Michael M. J. Fischer, Ethnicity and the post-modern arts of memory, 1986

Cultural festivalization, or the performative (re)invention of Moroccan national culture

2This essay unfolds through an analysis of the entanglements between embodiment, performance, and power in contemporary Morocco, focusing on how Berber cultural expressions are simultaneously disciplined, celebrated, and commodified within state cultural policies. After outlining the theoretical and methodological framework that situates the body as both a medium and object of governance, the paper explores the historical trajectory of Moroccan cultural staging, the politics of folklorization and depoliticization of Amazigh identity, and the ethnographic case of Sefrou’s Cherry and Ahazij festivals as sites of negotiation between local and national narratives. The final sections discuss how Berber performers enact subtle forms of resistance and self-representation through their embodied practices, revealing the ambivalent coexistence of compliance and dissent within the spectacle of national culture. The article thus argues that these performative spaces not only reproduce hegemonic forms of belonging but also open micro-political arenas where alternative identities and meanings of “Moroccanness” are enacted.

3If Silverstein has analyzed how Amazigh activism in Morocco and North Africa navigates the intersections of secularism and state ideology, exposing the scalar and ideological ambiguities that shape contemporary forms of cultural politics (Silverstein 2012, 2013; see Buonvino 2025), in line with his insights, this article turns to the performative domain to explore how such negotiations are materially enacted through the festivalization of Berber culture – where questions of authenticity and belonging intersect with state strategies of cultural governance and with local struggles for recognition and visibility.

5Building on Bhabha’s (1990, 1994) distinction between the pedagogical and the performative dimensions of nation-making, I approach Moroccan cultural festivals as spaces where national identity is not simply transmitted from above, but enacted, negotiated, and embodied by multiple actors. This perspective shifts the focus from abstract narratives imposed by the state to the concrete encounters where performers, officials, and audiences interpret, appropriate, and contest national scripts. In line with Abu-Lughod’s (2005) call to examine the nation through its “multiple microcosms” and everyday sites of mediation, this approach foregrounds the plural, situated, and often contradictory ways in which national belonging is lived and staged.

6Within this framework, I argue that since the late 1950s the Moroccan state has used cultural festivalization as a key strategy to choreograph and normalize Amazigh cultural expression within a unifying national narrative. By placing Berber performances at the center of state-sponsored spectacles framed as symbols of cultural authenticity and resilience, the monarchy positions itself as the “guardian” of national heritage while simultaneously reshaping and depoliticizing Amazigh identity. Therefore, the main objective of this paper is to examine the relationship between technologies of power and the production of knowledge that take place through processes of normalization of the bodies engaged in specific state performances, producing a commodified representation of national cultural heritage.

8Following Turner’s formulation of social dramas as “units of social process” that emerge from breaches of normative order and progress through crisis, redressive action, and either reintegration or schism (1974), cultural festivals in Morocco may be read as institutionalized sites of redress embedded within a recurring ritual cycle. Social dramas, for Turner, unfold publicly and are animated by actors who occupy distinct structural positions – ritual specialists, political leaders, cultural brokers – whose differential authority shapes the scope and efficacy of redressive measures.

9In this framework, embodied performances operate not merely as vehicles for the transmission of collective identity but as reflexive forms of cultural communication. They constitute what Turner (following Geertz’s definition) called “metacommentaries” upon the social process: staged reflections on historical experience that simultaneously reproduce and reconfigure the cultural codes through which such experience is interpreted. The Moroccan festival apparatus can thus be situated within the third, redressive phase of the social drama, wherein ritualized performances function as compensatory mechanisms designed to symbolically manage tensions between social groups, regions, and cultural identities.

10By choreographing embodied performances within a controlled public arena, the state harnesses the redressive potential of spectacle to symbolically absorb dissent (Boum 2012), recalibrate intergroup relations, and reaffirm a hegemonic narrative of national unity. The framing of festivals as apolitical celebrations of “tradition” is thus integral to their political efficacy: depoliticization is a constitutive feature of their redressive function.

