Enmeshed: The Colonial and Post-Colonial Anthropology of Moroccan Textiles and Dress

This chapter traces the intellectual trajectory of the anthropology of Moroccan textiles and dress, focusing on the period from the early twentieth century to present day. The discussion focuses on the analytic and thematic circularity of tropes that characterize scholarly and quasi-scholarly treatments of the topic, as well as offering suggestions for ways to exit the loop. From the beginning, studies of Moroccan dress and textiles by anthropologists and scholars from related disciplines have been entangled in various ways with colonial projects and conceptual frameworks. Scholarship published in outlets such as Hesperis-Tamuda (as well as its predecessor journals) has contributed substantially to discourse on "traditional" Moroccan textiles and dress, especially during the colonial period. Post-independence anthropologists (and disciplinary neighbors such as art historians and museum practitioners) continue to grapple with the import of this work, which, despite its colonial origins, has more or less established the terms of the intellectual conversation around these topics. This chapter sketches the main tropes and orientations of colonial scholarship (mostly produced by Europeans), how the field and its debates developed in the post-colonial context, and proposes some directions for a post-post-colonial research program on Moroccan dress and textiles.