of the photos that were circu-
Figure 2. Example of a Tcharmil pose with butcher knives. Source: Tchâr mi l Public Facebook Group.
70 | Cristiana Strava
lated online as illustrations of Tcharmil did ap-
pear to be connected to illegal activities such as
the sale and consumption of hashish. is type
of photo never featured people, but depicted ex-
clusively an inventory of illicit and haram sub-
stances like cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs ( gure
3). ese photos, together with those in which
teenage boys posed with long butcher knives,
were, however, a minority among the multitude
of images depicting young boys (and occasion-
ally girls) wearing track suits and proudly dis-
playing status objects like smartphones, brand
name clothing or sports shoes considered fash-
ionable at the time ( gure 4).
Figure 3. Tcharmil “still life,” in which drugs, cash, and status objects like sneakers are displayed
against a Moroccan salon background. Source: Tch â r mil Public Facebook Group.
Dissenting poses | 71
According to rumors circulated through on-
line groups and also recounted by my research
participants, the police initially tried to have
the images found on the main online Tcharmil
forum removed. As Luise White has observed,
rumors can “be a source of local history that
reveal the passionate contradictions and anx-
ieties of speci c places with speci c histories”
(2000: 83). Morocco’s recent history is rife with
such class anxieties that have been politically
and economically stoked, as public education,
the main motor for social advancement in post-
independence Morocco, can no longer guaran-
tee a middle-class position in an era of shrinking
Figure 4. Example of young women posing “Tcharmil style.” Source: Tchâr m i l Public Facebook
Group.
72 | Cristiana Strava
labor markets and increasing nancialization
of urban space (Bogaert and Emperador 2011;
Cohen 2004: 68–70). Moreover, the appeal of
these rumors points toward the power exerted
on the social imaginary by a strategy of deal-
ing with growing inequality by progressively
obscuring or concealing those whose precari-
ous living circumstances run counter to o cial
discourses that paint Morocco as North Africa’s
aspiring economic powerhouse (Strava 2018).
What eventually happened was that the raids
proceeded to remove from the street young low-
er-class men who matched the images and give
them “disciplinary haircuts” while in custody
(Crétois 2014).
Aesthetics and/as
neoliberal a ective politics
Newspapers, weekly magazines, TV news, and
Internet sites maintained a regular cycle of re-
porting on both the arrests as well as their jus-
ti cation for months to follow. e authors of
some of the online articles wondered whether
this phenomenon was indeed all that new and
not just another passing trend. Several com-
mentators in a dedicated online group cautioned
against reifying it as a “gang movement” when it
appeared to be just a fashion.
9
An opinion piece
in the French-language weekly TelQuel cau-
tioned against the criminalization of an entire
group of already disadvantaged young people,
10
and, a er one young man who had been sum-
marily detained during one of the police raids
committed suicide while in custody, the presi-
dent of the National Centre for the Study of Hu-
man Rights and Democracy (CEDHD) stepped
in to plead for “a more reasoned response” on
the part of the authorities (Strava 2018). Speak-
ing with former political detainee and human
rights activist Fatna El Bouih about the raids,
she echoed commentators in the press who
reminded the public that such arbitrary mea-
sures of enforcing security were reminiscent
of the dreaded, repressive era of the “Years of
Lead,” and should therefore be reconsidered.
11
e arrests nevertheless continued unabated,
while the conversations I followed in the on-
line discussion forum “March against insecu-
rity [in Casablanca],” the largest dedicated to
middle-class voices concerned with a purported
rise in criminality, derided the idea of human
rights violations and quickly devolved into calls
for harsh punitive measures, with some sug-
gesting re-opening secret detention centers for
the mcharmlin. is common claim put forth
that those who took on the style should expect
repercussions, demonstrating what Stuart El-
den calls “a disturbing faith in the e cacy of
state violence” to address a sudden outburst
of public disturbance (2011). A small number
of commentators in the same forum suggested
that the socio-political root-causes behind the
emergence of this “youth subculture” should
be considered, but a considerably larger num-
ber dismissed their arguments as une foutaise
(nonsense). As the group reached 21,000 mem-
bers at the peak of the police raids, a frequent
commenter wrote: “One must stop nding ex-
cuses [for these acts] (the economy, politics, ed-
ucation, poverty). Citizenship is not only about
rights, but also responsibilities.”
