Ruling and Living in Occupied Tetouan
摘要
This chapter investigates the role of space in the making of colonial rule, colonial categories, boundaries, and hierarchies; and the ways in which the inhabitants of occupied Tetouan navigated them. It surveys the urban intervention carried out by the Forces of the Occupation of Tetouan, and the mechanisms set in place in order to racialise the inhabitants of the occupied city—both the lower-class Spaniards and the Moroccans. The chapter also explores the gendered spatial dynamics that went with the occupation, which masculinised the urban space and administration, at the same time as it established an unprecedented mixed gender sociability. In their attempt to establish clear boundaries between ‘the coloniser race’ and ‘the colonised race,’ the Spanish colonial authorities set to manage the ‘private’ space, which makes households and other spaces of intimacy complex sites of domination as well as contestation. The chapter underscores the porous—thus surmountable—quality of the boundaries in occupied Tetouan; that is, it posits that the boundaries established by the authorities—the ruling institutions, religious personnel, and family authority—were not all-powerful, and that those affected by them found ways to navigate them.