"The Mass Sacred in Morocco" by Emilio Spadola

Emilio Spadola

Deposited 2007

Abstract
This thesis examines the changing mediation of religious messages (the sacred) in Fez, Morocco, from the cusp of modernity to the present. It begins with premodern corporeal mediation of blessing, spirits and scripture—sainthood and ecstatic possession, jinn mediumship and exorcism, Qur`anic inscription and recitation—and traces its modern reproduction in technological audiovisual media. The thesis links this changing mediation of religious messages to contemporaneous socio-political conditions in Morocco, namely, the rise of mass society and subjectivity and attendant ruptures in religious authority and recognition. More specifically, this thesis describes an enhanced power of reception among Muslims as itself an act of religious mediation, which it links to modern da`wa (outreach) movements.

Reception, in a general sense, describes the act of reading messages; in Islamic Morocco, I argue, it also describes a relationship of power, that is, of authority and devotion. In premodern society, religious mediation encircled authority and devotee: saints and scribes sent religious messages as imperatives, and, through ritual performance, devotees received the call, along with blessing and recognition. When successful, premodern authority controlled what it summoned; reception returned the message to its authoritative source.

Modern technological dissemination of religious messages, I argue, ruptured the circle, as multiple sites of reception—in mass-mediated form—displaced the unique presence of authority at the center of ritual. In the initial stages of technologization, Muslim reformists attempted to control "folk practices," as ordinary Muslims' rituals of reception—ecstatic possession in particular—were filmed and recognized from beyond Morocco as authentic culture. Then as now, I argue, the source of divine imperative, and thus, the source of recognition for ordinary Muslims, no longer abides in a single corporeal medium (a saint or scribe), but rather in the multiple sites of a perceived mass-mediated audience.

Examining contemporary ritual, I show that, on the one hand, Islam is "democratized": hearing the technologized call, ordinary Muslims practice da`wa, extending imperatives to a mass-mediated audience. On the other, however, many Muslims fear the loss of recognition, as their messages proliferate across mass-mediated society without return.