rethinking the diaspora through the legacy of slavery in rachid bouchareb’s little senegal

Delphine Letort, “Close- Up: Postcolonial Filmmaking in French- speaking Countries: Rethinking the Diaspora through the Legacy of Slavery in Rachid Bouchareb’s Little Senegal,” Black Camera: An International Film Journal 6, No. 1 (Fall 2014): 139–153.

Close- Up: Postcolonial Filmmaking in French- speaking Countries

Rethinking the Diaspora through the Legacy of Slavery in Rachid Bouchareb’s Little Senegal

Delphine letort

AbstractRachid Bouchareb’s Little Senegal (2001) sheds light on different experiences of Af ri can migration, dramatizing the protagonist Alloune’s investigation into the traces of slavery to pinpoint the legacy of forced displacement in the construction of the Af ri can diaspora. The film articulates the fantasy of a past through reconstructing Alloune’s genealogical tree, which displays the distance between the Af ri can character and his Af rican Ameri can counterparts. Bouchareb interrogates the legacy of French colonialism on the postcolonial subject while exposing the limits of the diaspora as a unifying concept among Af ri cans and Af ri can Ameri cans.

Rachid Bouchareb belongs to the generation of French filmmakers of Algerian descent that emerged in the 1980s, giving rise to the birth of

beur cinema which addressed issues of immigration in the French multi-ethnic banlieues—the neighborhoods of residential towers spreading in the outskirts of urban areas.1 Carrie Tarr notes, however, that the director’s films break with “the tone set by the first beur features,” exploring the alienating experiences of hyphenated characters beyond the closed environment of the French suburbs.2 Bâton Rouge (1985) follows three French youths on the path to self- discovery as they try out the Ameri can dream in Louisiana, whereas Cheb (1991) evokes the return to Algeria of two young beurs, who feel estranged from the constraining cultural heritage of the Maghreb.3 While his latest films Indigènes / Days of Glory (2006) and Hors la loi / Outside the Law (2010) assume an openly his tori cal perspective that has fuelled contro-versies over the legacy of colonization in French collective memory, they also explore the experiences of the postcolonial subject in French society, highlighting the poor living conditions of immigrants in terms of housing

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and employment, and the racial discrimination they confront when dealing with French authorities. Bouchareb’s films articulate the conflicting tensions to which Franco- Algerians who straddle the oppositions between two cul-tures are subjected, compromising the traditions of their ancestral roots with the demands of the host society. Resorting to international funding sources that open interstices of creation in French cinema, the filmmaker has built a career that illustrates a transnational approach to the art of making films,4 envisioned as spaces of cultural negotiation that contribute to enrich the “new French cinema,” which Michel Marie links to the input of North Af ri-can actors (Roschdy Zem, Jamel Debbouze, etc.) and directors (Abdellatif Kechiche, Malick Chibane, Yamina Benguigui, among others).5 As a trans-national filmmaking endeavor—involving France, Algeria, and Germany at the level of production—Little Senegal illustrates that creative, fertile ter-rain of diasporic cinema.6 Bouchareb does not feel constrained by national boundaries, exploring a variety of immigration issues through out his filmog-raphy. Lon don River (2009) engages with the climate of suspicion that reigned in multicultural Lon don after the 2005 terrorist attacks, whereas Poussières de vie / Dust of Life (1994) addresses the fate of abandoned Amerasian chil-dren in the post–Vietnam War years, thereby broaching transnational issues that broaden the scope of French cinema. Little Senegal challengingly evokes a diversity of Af ri can migration ex-periences. While the film opens with the visit of Af ri can Ameri can tourists in search of their roots in the Museum of Slavery on Gorée Island, Alloune (Sotigui Kouyaté) reverses the well- established ritual pattern by traveling from Senegal to America, following in the tracks of his Af ri can ancestors sold into slavery. Alloune tells his nephew Hassan (Karim Traore) about his diasporic dream when accounting for the reason why he made the journey to Harlem: “I had a dream about my ancestor. One of the men transported as a slave. It’s a dream that I had oft en. I must follow his trail and find one of his descendants to earn rest and peace. An Ameri can who has your blood. Our blood.” Alloune’s diasporic quest shares little with the Ameri can dream, which has lured Hassan to Little Senegal, where he has already discovered that “life is expensive.” Little Senegal builds on this opposition, confronting Alloune’s diasporic tale of family scattering with the travails of contempo-rary economic migration. This article interrogates the construction of the diasporic discourse in a film that focuses on the memory of slavery, ques-tioning its legacy and impact on the present relationships between Af ri can immigrants and Af ri can Ameri cans in Harlem. Little Senegal is constructed around the central fig ure of Alloune, whose investigation provides the nar-rative drive through out the film, and testifies to the influence of Hollywood conventions on Bouchareb’s filmmaking style.7

