1. Spectral Waters, Liquid Archives: The Mediterranean as a (Racialized) Continuum
For centuries, despite recurrent conflicts, the Mediterranean functioned as a fluid and porous frontier – a space of circulation, encounter, and cultural interpenetration that unsettled fixed borders (Braudel 2017). In recent decades, however, this openness has increasingly been eclipsed by the EU strategy of political and symbolic hardening, turning the sea into a laboratory for controlling mobility and enforcing borders (De Genova 2017). Shaped by what Achille Mbembe calls necropolitics (2003), the Mediterranean has become a space where life and death are differentially governed along racialized and geo-biopolitical lines (Tazzioli 2020). Securitarian regimes, surveillance technologies, and the externalization of European borders have transformed it into a lethal and “spectacular” zone of exclusion – or an “obscene” mechanism of conditional inclusion (De Genova 2013) – where migrant and Black bodies are rendered disposable, illegalized, exploited, or abandoned. Beneath the ostensibly “white”, innocent and polished façade of (Fortress) Europe lies a deeply racialized landscape rooted in colonial histories (Kundnani 2023).
Yet the Mediterranean continues to bear the traces of its layered past. It is still marked by memories of slavery, traces of (post)colonial crossings, and Afropean and Afro-Mediterranean cosmologies that persist despite systematic attempts at suppression (Pitts 2019). From this complex and haunted terrain, the (Black) Mediterranean can be reimagined not only as a site of violence, enclosure and disenchantment, but also as a space of political and aesthetic re-enchantment (Chambers 2020), characterized by liquidity and multiplicity (Zaccaria 2016).
In this sense, the notion of the “Black Mediterranean” has emerged in recent years to describe not only geographies of migration and control but also diasporic and decolonial histories linking Europe, Africa, the Americas and the SWANA region (Proglio et al. 2021). In dialogue with Paul Gilroy’s Black Atlantic (1993), this framework positions the Mediterranean as a space of transnational entanglements, post-slavery memory, and diasporic subjectivities, where borders are continuously crossed and unsettled. Yet Afro-Maghrebi histories and imaginaries – including long-standing Black presences in North Africa and intra-African mobilities predating European colonialism – remain marginal within these debates. Recentering them challenges the epistemic divide between “Black Africa” and “White Africa,” revealing the deep historical continuities linking the Mediterranean, the Sahara, and the Atlantic (Deubel, Youngstedt, Tissières 2014). Moving toward a “trans-MediterrAtlantic” approach (Zaccaria 2016) and through the lens of re-enchantment – understood, following Stefania Consigliere (2020), as a critical practice that exposes modernity’s illusions and reactivates displaced imaginaries – the Maghreb emerges not as a peripheral margin of Europe, Africa, or the Middle East, but as a vibrant, central liminal space (El Guabli 2022): a threshold animated by multiple spirits, memories, and diasporic dreams circulating through overlapping geographies and temporalities (Winegar, Pierpzak 2009). In this framework, the Maghreb – and Morocco in particular – appears as a crucial vantage point: a historical crossroads, where precolonial, colonial and postcolonial racial images and imaginaries continue to be negotiated, rearticulated and contested (Turchetti 2023).
Foregrounding the Maghreb also draws attention to the internal racial formations that structure North African societies, both within local and global dynamics (Aidi, Lynch, Mampilly 2021, Pouessel 2012). In Morocco and across the region, Blackness has been shaped by intertwined regimes of Islamic jurisprudence, trans-Saharan trade, colonial racial science, postcolonial politics and art, recent migration policies, producing hierarchies in which Blackness is simultaneously hypervisible and marginalized (Becker 2020, El Hamel 2013, Gross Wyrtzen 2019, King 2021, Terhmina 2024, Tolan Szkilnik, 2023). Approaching the Black Mediterranean from the Maghreb challenges the historical tendency to render Black presence in North Africa marginal or “elsewhere,” revealing the Mediterranean not as a simple boundary between Europe and Africa, but as a racialized continuum in which Blackness has long been constitutive, even if often denied or made invisible. Engaging with these “spectral” presences allows us to recover the sea’s multiple geographies and nonlinear temporalities, where Blackness functions as a cosmopolitical, liquid, performative and visionary force (Fleetwood 2011, Raengo 2014), reshaping our understanding of the Mediterranean as a space of both historical continuity and imaginative possibility.