11Having established the festival apparatus as a key dispositif through which the Moroccan state orchestrates symbolic repair and produces normative forms of belonging, the next section examines the mechanisms that enable this depoliticizing work. Specifically, it turns to the folklorization and commodification of Amazigh cultural expression as central strategies through which difference is domesticated, aestheticized, and rendered compatible with the project of national cultural governance.

Folklorization and commodification of Amazigh culture, or the politics of depoliticization

12In the aftermath of 9/11 and the subsequent attacks in Casablanca (2003, 2007), cultural festivalization in Morocco became a central instrument of statecraft in the governance of religious affect and public sentiment. The proliferation of festivals during this period must be situated within a broader project of producing affective cohesion – what El Maarouf (2013: 69) terms a state-sponsored ethic of “togetherness and peace” – as part of a strategy to pre-empt and neutralize forms of political Islam deemed threatening to the monarchy’s moral authority.

13The state-led revitalization and public celebration of Sufism, positioned as the embodiment of Morocco’s “tolerant” Islamic tradition, exemplifies this logic. Its festivalization operates as a technique of depoliticization: by aestheticizing Sufi ritual and relocating it to staged, touristic, and media-circulated performance spaces, the state extracts its spiritual capital while displacing its potential for collective mobilization. Such measures resonate with what Lust-Okar (2004, 2005) analyses as elite “engineering” strategies in neo-loyalist regimes, wherein selective incorporation and exclusion structurally delimit the contours of the political sphere (see Buonvino 2024b).

14Within this assemblage, the folklorization and mise en scène of Amazigh cultural expressions perform parallel work. Their integration into narratives of national “resistance” to colonization furnishes symbolic resources for the monarchy’s post-2001 identity politics, which seeks to manufacture a shared cultural heritage anchored in depoliticized diversity.

15The festivalization of Moroccan arts and culture officially began in 1959, when King Mohammed V inaugurated the Festival National des Arts Populaires: the regional diversity of costumes, dances, music, and oral traditions was celebrated in front of a national audience brought together; the protagonists of the show were the Berbers, with their rich repertoire of dances and songs. Meriem Aherdan, wife of former Minister Mahjoubi Aherdan, described the event as a meeting meant to mark the history of the country: the historic encounter between the various components of a national community, the North and the South of the country, urban citizens and those from the countryside, finally free from Western domination and ready to return, with a rediscovered independence, to an “authentic Moroccan culture” (see Aherdan 1983-1985; Sefrioui 1965).

17In The Body Impolitic (2004), Herzfeld shows how certain groups – in his case traditional artisans – are simultaneously celebrated for their craftsmanship and excluded from modern political discourse. These artisans are romanticized as the bearers of “authentic” national heritage, yet they lack social mobility and political recognition. Their exclusion reflects broader dynamics of symbolic capital, in which elite groups control national narratives while exploiting or sidelining the very people who sustain those narratives. Similarly, Berbers are celebrated as symbols of cultural heritage, but attempts have been made to deny their political and economic power. Indeed, the post-independence state embarked on an assertive project of cultural homogenization aimed at consolidating Arab-Islamic national identity. Mohammed V’s abolition of Berber customary law and the Arabization of education, toponymy, and public discourse – formalized with Arabic’s exclusive recognition in the 1962 Constitution – constituted a deliberate dispositif of erasure. This damnatio memoriae sought to excise Amazigh historical presence from the national imaginary and reorient collective memory toward a unilinear Arab-Islamic heritage.

18By the 1970s, this politics of erasure converged with a strategy of depoliticization. Following the alleged involvement of Amazigh military figures in coup attempts, Amazigh identity became coded as a latent threat to national cohesion. The state responded by relegating Amazigh culture to the realm of “sanitized folklore”: a repertoire of dances and songs mobilized for national celebrations yet stripped of political significance. However, this top-down project was neither total nor uncontested. Amazigh intellectuals, activists, and cultural associations responded through linguistic revival initiatives, grassroots cultural production, and transnational advocacy networks that sought to re-inscribe Amazigh identity into the public sphere. Their efforts complicated the state’s narrative monopoly and gradually shifted the discursive terrain.