12
In the same
thread, others proposed retaliatory measures
against anyone matching the Tcharmil descrip-
tion: “We should not wait until they [mcharm-
lin] attack you and then we arrest them. Too bad
for those who wear a suspicious haircut or dress
[style]. ere is a price to pay. In any case if this
brings some peace to the citizen it is not bad.”
13
e aesthetics of Tcharmil—captured through
gritty, low-quality phone images, and the asso-
ciation with counterfeit merchandise—further
aided in this “othering” by not lending itself
easily to middle-class appropriation. Instead,
the Tcharmil youth were quickly presented with
a foil: the Kilimini child. A popular culture term
in circulation for much longer than Tcharmil,
the origins and precise etymology of Kilimini
are also blurred. One of my long-time interloc-
utors claimed that it was derived from the mis-
pronunciation of the French [Qu’est-ce] qu’il/elle
est mignon(e) meaning “isn’t he/she sweet,” an
exclamation that was ostensibly associated with
Dissenting poses | 73
middle-class children who behaved according
to social norms, but also used as a way of mock-
ing middle-class a ectations or those who were
seen to lack “street-smarts.” Other interlocutors
from Hay Mohammadi agreed on this etymol-
ogy, stressing that Kilimini youth had early
bedtimes, never used swear words, spoke good
French, and dressed in a clean, “proper” fashion.
Implied, but not stated, was the fact that in order
to be a Kilimini child, one needed to be part of
a middle-class family with the socio-economic
means to provide such things as French educa-
tion and clean, fashionable clothes. Claiming
to bridge this dichotomy, another online group
was constituted: “Anticharmil or the incita-
tion to reading.” According to its founders, the
group attempted to go beyond opposing a Kili-
mini stereotype in its response to the Tcharmil
aesthetic.
14
In reaction to the photos of sports
shoes, gold watches and illegal substances, the
Anticharmil encouraged Moroccan youth to
take and circulate photos of their books, or
themselves reading. In an open letter, illustrated
with an image of a young woman surrounded by
book covers in Arabic and French ( gure 5), the
creators of the group called for a halt to the stig-
matization and criminalization of urban youth
(Azzami 2014). e words of the letter appeared
to carry less a ective weight than the images
accompanying it, and the solidarity march pro-
posed under the banner “We are all Moroccan
youth” never took place. e contrast posed
by the images of aspirational-looking, cultured
youth against those of presumably crass if not
outright delinquent, tracksuit-wearing teenag-
ers potently demonstrated the social performa-
tivity of the medium, but also its susceptibility
to index reductive readings of di erence.
e growing availability in recent years and
intensi ed use of new media technologies and
platforms has led to a vast and global prolifer-
ation of grassroots movements, forms of con-
testation, and alternative political engagement.
Kerstin Schankweiler’s analysis of what she
broadly calls “sel e protests” and the ways in
which these make use of a “body-driven [ico-
nography] to trigger a sense of anxiety when
beheld by the viewer” and thus provoke a reac-
tion (2017), is salient in the case of Tcharmil.
Crucially, the use of digital technology and the
immediacy of interaction facilitated by social
platforms and new media, helped not only to
visualize the phenomenon for those who had
never set foot in neighborhoods like Hay Mo-
Figure 5. e image headlining the “Anti-Tcharmil” manifesto. Source: fr.le360.ma
74 | Cristiana Strava
hammadi. e a ordances of this medium for
excessive, ostentatious, and mimicked forms
of display also worked to dislodge the subject
and image from the socio-historical context of
their production. To those “outside” the partic-
ular aesthetic economy of Tcharmil and for the
authorities, this aspect enabled the reading of
mcharmlin youth as agents of an actual, homog-
enous subculture, one reductively understood as
solely connoted with criminality and perceived
through a narrow, morally conservative register
about the impending dangers of youthful delin-
quency. By considering all of the photographic
poses to belong to and index a radically new,
and hence “other,” youth gang presence, the
authorities could harness their a ective power
and unleash a sweeping operation, without hav-
ing to deal with prolonged evidence gathering
and due process, thus illustrating what Mas-
sumi calls the “conditional logic” of a ectively
legitimated preemptive acts (2010: 55). Shored
up by a gaze that saw lower-class male bodies
and practices as undeserving unless proven oth-
erwise, the preemptive tactics of the Tcharmil
raids produced their own target.
