For this project, I have chosen to investigate Ousmane Sembene's 1975 film Xala. The film raises a multitude of issues pertaining to post-colonial African government and culture. Sembene largely criticizes the incompetence of the new governments, using the sexual impotence of the film's main character as a metaphor. For the research portion of the project, I sought to answer the following closely-related questions: How have post-colonial African peoples navigated the dichotomy between tradition and modernity in the realms of gender, sex and womens rights? Is it even beneficial to think about this subject as a dichotomy? Not all of my sources pertain directly to this, but the majority lean heavily in that direction of thought.

Pfaff, Francoise. Cinema of Ousmane Sembene, a pioneer of African film. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984.

In chapter 2 of Cinema of Ousmane Sembène, Pfaff decribes Ousmane Sembène’s exquisite skill as a storyteller, calling him the modern equivalent of the traditional African griot. A griot is an individual that specializes in storytelling, legends and family histories. Sembène certainly fits the bill, but what makes him even more authentic as the first African international herald was the fact that he was self-educated, opinionated and critical of post-colonial rule in Africa. The author elaborates upon the popularity and effectiveness of griot storytelling in African heritage, and how this heritage gave Sembène’s films such a distinct style when compared to Western films. Griot-style stories were often allegorical in nature, and we see the same style in most of Sembène’s films. Pfaff uses Xala, for instance, to show how individual character psychology is not as important as character stereotype – each character representing a distinct worldview.

I think the relation between this chapter and Xala is rather obvious. Sembène uses Xala, to tell the story of post-colonial Africa. The film has elements of allegory, and certainly has a strong political and cultural agenda, as would be expected coming from a griot. The film was recorded in French so that Sembène could tell the story to an international audience, in hopes of spurring outside political pressure and accountability for African governments.

Thomas, Lynn M.  Politics of the womb : women, reproduction, and the state in Kenya.  Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003.

Chapter three of Lynn Thomas’s book Politics of the womb: women, reproduction, and the state in Kenya talks about the ban on female excision (female genital cutting, a cultural and religious tradition in many African people groups) in Kenya from 1956-1959.  The ban resulted in a significant backlash, not from indigenous men in positions of leadership, but rather from young indigenous women.  Girls organized excisions on their own, as it was firmly believed that the coming-of-age ritual was necessary to live morally and even birth healthy children.  However, the girls didn’t follow all of the rituals, celebrations and formats of the traditional excision ceremony, which resulted in the older generation of women criticizing, and even not recognizing the excisions as legitimate.  Interestingly, this marked a significant shift in women’s mentality in Kenya.  The new generation of women represented a hybrid between rebellion against authority (both colonial and traditional), and preservation of tradition.

This article relates to the film Xala, and specifically to my thesis, in the way that demonstrates how one people group navigated the friction between traditionalism and modernism.  While the girls from this time period rejected the imposition of colonial modernism, they nonetheless diverged from complete traditionalism as well.  This generation even stood in rebellion to their maternal elders, who insisted upon the most “traditional” and thorough rituals associated with female excision.  The character and actions of Rama in Sembène’s film run parallel to the Kenyan girls’ attitude.

Okom, Mojúbàolú Olúfúnké.  “African Women and Power: Reflections on the Perils of Unwarranted Cosmopolitanism.”  Jenda: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies 1:1.

This article explores African women’s positions of power in the pre and post-colonial eras.  The author first argues that it is incorrect to describe pre-colonial African women’s roles as “traditional,” as they had been steadily changing for centuries.  Not only that, but they varied dramatically from people group to people group.  The author focuses on one particular people group, the Yorùbá of Southern Nigeria, to demonstrate the rights and power exercised by women in the capacities of mothers, wives, daughters, sisters, political officials, owners of capital, monarchs, deities and religious leaders.  The author shows how women’s anatomical role as child-bearers was a position of honor in pre-colonial Africa.  Of particular interest was the rigid power structure within each clan of the Yorùbá people group.  Women belonging to the clan actually had authority over men that chose to marry into the clan.  Although the clan still operated as a patrimony, being a clan insider trumped sex.

As it relates to Xala, this article gives several real examples of how women in Africa can and do exercise power.  In Xala, we saw this in the way El Hadji’s first wife explicitly pointed out her superiority to the second and third wives both to her husband and to the other wives.  She could essentially hold her husband’s treatment of the second and third wives in check, and demand respect and submission from the other wives.  The author would also argue that many cultural “traditions” claimed by the males in the film were actually much less traditional than they claimed when one examines Africa’s history, which is very interesting.

Boris, Eileen.  “Gender After Africa!”  Africa After Gender.  Ed. Catherine M. Cole, Takyiwaa Manuh, and Stephan F. Miescher.  Bloomington, IN : Indiana University Press, 2007.  191-204.

Eileen Boris opens her essay by turning a common question asked by Western gender academics on its head. Instead of asking “What impact has gender as a category of analysis had on the study of Africa,” which in itself assumes Western thinkers have already arrived at a correct framework for studying gender, the author argues that a much more appropriate question is “What can Africa do for gender?” She explains how Western gender theorists have, until recently, incorrectly proposed their own historical gender tradition to be universal. Instead, historical African social and gender structures need to be used to enlarge the framework for academic gender theory. Additionally, she explores the similarities and differences between gender and other social attributes such as age, lineage, kinship and wealth for determining social status. Finally, she shows how African gender is a source of power in post-colonial political struggles.

In many ways, this article reveals the Western bias in my original thesis for this research project (I actually still retained the same thesis, as it is a case in point for Eileen Boris’s and many other African gender scholars). My thesis assumes that gender and feminism thought in Africa need a Western savior-that African women have to find a balance between their “primitive” gender tradition and the “correct” or “modern” Western ideas of gender and liberation. It also makes me wonder what opinions about gender roles director Ousmane Sembène might have had in mind when he released Xala. Most of the Western analysis of the film describe women in the film as “masculine,” and the men as “feminine,” but Boris’s article suggests such reviews assume Western gender stereotypes are universal. Did Sembène have this in mind as well?

Chapter 2 of Chant’s book gives an overview of the recent push to expand the definition and measurement of poverty at the global level. While traditional measurements fixated on household income, the author shows how this overlooks social dimensions such as self-esteem, respect, education and power. The author goes on to show that disaggregation of poverty measures into male and female components is essential to accurately measure poverty. Such disaggregation shows an alarming trend, a phenomena described as the “Feminisation of Poverty,” and has led to a whole new field of research. Also, it has brought issues of female ‘empowerment’, described as resources (preconditions), agency (process) and achievements (outcome), more to the forefront, leading to the popularization of microfinance, self-help groups, community development initiatives targeted at women. The author summarizes the modern definition of poverty as something that is a “Multidimensional and Dynamic Entity.”

This section of Gender, Generation and Poverty related closely to El Hadji’s wives’ financial predicament, particularly his first wife Adja’s dependence upon El Hadji. When questioned by her daughter Rama as to why she wouldn’t divorce her husband, we learn that at least part of her reluctance has to do with her financial dependency. The vast majority of the female characters in the film fit into the Western gender role of the financially dependant stay-at-home wife. As defined by Sylvia Chant (and her contemporaries), these women live in partial poverty as they lack the agency and achievement enjoyed by African males. Although El Hadji’s wives seem to have the resources (house, some personal property), their seems to be little place for them outside the home.