Mobility and the Representation of African Dystopian Spaces in Film and Literature A dissertation presented to the faculty of the College of Fine Arts of Ohio University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy Abobo Kumbalonah August 2015 © 2015 Abobo Kumbalonah. All Rights Reserved. 2 This dissertation titled Mobility and the Representation of African Dystopian Spaces in Film and Literature by ABOBO KUMBALONAH has been approved for Interdisciplinary Arts and the College of Fine Arts by Charles Buchanan Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts Margaret Kennedy-Dygas Dean, College of Fine Arts 3 ABSTRACT KUMBALONAH, ABOBO, Ph.D., August 2015, Interdisciplinary Arts Mobility and the Representation of African Dystopian Spaces in Film and Literature Director of Dissertation: Charles Buchanan This study investigates the use of mobility as a creative style used by writers and filmmakers to represent the deterioration in the socio-economic and political circumstances of post-independence Africa. It makes a scholarly contribution to the field of postcolonial studies by introducing mobility as a new method for understanding film and literature. Increasingly, scholars in the social sciences are finding it important to examine mobility and its relationship with power and powerlessness among groups of people. This dissertation expands on the current study by applying it to the arts. It demonstrates how filmmakers and writers use mobility as a creative style to address issues such as economic globalization, international migration, and underdevelopment. Another significant contribution of this dissertation is that it introduces a new perspective to the debate on African migration. The current trend is for migrants to be seen in the light of vulnerability and powerlessness. This project presents the position that migration is also empowering in the sense that people sometimes can revolt against an unfavorable situation by leaving. Theoretically, this study relies to a large extent on Cresswell’s (2006) argument that motion can be regarded as mobility, if it occurs physically and has a meaning to it. Thus, the dissertation seeks to find answers to two principal questions. First, how does mobility fit in with the creative styles commonly used by postcolonial artists? Since 4 mobility ensures fluidity in bodily displacement, its use in the creative arts offers a sense of narrative omnipresence through which postcolonial artists can present their audiences with an intimate knowledge of the socio-economic and political realities of a place (Africa). Secondly, this study examines what the selected filmmakers and writers consider as the challenges to African development. In addition, this project assesses how these artists differ in their use of mobility to represent the challenge to African development. The research is divided into four main chapters. The first discusses Knudsen’s Heart of Gold (2006) in the context of globalization. It examines how the act of walking can expose the vulnerability of African economies with respect to their relationship with multinational mining companies. The second chapter examines how Abani’s Song for Night (2007) allegorizes walking to highlight the role of African peoples to the underdevelopment of the continent. The third chapter examines forced migration as a nonverbal expression of a state of ineffective leadership. It is based on the study of Somali migration to Yemen as visualized in Grandclement’s film Journey Through Hell (2011). The final chapter looks at VanOrden’s literary memoir, Africa: Stranger than Fiction (2008), to understand the underlining power relationship between Africa and the Western world as it relates to transnational mobility and the reinforcement of the geographies of stereotypes. 5 DEDICATION I dedicate this dissertation to my wife, Lolita Kumbalonah, our son, Antiere Kumbalonah, my parents, Kingsley Kumbalonah and Bibiana Bakara, and my siblings, Godfred Williams-Nanyaa, Jonathan Kunwanie Williams, Cecilia Sunachebe Williams, and Vida Tang. 6 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS In the process of writing this dissertation, I received enormous support and encouragement from several individuals. I could not have completed this study without my dissertation advisor and director of the School of Interdisciplinary Arts, Dr. Charles Buchanan. I would also want to express my gratitude to the members of my dissertation committee: Dr. Arthur Hughes, Dr. Ghirmai Negash, and Dr. Michael Gillespie. Next, I would like to acknowledge the support of my dissertation writing group members— Nathaniel Wallace, Gordon Briggs, Yining Liu, and Hsin-ning Chang. Furthermore, I would like to thank my wife, Lolita Kumbalonah, for making her formatting skills available to me and also encouraging me to write even when I felt like I was at the limits of my endurance. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to the following individuals for their support: Dr. Antonio Olliz-Boyd, Dr. Steve Howard and Dr. Abdullah Mohammed. 7 CONTENTS Abstract ............................................................................................................................... 3 Dedication ........................................................................................................................... 5 Acknowledgments............................................................................................................... 6 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 9 Methodology ................................................................................................................. 12 Mobility Theory ........................................................................................................ 12 Postcolonial Theory .................................................................................................. 18 Relationship between Film and Literature in the African Context ........................... 22 Why Postcolonial Theory and Mobility? .................................................................. 23 Literature Review ......................................................................................................... 24 Mobility as a Narrative Method ................................................................................ 24 Utopia, Dystopia, and Postcolonialism in Africa ...................................................... 29 Film: National Cinema, African Cinema .................................................................. 33 Chapter Outline ............................................................................................................. 37 Introduction ............................................................................................................... 37 Chapter One .............................................................................................................. 37 Chapter Two .............................................................................................................. 38 Chapter Three ............................................................................................................ 39 Chapter Four ............................................................................................................. 39 Chapter 1: Heart of Gold: Mobility and Globalization ..................................................... 41 Political Detouring ........................................................................................................ 41 The Aesthetics of Political Detouring ........................................................................... 45 Environmental Degradation .......................................................................................... 48 Cultural Detouring ........................................................................................................ 57 Economic Detour: Globalization and Postcolonial Governmentality ........................... 59 Mobility of the Child: Silence, Invisibility, and Innocence .......................................... 64 Staging Political Detour in the Documentary Genre .................................................... 68 Chapter 2: Song for Night: Touring the Warscape............................................................ 81 Mobility, Detour and the Allegory of Post-Independence African Economic Underdevelopment ........................................................................................................ 83 8 Time, Mobility, Detour and African Development ...................................................... 91 Detour and the Highlight of Economic Underdevelopment ......................................... 94 Ethnic and Religious Intolerance ................................................................................ 103 The Religious Factor ................................................................................................... 105 Corrupted Citizens ...................................................................................................... 112 Mobility, Exploitation and the Allegory of the “Big Man” ........................................ 114 Hope for the Future ..................................................................................................... 119 Chapter 3: Journey Through Hell: Migration and Protest ............................................. 122 Visualizing Protest Migration in Journey Through Hell ...........................................