alexi tcheuyap

8/12/2019 Alexi Tcheuyap

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Postnationalist African CinemaAlexie Tcheuyap

I. Introduction:

A. The study is undertaken with the following tenants:

1. African cinema has never been as homogeneous as scholarshave tended us believe;2. in a new context of transnational circulation, nation building hasbecome a less prominent, if not absent, motivation in filmmaking;3. cultural nationalism has thus far failed to give voice to laughter,

joy, sexuality and formal experimentation presently beingexpounded in postcolonial narratives;

4. new analytical categories are needed to theorize a changingcorpus that is no longer limited to social contestation, binary

oppositions and essentialist cultural considerations.

B. Although the genre of committed filmmaking is close to exhausting itself,this has not always been the case because social contestation was almost asacred norm. As a result, alternative and emerging film praxis was eitherignored or dismissed because of the nationalist which equally dominatedcultural criticism.

C. Films were largely concerned with providing a context (i.e. what isshown), and far less with questions of form (i.e. how it is shown); as such, itis possible to see in what way a diverse corpus generated an impression of

uniformity;

D. ...the African reappropriation of the camera necessarily involved a radicalreconsideration of the aesthetic as the ideological functions of the imagebeing depicted. Cinema was not meant for pleasure, but for (political)instruction. In keeping with these propositions, African cinema, like Africanliterature, could only be a cinema of contestation.

E. Nationalism thus becomes elitist in spite of its claims to representsubaltern classes;

F. The works of these filmmakers are predicated on an understandabledesire to define Africa against a unified 'West', a search for anontological 'African self ', a genuine anxiety over a lost history and athreatened identity. A paradoxical as it may be, from its pioneering phaseand for decades thereafter, in a continent desperate for literation anddemocracy, African filmmaking and scholarship were reduced to amonolithic trilogy. This trilogy, demonstrated clearly in the above- citedcase of Algeria, is comprised of the following tenets: one 'African


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cinema', on e film association (FEPAC I) and one dominant (political)discourse.

G. ...the 'Africa' being does not correspond to a shared view. Byincorporating new visions, genres, representations and aesthetic

expressions, today's filmmakers are not only interrogating sub-SaharanAfrican identities, but are furthermore staking out a place for African cultur esin global flows where identity oscillates between 'global and local , nati on andnon nation' Pett , 2008, 1 . In a context o transnational , hybrid , shiftingand multiple identities . it is difficult to imagin e that African produ ctionshave remain ed immune to Outside influence . ;

H. The current status of African film production , with its multipli ciofissues , discourses and languages, strongly suggests that it is necess'.!!"y to de8igna more innovab e and mclus1ve theoretical framework_. to accommodate a ra idl rmu tatin cor us whose analytical paradigms stretch beyon social chalJ en es,dualiti es and cultur al essen tia i s s

I. As Neil Lazaru s ( 1999, 78) asserts, national liberation movementswere not what they were expected or claimed to be, namely organizationsthat aimed atempowering, safeguarding and helping the powerless. Instead ,in the words of Franz Farron ( 1968, 152), the main project of the localbourgeoi s nationali sts was 'quite simply .. . [toJ transfer into native handsthose unfairadvan tages which are the l egacy of the colonial period' .

J. The decadence of the cinema of endless contestation...

K. uch stands by Ouedraogo, Maldoror, Bekolo and Ram aka clearly indicatethe extent to which Sembene Ousmane's concepbon of cmein::r=as 'eventng school 'for consciousness-raising an d social transf ormation has become, in a way, somehow outdated for several directors. This book aims to re conceptualizecontemporary sub- Saharan African cinema by foregroundin g the narrative andaesthetic structur es of recent films. The failure of liberationist discour ses tosecure perman ent gains has r esulted in fifmmak er s selecti n g n ew a esthetic a pproa ch es th a t m pye b eyond anti - imperialist, historical contestationsand cultural claim s; accord ing to chille Mbembe (2002a , 272), 'the very project of an esse r:-er ic1a recovery o e [A ri canJ self is . . . oom ed' .Thu s, the movementaway from liberationist aesthetics may have less to do withthe Westernization of sub -Saharan Afr ican cinema or a facile 'fashion ct e emer en ce of a h brid cin em ati c st le intend ed to interrogate constructs n owbecoming unsettled in the context.of gk;balization.Ihe third and perhapsm ost decisive factor in und erstandingcontem orar African films is the near dissolution of the African nation-tate and theresultant need to rethink nationalism.