In her work on the construction of white in-
jury and attitudes of fear in the face of asylum
seekers in the United States, Sara Ahmed (2004)
proposed the concept of “a ective economies”
as a way of theorizing the modalities through
which certain images appear to mobilize intense
emotional responses to certain groups, while
also contributing to the reinforcement of par-
ticular ideas about that group’s identity. Ahmed
demonstrates how it is the very ambiguity or
lack of an individualized identity of the feared
“other” that is both produced by and produc-
tive of such economies of hate: “Such gures of
hate circulate, and indeed accumulate a ective
value, precisely because they do not have a xed
referent” (2004: 123). e reductive reading of
the Tcharmil image as the marker of an anon-
ymous threatening mass of humanity, which
denied lower-class youth their individuality, be-
came the currency in which the particular a ec-
tive economy of alarmed Casablancans traded.
ose who toyed with the image of mcharmlin
as youthful, tacit appropriation, and experimen-
tation with what might be read as an assertion
of “rough masculinity indexing working-class
values and forms of sociability” (Wacquant
2009: 205) became subject to the correctional
gaze of local elites and the state, inviting their
own “othering.” I suggest that the reactions and
fervor with which the Tcharmil sel es were
mobilized both on- and o ine need to be con-
sidered as indicative of the struggle over the
policing and de nition of forms of belonging
and ultimately “citizenship” in a neoliberaliz-
ing Morocco. ese forms, as Lauren Berlant
poignantly shows, are increasingly shaped by
a ective economies and aesthetic reactions
of “aspirational normativity” (2011: 164). e
Tcharmil raids remind us, however, that collec-
tive readings and appropriations of such aspi-
rations (expressed as consumer desires) can be
strongly classed and aestheticized. As such, the
performance and display of di erent forms of
cultural capital, its consumption, and the class
a ects associated with each played a central role
in the way the Tchar mil phenomenon was visu-
alized, articulated and dealt with by authorities
and middle classes in Casablanca. e valuing
by the urban lower-classes of material posses-
sions and status objects such as watches, mo-
torcycles, or brand-name clothing was vili ed
for potential links to criminal activity or judged
as lack of taste and education. is ironically
allowed those who already possessed such de-
sirable commodities to turn to books as a sign
of distinction and civic responsibility (see Bour-
dieu 1987).
“Responsibilizing” lower-class youth
During the police raids, it was di cult to remain
a detached observer of the on-going debates
and criminalization of those associated with the
Tcharmil look. On the one hand, someone from
an upscale neighborhood could have described
as mcharmil many of the teenage boys I knew
from the “street arts” program and had grown
fond of over the year. ey were incredibly tal-
Dissenting poses | 75
ented and skilled break-dancers, but could also
spend a ernoons hanging out on street cor-
ners neglecting their homework, occasionally
engaged in petty the for fun (see Wacquant
2009: 205), and were extremely proud of their
Nike Air Max shoes. On the other hand, several
of my adult interlocutors in Hay Mohammadi
believed that urban peripheries were indeed
experiencing a loitering and delinquency prob-
lem, unrelated to the Tcharmil fad. Mr. B., the
director of the jam‘iyya where I regularly at-
tended the youth program, a strong advocate for
entrepreneurial solutions and empowerment
discourse, was one of the local community lead-
ers who subscribed to this view: “Between one
café and another café you nd a café. e youth
(drari) waste their time watching football and
TV channels from the Gulf [states] that rot their
brains. When they are not doing that, they loiter
in the street ( zanqa) doing nothing, throw-
ing away their lives.” In the context of Morocco,
where mundane household chores are intensely
gendered and very seldom counted as econom-
ically productive (see Ait Mouss 2011), un- or
under-employed men, and young able-bodied
men in particular, are increasingly likely to be
seen as bodies to be disciplined and rendered
productive by the gaze of neoliberalizing actors
and institutions.
15
is view has been progressively institution-
alized, beginning in the 1980s, and aided by a
series of reforms that gradually dismantled and
defunded social-support structures across the
country as the direct consequence of the struc-
tural adjustment and liberalization reforms
imposed by the IMF and the World Bank (Co-
hen 2004). Among other signi cant changes in
economic and labor market policies, human-
rights-based discourse and the NGO model
came to complement and, in places, replace
public welfare provisioning. While a variety of
associational forms preceded and survived this
transformation—from Islamic charities focused
on the collection and distribution of alms to
trade unions and civil rights organizations—the
emergence of the NGO model in the late 1990s,
supported by international development agen-
cies and funds, signi ed a radical shi not only
in the distribution of money and power across
the third sector but also in the logics and prac-
tices aimed at addressing inequality (see Bayat
2013; Clément 1995).
