Professor Aomar Boum talks about his latest book, The Last Rekkas, which offers an indigenous, counter-visual approach to the work of colonial artist-ethnographers. A collaboration with his daughter, Majdouline Boum Mendoza, that combines her visual work with the life stories of his father Faraji that's thought to be Morocco’s last known rekkas, a mail courier who walked thousands of miles delivering letters under colonial rule. The Last Rekkas is a decolonial project, which began with ethnographic studies in the 1990s in a village in Southern Morocco that uses art and text to center the stories of marginalized "ordinary people". A sociocultural anthropologist who holds the Maurice Amado Endowed Chair in Sephardic Studies at the University of California, professor Boum discusses his work on religious and ethnic minorities in the Middle East and North Africa. The conversation explores the book’s multimodal approach, contrasting it with Boum’s previous work "Undesirables" and reflecting on the tradition of Moroccan historian Mokhtar Soussi. We also delve into the necessity of engaging with colonial ethnography to create alternative narratives, using figures like Jean Besancenot to frame the story of his father, a mail carrier (rekkas) whose history was centralized but his voice erased. The episode concludes with a discussion of the book's audience—the coming generations of Moroccans—and how materiality and space, like cemeteries and everyday objects, can serve as archives to uncover untold histories in North Africa.
Professor Aomar Boum talks about his latest book, The Last Rekkas, which offers an indigenous, counter-visual approach to the work of colonial artist-ethnographers. A collaboration with his daughter, Majdouline Boum Mendoza, that combines her visual work with the life stories of his father Faraji that's thought to be Morocco’s last known rekkas, a mail courier who walked thousands of miles delivering letters under colonial rule. The Last Rekkas is a decolonial project, which began with ethnographic studies in the 1990s in a village in Southern Morocco that uses art and text to center the stories of marginalized "ordinary people". A sociocultural anthropologist who holds the Maurice Amado Endowed Chair in Sephardic Studies at the University of California, professor Boum discusses his work on religious and ethnic minorities in the Middle East and North Africa. The conversation explores the book’s multimodal approach, contrasting it with Boum’s previous work "Undesirables" and reflecting on the tradition of Moroccan historian Mokhtar Soussi. We also delve into the necessity of engaging with colonial ethnography to create alternative narratives, using figures like Jean Besancenot to frame the story of his father, a mail carrier (rekkas) whose history was centralized but his voice erased. The episode concludes with a discussion of the book's audience—the coming generations of Moroccans—and how materiality and space, like cemeteries and everyday objects, can serve as archives to uncover untold histories in North Africa.
00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:59 Centering Marginalized Histories Through Visuality
00:01:58 The Impetus Behind "The Last Rekkas"
00:03:30 Conversations with Faraji, the Author's Father
00:06:57 Majdouline Boum Mendoza's Archival Art Centered Around Her Grandfather
00:11:19 Multimodal Dimensions of Ethnography: From Undesirables to The Last Rekkas
00:16:38 The Book's Genre: An Illustrated Story
00:18:57 A Dialogue with Colonial Ethnography and Mokhtar Soussi
00:23:36 Engaging with the Colonial Archive to Create Counter-Visuality
00:34:15 Faraji, The Rekkas, and The Work of Jean Besancenot
00:40:29 A Foundationally Decolonial Project
00:44:14 The Audience: The Coming Generations of Moroccans
00:48:50 Space and Materiality as Archives
00:57:59 Current and Future Projects: Inside the Margins
Aomar Boum is a Moroccan-born cultural anthropologist and historian at UCLA, holding the Maurice Amado Chair in Sephardic Studies, known for his research on religious and ethnic minorities (Jews, Baha'is, Shia, Christians) in North Africa and the Middle East, Jewish-Muslim relations, and Holocaust history, authoring books like Memories of Absence and The Holocaust and North Africa, and co-founding initiatives like the Moroccan Jewish Studies Initiative. A sociocultural anthropologist who holds the Maurice Amado Endowed Chair in Sephardic Studies at the University of California, Boum has written many books including "Memories of Absence: How Muslims Remember Jews in Morocco" (2013); "Historical Dictionary of the Arab Uprisings" (2020); "Undesirables: A Holocaust Journey to North Africa" (2023); and "The Last Rekkas: Chronicles of a Pedestrian Messenger in Southern Morocco" (2024).
Connect with Aomar Boum 👉 https://www.linkedin.com/in/aomar-boum-916b74a
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Amine Bit is a Columbia University graduate of Comparative Literature and Society, who served as the Events Editor of The Columbia Review and currently works with Souffles Monde.