Radical Memory
Négritude, Anti-colonial Struggles, and Cabral’s Return to the Source
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 23478293 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Inez Hedges (Northeastern University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2015 |
| Pages | 83-106 |
| Publication date | 2015-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | CHAPTER |
| Venue | World Cinema and Cultural Memory (SOURCE_BOOK) |
| Publisher | Palgrave Macmillan UK (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1057/9781137465122_6 |
| OpenAlex | W2476283050 |
| ISBN | 9781137465122 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 11 |
At the end of Ousmane Sembene’s La noire de... (Black Girl , 1965), a French colonizer is pursued by an African mask. He has returned to Dakar to bring back the effects of the household maid, Douala, whom he and his wife had brought to Antibes as a nanny for the children, but who was treated essentially as a slave in their home. Although Douala, who eventually kills herself, never confronts her employers openly, she expresses her growing awareness of her hopeless situation in voice-over on the soundtrack. When she arrives, the children are away and she is ordered to cook and clean. Sembene portrays how Douala is treated like an animal, or an object, both in the way she is spoken of and the way she is peremptorily ordered about. She becomes effectively effaced—one shot shows her cleaning a mirror in which she declines to look at her own reflection. The France she can see from her window at night begins to appear to her like a black hole. Faced with the incomprehension of her employers, she takes to her bed and falls into depression. Eventually even her employers notice that she is “declining,” but make no move to talk to her as a human being; for them she is merely the instrument of their comfort. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
Archaeology · Colonialism · Genealogy · Girl · Notice · Object (grammar) · Political science · Wife · African history and culture studies · Caribbean and African Literature and Culture · History · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · South African History and Culture
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |