Anjali Prabhu  (Wellesley College)
'Francophone' Cinema: Redefining Postcolonialism?

This paper addresses one prominent feature of postcolonial criticism, which is the notion of "resistance" through an examination of contemporary Francophone cinema. The term Francophone, itself having undergone scrutiny like many other categorizations within postcolonial studies (including this latter term), is necessarily in quotation marks with reference to the genre of cinema. What is considered Francophone cinema for the purposes of publication, anthologies, as well as teaching in the U.S. academy often contains only traces of "French" language. In this paper I will ask in what ways the cinema produced in and on African Francophone contexts re-aligns more closely with an African rather than a Francophone context, and whether such a distinction can be fruitful. As well, how does this relatively new genre question some of the methodologies that have been useful in the analyses of postcolonial cultures, particularly as it has been studied through literary texts.

"Resistance" in this paper is studied through the images of African women defying stereotypes of all kinds and maneuvering spaces that are distinctly African. The films to be considered for this purpose are Sembene Ousmane's Faat Kine and Joseph Gaï's Karmen Geï. In each of these films the protagonist employs a particular form of resistance that engages realities within the postcolonial context in question. While the question of "difference within" has been raised by many postcolonial critics such as Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Spivak, or more recently Martina Michel and Deepika Bahri, it is less evident in what ways a study of this internal difference marks or even alters the field of postcolonial studies itself. My presentation will tackle this central question.