Senegalese New(s) Media
Transpositions and Transformations of the Fait Divers in Aminata Maïga Ka
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 13015228 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Doyle Calhoun (0000-0002-5998-8215, University of Cambridge, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 11 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 1-21 |
| Publication date | 2025-03-24 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2052-2614 • E-ISSN: 2052-2622 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/pli.2024.20 |
| OpenAlex | W4408801614 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 14 |
Considered a staple of the French press since at least the nineteenth century, the fait divers —a catch-all category for short, often sensational news items such as murders, petty crimes, and suicides—has been taken up and transformed in West African cultural production. This essay focuses on the transformations and transpositions of the fait divers tradition in the work of Senegalese writer Aminata Maïga Ka (1940–2005), arguing that her short stories and novels inflect earlier treatments of the journalistic genre while staging a broader critique of the liberalization of the media in Senegal during the 1970s and 1980s. Ka’s works offer a window onto the entangled histories of postcolonial literary production and the emergent popular press in Senegal. Specifically, she updates and expands Ousmane Sembène’s rescripting of the French fait divers in his short story “La Noire de ...” (1961/1962) and the landmark film from 1966 by the same title
Geography · African history and culture studies · African Sexualities and LGBTQ+ Issues · Caribbean and African Literature and Culture
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |