Visualizing the Margins of Morocco & North Africa | Aomar Boum

Episode THREE

Professor Aomar Boum talks about his latest book, The Last Rekkas, which offers an indigenous, counter-visual approach to the work of colonial artist-ethnographers. A collaboration with his daughter, Majdouline Boum Mendoza, that combines her visual work with the life stories of his father Faraji that's thought to be Morocco’s last known rekkas, a mail courier who walked thousands of miles delivering letters under colonial rule. The Last Rekkas is a decolonial project, which began with ethnographic studies in the 1990s in a village in Southern Morocco that uses art and text to center the stories of marginalized "ordinary people". A sociocultural anthropologist who holds the Maurice Amado Endowed Chair in Sephardic Studies at the University of California, professor Boum discusses his work on religious and ethnic minorities in the Middle East and North Africa. The conversation explores the book’s multimodal approach, contrasting it with Boum’s previous work "Undesirables" and reflecting on the tradition of Moroccan historian Mokhtar Soussi. We also delve into the necessity of engaging with colonial ethnography to create alternative narratives, using figures like Jean Besancenot to frame the story of his father, a mail carrier (rekkas) whose history was centralized but his voice erased. The episode concludes with a discussion of the book's audience—the coming generations of Moroccans—and how materiality and space, like cemeteries and everyday objects, can serve as archives to uncover untold histories in North Africa.

L'histoire de Souffles | Jocelyne Laabi

Episode TWO

Dans cet épisode, nous avons l'honneur d'accueillir Jocelyne Laabi, née à Lyon en 1943 et fascinée par le Maroc depuis son enfance. Elle nous partage son parcours depuis son arrivée à Meknès à l'âge de sept ans, sa prise de conscience du racisme et du colonialisme, et son implication dans la revue 'Souffles'. Nous explorons également son appréhension de la langue arabe, la scène théâtrale universitaire, son mariage avec l'activiste et poète Abdellatif Laabi, et ses années de résilience pendant l'emprisonnement de son mari. Jocelyne Laabi dépeint son amour pour le Maroc et les combats sociaux et politiques qui ont marqué sa vie. Elle aborde également ses contributions littéraires, notamment ses contes pour enfants et sa propre autobiographie, 'La Liqueur d'Aloès'.

The Rebirth of Souffles &
The Power of Cultural Dialogue

Episode ONE

Welcome to the very first edition of Radio Ifriqia, a new podcast powered by afikra. In the first episode, we delve into the history and relaunch of the influential Moroccan magazine, Souffles (Anfās in Arabic, meaning "breath" or "spirit"), with founding editors Hisham Aidi (Columbia) and Zakia Salime (Rutgers). Souffles was originally launched in 1966 by a group of Moroccan writers and artists who came of age writing in Paris and were steeped in Pan-Africanism, decolonial movements, and anti-liberation movements of the era. They are credited with coining the phrase "cultural decolonization", challenging the dominance of colonial paradigms in newly independent Morocco and examining what it meant to decolonize knowledge and culture. It was the first truly transatlantic, transcontinental magazine, connecting North Africa to the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America. The original magazine lasted from 1966 to 1972 but the editors have resurrected it, relaunching the magazine in 2022 on the 50th anniversary of its closure as "Souffles Monde". The relaunch is driven by a commitment to bring academic research to a lay audience and reignite the tradition of decolonizing knowledge and challenging structures of power—the very spirit of Souffles. This discussion explores the magazine's initial intellectual pillars, the importance of historical reference points from the region, the continued relevance of debates on language and identity, and the new team's commitment to creating a dialogue among scholars across generations and geographic boundaries in the spirit of Pan-Maghrebism and South-South conversations.