Chromatic Maghreb. Untangling the Complexities of Race in the Contemporary Maghreb

Descripción del proyecto

Dinámica racial contemporánea en el Magreb

En el Magreb, el creciente etnonacionalismo pone de manifiesto las persistentes tensiones raciales. La región ofrece un punto de vista singular sobre cómo opera la racialización en la intersección de la estatalidad poscolonial y el legado perdurable de la esclavitud. En este contexto, el equipo del proyecto CHRoMa, financiado por el CEI, pretende explorar léxicos, gramáticas y genealogías de raza en el Magreb. Combinará teorías raciales clave con conocimientos antropológicos y literatura histórica, centrándose en las identidades raciales dentro de contextos culturales específicos. En CHRoMa el foco son las jerarquías y los movimientos de resistencia en las sociedades magrebíes, más allá de la dicotomía blanco/negro y promoviendo un método de la racialización centrado en el Magreb. Se estudiará el legado de la esclavitud, los significados de la blancura, las divisiones internas entre los amazigh, la racialización de los emigrantes subsaharianos y los movimientos antirracistas.

Objetivo

In the Maghreb, raising ethno-nationalism excludes Blackness from the national body. These racial tensions build on a long history of social differentiation that political, public, and academic discourses tend to reduce to a Black/white dichotomy. CHRoMa explores these current dynamics in light of earlier histories of racial differentiation. By addressing Maghrebi lexicons, grammars, and genealogies of race, the project cross-fertilises three disciplinary fields: Critical Race Theories and Methodologies, recent anthropological reflections on race, and history literature on race in the Maghreb. The objective is to study today’s Maghrebi patterns of racialisation through a bottom-up approach that grounds the understandings of racial identities within specific cultural, social, political, and religious contexts. An innovative method that starts from people’s lived experiences will prevent an essentialised and a priori reading of racial identities. On a broader comparative level, the project considers racialised hierarchies and political and personal spaces of resistance to racial discrimination across Maghrebi geographies, histories, and societies. Three are the ground-breaking shifts 1) to develop an analytical approach that combines nuances of colour with other discriminatory factors, thus moving beyond the Black/White dichotomy 2) to promote a Maghreb-centred approach to the study of processes of racialisation 3) to strengthen the emergent field of Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) Critical Race Studies. The Maghreb is a privileged standpoint to narrate patterns of racialisation outside dominant Western thinking, as it is both a “post-colonial” and a “post-slavery” context. Case studies comprise the legacies of racialised slavery, the meanings of whiteness, racialised internal divisions within the “white” Amazigh population, the racialisation of Sub-Saharan migrants, and the new categories crafted by anti-racist activism.