Skip to content
1981
1-2: Marginality and Fragility in African Cinemas
  • ISSN: 1754-9221
  • E-ISSN: 1754-923X

Abstract

Sitting in a small apartment, the main character of Haroun’s (2018), Abbas, reads Achille Mbembe’s (2016). The act of reading this significant book can be understood as resistance on the part of Abbas and as overt criticism of power on the part of Haroun. Resistance to the structural violence perpetrated on African immigrants – the ‘marginal(ized)’ population of the empire – is still a necessary act in the twenty-first century. This is an act that reveals the ‘nocturnal face’ (i.e. the colonial world and its reverberations) of the democratic order (i.e. France as a colony), as Achille Mbembe instructs us. In doing so, Haroun’s film blurs the lines between the ‘categories’ of postcolonial African film and postcolonial French film, perhaps even resetting the boundaries of diasporic cinema in the process. In order to study this paradigmatic shift, I propose to investigate the continued frailty of the postcolonial condition in Haroun’s film through the issue of love – a marginal theme in its own right in the canon of ‘African’ cinema, but perhaps the key to transcending death-worlds and death itself.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1386/jac_00131_1
2025-08-06
2026-04-12

Metrics

Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Amine, Laila (2018), Postcolonial Paris: Fictions of Intimacy in the City of Light, Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  2. Badiou, Alain (2012), In Praise of Love (trans. P. Bush), New York: The New Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  3. Bekolo, Jean-Pierre (2018), Miraculous Weapons, Cameroon: Jean-Pierre Bekolo Productions.
    [Google Scholar]
  4. Cioran, Emil (1992), On the Heights of Despair (trans. I. Zarifopol-Johnston), Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  5. Conley, Tom (2007), Cartographic Cinema, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  6. Diawara, Manthia (2010), African Film: New Forms of Aesthetics and Politics, Berlin: Prestel Verlag.
    [Google Scholar]
  7. Dima, Vlad (2017), Sonic Space in Djibril Diop Mambety’s Films, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  8. Diop, Mati (2019), Atlantics, France and Senegal: Les Films du Bal and Cinekap.
    [Google Scholar]
  9. Eliade, Mircea (1963), The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion (trans. W. Trask), New York: Harcourt.
    [Google Scholar]
  10. Faye, Safi (1996), Mossane, DVD, Senegal: Muss Productions.
    [Google Scholar]
  11. Godard, Jean-Luc (1965), Pierrot le fou, DVD criterion, France: Films Georges de Beauregard and Rome Paris Films.
    [Google Scholar]
  12. Haroun, Saleh Mahamat (1998), Bye Bye Africa, France and Chad: Images Plus, La Lanterne and Tele-Chad.
    [Google Scholar]
  13. Haroun, Saleh Mahamat (2002), Abouna, DVD, France and Chad: Arte France and Duo Films.
    [Google Scholar]
  14. Haroun, Saleh Mahamat (2006), Daratt, DVD, Chad and France: Chinguitty Films and Goi-Goi Productions.
    [Google Scholar]
  15. Haroun, Saleh Mahamat (2010), Un Homme qui crie, DVD, France and Chad: Pili Films and Goi-Goi Productions.
    [Google Scholar]
  16. Haroun, Saleh Mahamat (2013), Grigris, DVD, Chad and France: Pili Films and France 3 Cinéma.
    [Google Scholar]
  17. Haroun, Saleh Mahamat (2017), Une Saison en France, France: Pili Films.
    [Google Scholar]
  18. Harrow, Kenneth (1994), Thresholds of Change in African Literature, Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  19. Harrow, Kenneth (2007), Postcolonial African Cinema: From Political Engagement to Postmodernism, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  20. Higgins, MaryEllen (2015), ‘The winds of African cinema’, African Studies Review, 58:3, pp. 7792, https://doi.org/10.1017/asr.2015.76.
    [Google Scholar]
  21. hooks, bell (2001), All about Love, New York: William Morrow.
    [Google Scholar]
  22. Ly, Lady (2019), Les Misérables, France: Srab Films and Rectangle Productions.
    [Google Scholar]
  23. Mambéty, Djibril Diop (1973), Touki Bouki, DVD, Senegal: Cinegrit.
    [Google Scholar]
  24. May, Simon (2011), Love, a History, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  25. Mbembe, Achille (2016), Politiques de l’inimitié, Paris: Editions de la Découverte.
    [Google Scholar]
  26. Mbembe, Achille (2019), Necro-Politics (trans. S. Corcoran), Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  27. McNeill, Isabelle (2020), ‘Music and spatial injustice in banlieue cinema’, French Screen Studies, Special Issue: ‘Music in French Cinema’, 20:3–4, pp. 31735.
    [Google Scholar]
  28. Mudimbe, V. Y. (1994), The Idea of Africa, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  29. Niang, Mame-Fatou (2019), Identités françaises: Banlieue, féminités et universalisme, Amsterdam: Brill/Rodopi.
    [Google Scholar]
  30. Ramaka, Joseph Gaï (2001), Karmen Geï, DVD, Senegal and France: Arte France Cinéma and Canal+.
    [Google Scholar]
  31. Rimbaud, Arthur (1873), Une Saison en enfer, Brussels: Alliance typographique.
    [Google Scholar]
  32. Soyinka, Wole (1972), A Shuttle in the Crypt, New York: Hill and Wang.
    [Google Scholar]
  33. Soyinka, Wole (1976), Myth, Literature and the African World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  34. Tcheuyap, Alexie (2011), Postnationalist African Cinemas, Manchester: Manchester University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  35. Todorov, Tzevetan (1975), The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  36. Truffaut, François (1959), 400 coups, DVD, France: Les Films du Carrosse.
    [Google Scholar]
  37. Ukadike, Frank (1994), Black African Cinema, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  38. Williams, James S. (2014), ‘Male beauty and the erotics of intimacy: The talismanic\cinema of Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’, Film Quarterly, 67:4, pp. 3343, https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2014.67.4.33.
    [Google Scholar]
  39. Žižek, Slavoj (1996), ‘I Hear You with My Eyes: Or, the Invincible Master’, in R. Salecl and S. Žižek (eds), Gaze and Voice as Love Objects, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 90127.
    [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.1386/jac_00131_1
Loading
  • Article Type: Article
Keyword(s): African and French cinema; death; diaspora; love; postcolonial; power; resistance
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a success
Invalid data
An error occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error
Please enter a valid_number test