20The invention of the “internal primitive” coincided with the production of its marginality and political stigmatization, as well as its transformation into a commodity for the national and international tourist economy. Starting in the 1990s, coinciding with the opening of the festival era, the concepts of “minority” and “majority” began to be replaced by what Boum has defined as “the homogeneous yet superficial version of the democratic and multicultural citizen” (2007: 237). From the 2000s onwards, also due to increasing international pressures, the government moved toward the official inclusion of the Berber component within the national public sphere as an active subject and promoter of development. The Amazigh Manifesto, presented to Mohammed VI in 2000, exemplifies this process of rehabilitating Amazigh culture and its integration into the national discourse. The Moroccan identity discourse was reworked based on the concepts of hybridity and inclusion, and in 2005, the Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University, the Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture (IRCAM), the Fes-Saiss Association, and the municipality of Fez, under the patronage of His Majesty King Mohammed VI, organized the first national Festival de la Culture Amazighe, which took place in Fez, the capital of the Istiqlal party (nationalist and conservative political party). On October 17, 2001, during the ceremony for signing the decree ratifying the creation of IRCAM, held on the Ajdir plateau in the central Middle Atlas Mountains, King Mohammed VI delivered a speech that redefined the characteristics of “Moroccanness”. In this royal speech, “Amazighness” was recognized as playing a primary role in the historical process of defining the imagined national community. The process of re-imagining the Moroccan nation, led by the monarchy, focused on the affirmation and recognition of internal cultural pluralism. This pluralism was, however, “reduced to unum”, thanks to a firm attachment to the pillars of Islam and the leadership of the Alawite dynasty, which has proven capable of resisting threats from invaders, averting internal divisions, and ensuring, for centuries, the defense of the country and its integrity. The Ajdir speech marked an ambivalent turn: while the monarchy framed pluralism as part of a sovereign narrative of unity, it nonetheless generated institutional openings that Amazigh actors were able to strategically inhabit. State-managed recognition did not dissolve hierarchical relations, but it altered the terrain of cultural politics, enabling new forms of Amazigh activism, expression, and negotiation (Wyrtzen 2013).

21The ambivalent pluralism formalized after Ajdir reshaped the conditions under which Amazigh culture could be publicly performed, opening new channels of recognition while simultaneously circumscribing their political scope. Yet the effects of these reforms are uneven and become legible in the local arenas where festivalization is enacted. The next section examines this dynamic through the case of Sefrou, where I conceptualize the “festival divide”: the set of cultural and political fault lines that emerge within festival spaces, revealing how recognition, participation, and belonging are unequally negotiated and distributed.

The festival divide: cultural politics and identity struggles in Sefrou

23When I arrived in Sefrou before the Ahazij Festival 2019, my interlocutors told me that the organization of this festival was the result of a latent conflict that later erupted into a sort of “Great Schism”. Nasiba, a forty-five-year-old Berber woman from the Sefrou countryside, told me: “It was a tragic misunderstanding that is better to forget. The organizers of the Cherry Festival prioritized Arabs over Berbers, but Sefrou is more Berber than Arab. In any case, we must learn to coexist”. Brahim, a thirty-five-year-old storyteller from Sefrou, commented on the event, telling me that the Cherry Festival became famous thanks to the Berbers, not because of Arab music. “It is the Berber cultural manifestations that attract tourists, as tourists love Amazigh culture, and that is what they want to see!”, affirmed Brahim. Driss, former organizer of the 2018 Cherry Festival, told me that from that edition, in order to make the festival “more modern” the organizers decided to implement profound changes regarding the structuring and distribution of cultural events in Sefrou. “It came to our mind”, he said to me,

to allocate the Berber show to either July or August since the city only hosts one festival during the year. We wanted to create two festivals out of one; this would also help enliven the city’s atmosphere, which is practically dormant during these two months. Associations defending the Berber cause have taken advantage of political tensions and have raised a scandal, labeling the Cherry Festival as an anti-Berber festival, but this is not true! If the festival includes Berber performances, the city becomes a jungle. The council overflows, the organization struggles, and the police are everywhere. Since 2018, we have said: “let’s try to create an “affordable” Cherry Festival, that can take place under the best conditions. There aren’t many roads, you see? There aren’t many hotels. Let’s reserve the songs and Berber shows for the rest of the months, attracting some tourists as well. However, the leaders of the Berber associations have also accused the mayor of favoring an anti-Berber policy. They did not understand this choice. They said: “We too have the right to festivities during the Cherry Festival, which is also our festival”. Ultimately, the Berbers have been reintegrated into the framework of Cherry Festival. (Driss, Sefrou, 13 June 2019)

