Lifongo Vetinde and Amadou T. Fofana - Ousmane Sembène and the Politics of Culture

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham Boulder New York London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ousmane Sembene and the politics of culture / edited by Lifongo J. Vetinde and Amadou T. Fofana.

pages cm. -- (After the empire: the francophone world and postcolonial France)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-7391-9254-2 (cloth : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-0-7391-9255-9 (electronic)

1. Sembene, Ousmane, 1923-2007--Criticism and interpretation. 2. Senegalese literature (French)--History and criticism. 3. Motion pictures--Senegal--History. 4. Culture in literature. 5. Culture in motion pictures. I. Vetinde, Lifongo J. II. Fofana, Amadou Tidiane, 1965- editor of compilation. III. Series: After the empire.

PQ3989.S46Z78 2014

843.914--dc23

2014036921

TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

The idea of this book goes back to the thirty-second annual meeting of the African Literature Association that was held in Accra, Ghana in 2006. During that meeting, a group of scholars, including the editors of this volume, formed the Society for the Study of Sembne (SSS) whose principal objective is to contribute in the dissemination of critical studies on Sembnes oeuvre. We are thankful to many friends and colleagues for their support in producing this anthology. We would like to particularly thank Jude Akudinobi at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Kenneth Nolly at Willamette University, and Ayo Coly at Dartmouth College for their input in the initial phase of the project. We also thank colleagues at Lawrence University for their help: Judith Holland Sarnecki for proofreading some of the chapters and Lori Rose for her work on formatting the text. Special thanks are due to Daour Wade at the African Consultants International (ACI) (also known as Centre Baobab), Dakar, Senegal, for kindly introducing us to Ousmane Sembnes close collaborators who were interviewed for this book. Thanks to Seydou Nourou Ndiaye, the manager of Editions Papyrus Afrique, in Dakar, and the Office of the Provost and Dean of the Faculty, Lawrence University, for their support. Finally, we would also like to thank our very dynamic editors at Lexington Books for their assistance in preparing the manuscript for publication.

Lifongo Vetinde

Cultural Politics in Senegal: A Quest for Relevance

Culture in all its aspects is political. Ousmane Sembne

According to Nobert Elias, the German sociologist, the concept of Kultur mirrors the self-consciousness of a nation which had constantly to seek out and constitute its boundaries anew, in a political as well as spiritual sense, and again, had to ask itself: What is really our identity? (1978: 56). I concur, for culture is the measure of what constitutes a peoples specificity: their customs, traditional values, art, cuisine, forms of communication, and elements of social contract. It is indeed the window through which we can understand the way a society perceives itself in relation to others. The role of politics in shaping cultural practice has been the subject of discussion by social critics such as Antonio Gramsci who, in his discussion of the affinity between culture and hegemony, posits that the cultural values that are upheld in society are, for the most part, transmitted by the ruling class.

The nexus between culture and power is particularly evident in the colonial context where the devaluation and stigmatization of indigenous cultures constitute an important element in the apparatus of domination. Indeed, the repression of the subalterns culture is an efficient method of domination. As Amilcar Cabral put it in his lecture, National Liberation and Culture, delivered at Syracuse University, New York, in 1970:

History teaches us that, in certain circumstances, it is very easy for the foreigner to impose his domination on a people. But it also teaches us that, whatever may be the material aspects of this domination, it can be maintained only by the permanent, organized repression of the cultural life of the people concerned. Implantation of foreign domination can be assured definitively only by physical liquidation of a significant part of the dominated population.... In fact, to take up arms to dominate a people is, above all, to take up arms to destroy, or at least to neutralize, to paralyze, its cultural life. (