Citation

Calhoun D. Res. Afr. Literat. 2020; 51(2): 96-116.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020, Indiana University Press)

DOI

10.2979/reseafrilite.51.2.06

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This essay examines the tensions between inscription and voice, silence and servitude, that are staged in Ousmane Sembène's novella La Noire de… (1962) and its eponymous film adaptation (1966). In contrast to existing scholarship on La Noire de…, I center my reading on the space of suicide itself-the bathtub and the interior space of the bathroom-which I show to be a highly symbolic site, charged with meanings. Taking up Gayatri Spivak's characterization of suicidal resistance as an impossible message inscribed on the body, I show that Sembène figures Diouana's suicide in the bath not only as a watery death, but also as a writerly one. I argue, moreover, that the bath manages to distill a racialized discourse on hygiene while presenting Diouana's death as occurring at the intersection of two models of neoslavery. © 2020, Indiana University. All rights reserved.

Language: en