24If it is true, as Rosen (1972) claimed, that ethnicity is just one of many indices through which to understand the universe of social relations in Sefrou, and if it is appropriate to underline the vital dynamism of integration work among heterogeneous components, it is also important to consider the processes of constructing and narrating the stereotype of the Dionysian, animalistic, rough, anxious, hysterical, dangerous, and dissenting Berber, afflicted by an “uncaptured, restive, rebellious peasantry” (Olivier de Sardan 2005: 79), a stereotype “sweetened” by the tourist passion for the “authentic” and the “primitive”, making the Amazigh population the object of a new national and international challenge and a certain local re-evaluation. This stereotype is often alive and operates in everyday discursive practices and the social reality of Sefrou. The Cherry Festival (and, since 2019, the Ahazij festival) each year amplifies the relational dynamics between Arabs and Berbers. Following the exclusion of the Berber component from the festival, we witness its gradual reintroduction (as we have seen, in the area of Massay, the Berber festival takes place parallel to the “official” festival), likely motivated by the “magnetic” potential of Berber cultural events to attract, more than others, a huge number of tourists (and to generate significant revenues for the city’s economic budget). The overview described so far reflects some of the problems inherent in state political designs to integrate Amazigh identity within the national discourse; in fact, the redistribution of these discourses at the local level often brings to light the limitations of the city’s infrastructures in which local authorities and organizers attempt to navigate.

25The Sefrou Cherry festival constitutes a crucial opportunity for economic gain and the expression of urban and extra-urban political games: it constitutes a theater for frictions between factions and also a betting ground for the spectacle of a mostly personalistic political practice. The ninety-ninth edition concluded with accusations of illegal funding against the organizers made by political opponents of the mayor and his party (Parti de la Justice et du Développement), leading to a judicial process that has concluded in 2023. During our last interview, Aziz, former President of the Fondation Caraze, revealed to me that, following the 2019 edition, representatives of the Berber community in Sefrou publicly accused the organizers of racism, fueling anti-municipal protests that ultimately led to the mayor’s dismissal and new elections. From that moment until June 2022, Sefrou faced one of its frequent political crises, which involved a succession of various governments over two years. Further controversies surround the organization of the festival; individuals close to the municipal administration created a new cultural association to take control of the festival’s organization.

27As the final night of the 2019 Ahazij Festival ended, I stood beside a group of ahidous performers as they prepared an unscripted encore. Away from the official stage and its controlled choreography, the dancers formed a loose circle, exchanging glances that signaled a return to the rhythms of home rather than spectacle. The maâlem tapped his bendir softly, and for a moment the dance shed its frontal orientation and regained its communal pulse. “This is the real one”, a young performer whispered to me, gesturing toward the improvised circle. This fleeting scene captured a paradox that formal festival spaces cannot contain even within the constraints of state-sanctioned performance: Amazigh cultural practices continue to morph, adapt, and experiment in the everyday. Lived performance generates an alternative repertoire – subtler, more intimate, and often at odds with official representations. The following section turns to these embodied micro-practices, examining how Amazigh performers reshape tradition through improvisation, affective labor, and acts of reinterpretation.