In this new ideological landscape, the lan-
guage of social justice that had been central
to previous contestation movements (Desrues
2012) became progressively delegitimized and
replaced by the mantra of “responsibilization”
(Hache 2007). is logic operates in two ways:
on the one hand, it functions to shi the burden
of socio-economic security from the state to in-
dividuals as autonomous, rational actors; on the
other, it becomes the eld on which a politics of
morality that stigmatizes and blames the poor
for their own predicament
16
has gained increas-
ing political currency (see Hache 2007). As Mr.
B.’s comments illustrate, this shi has led to a
narrow political conception of individual mo-
rality and action based on behaviorist notions
that have produced an idea of the “self that is
in theory detached from its historical and social
conditions” (Hache 2007: 18) and whose actions
are considered “the simple sum . . . of free will”
(Wacquant 2009: 10). By 2014, this language had
not only gained signi cant purchase among the
Moroccan authorities and local elites, but had
also become rmly institutionalized through
a vast array of third sector programs. Echoing
what Mike Davis has called the “NGO-ization
of impoverished urban communities” (2007:
77–82), this transformation was signi cantly
aided by the political and social climate fol-
lowing the suicide attacks of May 2003. In their
a ermath, the Moroccan state, with the help of
international donors, was able to consolidate
this shi to “responsibilization” by drawing on
the increasingly popular trope of Islamic radi-
calization, and redoubled its e orts supporting
NGOs that focused on rendering urban delin-
quency and forms of loitering not only undesir-
able but as symptomatic of radical criminality.
On Casablanca’s margins, this has meant
the growing presence of NGOs and CBOs,
such as the one directed by Mr. B. whose pro-
grams I attended, focused on helping “youth
76 | Cristiana Strava
at risk” through activities that employ “street
arts” and the language of “children’s rights” as
a way of combating the pernicious in uences
of the street, and preemptively “de-radicaliz-
ing” disenfranchised youth.
17
When their re-
belliousness was not channeled into sanitized
artistic pursuits, lower-class youth were “re-
sponsibilized” through a variety of public pri-
vately funded programs and activities meant
to incorporate them into vocational training
schemes or develop their “entrepreneurial”
skill sets (see Paciello et al. 2016).
18
As Susanna
Trnka and Catherine Trundle (2014) point out,
this limited conception of responsibility does
not do justice to the many other available forms
and meanings that local communities may en-
act on the basis of other logics and within a
variety of potentially competing frameworks.
Indeed, in Hay Mohammadi, neoliberal ideas
about self-reliance co-existed with daily respon-
sibilities to give and receive care, be it of kin or
neighbors, in an ongoing e ort to make precar-
ious lives livable (Strava 2017). For example, the
same young men who could be seen aimlessly
loitering on street corners were also occasion-
ally called upon to look a er younger siblings
or help single mothers with various chores, and
encouraged to attend Friday prayer once they
reached their teens. But as Yasmine Berriane’s
work (2010, 2016) has shown, the o cial treat-
ment of socio-economic inequality in Morocco
as a question of (limited) “empowerment” (see
Bono 2013) has led to the exponential growth of
state-approved organizations running a variety
of programs that promote discourses centered
on values like “self-su ciency” and “personal
accountability.”
I argue that it was the growing entrench-
ment of these ideas that lent critical weight to
the a ective reactions aimed at Tcharmil youth.
Capitalist societies have developed the tendency
to respond to non-productive forms of being-
in-the-street in two ways: either “stigmatize it
within an ideology of unemployment or taking
it up into itself to make it pro table” through
regulated and approved forms of consumption
and leisure (Buck-Morss 1986: 112–113). In
the case of Hay Mohammadi, non-productive
forms of “hanging out” in the street were stig-
matized twice: once as the marker of unemploy-
ment or troublesome youth, and a second time
criticized as an excessive form of lower-class lei-
sure principally associated with street sociality
or the much frequented and male-dominated
co eehouse. As a growing body of literature
also attests, within increasingly precarious ur-
ban landscapes, morally and politically con-
servative ideas about time and the way bodies
mark it—that is by engaging (or not) in socially
and politically sanctioned forms of labor—have
been recuperated by neoliberal logics and rein-
forced as the measure of one’s moral and social
worth, which those con ned to di erent forms
of boredom and waiting must constantly ad-
dress (see Elliot 2016; Mains 2007). According
to this logic, “all time is a potential ‘investment’
in one’s future” (van Oort 2015), and the failure
to capitalize on this resource even in a context
of scarce opportunities is seen as a fundamental
demonstration of irresponsibility.