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D e l p h i n e L e t o r t / Close-Up: Re th ink ing the D iaspora 141

Memories of Slavery and the Diasporic Quest

Little Senegal opens with an iconic shot of the “door of no return” in the slave fort of Gorée, symbolically representing the imaginary journey into the past that the voice- over narrator Alloune engages in, reading aloud the in-formation he uncovers among the logbooks of the slave ships that moored at Gorée. The introductory sequence places the memory of slavery center stage as a ferry boat unloads a crowd of tourists about to visit the “site of memory,” which, in the terminology of Pierre Nora, refers to the “turning point where consciousness of a break with the past is bound up with the sense that memory has been torn.”8 Nora underscores the opposition between the criti cal discourse of history and the spontaneity of memory, which the film articulates through an emphasis on the narrative role of Alloune. Insistent close- ups enhance his position as a griot whose concern with passing on the slaves’ stories draws particular attention among the Af ri can Ameri cans gath-ered around him. Alloune relates the acts of torture that the captives were subjected to should they resist their white masters, commenting on the pun-ishment inflicted on the slaves who attempted to conduct an uprising. Shot- reverse shots capture the look of fright on the faces of two women as he dis-plays a drawing representing a man hanging by the chest, a technique that he explains was devised to make the slave’s “death more drawn- out and pain-ful.” Alloune manages to forge a sense of community belonging when guid-ing his listeners through the fort corridors in the steps of the chained slaves, prompting them to look back at the past in order to move forward; “Once the slave stepped through this door, he never saw Africa again,” he explains. When he draws attention to the physical movement that signifies the rup-ture from which the Af ri can diaspora grows, the film cuts to a panoramic view of the ocean through the door of no return, poetically lingering on the flows of the Black Atlantic, which Paul Gilroy conceptualizes as a chrono-tope that “focuses attention on the middle passage, on the vari ous projects for redemptive return to an Af ri can homeland.”9

The focus on Alloune slows down the pace of the narrative, emphasizing his role as a go- between who mediates the relationship between the present and the past, Af ri cans and Af ri can Ameri cans. His ability to connect with Af ri can Ameri cans, whether they visit Gorée or live in New York, testifies to the diasporic imagination Percy C. Hintzen identifies:

Diasporic identity connects persons of Af ri can descent in a global web of racial intimacy. It occupies the sentimental center in black transnational po liti cal alli-ances employed so successfully in the vari ous nationalist struggles against colo-nialism and racial segregation. In the United States, it was the cement that tied

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black immigrants and Af ri can Ameri cans together in a po liti cal alliance aimed at breaking the structures of white exclusivity and privilege.10

The tourists at Gorée are neither actors nor extras, but a mixed crowd of ac-tual visitors who agreed to take part in shooting the scene.11 The realistic effect achieved points out the talent of Malian actor Sotigui Kouyaté, who convincingly manages to arouse empathy by drawing on his personal expe-rience as a griot. Little Senegal endeavors to reconcile the diasporic dream with the facts by following the journey of Alloune, whose investigation into the archives aims to reestablish the actual story behind his own family experience. The film offers a fictional tale that illustrates an idealized view of the diaspora, hinging around an organic link to Africa which defines the real and imag-ined community relationships among dispersed populations. According to historian John Durham Peters, “Diaspora suggests real or imagined relation-ships among scattered fellows, whose sense of community is sustained by forms of communication and contact such as kinship, pilgrimage, trade, travel and shared culture (language, ritual, scripture, or print and electronic media).”12

The Af ri can guide embodies local memory as he rummages through the archives and digs up documents that testify to the tragic separation of his own family. Fiction allows Bouchareb to tread the line between history and memory, making his film a tool in the construction of diasporic memory: Alloune’s personal quest blends with history since he has to plumb the past through its artifacts in order to rebuild the severed family ties between him-self and his estranged Af ri can Ameri can cousins. His investigation into pri-mary documents emphasizes the intimate link between the his tori cal narra-tive of slavery and his family’s trail, allowing him to incorporate documents such as archival photographs into his genealogical tree. The film follows the pattern of a crime film, implicitly comparing Al-loune with a detective looking for evidence that might help him solve a criminal case. His purpose, however, is not to uncover the guilty ones, but to retrace the vari ous stages of migration and dispersion experienced by his slave ancestors. Confronted with the uprooting which renaming repre-sents, Alloune resorts to dates and ages to identify his ancestors among the slaves sold on the arrival of the King of Salomon in the Port of South Caro-lina, on Sep tem ber 15, 1805. Little Senegal underlines Alloune’s determina-tion through subjective point of view shots that invite the viewer to share in his investigation. Close- ups on the files he reads draw the spectator- reader into the past of slavery, the coercive dimension of which is aptly signified by such headlines as “Negroes for sale,” “Slaves—Top quality servants for sale,” “good character,” “very good fisherman,” “family for sale.” Ironically,