Tradition in transition: Berber performance and the daily reshaping of Amazigh culture

28In tourism, and in national and global markets, Berbers are often called upon to perform their “authentic traditions” through bodily gestures and dress. Their bodies become part of a state-sponsored spectacle – exhibited for cultural consumption. The two festivals in Sefrou bring together musicians, dancers, and storytellers from across Morocco. Their presence is officially framed as a celebration of national heritage. Yet, what emerges in this space is not only the reinforcement of a unified Moroccan identity, but also the articulation of an alternative Moroccanness, one that is rooted in Amazigh lived experience and that subtly diverges from the homogenising narratives promoted by the state. In this sense, performance operates as a site of negotiation where Berber identity is not simply displayed but actively reworked. Music and dance also function as a form of resistance and assertion of identity, particularly in the face of state narratives that have historically marginalized Berber language and culture. Through their art, performers try to negotiate their place within a national framework that both celebrates and commodifies Berber heritage. In Sefrou, the festival setting transforms the town into a space of heightened cultural exchange, where Berber traditions from different regions converge. The performers interact not only with local audiences but also with national and international visitors, positioning their art within a broader dialogue about Moroccan identity. While the festival officially promotes cultural heritage, the performers themselves experience a sort of dual reality, because they gain visibility and economic opportunities while simultaneously contending with the state’s selective appropriation of their traditions for tourism and national branding.

29Beyond the festival, many of these performers sustain their livelihoods through itinerant performances at weddings, parties, and village gatherings, and their art is deeply embedded in social life, acting as a medium through which specific values, political and social critiques are expressed and transmitted. Performance, in this sense, represents both a form of entertainment and a social practice through which Berber identity is continuously negotiated and redefined. Among the many performers who come to Sefrou, the ahidous dancers and musicians hold a special place. Ahidous can be considered a rhythmic and poetic expression of community solidarity. The life stories of its performers reflect the deep intertwining of experienced tradition, personal aspiration and pursuit of economic gain. Omar, a veteran ahidous drummer from a small village near Khenifra that I had the opportunity to interview during the Ahazij Festival, grew up watching his grandfather play the bendir. As a child, he would sneak into village celebrations, mesmerized by the way music brought people together. Now in his seventies, he speaks of how ahidous has changed – once an intimate form of social expression, it is now mainly performed for festivals and tourists. His attachment to the practice thus reaffirms a sense of belonging that exceeds its current commodified form. Ahmed is a forty-eight-year-old lyricist whose words form the backbone of some ahidous songs, intertwining themes like love, exile, and resistance, drawing inspiration from everyday life. A shepherd by day, a performer by night, Ahmed embodies this dual existence of many Berber artists, straddling the demands of survival and artistic expression. Through his poetry, Ahmed articulates an understanding of the nation from the margins, offering a narrative of Moroccanness that emerges from rural precarity and cultural persistence rather than from state-centred discourse. Another figure, Hassan, is a seasoned ahidous leader from the Zayane tribe. Once a farmer, he took up performance full-time after a severe drought made agriculture unsustainable. For him, ahidous is synonymous with community cohesion. During the interview he describes how, in his youth, the dance was performed to resolve conflicts between neighboring tribes, with rhythm and poetry replacing the need for prolonged disputes. Nasiba, a widowed mother of three from Azrou, found a livelihood in ahidous after the loss of her husband. Initially, she faced resistance, as performing publicly was seen as improper for a woman of her status. Yet, she persevered, becoming one of the few female percussionists in her troupe. Through ahidous, she provides for her family, proving that tradition can also be a space of empowerment as well as preservation. These examples show that ahidous could be at the same time a means of sustaining identity and fostering a sense of belonging in an ever-changing global Morocco, acting as the medium for the rearticulation of an alternative Moroccanness grounded in Amazigh experience. This form of belonging does not position itself outside the nation, but rather reconfigures it from within, proposing a vision of Morocco that is plural, negotiated, and continuously produced through performance. Moreover, their stories highlight the adaptability of an artistic practice in the face of economic hardship, shifting social norms, and the pressures of modernization and subtle depoliticization. In other words, studying (with) these performers reveals how cultural expression intersects with broader socio-political structures. Their cultural practices reflect both resilience and adaptation, as they navigate the expectations of audiences, the demands of the market, and the pressures of state narratives. By situating performance within everyday life rather than viewing it as an isolated spectacle, we gain insight into the dynamic ways in which Berber identity is sustained, contested, represented and reimagined in contemporary Morocco.