L. ...contemporary productions have significantly modified their formal anddiscursive architecture for a public which only wants to see good films, be they'African' or not.


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M. What is indisputable, though, is that liberationist aesthetics and paradigmsseem to have played themselves out. N. }frican identity politics are

concerned .with re udiatin Western imposition , developing instead a languageinfused with African 'auth enti city ' (244). The result of sue attltu e is e mvention of

anarrativ e of li berab.on bUilt ar und a dual temporality: on the one hand, the i;tfucaI,glorious , vanished past tradition or history, and on the othere hope of abetter funire fa be secnred tEliGHgf:! eemmit:ment to tionalist ideaE.....G--49-250).Typical of this tendency is Manthia Diawara's return to the source' films which he usesin his typology ( 1992, 159-164). The second thrust, which Mbembe refers to as'nativism,' foregrounds 'the i dea of a 1micp 1e African identity founded on1+1e1+1b@rship ef the black re' (2002a, 240 241) . In this view transnationalsolidarity is buil t on a collective narrative that emph asizes a past gf dauer)'icglgnizsatiem and apartheid .

N. One of the main arguments of this book is precisely that fixed identities andsocial realism are no more a fatality, the must feature of african film

O. ...it is obvious that the nation becomes less important, in not only absent,signifier. Although it has not been entirely abandoned, the idea of nation building hasbeen somewhat overshadowed by a shift in focus to more quotidian priorities.

P. Because 'the natur e of African cinema has too often been traped

'rithin reductive opposition between Western and African cultur e'

Mur hy, O , 241 ), in e context o g o a iza

Postnationali sttifr;can Cwmasstigates how the emergen ce of new genres, discourses ard re resentations, some of which are

totally unr elated to the nationalist dictates ou ence th e formJ]

elisiees FRaEle 1-i, tire I1ew directors . It ex lores sub -Saharan

cinema in terms of 'the emer ence ofnew thou ht forms' Me er 1

999, 108), orm s t at ave itt e, if an thing, LO do with moribund

fifty-year-old imperatives. e o j ectives of this book are as

follows:{I)describe the limits of current taxonomi es and

critical:mestigations in light of new produ ctions; etermin e e new

enres i:ti!Pe movies, epics, comedies) that have arisen; @.explore

how n nnovations issu es and concerns are addressed in these genres

and et apart from the foundational oeuvres; xamine how filmsro oseew mod es of representation , sexuality, end er and/ or African

identiti es; vestigate w at role is played by global cultur al forces and

forms.

Q. Shelbi e instead inscribes Black cultur al forces in transnationa l

formations that cannot be limited to an 'ethnic' milieu .The shaping of new,

hybri d cultur es d oes not in any way suggest that Bla cks cannot


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build communit y spirit, or that brut e racial discrimination no longer

exists.

L. In thi s book, I show that the fra mentation of experience and the

appearance of tran snation al associations have brought a out nationac_;isis; the reprodu cti on of alternative cultur al forms has become

accelerated and accentuated in places where n ation building and social

outcry are no lon ger.priorities . [ call narratives created in this context po

stnationali st becau se tpey are th ematically beyond the mode of resistan

ce. Far from advocating a strict social d eterminism , my argument here

is that new contes havegenerated new forms and representati ons.

M. Althou h we all know that Western scholarship was born within a

specific hi storical and discu sive setting that conso i ate its e emon theencounter with the African 'other' as een, or better or wors e, mutuall y

(gan s)format1ve ID that director s, writers md artjsts now ex per i

ence h brid identities. African filmmaker s have borrowed and

substantiallys bverte categories or codes indebted to foreign spaces and

cultur es.

N. ...theories of national cinema ought to interrogate the conceptual limits

of nation, positioning it within transnational and international settings.

alexi tcheuyap

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