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Alloune is able to identify his relatives through the “promotional” details given about them. However, he is soon confronted by the hurdles of history as he discovers that his ancestors “Zachariah Robinson and his wife Phoebe escaped from the Robinson plantation,” in a document dating back to 1808. The plantation owner’s $1,250 reward notice for the capture of the runaway slaves mentions markings on their faces—“three lines from the mouth to the cheekbones”—which allow Alloune to identify his ancestors among the fugi-tives who bore “the markings of his people.” The narrative of slavery is com-plexified through the in di vidual lens adopted in the film, offering indirect characterization of the Af ri cans’ spirit of resilience. It is remarkable that the film offers no flashback into slavery days, thus eschewing the dramatic effect of sensational scenes—in clud ing the rapes and lashings that have become common in Ameri can film portrayals of slavery. The camerawork emphasizes Alloune’s determined gait by capturing his emotional and physical engagement with space: wide- angle shots depict him wading through the fields whereas close- ups reveal his insistent gaze. The slaves’ singing voices accompany him as he travels by bus through the South ern landscape to the Robinson plantation, acting as though he were re-sponding to the voices calling for him, guiding him to the slaves’ quarters—the poor state of which illustrates the stark social contrast between the own-ers and the slaves. Few windows open to the outside in the slave quarters, suggesting that the captives retreated to the dark when they withdrew from society. Little Senegal conveys the atmosphere of south ern society by filming its well- ordered landscape of short- cut lawns and clean alleys in long shots that portray Alloune as an intruder in this idyllic setting, disrupting the im-posed order through his determined gait (fig. 1). The first floor of the Rob-inson mansion is elevated from the ground, denoting the race and class hi-erarchy between masters and slaves, which seems to endure in the present as suggested by the fact that the Robinson plantation still belongs to the same family.13

Alloune gains mastery over the past by retracing the route of his ances-tors, recovering pieces of hidden history that allow him to further the draw-ing of his genealogical tree, which metaphorically evokes the desire for a past, articulating a fantasy of flow and mobility behind the travails of forced migra-tion. The anonymous crowds of slaves become individualized and endowed with origi nal names through his quest, which thereby counters the reifying order of slavery. As Alloune’s investigation progresses and takes him further to the north, the film moves from an essentialist understanding of the dias-pora to the recognition of its heterogeneity and diversity. Through portray-ing the difficulties encountered by the postcolonial subject in Little Senegal, Bouchareb calls attention to a fractured diaspora and interrogates the Afro-centric myth.

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Turning Little Senegal into a Ghetto

While Paul Gilroy assumes that the history of slavery is the basis for the for-mation of the Af ri can diaspora across the Black Atlantic, arguing that black intellectual and artistic life plays a special role in the “telling and retelling of these stories” that organize “the consciousness of the ‘racial group,’”14 he also levels criticism at the homogenizing discourse utilizing the Af ri can heritage to promote an Afrocentric project. In his seminal study of global diaspo-ras, anthropologist Robin Cohen also notes that “a member’s adherence to a diasporic community is demonstrated by an acceptance of an inescapable link with their past migration history and a sense of co- ethnicity with oth-ers of a similar background.”15 Cohen underlines the nostalgic longing for a homeland among the members of a diaspora—“an idealization of the puta-tive ancestral home and a collective commitment to its maintenance, restora-tion, safety and prosperity, even to its creation.”16 Little Senegal debunks the myth that underlies the homeland paradigm of the diaspora through por-traying the conflicting relationships between Af ri can Ameri cans and Sene-galese immigrants in Harlem. Although its opening sequence portrays some Af ri can Ameri cans’ authentic desire to rediscover the Af ri can territory, Al-loune encounters a diversity of black characters in the course of his travel, whose in di vidual stories of migration enhance the heterogeneous dimen-sion of the diaspora. Bouchareb broaches a wide range of issues linked to Af ri can immigra-tion through the narrative of Hassan’s everyday life in the ghetto: Hassan and his girlfriend Mira are faced with poverty, whereas his North Af ri can friend Karim pays for a green- card marriage: “I don’t need your Africa; you need America,” he is told by the girl he wants to marry, who is trying to teach him what to remember to pass the naturalization test. Af ri cans are kept to the margins of mainstream society in Harlem and Hassan expresses bitterness over his Ameri can experience, feeling excluded from the Af ri can Ameri-can community: “We’re too black for them. They don’t like us. Hold out your hand to them and they’ll stab it. They’ll kill you if they can. I like you but I prefer your money.” The Black Atlantic does not promote racial solidarity in Little Senegal as illustrated by the encounter between Alloune and his nephew Hassan, who have been forced apart by the experience of migration. Alloune’s journey from Senegal to South Carolina to Harlem is a reenact-ment of the black journey, which draws him closer to his ancestors’ Ameri-can descendent Ida—“an Ameri can who has the same blood”—he argues in front of Hassan. Little Senegal conveys the feeling of otherness that margin-alizes Hassan in the Ameri can ghetto, which epitomizes the difficulties Af-ri can immigrants have to face while being confined to the fringe of main-stream America by poor socioeconomic conditions.