“Resistance”, or the dance of negotiation

30The concept of resistance is a privileged ground for the construction of those nationalisms that arose in an anti-colonial context, as is the case in Morocco. It represents the social capital on which the imagined national community is based. The various efforts made by the monarchy to expand the concept of resistance serve as proof. Contrary to what Mohammed VI claimed in 2001, namely that Amazighness cannot be put to the service of any political designs, it seems that it still constitutes an elective ground today for pursuing distinctly political interests and objectives. The events related to the “Berber issue” confirm the inherently dynamic nature of ethnicity. In this case, the processes of attribution and assumption of ethnic identity leverage the construction of a “plural conception of self” as a prerequisite for establishing a “pluralist social ethos” (Fischer 1986). The process of including Berbers in the national discourse of resistance represents a remarkable example of that process of ethnic reinvention directed by a “future-oriented ethical vision” which finds in establishing a connection with the past the necessary coherence for pursuing future social objectives.

32However, in this “contest”, there are no permanently victorious groups, only subjects who temporarily occupy strategic positions in a sequence of acts of resistance, capitulation, and submission. Moreover, the aesthetics employed by festival practitioners serve to express and mediate new forms of citizenship and belonging. These forms allow for the articulation of critique or the exploitation of opportunities for increased social and economic mobility, resulting from the processes of globalization and neoliberalization (see Goodman 2005). In this respect, Maddy-Weitzman (2006) has demonstrated how globalization processes have ended up strengthening a specific Amazigh identity ethnopolitics, in opposition to the monocultural normative order based on Arabism and Islam (see Crawford 2001). According to some scholars (see Ben-Layashi 2007), the Berber discourse represents an inviting alternative to the existing order in the Maghreb, as it proposes a vision of the future more aligned with the democratic and humanistic values mediated by European culture. Ethnographic research reveals that most Berber groups participating in national festivals engage, to some extent, with the official discourse, benefiting from the commodification of Berber cultural expressions by performing the “internal primitive” within a state-driven politics and poetics of active self-celebration. As Bobel and Kwan wrote, “like norms, resistance is multifaceted […] involving lesser and greater degrees of intentionality and recognition by the many actors involved” (Bobel, Kwan 2011: 2). Therefore, embodied resistance can be understood as “oppositional action or nonaction that defies contextual body norms, and it comes in many forms” (ibid.).

33In this context, one might ask: do these practices reaffirm the very norms they seek to weaken? To answer this question, we must consider the significant efforts made by the Moroccan state to disseminate specific values across the territory through the celebration of national festivals. Reysoo (1991), author of one of the few anthropological studies on Moroccan moussem, noted that many of her interlocutors from the poorest classes became advocates for an institutional national culture that often clashed with their background. In other words, during her observation of these celebrations, Reysoo highlighted an unresolved interaction between dominant culture and local culture, interpreting these events as privileged vehicles for an ideal of national purity rooted in concepts such as “historical continuity”, “cultural heritage” and “authenticity”. Within this framework, Berber performances became emblematic of a process of folklore idealization aimed at promoting national culture. This process ultimately led also to the professionalization of the increasingly diverse category of Berber performers. Following a history of internal conflicts and fragmentation, Morocco under Mohammed VI, particularly in the wake of significant rights recognition driven by the protests of the Berber cultural and political movement, appears determined to increasingly employ cultural festivalization as a strategic means of reconstructing and reinforcing its cultural, political, and religious unity, using public celebrations and cultural events to foster a cohesive national identity, seeking dialogue across diverse social and political segments.

