Moroccan Trance

Abstract This chapter focuses on trance, in which movement, sound, and sensory experience enlist and amplify the healing power of religious faith, while also challenging the racial schemes and rationality of European and Western knowledge. Trance is a pillar of religion and traditional medicine in Morocco and the Maghreb. Despite enjoying wide popularity, trance has often been the object of fear, misunderstanding, dismissal, or even scorn. Trance in Morocco was the target of particularly intense hostility during the colonial period, in which this practice was ingrained in the construction of conflicting forms of power and authority, and took centre stage in debates about Morocco’s modernity. The Moroccan Sultan, and the French and Spanish authorities that ruled over him persecuted trance because it reinforced the symbolic power and political authority of the rebel ‘tribes’ and groups that were opposed to the colonial regime and the government. European scholars dismissed trance as a superstition, never considering it a legitimate form of healing. Meanwhile, the fluidity of meaning of the moving body enabled trance to shake up some of the foundations supporting European knowledge about Morocco.