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Little Senegal evokes that context by having Al-loune confront the his tori-cal traces of slavery and segregation; motifs of en-trapment and racial domi-nation articulate the con-tinuity between the past and the present. Hassan’s dark cramped Harlem apartment visually recalls the slave quarters, stress-ing that the bleak condi-tions of the past endure in the present. Bouchareb’s Little Sene gal no longer represents Marcus Gar-vey’s “mecca for Af ri can peoples,”17 eschewing the most symbolic places of the neighborhood to focus on unsightly places of com-merce instead, in clud ing

the garage and the taxi station where Hassan works. The first images of Little Senegal depict a harsh urban environment, focusing on the tensions between Af ri cans and Af ri can Ameri cans: Hassan quits his job as a mechanic after an Af ri can Ameri can customer makes a humiliating scene. Alloune arrives in Little Senegal on board the J train, which suggests that he is physically retracing his ancestors’ journey by using the same means of travel. Paula Massood identifies the motif of the train as a trope “of migra-tion, mobility, and settlement” and argues that Harlem played a crucial role in the Great Migration “as a black city—‘a promised land’—for many mi-grants.”18 Little Senegal, however, points to the distance between the dream of the past and the reality of the present through the opposition between Al-loune and Harlem residents; he embodies movement whereas they seem con-fined to the ghetto, which appears cut off from the rest of the city. The white passengers sitting beside Alloune leave the northbound train as it reaches Harlem while white policemen stand outside the station, signifying the racist order that prevails and defines the Af ri can as the Other. The distribution of space in Little Senegal is defined in racial terms, echoing the notion of hyper- segregation used by social scientist Loïc Wacquant to characterize the black ghetto (fig. 2).19

Figure 1. Alloune intrudes in the well- ordered garden of the Robinson plantation, exposing the enduring legacies of slavery on the landscape in South ern society.

Figure 2. Hassan’s confined apartment in Harlem evokes the slave quarters and displays motifs of entrapment to signify his marginalized status.

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Striving to survive in the face of afflicting poverty, Hassan entertains no illusion as to the bleak future awaiting him. His murder at the end of the film resonates with other black- on- black crimes, which Alloune learns about through watching television. The geographical focus on Harlem allows Bouchareb to address an array of topical issues—in clud ing poverty, jobless-ness, social exclusion, and racism—that plague Af ri can Ameri cans into the ghettos. Ida’s pregnant granddaughter Eileen has no father she can rely on—and neither will her own child, thus replicating the cycle of self- destruction which Daniela Berghahn views as resulting from “an uprooting and a loss of Af ri can identity from which Af ri can Ameri cans have never been able to recover.”20 Bouchareb endorses a social deterministic view of the Ameri can ghetto while adopting the external viewpoint of Alloune, who remains the powerless spectator of the racist violence he observes around him. The death of Hassan is linked to a crime story, which resonates with the deadly cycle identified in the hood film.21

Harlem is portrayed as a gloomy environment where Af ri can Ameri can residents struggle to make ends meet. Estranged from their Af ri can roots, they reproduce the racist bias of dominant groups. The film underlines the legacy of slavery through the behavior of Ida, who looks down on Alloune as she first meets him—“You should have stayed there,” she tells him when he explains he has traveled from Africa—and that of Hassan, who assumes the power of the white man over his girlfriend Mira. As they fight over what an Af ri can woman can expect from living in Harlem, Mira switches from French to Wolof in an act of rebellion against the power of a man who treats her like a slave by beating her. Hassan uses French to subjugate her, a lan-guage that makes him look and behave like a colonizer,22 asserting his virile masculinity through subduing the female voice. The Af ri can subject is dou-bly humiliated in a society in which race and masculinity intersect: the black man is not treated as an equal on the streets of Harlem and deprived of the economic means allowing him to fit the patriarchal model. Although the Af-ri can man has fled his native land, he cannot free himself from the legacy of the colonial order, which “mocked his masculinity through dehumaniza-tion.”23 Hassan’s masochistic violence is proof of his regained masculinity, yet the only chance he is offered to assert himself as a subject makes him a copy of the colonizer. The film complexifies the diasporic discourse by confronting the Af-ri can individuals with economic and social realities that undermine Pan- Af ri can ideals. Bouchareb’s portrayal of a fractured diaspora in Harlem seems to bear the influence of French anthropologist Roger Bastide’s The Black Americas, which posits that slavery did not permit the survival of Af ri can culture among the broken communities: “The pressure of the surrounding