34Berber performers seem to use their bodies to softly challenge and resist the cultural dominance of Arab official culture, dramatizing, sometimes exasperating their “traditional” and “authentic” cultural traits. In doing so, they not only assert their distinct identity but also engage in a complex negotiation with the state’s cultural rhetoric (rather than absolute opposition). If their performances serve as an almost unconscious critique of the hegemonic Arab-centric narrative (see Almasude 1999; Jay 2015), at the same time they basically align with and contribute to the state’s broader efforts to promote a unified national identity. Their practices do not actually translate into explicit political opposition, instead often coexisting within the broader framework of national integration. So, if on the one hand these groups often use their bodies to critique the “monolingualism” of the hegemonic culture, on the other hand these performances increasingly conform to the logic of the cultural market, becoming more tailored to attract tourism. Through music, dance, or clothing, Berbers negotiate with state power or mainstream culture, seeking recognition or accommodation rather than outright overthrow. This dynamic leads to a complex form of resistance where the body becomes a medium through which alternative forms of identity and belonging are articulated (see Rachik 2006). This trend is also evident in Sufi performances, which, while retaining spiritual and cultural significance, are increasingly shaped to meet the expectations of the global tourist economy.

35Berbers’ embodied resistance practices offer a very subtle and not clearly structured form of critique, coexisting within and even benefiting from the broader framework of national integration and cultural commodification. Also, as neoliberalism increasingly commodifies cultural forms of resistance, the line between resistance and compliance becomes definitively blurred.

36Read in dialogue with Michael Herzfeld’s The Body Impolitic, the dynamics described here could acquire a comparative depth that extends beyond the Moroccan case. As Herzfeld demonstrates for traditional artisans in Greece, marginal actors may be simultaneously elevated as emblems of cultural authenticity and structurally excluded from full political recognition. Their bodies, practices, and forms of knowledge are celebrated as repositories of national heritage, while their capacity to shape national narratives or access political and economic power remains constrained.

37A similar logic can be observed in the Moroccan context, where Amazigh performers have increasingly been incorporated into the state’s symbolic economy as emblems of cultural pluralism and historical depth. While this process has expanded the public visibility and institutional recognition of Amazigh cultural expression, it has not been accompanied by a commensurate redistribution of political agency or decision-making power.

38In Herzfeld’s terms, this ambivalent condition can be understood as a form of “cultural intimacy”, in which practices that might otherwise unsettle the dominant national narrative are tolerated – or even encouraged – precisely because they are reframed as tradition, folklore, or embodied authenticity, and thus rendered non-threatening. Like the artisans described by Herzfeld, Berber performers inhabit the national discourse from within, negotiating legitimacy through performative excess, self-essentialization, and aestheticized difference. Their resistance, therefore, does not take the form of frontal opposition but unfolds in the interstices of hegemonic cultural production, revealing how the nation-state depends on marginalized bodies to sustain the very narratives that simultaneously constrain them.

39Through the state’s cultural policies of festivalization, bodily performances are transformed into instruments of national pedagogy – mechanisms through which the Moroccan monarchy rearticulates unity, modernity, and cultural pluralism under the sign of controlled diversity. Yet, these same performative spaces constitute arenas of negotiation, where marginalized subjects mobilize aesthetic and affective repertoires to reclaim visibility and articulate forms of agency within and against the hegemonic order. In this sense, Berber performers re-signify the very discourses that attempt to domesticate their cultural expression.

40The Sefrou case thus contributes to a broader anthropological understanding of how postcolonial states engage in the biopolitical management of culture, transforming difference into both a commodity and a marker of legitimacy. What emerges is not a binary opposition between domination and resistance, but rather a continuum of embodied negotiations in which agency is exercised through accommodation, repetition, and subtle reappropriation of state-sanctioned forms. By analyzing these dynamics through the lens of performance, the paper underscores the importance of embodiment as a methodological and theoretical entry point for studying the everyday materialization of national imaginaries and the moral economies that sustain them.

41Future research could expand on these insights by tracing how the commodification of cultural resistance evolves within transnational circuits of tourism, media, and diaspora. Comparative inquiries might illuminate how other postcolonial contexts in the Maghreb and beyond articulate similar processes of depoliticization through cultural spectacle. Furthermore, exploring the emergent role of digital media and youth activism in reshaping Amazigh performative practices could shed light on new configurations of resistance that exceed the spatial and ideological boundaries of the nation-state. Ultimately, the study of Moroccan festivalization opens a critical vantage point from which to interrogate the politics of visibility, embodiment, and belonging in the global circulation of “authentic” culture – where power continues to choreograph difference, yet the body persistently dances otherwise.