In this sense, Afro-Maghrebi practices – rituals, music, oral histories, spiritual lineages, and contemporary artistic interventions – function as embodied archives that challenge dominant historiographies. In this article, I will focus on some examples from the contemporary Moroccan cultural scene: Gnawa culture, which combines music, trance, and spirit possession with visual and performative elements to offer alternative forms of spirituality and identity; and the work of two contemporary artists: Hassan Hajjaj, whose vibrant portraits and intricate patterns disrupt Orientalist and stereotypical imaginaries, reclaiming visibility, agency, and desire for Black and marginalized bodies; and M’Barek Bouhchichi, who, through archival work and poetic interventions, confronts historical erasure and brings to light the Black Moroccan histories that have long been silenced.
Across spiritual, visual, and political registers, Gnawa, Hajjaj, and Bouhchichi enact practices of re-enchantment: crossing boundaries, reactivating the invisible, and giving form to erased worlds. From this perspective, the Black Mediterranean emerges not merely as a border zone but as a cosmopoietic and political field – a space where colonial ghosts, diasporic dreams, and Black imaginaries converge to inspire alternative futures.
2. Going Gnawa: Trances, Alternative Cosmopolitanisms, and Performances of Blackness
Traditionally, Gnawa culture in Morocco combines musical, spiritual, and performative practices centered on trance, spirit possession, and collective ritual (called lila), functioning as a living archive of Afro-Maghrebi histories and memories (Benachir 2005). Emerging from the trans-Saharan circulation of peoples, ideas, and spiritual practices, Gnawa rituals mediated memory, resistance, and belonging, offering a cosmology in which the spectral presence of Black ancestors could be acknowledged, honored, and invoked. These practices produced a form of embodied knowledge that preserved histories often marginalized or suppressed in dominant narratives, enabling communities to negotiate the legacies of slavery, colonialism, and internal racial hierarchies while asserting agency in the present (El Hamel 2013). The ritual dimension of Gnawa – through lila ceremonies and the interplay of music, movement, and trance – functioned as a collective and participatory archive, where social, spiritual, and historical knowledge were intertwined and transmitted across generations (Turchetti 2015).
From the 1960s onward, Gnawa culture has increasingly expanded beyond local ritual contexts, becoming a transnational aesthetic and intercultural phenomenon. Collaborations with African American jazz and blues musicians – most notably figures such as Randy Weston – opened Gnawa music to diasporic Black Atlantic circuits, fostering new forms of cross-cultural dialogue grounded in shared histories of displacement, otherness, and spiritual survival. This transnational circulation was further amplified by the incorporation of Gnawa into the global world music market, where its sonic and performative elements were recontextualized for international audiences (Kapchan 2007). In parallel, the Moroccan state has progressively mobilized Gnawa heritage within broader cultural and diplomatic strategies, particularly in relation to its renewed political and economic engagement with the African continent. The inscription of Gnawa culture on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2019 has played a crucial role in this process, contributing to the global visibility and institutional valorization of the tradition, while also raising critical questions about commodification, depoliticization, and the reframing of historically subaltern Black practices within official narratives of national heritage.
However, the contemporary circulation of Gnawa culture and aesthetics cannot be understood solely as a top-down process driven by state institutions, global markets, or heritage regimes. Already in the seventies, groups like Nass El Ghiwane experimented with blending traditional Gnawa rhythms with popular genres to create powerful, politically charged protest songs. Today, it also unfolds through multiple bottom-up, everyday, and performative practices in which references to “Africa” and Blackness – understood as fluid, relational, and cosmopolitan signifiers – remain central, even when detached from explicitly ritual contexts or real lineages (Becker 2020). As Benachir shows, processes of “gnawisation” and “blackisation” among younger generations have emerged (Benachir 2001:216-217), in which Blackness functions not merely as a racial category, but as a marker of creativity, cosmopolitanism, and cultural “coolness” (Thompson 2011). In this sense, Blackness operates as a performative resource, detached from skin color – a “liquid” identity through which youth in the Maghreb and in its diaspora navigate social, cultural, and global spaces, articulating belonging and aspiration simultaneously (Clarke, Thomas 2006, Raengo 2014). Musical innovations such as the “Gnawa reggae” movement, collaborations with hip-hop, and the incorporation of Afro-Maghrebi stylistic references into urban youth culture (Turchetti 2017) demonstrate how Gnawa culture continues to operate both as a vehicle for cultural affirmation and as a subtle critique of social hierarchies, connecting local, transmediterranean and transatlantic imaginaries (Aidi 2014).