Conclusion
Media panics are prone to act as smoke screens
de ecting conversations that would be more
dangerous to those in authority (Hall 1978).
Despite the heightened collective alarm that
was expressed in online forums, it soon became
clear that Tcharmil was far from being a vast,
organized crime phenomenon. e minor drug
dealers and the relatively small sums of money
that were reported as con scated during the po-
lice raids indicated a fragmented scene of street
violence and petty crime on the urban fringe.
Not quite a subculture and certainly not an or-
ganized movement, I suggest that the young
mcharmlin boys of Morocco’s urban margins
appeared to be threatening to the socio-political
order, not because they had engaged in a direct
form of collective protest, but for what Bayat
calls “collective presence” (2013: 111). e vis-
ibility and online presence of dispersed, atom-
ized individuals proved more destabilizing than
Dissenting poses | 77
the actions of an organized movement, because
they triggered the neoliberal a ects of local
middle-classes and elites, whose anxieties had
been fed by decades of eroded education and
employment opportunities, as well as the elu-
sive and tantalizing promises of globalization
(see Montgomery 2019; Wacquant 2009: 4). e
o -rehearsed refrain from online discussion
forums, echoed by political actors and author-
ities, claimed that the uneducated could not be
granted rights before they knew how to also as-
sume responsibilities, something the mcharmlin
were found to be severely lacking. Comments
about the need to harshly discipline the lower-
class male body illustrated this “zero-tolerance”
mindset that saw citizenship as a right and priv-
ilege to be granted only to those who could
“a ect” deservingness. Overall, the unfolding
of these conversations, taken together with the
progressive institutionalization of third-sector
initiatives aimed at “responsibilizing” lower-
class youth and their practices, are indicative of
the entrenching of hegemonic orders that nd
it productive and legitimate to draw on a grow-
ingly popular and established logic of disciplin-
ing and policing. Aided by conservative public
opinion in a city marked by stark inequality
and already mired in petty crime for decades,
Moroccan authorities were and continue to be
able to target the disenfranchised with excessive
punitive measures, without having to acknowl-
edge the structural and historical causes of local
poverty and crime.
In my attempt to unpack the signi cance of
the historical, spatial, and aesthetic dimensions
that became wedded in the key articulations
accompanying this moment of “punitive” out-
burst, I have found it productive to draw on
the conceptual tools provided by the “a ective
turn.” By ethnographically starting from the
real and discursive spaces and dynamics that al-
lowed “feelings of insecurity” to trump discus-
sions of actual lived socio-economic precarity,
it became possible to discern the importance of
an incongruous assemblage of histories of po-
litical repression, derelict urban spaces, erratic
policing, and the everyday lived experiences
of urban life in a growingly unequal city. In a
rst instance, setting my account and reading of
the ethnographic episode of the Tcharmil raids
against this background of historical, spatial
and political transformations, I argue that the
popularization of particular logics about who
can make (speci c) claims to urban space, and
ideas relating to disciplining those identi ed as
“(ir)responsible poor” need to be seen as part
of a longer history of authoritarian rule and
liberal economic practice. By highlighting the
strong currents of historical continuity that run
below the surface of contemporary institutions,
logics, and practices, it becomes apparent that
disciplining practices are not only historically
(re)produced through complex and contin-
gent socio-political processes, but also strongly
amenable to being recycled and re-used.
Second, I propose that by considering how
a ective economies are increasingly becoming
a crucial conduit for the re-production and mo-
bilization of neoliberal logics and institutions,
we are better able to critically reexamine cur-
rent practices of criminalization and punitive
surges aimed at inequality and disenfranchise-
ment. As these a ects become increasingly, yet
unstably, indexed by the performativity of par-
ticular classed aesthetics, this will require tak-
ing seriously the dissenting self-fashioning and
presentation of lower-class bodies and practices.
Not in a manner that leads to their romanti-
cizing (see Bayat 2013) or essentializing into
notions like “culture of poverty,” but in a way
that re-politicizes and historically grounds fac-
ile assumptions and received ideas. My reading
of the Tcharmil phenomenon as a heavily gen-
dered and classed, if politically ambiguous and
incomplete, excessive articulation of youthful
dissent aims to contribute to such an agenda
that situates and complicates established under-
standings about socio-economic identities and
available forms of resistance in the region.
