Xala an African Story (original) (raw)
Related papers
Cultural and Political Alienations in Sembene Ousmane’s Xala
2013
Linguistic alienation is a wall, which separates the African elite away from their fellow African brothers and sisters. This gap is what we intend to break because it is a kind of cultural alienation, which hinders development in all its ramifications. Our search light in this paper is on cultural and political segregations in Sembène Ousmane’s Xala. We demonstrate that El Hadji Kader Beye, the chief character in the story represents the Senegalese elite in a post-colonial setting while the beggars stand-in for the oppressed masses, who are more than 80% of the country’s population. The oppressed make themselves relevant in the scheme of societal affairs by being the ones that have solution to the xala, a disease of impotence which the protagonist in the story suffers. The spitting act becomes a form of freedom of speech to voice out their mind; especially by showing their displeasure over an exploitative system in the perceived new dispensation. As its purpose, the paper validates ...
Cultural and Political Alienations in Sembene Ousmane’s Xala
Global Journal of Human-Social Science Research, 2013
Linguistic alienation is a wall, which separates the African elite away from their fellow African brothers and sisters. This gap is what we intend to break because it is a kind of cultural alienation, which hinders development in all its ramifications. Our search light in this paper is on cultural and political segregations in SembA¨ne Ousmane’s Xala. We demonstrate that El Hadji Kader Beye, the chief character in the story represents the Senegalese elite in a post-colonial setting while the beggars stand-in for the oppressed masses, who are more than 80% of the country’s population. The oppressed make themselves relevant in the scheme of societal affairs by being the ones that have solution to the xala, a disease of impotence which the protagonist in the story suffers. The spitting act becomes a form of freedom of speech to voice out their mind; especially by showing their displeasure over an exploitative system in the perceived new dispensation. As its purpose, the paper valid...
Ousmane Sembène's Xala: An Anti-Bourgeois Novel
Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies, 1993
diMIIU, d'1Utt! tnllIJUn brechrienM.1o dietQ1llTe tk la bourgeoisie sur Ie~uple. ecru bourgeoisie. .. ers lUSt' bourgeoisie d'1UI type spiciaJ qu fI'est pas IQIll composie de possidants que d';",dlecture/s el de cadres adminsrratifs. Celle bourgoisit u sert de us connaissances, de sa position, poUT mainttnir Ie peuple sours sa dominatwn ttpour accroflTt sa/onUM. Ousmane Sem~ne The post-independence period and its d.i.SIIppointmenls have distressed many African intellectuals and writers. According to their view, the attainment of independence by African nations has not only brought on characteristic problems of nation-building. bUI has also accelenued class formation. Indeed. it has triggered. dog-eat-dog fight in the quest for political power. This relentless struggle has resulted in the emergence of • new political elite which. having talcen politicaJ control from its masters, rules and dispenses ravors to those who helped to consolidate its power and ensure its security while crushing and destroying those who opposed its mIe. It is in this perception of postindependence that Sembt.ne wrote his novel. X"'".' to express his
Decolonizing National Consciousness Redux: Ousmane Sembène's Xala as Transhistorical Critique
Prompted by the recent celebration of Senegal's fiftieth anniversary of independence, this article revisits Ousmane Sembène’s Xala in the contemporary contexts of the postcolony and globalization. Considering both novel and film, and utilizing an intertextual approach of cinematic translation and cultural theory, I argue that Sembène’s political aesthetic remains pertinent as a transhistorical work of criticism. Part of the reason is that this visceral satire eloquently maps out the pervasive and insidious effects of colonial ideologies on the ruling classes, even in the wake of Senegal’s fifty years of self-rule.
This paper is both a film and literary study that examines the legacy of imperialism and the problems of decolonization through their depiction in Ousmane Sembène's 1976 film Xala. It is a landmark work critiquing the tendency of the leaders of countries freed from the bond of colonialism to maintain the old order, despite equipping themselves with the trappings of their own culture, so-called symbols of ethnicity. The term 'symbolic ethnicity' refers to a strategy of self-identification in this case, by using objects that are identifiable as 'African'. This paper attempts to decode this phenomenon of post-colonial Africa as it is shown in the film, and from there extrapolate larger meanings from those objects and the act of self-identification, as well as to explore how the tactic fails, why it fails, and to suggest remedies. Through the course of the exploration further questions of study along those lines also become apparent, such as the difficult coexistence of two social realities, Africanité and modernité.
2015
Through a textual analysis of Sembene Ousmane’s novels, Xala (1976) and The Last of the Empire (1981), the paper suggests that nation building in Africa generally and Senegal in particular has been hampered by globalization. Nation building was trumpeted by African nationalists who united the masses to end colonial rule. The political leaders and the middle class touted nation building. However, after they took up the reins of power from the colonialists, they not only created an elite class of capitalists, but they also sustained exploitative links with the former colonial masters, whose only intent is to under develop African nations. These leaders, who worked in cahoots with the former colonial masters, aped the lifestyle of the former master at the expense of the masses and the nation. Their practices undermined the sense of nationalism. It is against this backdrop that this paper will explore globalization and how it challenges and undermines nation-building in African nation-s...
Language As Resistance in "Xala" and "Timbuktu"
My essay posits multilingualism as an essential, recurring motif of West African Cinema which speaks to a wider discourse: the impact of external cultural (Western & other) influences on the post-colonial continent. I first explore the existing discussion of multilingualism in the sociopolitical context of West Africa. This is followed by a foray into the history of West African Cinema and role that language politics had in the formation of a distinctive African cinematic style. I then highlight the use of this motif in Ousmane Sembene's Xala and Abderahmane Sissako's Timbuktu- films set in Senegal and Mali respectively, and attempt to analyse the themes it espouses within the political framework of the individual countries during the period, and in the context of the aforementioned wider discourse.
Babilónia: Línguas, Culturas e Traducao, No. 13 (2013), Lusofonia Pós-colonial: Línguas, Literaturas e Identidades
The exploitation and trauma of the colonised nation has often been written upon the female body, and in turn the land has been accorded feminine characteristics. European colonisers talked of their divine, patriotic mission to penetrate virgin lands in order to inseminate them with the seed of civilisation. This allegory evolved in postcolonial discourse into the figurative rape of the colonised land and the societies that inhabited them. With the figuring of the nation as family (McClintock, 1993) the innate femininity of the native land was perpetuated in African nationalists’ and Pan-Africanists’ romanticisation of their origins as Mother Africa. This paper will examine the gendering of the bodies upon which the narrative of the nation is written in the three novels of the Bissau-Guinean author Abdulai Sila. A Última Tragédia (1995), his second published work but whose narrative sits chronologically first of his three novels, centres on the trope of the female Africa in inscribing the colonial nation upon the body of his protagonist Ndani as she symbolically undergoes the physical, psychological and cultural violations which likewise oppressed the nation. Eterna Paixão (1994) features the romanticisation of Africa as the loving, vital, fecund Mother, a symbolism which spills onto female bodies as the African American protagonist’s tempestuous connection with the post colonial continent is reflected in his relationships with the homely African Mother figure and the sexually charged, morally deviant African Woman. Finally, this paper will explore and interrogate Sila’s innovative evolution of the post-independence national body into the emasculated man in Mistida (1997). Here the male body becomes the site upon which the corruption and political violence brewing in the years preceding the 1998 civil war and their grave consequences upon Guinea Bissau’s social fabric are figured in the physical disabilities, psychological scarring and social incapacities of poignantly male characters.