This aesthetic, performative, and social circulation becomes particularly visible during the annual Gnawa Festival in Essaouira, often described as the “Moroccan Woodstock.” Attracting thousands of young Moroccans alongside international visitors, the festival cultivates a liminal and liberatory atmosphere, temporarily suspending everyday rhythms and generating a “time outside of time” (Kapchan 2007). Drawing on the spirit of the lila, the festival invites participants to experience collective movement, music, and moments of trance-like engagement, creating occasions that are simultaneously cathartic and socially transformative, despite being embedded within state cultural policies. Beyond its ritual echoes, the festival also operates as a performative site of identity production, where Blackness, African heritage, and Gnawa aesthetics are publicly re-signified as markers of creativity, coolness, and transnational connectivity. In this way, the Gnawa Festival exemplifies how spiritual practices rooted in Afro-Maghrebi histories are reactivated and reworked within contemporary urban and cosmopolitan contexts, blurring the boundaries between ritual and spectacle, sacred and festive, memory and style.
Gnawa culture, therefore, functions as a critical vector of re-enchantment in the contemporary Maghreb. By mobilizing music, trance, and visual performativity, it reactivates invisible or erased histories, contests dominant social and aesthetic hierarchies, and provides young people with symbolic and embodied tools to navigate a complex, globalized cultural landscape. Despite its co-optation for state purposes and the persistence of colonial frameworks shaping its interpretation (Aidi 2023, 2025) – whether through ritual lila, festival celebrations, or urban reinterpretations – Gnawa culture remains a space where memory and creativity converge, generating alternative temporalities, cosmopolitan modes of expression, and forms of belonging that resonate well beyond Morocco itself (Kiwan 2014). Far from folklore, it constitutes a transnational and open archive that reclaims the Mediterranean’s multiplicity and the Maghreb’s plurality (Khatibi 2019).
3. Seeing Black Otherwise: Visual Arts and Afro-Maghrebi Imaginaries
Alongside musical and ritual practices, contemporary Moroccan visual and artistic interventions further enact processes of re-enchantment, rendering visible histories and presences long marginalized within dominant cultural narratives. In this sense, the work of Hassan Hajjaj offers a paradigmatic example of how Afro-Maghrebi cultural forms – and, more specifically, Gnawa aesthetics – are reinterpreted and reactivated within contemporary visual culture.
Born in Larache, Morocco, and raised in London, Hajjaj occupies a liminal position between North African and European contexts, navigating multiple cultural, social, and aesthetic geographies. His practice fuses elements of Moroccan visual culture – traditional garments, musical instruments, decorative motifs, and artisanal patterns – with global pop imagery, including brand logos, consumer objects, and references to African popular culture, particularly the dandy-inspired aesthetics of the Sapeurs. The resulting photographs are vibrant, highly stylized portraits that merge fashion, music, design, and performance, producing a hybrid aesthetic that is simultaneously local and cosmopolitan.
Hajjaj’s work, particularly in the series My Rockstars, foregrounds Black bodies as visible, empowered, and desirable, offering an alternative vision of Morocco and Africa that actively counters Western imaginaries of poverty and underdevelopment, as well as local social hierarchies that have historically marginalized Blackness. Circulating widely through social media, exhibitions, and popular culture, Hajjaj’s imagery has inspired new modes of expression among Moroccan and diasporic youth, frequently described as an “Afro-Gnawa” aesthetic, linking contemporary fashion and visual style to longer histories of Black presence and creativity in the Maghreb (Turchetti 2017).
While his practice powerfully reclaims visibility and cosmopolitan desire, it also circulates within commercial and fashion-oriented circuits, which can risk neutralizing its critical potential and fetishized Blackness. Yet, through visual excess, humor, and hybridity, Hajjaj reconnects audiences to historical, cosmopolitan, and affective dimensions of Blackness, transforming visual culture into a site of memory and imaginative possibility.
By contrast, M’Barek Bouhchichi engages the Black Mediterranean through critical excavation, archival research, and visual confrontation. Born in Akka, southern Morocco, and identifying as Black, Amazigh, and Moroccan, Bouhchichi divides his time between Marrakesh and Tiznit, where he teaches, organizes workshops, and develops his practice. A sustained dialogue with curator Omar Berrada (Berrada et al. 2016) enabled him to center a “Black Morocco” within his work and to articulate a visual language that resists reductive or aestheticized representations of Blackness.
In Les Mains Noires (2016), Bouhchichi conducted an intensive, field-based – almost ethnographic – investigation into the labor exploitation and social segregation of Black communities in Zagora, including cemeteries where Black individuals are buried separately from the “white” population. His work critically interrogates historical marginalization, transforming artistic practice into social inquiry and historical reckoning.
