"Ethical and aesthetic values in literature and the arts" is the theme of an international symposium that opens this morning in Rabat.

Organized by the French Language and Literature Department of the Ecole Normale Supérieure – Rabat, with the support of the Council of the Moroccan Community Abroad (CCME), this meeting brings together a galaxy of researchers in art, literature, and didactics of different nationalities.

For two days, the participants in this symposium will debate "the values conveyed by certain cultural products as well as the intrinsic value of these products," emphasize the organizers. During these two days, "the speakers will address aspects ranging from literary works perceived as problematic from the point of view of the moral values they convey to artistic productions that challenge aesthetic or ethical norms," it is specified.

The participants will thus have to debate a question that is both thorny and of great importance, especially since values, despite all attempts to delimit their meaning, remain a fluctuating, unstable concept and are subject to "the vagaries of politics, social, religious, and even the influences of fashion," observe the organizers who insist on the interest of focusing on these questions. Because, it is recalled on the side of the ENS, cultural fields, such as art and literature, are doubly sensitive to these variations. "They are subject to evaluation by the criterion of values as objects that can have an ethical and/or aesthetic value in themselves, but also as vectors of a given type of values."

Let us remember that some works have been contested, denounced, condemned, rejected, or censored in Morocco because of "unacceptable values" they would convey. And examples, we do not lack. "The autobiography 'The Naked Bread' by Mohamed Choukri was long banned; the programming of Zefzaf's novel 'Attempt at Life' sparked a lively controversy because of its content deemed 'licentious'; the latest novel by Mohamed Leftah 'The Last Fight of Captain Ni'mat' is nowhere to be found in bookstores without being explicitly censored! Is it because of the protagonist's homosexuality? What becomes of the aesthetic value of the book?", it is recalled.

But literature is not the only field where this kind of problem arises. Cinema and painting are also concerned. Moreover, everyone still remembers the famous notion of "clean art", which has circulated in recent years in a field where art, religion, and politics also question the value of art.

After the welcome speeches by the director of the ENS, Hassan Jaziri, the CCME, and the word from the organizing committee, the participants will get to the heart of the matter. With on the programme for the first session, subjects focusing on "The moral content of (allegedly) immoral works", "The tragic and values in Yasmina Khadra's trilogy", "The foreigner, body and places of writing: the case of Rachid O and Abdellah Taïa", and "Values put to the test in Leftah's 'The Last Fight of Captain Ni'mat'", among others.

It should be noted that this symposium includes six axes of reflection, three of which will be the subject of debate on this first day.