SEMBENE IN SENEGAL Radical Art in Neo-colonial Society by Fírinne Ní Chréacháin A thesis submitted to the Centre of West African Studies of the University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY December 1997 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. AUTHOR’SSTATEMENTCONCERNINGELECTRONICVERSION Theoriginalofthisthesiswasproducedin1997onaveryoldAmstradwordͲprocessor whichwouldhaveproducedaverypoorͲqualityscannedversion. InsubmittingthiselectronicversionforinclusionintheUBIRArepositoryin2019,I,the author,havemadethefollowingchanges: FRONTPAGES:Ichangedtheorderofthepages,puttingthepersonalpages(dedicationand acknowledgements)first. TABLEOFCONTENTS:Iremovedtheclumsylookingsubsubtitlestoproduceacleanerlook. BODYOFTEXT:Nochangesapartfrominsertionofsomeextrasubtitlesandsubsubtitlesto enhanceaccessibility. BIBLIOGRAPHY:Iaddedthreeentries,ADOTEVI,ENAGNONandKANE,inadvertentlyomitted inoriginal. Signed DrFírinneNíChréacháin 7May2019 FOR YETUNDE AND ALL GOD’S BITS OF WOOD BANTY MAM YALL WHO CONTINUE THE STRUGGLE FOR A BRIGHTER AFRICAN FUTURE AND A FAIRER WORLD ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It has been a long haul, and I would not have made it without the inspiration, support and love of a number of people. First, I want to thank Nigeria, the giant of Africa, for being its inimitable self: a great bubbling nation (yes, nation), bursting with energy, independence and endless contradictions, and with such a capacity to integrate the stranger that I felt more at home in my twenty odd years there than I have in any corner of the globe. More especially, I want to thank my large number of friends, and hopefully lesser numbers of enemies, at Ahmadu Bello University, for the most stimulating and challenging years of my life to date, and for allowing me to feel as never before that I could be myself and be accepted. Secondly, I want to thank the countless people in Senegal - writers, politicians, journalists, filmmakers, actors, teachers, students, technicians, labourers, housewives - who gave so generously of their time and intellectual energy as I interrogated them mercilessly about Sembene between 1989 and 1992. My special thanks go to the community of the École Normale Supérieure, Dakar, and especially to the triumvirate of technicians, Badara, Cheikh and Ndongo, who embraced me as their own. Thirdly, I am grateful to CWAS: to Karin Barber and Peg Peel for their initial welcome, and to Karin again for her characteristically meticulous reading of the thesis as internal examiner, and her valuable suggestions and encouragement for the future. Above all, I am thankful to Stewart Brown, my supervisor, who was the perfect person for a very difficult task. I have been an impossible student, but Stewart has an instinctive grasp of who he is dealing with, together with a unique ability to demystify the intellectual process, and he somehow found the right words, gestures, coffee brand, to coax the finished product from me just within the deadline. Finally, I owe an immeasurable debt of gratitude, as they say when they run out of other synonyms, to friends and family who have made these ten years of exile from Nigeria bearable, and who have put up with my horrible behaviour as I tried to make sense of the sprawling mass iii of Sembene material, of which the merest fraction appears in the pages which follow: James Leahy, who has done so much to promote African film in England, Odia Ofeimun who constantly over-estimates me, Gloria Emeagwali who, in her many flying visits revived my flagging spirits with memories of the dancing Zaria days, Nicole Medjigbodo who, in her own flying visits from France, brought stimulation, insights into French Communism, and books, Eki Gbinigie, who brought the Nigerian political world of the 1990s alive for me, Pascal Stanley whose cheerful optimism was an example, and who patiently hooked together the hundreds of little Amstrad files, Marisa Dieneman, much loved friend of almost forty years, who is more excited by my 'achievement' than I am myself, and who swears my mother would have been proud of me, Kayode Soyinka who prayed for me and Susan Soyinka who kept saying it was like labour, one more push would do it, and last but the opposite of least, Linda Ludwin, who picked me up from Heathrow when they deported me, and who, through the deepest troughs of the exile years, stubbornly went on picking me up and believing in me when I had long ceased to believe in myself. The contribution of my beloved daughter Yetunde to this thesis is in a category of its own. She knows everything she has done to make it happen, from arguing with great subtlety in defence of Sembene when I was in danger of doing him the slightest injustice, to stencilling numbers on endless pages when neither of us could get the Amstrad to deliver. But as the Yoruba say, we do not thank our own: A kìí dúpẹ́ ara ẹni. iv ABSTRACT This study asks whether it is possible to produce revolutionary art – in this instance cinema - in the neo-colonial context. It defines revolutionary art in terms of its ability to expose the exploitative structures of neo-colonialism in a language accessible to the masses, and to inspire the exploited to fight back. It takes as a case study the films of Ousmane Sembene produced during the first two decades of neo-colonialism in Senegal. The study first examines Senegal and Sembene prior to 1960, confirming that France's continuing grip on Senegal is the result of a high level of hegemonic control. Sembene emerges as a complex product of the contradictions of French colonialism in its specific Senegalese form. The production of the films is looked at as concretely as possible, taking into account the ideological conditioning of Sembene himself, the contradictions of the medium and mode of production, the direct and indirect interventions of the state, and the ideological and cultural obstacles to communication between the artist and the masses. The study concludes that it is possible to see Sembene's work as stretching to the maximum the margin of manoeuvre provided by the contradictions of neo- colonialism in Senegal, or as an example of the power of hegemonic forces to incorporate even the most radical artist such a society can produce. v TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………1 CHAPTER ONE - ART AND IDEOLOGY: CRITICAL MODELS AND METHODS…………………………. 22 Demystification and inspiration: various Realisms……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………24 The power of the adversary: reification, hegemony and other obstacles……………………………………………………………………………………………..30 Refining the model……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..34 CHAPTER TWO - SENEGAL 1600-1960: FROM THE JOLOFF EMPIRE TO THE NEO-COLONIAL STATE…………………………………………………………………………………………………….46 The mercantilist stage……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...46 Colonial Senegal…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………..50 The anti-imperialist struggle………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….62 CHAPTER THREE – SEMBENE 1923 – 1963………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..71 The revolutionary artist: Sembene’s early novels………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….………….71 The Sembene legend Part 1: Senegal 1923-48………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...75 The Sembene legend Part 2: France 1948-63……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………84 CHAPTER FOUR – GETTING STARTED: SEMBENE AND SENEGAL IN THE 1960S………100 Radical art under neo-colonialism: an anti-climax?........................................................................................................................................................................................100 France and Senegal in the 1960s: new strategic interests……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….103 The birth of the neo-colonial state 1963-68……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….105 Radical artist v. neo-colonial state: clash or compromise?...................................................................................................................................................................113 Testing the water: Sembene’s early films…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..119 CHAPTER FIVE – MANDABI: HAS THE ELEPHANT GIVEN BIRTH TO A MOUSE?..................126 From cigarette buts to Cinéma Liberté: making Mandabi………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….128 Ceeb u jen hits the commercial screens: audience reaction……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………134 vi CHAPTER SIX – THE 1970S: THE STATE TURNED ENTREPRENEUR, ‘DEMOCRACY’ AND A CULTURAL REVOLUTION?.....................147 Managing the hegemonic crisis……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….148 The revolutionary struggle shifts: culture as politics……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..155