The Silent Mirror (2021) advances this exploration by presenting life-sized portraits that compel viewers to confront Blackness directly, making visible those typically silenced. Bouhchichi’s subjects assert their presence with quiet insistence, embodying a radical form of visual affirmation and collective agency and positioning Blackness as a force that “disrupts the dominant visual field” (Fleetwood 2011: 7). In Black Seeds (2025), he expands these concerns through sculptural and drawing-based works reflecting displacement, ancestral memory, and mobility across Afro-Maghrebi and trans-Saharan geographies. By mobilizing organic materials, fragmented forms, and references to ritual objects and vegetal “seeds,” the exhibition frames Blackness as a dispersed, living, and transformative force, linking historical movements to contemporary sub-Saharan migrations.
Central to Bouhchichi’s practice is its reflexive, mirror-like approach. His works act as visual thresholds, encouraging viewers to confront their own internalized prejudices, recognize processes of social erasure, and acknowledge the historical marginalization of Black Moroccans.
As the artist provocatively observes: «When I present my projects in Morocco, I often feel the echo projected by Moroccan audiences, immersing me in a frustrating duality. People tell me, ‘Oh, but this doesn’t exist,’ or ‘We are all Moroccan, there is no Black Moroccan.’ […] Yet Morocco is Black, and anyone striving to become White will never embody the Greek ideal of Whiteness. When you look at the data, they say that Morocco’s Black population is 10%. I like to be radical and invert that. I see everyone as Black» (in Alaoui Soulimani 2020).
He further emphasizes: «The issue that we encounter is that any Black found in Morocco is told to have come from Sub-Saharan Africa. And this is where they are wrong. I am from here. I am here» (Ibidem).
For Bouhchichi, Blackness is not an external or imported element; it is a constitutive part of Morocco’s history, culture, and identity. His work challenges the pervasive narrative that Black Moroccans are solely of Sub-Saharan origin, reaffirming their rooted, historical, and ongoing presence within the country. In this sense, Blackness functions as a central and integral aspect of Morocco, Maghreb and the Mediterranean rather than as a marginal or foreign presence, contesting social, cultural, and visual constructs that have historically sought to erase or render it invisible.
Hajjaj and Bouhchichi exemplify divergent strategies: Hajjaj mobilizes excess and pop aesthetics to reclaim Blackness as pleasure, visibility, desire and cosmopolitan “coolness”, circulating Afro-Maghrebi identities within global visual economies, though his commercial orientation can risk diluting critical potential; Bouhchichi works through restraint, confrontation, and archival inquiry, exposing structures of erasure and denial in Moroccan racial formations; his art demonstrates a more deliberate political and intellectual engagement.
Despite these differences, both enact forms of re-enchantment that resist nostalgia. Rather than returning to a mythical past, their work reactivates suppressed histories and spectral presences in the present, generating new imaginaries of belonging and possibility. Alongside Gnawa culture, they show how contemporary Moroccan culture functions as a living archive, actively reshaping the Black Mediterranean as a dynamic space where the Maghreb’s racial, cultural, and spiritual multiplicities are fully visible.
4. Conclusions
As this analysis has shown, the Mediterranean remains haunted by alternative temporalities, geographies, and imaginaries that resist erasure. Engaging with the concept of the Black Mediterranean from the Maghreb allows us to recover these spectral yet vivid dimensions. Through the lens of re-enchantment – understood not as a retreat into spirituality or nostalgia, but as a critical practice that exposes the illusions of modernity and reactivates displaced worlds – Afro-Maghrebi cultural practices emerge as powerful sites of intervention, challenging the epistemic divide between “Black Africa” and “White Africa” and questioning the Mediterranean as a rigid border. In doing so, they confront dominant racialized imaginaries of the Mediterranean as white, European, and culturally homogeneous, reclaiming it instead as a space of multiplicity, circulation, and unfinished histories.
Taken together, these practices suggest that the Black Mediterranean is not only a site of violence and exclusion but also a field of aesthetic and political possibility. By reactivating spectral presences and alternative geographies and temporalities, Afro-Maghrebi cultural forms open pathways toward new forms of being and belonging that resist both colonial frameworks and contemporary border regimes. In this sense, re-enchantment does not negate the realities of racialized suffering; rather, it offers a critical and imaginative response to them.
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Alessandra Turchetti is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Milan-Bicocca, where she is part of the PRIN project “Growing old, feeling like citizens? Lived citizenship experiences among Muslim young adults of North African origin in metropolitan and provincial Italy.” She also teaches Anthropology of Art at the Santa Giulia Academy of Fine Arts in Brescia. In 2023, she obtained a PhD in Cultural and Social Anthropology with a dissertation titled “Images and Imaginaries of Blackness: ‘Race’ in Morocco between Art, Politics, and Society.”