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milieu proved stronger than the fragments of collective memory, eroded by centuries of constraint.”24 When Ida’s granddaughter, Eileen, abandons her baby after its birth, she reenacts a story of separation that conveys the disso-lution of the blood link between two generations. The girl hangs about with a gang of black thugs, whom she respects more than her own grandmother. Long shots transform the ghetto landscape, turning the streets into van-ishing lines that lead to a distinct horizon, signified by the chronotopes of the roads and of the crossroads that connote intercultural relationships in Gil-roy’s examination of transnational cultural forms produced by black writers.25 Alloune personifies the Af ri can subject’s capacity to adapt, which Sotigui Kouyaté embodies through his film career and collaborations with Boucha-reb (in clud ing Lon don River);26 his lonely fig ure conveys the sense of loss that Hamid Naficy deems “an inevitable outcome of trans nation ality, [which] finds its way into the desolate structures of feeling and lonely diegetic char-acters.”27 Depth of field repeatedly isolates the fig ure of Alloune in the fore-ground while the background landscape conjures another horizon. Introduc-ing Alloune in the constrained space of the ghetto, Bouchareb transcends the oppressive environment into a transnational space of encounter.

Constructing Collective Memories through Filmmaking

Bouchareb uses the narrative to unfold the link between two generations who are estranged from each other despite their common roots, evoking two waves of formation of the Af ri can diaspora: the generation of Af ri cans who were forcibly removed from the continent and their descendants embody a distinct experience from the “new or contemporary Af ri can Diaspora of of-ten scattered, deceptively Pan- Af ri can communities of diverse ethnic groups with differing economic, socio- cultural and his tori cal experience.”28 G. Oty Agbajoh- Laoye underlines the heterogeneity of the Af ri can diaspora living in the United States, pointing out that continental Af ri cans are oft en unaware of the discrimination awaiting them as black people.29

The walking fig ure of Alloune seems to cross the boundaries of time and space—as suggested by the ellipsis that obliterates his journey from Gorée to South Carolina, reflecting the path of the filmmaker across national cine-mas.30 Bouchareb questions the legacy of colonization through the eyes of Alloune, who carries the agonistic power of the griot in the interstices of the film, traveling through the “in- between” spaces identified by Homi Bhabha:

These “in- between” spaces provide the terrain for elaborating strategies of self-hood—singular or communal—that initiate new signs of identity, and innovative

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sites of collaboration and contestation, in the act of defining the idea of society itself. It is in the emergence of the interstices—the overlap and displacement of domains of difference—that the intersubjective and collective experiences of nationness, community interest, or cultural value are negotiated.31

The Af ri can postcolonial subject overcomes the binaries established by tradi-tional discourse, offering a positive identification fig ure for the audience who is invited to collectively share in the memory of slavery, which may account for the good box office results of the film in France.32 Little Senegal may be compared with Days of Glory, which, film scholar Mireille Rosello contends, “fictionalizes what the spectator is expected to discover as having been re-pressed and to remember what should not have been forgotten.”33 Alloune’s French accent is noticeable when he speaks in English, thus orally connect-ing the Ameri can story with the French colonial past.34

By crafting an imaginary past for the characters, Bouchareb fills in a his-tori cal blank and turns the film into a “memorial narrative.” Little Senegal may be based on facts; however, it is imbued with fictional elements that express Bouchareb’s po liti cal commitment to constructing a new relation-ship with the colonial past. The use of subjective shots prompts the viewer to join in a moment of intimacy between Alloune and Ida as they peruse photographs of slavery, which depict either men and women picking cot-ton in the fields, or portray the faces of the Other in the eyes of the photog-raphers of the time. The photographs provide an epiphanic moment in the film: Alloune and Ida become closer when acknowledging the pictures open a window into a lost past, which they can yet retrieve by endowing the pho-tographed fig ures with identities, thus overturning the sense of the archive and subverting the origi nal intent of the photographer. French philosopher Jacques Derrida refers to the Greek root of the word “archive” to argue that its meaning denotes

the residence of the superior magistrates, the archons, those who commanded. The citizens who held and signified po liti cal power were considered to possess the right to make or to represent the law. . . . The archons are first of all the docu-ments’ guardians. They do not only urge the physical security of what is depos-ited and of the substrate. They are also accorded the hermeneutic right and com-petence. They have the power to interpret the archives.35

When remediating the archival photographs through the subjective look of his characters, Bouchareb steals the power of the gaze from the white col-onizer, allowing a bond to be rebuilt between the descendants of the Robin-sons. The photographs no longer represent an anthropological glance objecti-

