What does it mean to weave political time? Interview with Béatrice Hibou & Mohamed Tozy

In light of the recent publication of the English translation of their book, Weaving Political Time in Morocco. The Imaginary of the State in the Neoliberal Age by Hurst and Oxford University Press (originally published in French by Karthala), we talk to the two authors, Beatrice Hibou and Mohamed Tozy, about the central concept of this theoretically ambitious work: weaving political time. Béatrice Hibou and Mohamed Tozy answer our questions in this short interview. The interview conducted for the publication of the book in French is still available here.

What does it mean to weave political time?

This expression refers to the plurality of repertoires of representation, staging, action, rationality, and understanding that we reveal in the book through our close description of government practices and technologies of power, which play out over different temporalities and sometimes over the extremely long term.

This is the central demonstration of our book. Through the Moroccan case, we show that the state, its modes of government, its structures, its imaginary, can only be understood if we take into account this imbrication – this weaving, overlapping, interconnectedness – of different temporalities and durations. The register of empire is not a register of the past, it does not refer to the precolonial period, or to the Sharifian empire. It is still present today at the heart of the modern state, even though its coexistence with the nation-state register has given it new meanings. The COVID pandemic, for example, showed how right we were to emphasize the importance of certain subaltern figures, who are often looked down on as being from a by-gone era. The muqaddam (who are local auxiliaries of state authority at the neighborhood or douar level, and on the lowest rung of the local administration ladder), to which we dedicated a long section of the book, was at the center of the management of the COVID crisis. He was the one people turned to for authorizations to go out, whatever their social position. And he was responsible for identifying the hotspots of contagion and enforcing quarantine measures.

Paying close attention to the inter-weaving of temporalities is a direct result of our fieldwork and our attention to the diversity of references to time by the actors we observed, and with whom we developed our questionings. But it also enabled exchanges with colleagues. The work of Jean-François Bayart on Bergson, for example [in L’Énergie de l’État ] helped us to pursue our questions further, even though we expressed them in different terms. We prefer to use the expression “woven time” to echo the Arabic. Time is woven through genealogy, isnad (the chain of those who vouch for information linked to the Prophet), and by silsilat (the chain of transmission), which link both the Commander of the Faithful – but also the simple believer – to his ancestor the Prophet, thus erasing the idea of duration. The notion of “woven time” allows us to take a step back from the assumption of linearity that sees the nation-state as replacing the Sharifian empire, in a negation of this interweaving of different temporalities.

Exploring how different timescales overlap stems above all from our desire to move beyond commonplaces about the invasion of the past into the present, or even on the continual invention of tradition. Above all, it stems from our dissatisfaction with the unshakable duality in the presentation of the state’s relationship with both elites and ordinary citizens, and the behaviour and representations that result. This might be dualism between tradition and modernity; or in an approach referring to modes of production, feudal or composite. We were also dissatisfied with the inability of these theoretical characterizations to go beyond notions of contradiction, duplicity, or even paradox.

How have you taken into account the demands of actors who express the necessity – or the art – of organizing different temporalities? How is it possible to characterize attitudes, behavior, or actions that you see as being in tension, or even as contradictory?

From the very beginning, our intuition was that this was not a confusion of temporalities, nor a “shattering” of times between different instances or levels of heterochronous sociability, but rather that we needed to understand the distinction and simultaneity of these different times by the actors themselves. After all, they are the first to cultivate these differences and their co-existence. This is the case for example, for one senior public servant, a Franco-Moroccan graduate of Polytechnique. On the one hand, he is extremely proud and at ease with the sophisticated management reforms he implements in the public companies he manages (specifically the RAM airline). Yet at the same time, he finds it both normal and natural to also behave like a khadim (servant of the prince), even accompanying the prince for several months on his African tour, dedicating an airplane especially, and accepting the role of the caid rwa (the courtier traditionally responsible for the Sultan’s horses and stables). This is also the case for the co-existence of baisemain rituals (hand-kissing) and demands for citizenship – which seems incomprehensible for many outsiders. The general acceptance of baisemain in the name of tradition, is legitimated by the depth of the royal family history (and its descendance from the Prophet), by Moroccan culture marked by the worship of saints (which is a strong marker in the face of both Islamists and secularists), and by family ethos (respect for the father figure). This practice is a throwback to the past but it is also rooted in the present. Moreover, it peaceably connects with the idea of “deactivated citizenship”, which is a citizenship that is expressed indirectly but which is nevertheless the expression of political issues. The cohabitation of these two registers, these two temporalities, reveals a new meaning behind the baisemain ritual where politics has not been evacuated. An ethnography of the moment allows us to see this gesture – kissing the King’s hand – from the perspective of different statuses. Whether the kiss is merely brushed or leaves the hand wet, whether the hand is kissed on both sides or the King’s shoulder is merely touched, whether the King withdraws his hand or leaves it – all of these things are part of a subtle grammar that reveals not only degrees of proximity but also different points of view on the chosen temporal register. This is by no means submission or unconditional renunciation of citizenship.

The idea of woven time emerged both from actors themselves, and from their understanding of their actions, as well as from our ethnographic observations of situations that might appear contradictory, but in which actors appear natural and comfortable. The imaginary is central to making the concept of weaving meaningful. It allows us to understand the cognitive complicity between actors and provides the possibility of accounting for the complexity of situations of co-construction of meaning, without being obliged to resort to concepts of contradiction, duality, or paradox.

Interview conducted by Miriam Périer, CERI.

Find all our resources related to the initial publication of the book in French, here.