Finally, despite the country’s proudly as-
sumed label as the “exception to the Arab
Spring,” recent mass protests over access to in-
frastructure, economic development, and social
reforms (Schwarz 2018) serve as reminders that
78 | Cristiana Strava
Morocco has not addressed underlying causes
of enduring injustice and inequality. By disrupt-
ing normative understandings and analyses of
urban marginality, neoliberal moral logics, and
the politics and geographies of dissent, we can
better sharpen our analytical apparatuses and
remain attuned to the fact that the neoliberal
city is not a fait accompli, to paraphrase Jamal
Bahmad (2013), but rather an un nished and
unstable project—not only open to but also in
much need of critique.
Acknowledgements
I am deeply indebted to my interlocutors in and
around Hay Mohammadi for their generous
participation in the wider project this material
is drawn from. I would also like to thank the
anonymous reviewers for their instructive and
helpful feedback on previous versions of this ar-
ticle. e research that this article is based on
was funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation,
the UK-ESRC, the Foundation for Urban and
Regional Studies (FURS), and the KHI-Max
Planck Institute.
Cristiana Strava is Assistant Professor in the
School of Middle Eastern Studies at Leiden Uni-
versity. She is a social anthropologist trained at
Harvard University (BA) and SOAS, University
of London (MARes, PhD), with a broad in-
terest in everyday urban spaces and practices,
socio-economic inequality, and the politics of
planning and development regimes. ORCID iD:
0000–0002–2622–2125.
Email: c.strava@hum.leidenuniv.nl
Notes
1. I make use of pseudonyms in order to protect
my interlocutors’ privacy.
2. All images in this article are found in the pub-
lic domain and are used in a citational man-
ner. Source for all images, unless otherwise
stated: https://www.facebook.com/Tchârmil-47
6074615838935.
3. For a look at how the blurring of distinctions
between “insecurity” and a “sense of insecurity”
gain the power of mobilizing punitive reactions,
see Loïc Wacquant (2009).
4. e Interior Ministry is considered to be the
institutional locus of the monarchy’s power. As
a so-called sovereign ministry, the king directly
appoints its head regardless of results in legisla-
tive elections.
5. For a discussion of the distinction and relation
between newer forms of associations and older
institutions like Dar Shabab (youth club) run
directly by the Ministry of Youth and Sports, see
Yasmine Berriane (2016).
6. In 2017, youth unemployment in Morocco
climbed to 28.5 percent, averaging 18 percent
over the past decade (International Labor Or-
ganisation 2017).
7. e overall aesthetics are comparable to the
British youth subculture of “chavs.” For an ac-
count of the media’s role in the vili cation of
working-class culture in Britain, see Owen
Jones (2011).
8. Several dozen public Facebook groups ded-
icated to collecting individual poses are still
active, although receiving less tra c in the
post-2015 period. e most popular of these,
Tchârmi l , counting upwards of 45,000 follow-
ers. See https://www.facebook.com/Tchârmil-
476074615838935/?fref=ts.
9. Public comments read and archived from the
now-defunct open online group, on 22 April
2014. See https://www.facebook.com/pages/
Marche-Contre-Linsécurité.
10. Several journalists questioned the methods and
legitimacy of arbitrary arrests and detention of
minors. See TelQuel archive http://telquel.ma/
tag/tcharmil.
11. e state selectively used its power to police
public space. Inhabitants complained that these
“security actions” were erratic and came in
spurts, only when the king or his loyal adminis-
trators could be moved to intercede and compel
the local authorities to act.
12. Retrieved from the online group Marche Contre
L’inséc urité, 22 April 2014.
13. My translation from French original. Archived
on 13 April 2014 from https://www.facebook
.com/pages/Marche-Contre-Linsécurité.
Dissenting poses | 79
14. Original: Anticharmil ou l’incitation à la lecture.
Other hashtags were “cultivate yourself ” (cultive
toi) and “books as loot” (des livres en guise de
butin).
15. is is comparable to the Algerian hittistes,
young unemployed men said to “hold up the
walls” (Souaih 2012).
16. For an overview of the “culture of poverty” de-
bate and its re-emergence, see Mario Luis Small,
David Harding, and Michèle Lamont (2010).
17. Hisham Aidi traces the historical roots of these
strategic programs to the anti-communist cam-
paigns led in the 1970s and 1980sthrough “jam-
bassadors” like Louis Armstrong and Duke El-
lington (2011: 26–28).
18. ese programs, alongside micro-credit schemes
for local women, overwhelmingly dominated
the local NGO landscape in Hay Mohammadi.
Also see Yasmine Berriane (2010).
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