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fying the Other, but are now incorporated into the personal family narrative of Alloune and Ida (fig. 3). Bouchareb uses the film to rewrite and reappropriate the past, human-izing the photographed men and women whom the characters identify as the descendants of the same Af ri can tribe. As Alloune uses the memories of slavery to connect with his Af ri can Ameri can cousin Ida, producing pho-tographs as evidence of a family history that derives from common roots in Africa, he posits that the diasporic feeling rests on the construction of memories that link people across different social and cultural geographies. Sociologist Percy C. Hintzen argues that the diasporic consciousness is used to create racial intimacy among Af ri can Ameri cans and Af ri cans, whose fight against colonization served as an inspiring model for the nationalists fight-ing against segregation in the United States.36 While Little Senegal explores the power of memory over the present, it nonetheless evokes the limits of the diaspora as a unifying concept among Af ri can immigrants and Af ri can Ameri cans. Contrary to Haile Gerima’s Sankofa (1993), which adopts an Af-rocentric perspective that promotes continuity between Africa and America, Little Senegal evokes the memory of slavery through the photographic snap-shots that stand as icons of modernity, metaphorically pointing to the trans-formation of Af ri can culture in the Americas.37

Bouchareb uses the motif of the Atlantic as a symbol of rebirth. After traveling back to Gorée where he buries the corpse of Hassan, Alloune looks at the sea with different images in mind. The Atlantic is no longer synony-mous with rupture by the end of the film; it represents the link between the two continents that are tied by a common history, giving birth to the dias-poric families that spread across the world. The diaspora is an inclusive con-cept in the eyes of Bouchareb, which film scholar Alec G. Hargreaves defines

Figure 3. Subjective shots bond Alloune and Ida to a common past, introducing the archival slavery photographs into their family story.

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as “global in scope, blending the specificities of a wide range of social and ethnic milieus with an underlying concern for universal principle of in di-vidual free dom and equality.”38

Little Senegal may draw on the strength of the diasporic sentiment that permits Alloune to overcome the cultural barriers which have estranged his Af ri can Ameri can cousins from their Af ri can roots; however, Boucha-reb does not endorse an Afrocentric reading of the past that would advo-cate continuity between Africa and America. Little Senegal focuses on the Af ri can immigrants’ struggles in Ameri can society and envisions the lim-its of the diasporic community in the context of the Ameri can urban ghetto, using francophone Af ri can characters to expose the difficulties encountered by the migrating postcolonial subject. As the West and North Af ri can char-acters of Little Senegal vent their frustration at the class divide that separates them from the Af ri can Ameri can residents of Harlem, their speaking French makes visible the legacy of French post/colonialism on transnational stories of migration.39

The film suggests that postcolonial migratory movements result from the long history of Af ri can, French, and Ameri can transatlantic relations. The in-termingling of vari ous languages—from French to Wolof to English–creates a transnational culture that expresses the in- betweeness of the emigrated Sene-galese characters—belonging neither “here” nor “there.” Revisiting Ameri can history through the eyes of Alloune in Little Senegal, Bouchareb articulates “a desire to escape the restrictive bonds of ethnicity, national identification, and sometimes ‘race’ itself . . . this desire to transcend both the structures of the nation state and the constraints of ethnicity and national particularity.”40 Little Senegal thereby gives voice and visibility to an ethnic minority whose migratory experience reflects more global trends.

Notes

1. Hamid Naficy, An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking (Prince ton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 97–98. 2. Carrie Tarr, “Beur cinema,” in Encyclopedia of Contemporary French Culture, ed. Alex Hughes and Keith A. Reader, (Lon don: Routledge, 1998), 64–65. 3. Alex G. Hargreaves, “No escape? From ‘cinema beur’ to the ‘cinema de la ban-lieue,’” in Der Kinder der Integration, ed. Ersntpeter Ruher (Würzburg: Königshausen and Neumann, 1999), 123. 4. “Transnationalism may be defined as the flow of people, ideas, goods, and capital across national territories in a way that undermines nationality and nationalism as dis-crete categories of identification, economic organization, and po liti cal constitution.” Jana Evans Braziel and Anita Mannur, “Nation, Migration, Globalization: Points of Conten-tion in Diaspora Studies,” in Theorizing Diaspora: A Reader, ed. Jana Evans Braziel and Anita Mannur (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2003), 8.

