Learning from the Curse: Sembene’s Xala

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

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 ...

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...

Xala has become a cornerstone work of African literature and film, it depicting the state of Senegal and by extension many African nations at the end of colonial rule and the beginning of independence. Sembène Ousmane the writer of Xala lived in these times and was keenly aware of the state of many African countries and especially his home Senegal. Xala presents a story of how the life of one man considered to be part of the new “Elite” class has done little to help his country and people, but has simply given himself over to exploitation and corruption for personal materialist gain.

Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 2021

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.

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 26: 4 , 2020