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5. Michel Marie, “French Cinema in the New Century”, in New Spaces for French and Francophone Cinema, ed. James F. Austin (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 20–21. 6. Annette Kuhn and Guy Westwell contend that diasporic cinema is synonymous with “intercultural cinema.” They argue that diasporic cinema encompasses two aspects: “1) Films made by postcolonial, exiled, or migrant individuals living in the West, and by their descendants. 2) The diasporic migrant, or postcolonial experience as portrayed in cinema. . . . A set of shared themes has been discerned across diasporic cinemas: these in-clude journeys and border crossings, real or imagined; issues around identities and family and intergenerational connections and conflicts, and reflection on slavery.” Annette Kuhn and Guy Westwell, “Diasporic Cinema,” Oxford Dictionary of Film Studies (Oxford: Ox-ford University Press, 2012), 116. 7. David Bordwell and Kristin Thomson note that “this conception of narrative de-pends on the assumption that the action will spring primarily from in di vidual characters as causal agents . . . the narrative invariably centers on personal psychological causes: de-cisions, choices and traits of characters.” David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction, 7th ed. (New York: McGraw- Hill, 2012), 89. Alec Hargreaves underlines the “Ameri can dimension” of Bouchareb’s work, pointing to the influence of Steven Spiel-berg’s Saving Private Ryan (1998) on the shooting of the battle scenes in Days of Glory (2006). Alec G. Hargreaves, “From ‘Ghettoes’ to Globalization: Situating Maghrebi- French Filmmakers” in Screening Integration: Recasting Maghrebi Immigration in Contemporary France, ed. Sylvie Durmelat and Vinay Swamy (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008), 35. See also Michael F. O’Riley, “National Identity and Unrealized Union in Rachid Bouchareb’s Indigènes,” The French Review 81, no. 2 (De cem ber 2007), 278–88. 8. Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire,” Representations 26, Special Issue, “Memory and Counter- Memory” (Spring 1989), 7. 9. Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 4. 10. Percy C. Hintzen, “Diaspora, Globalization and the Politics of Identity” in Les Diaspora dans le monde contemporain, ed. William Berthomière and Christine Chival-lon (Paris: Editions Karthala et MSHA, 2006), 110. 11. The tears of the two Af ri can Ameri can women standing in front of the door of no return were spontaneous. 12. John Durham Peters, “Exile, Nomadism, and Diaspora: The Stakes of Mobility in the West ern Canon” in Home, Exile, Homeland, Film, Media, and the Politics of Place, ed. Hamid Naficy (New York: Routledge, 1999), 20. 13. This part of the narrative further illustrates the interweaving of facts and fiction as the plantation owner plays her own role in the film. 14. Gilroy, Black Atlantic, 198. 15. Robin Cohen’s list includes: “1. Dispersal from an origi nal homeland, oft en trau-matically, to two or more foreign regions; 2. Alternatively, the expansion from a home-land in search of work, in pursuit of trade or to further colonial ambitions; 3. A collective memory and myth about the homeland, in clud ing its location, history and achievements; 4. An idealization of the putative ancestral home and a collective commitment to its main-tenance, restoration, safety and prosperity, even to its creation; 5. The development of a return movement that gains collective approbation; 6. A strong ethnic group conscious-ness sustained over a long time and based on a sense of distinctiveness, a common history and the belief in a common fate; 7. A troubled relationship with host societies, suggest-

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ing a lack of acceptance at the least of the possibility that another calamity might befall the group; 8. A sense of empathy and solidarity with co- ethnic members in other coun-tries of settlement; 9. The possibility of a distinctive creative, enriching life in host coun-tries with a tolerance for pluralism.” Robin Cohen, Global Diasporas: An Introduction (Se-attle: University of Wash ing ton Press, 1997), 26. 16. Ibid. 17. Elliott P. Skinner, “The Restoration of Af ri can Identity for A New Millenium,” in The Af ri can Diaspora, ed. Isidore Okpenwho, Carole Boyee Davies, and Ali A. Mazrui (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 36. 18. Paula Massood, “Which Way to the Promised Land?: Spike Lee’s Clockers and the Legacy of the Af ri can Ameri can City”, Af ri can Ameri can Review 35, no. 2 (Summer 2001), 264, 266. 19. Loïc Wacquant, “Pour en finir avec le mythe des ‘Cités- Ghettos.’ Les différences entre la France et les Etats- Unis,” Annales de la Recherche Urbaine 54 (1992), 21–30. 20. Daniela Berghahn, Far Flung Families in Film: The Diasporic Family in Contemporary European Cinema (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013), 62. Arthur M. Schlesinger also contends that: “For his tori cal reasons, black families are oft en less cohe-sive, and in consequence many black kids oft en move into a mistrustful world with low self- worth and little self- confidence.” Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Disuniting of America, Reflections on a Multicultural Society (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1998), 98. 21. Paula Massood, Black City Cinema: Af ri can Ameri can Experiences in Film (Phila-delphia: Temple University Press, 2003). 22. Roy Armes underlines that Arabic is frequently a “rich and viable alternative to the inherited language of the colonizer” in North ern Af ri can films. Roy Armes, “Culture and National Identity,” in Cinema of the Black Diaspora: Diversity, Dependence and Oppositionality, ed. Michael T. Martin (Detroit: Wayne State University, 1995), 35. 23. See the analy sis of Françoise Vergès, Monsters and Revolutionaries, Colonial Family Romance and Métissage (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999), 223. The French scholar refers to Fanon to posit that the relation between colonialism and mas-culinity entailed a profound destabilization of colonial men: “Fanon was right about the ways in which colonialism had config ured masculinity as feminized, emasculated, but his solution was misogynist and held out an impossible ideal for colonial man. . . . Fanon gendered decolonized masculinity and saw it emulating virile qualities.” Ibid., 222–23. 24. Roger Bastide, Les Amériques Noires (Paris: Petite Bibliothèque Payot, 1967), 49. Anthropologist Christine Chivallon notes that the term “diaspora” is “rarely applied to the populations deported from Africa or the Americas” in the French tradition. She ar-gues that the “restrictive and even discriminatory use of the term [might reflect] a broader, probably unconscious, manner of considering the black world of the Americas.” Christine Chivallon, The Black Diaspora of the Americas: Experiences and Theories out of the Caribbean (Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers, 2011), xiv–xv. 25. Gilroy, Black Atlantic, 199. 26. While Little Senegal and Lon don River enhance the capacity of Alloune / Ousmane (both played by Kouyaté) to connect with the others, Bouchareb views Little Senegal as a harsher environment than North Lon don. Elena Caoduro analyses Bouchareb’s depic-tion of the British neighborhood in positive terms: “His portrait of North Lon don reflects the strong sense of community and solidarity that emerges among minorities. The multi-cultural neighbourhood is highly functional and supportive as clearly seen in the efforts of the imam and the butcher to locate Ali. Multiculturalism appears therefore through

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a new prism; it contemplates the acquisition of a new civic and collaborative identity.” Elena Caoduro, “Face to Face with the Muslim ‘Other’: European Cinematic Responses to Al- Qaeda,” Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media 1 (Summer 2011), http://www .alphavillejournal.com/Issue%201/ArticleCaoduro.html, accessed Sep tem ber 6, 2013. 27. Naficy, An Accented Cinema, 55. 28. G. Oty Agbajoh- Laoye, “Lifting the Yoke of Tradition: New Af ri can Market- Women Diaspora: From Kaneshie, Accra, to Harlem, New York,” in The New Af ri can Diaspora in North America: Trends, Community Building, and Adaptation, ed. Kwado Konadu- Agyemang, Baffour K. Takyi, and John A. Arthur (Oxford: Lexington Books, 2006), 244. 29. Ibid., 246. 30. It is indeed noteworthy that Bouchareb’s latest films, Just like a Woman (2012) and Two Men in Town (2014), were made in the United States. 31. Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (Lon don: Routledge, 1994), 2. 32. The film totaled 242,804 admissions in the span of ten weeks in France. About the neighborhood of Little Senegal in Harlem, see Marième O’ Daff, “Little Senegal: Af-rica in Harlem” in Africultures no. 44, Janu ary 2002. 33. Mireille Rosello, “Rachid Bouchareb’s Indigènes, Po liti cal or Ethical Event of Memory?” in Screening Integration, Recasting Maghrebi Immigration in Contemporary France, ed. Sylvie Durmelat and Vinay Swamy (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008), 113. 34. Variety movie critic David Stratton remarked that the “halting English” of actor Kouyaté was “sometimes hard to decipher.” David Stratton, “Movie Review,” Variety 382, no. 2 (February 23, 2001), 44. 35. Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, trans. Eric Prenowitz (Chi-cago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 2. 36. Percy C. Hintzen, “Diaspora, Globalization and the Politics of Identity” in Les Diaspora dans le monde contemporain, ed. William Berthomière and Christine Chival-lon (Paris: Editions Karthala et MSHA, 2006), 110. 37. Gilroy, Black Atlantic, 54–55. 38. Alec G. Hargreaves, “From ‘Ghettoes’ to Globalization: Situating Maghrebi- French Filmmakers” in Screening Integration, Recasting Maghrebi Immigration in Contemporary France, ed. Sylvie Durmelat and Vinay Swamy (Lincoln: University of Ne-braska Press, 2008), 35. 39. Immanuel Ness explains: “The increase in Af ri can migration to the United States occurred as tighter immigration laws and restrictions on permanent residency were im-posed in West ern Europe in the 1990s and early 2000s.” Immanuel Ness, “Af ri can Migrant Worker Militancy in the Global North: Labor Contracting and Independent Worker Or-ganizing in New York City,” in West Af ri can Migrations, Transnational and Global Pathways in a New Century, ed. Mojubaolu Olufunke Okome and Olufemi Vaughan (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 210. 40. Gilroy, Black Atlantic, 19.

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rethinking the diaspora through the legacy of slavery in rachid bouchareb’s little senegal

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