This is a great loss indeed to African arts and literature. I was first 
inspired to write by Sembene's "Tribal Scars." I remember how I was so much 
in love with his short story in that collection "Love in Sandy Lane" and how 
it inspired me to write a story of forbidden love whose title now completely 
escapes me. I was about twelve at the time. May his soul rest in perfect 
peace.

Baba


>From: BASS DRAMMEH <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Gambia and related-issues mailing list              
><[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: A Giant Of African Letters And Film ,Sembene Ousmane,Has Died At 
>The Age Of 84 In His Native Senegal
>Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2007 23:36:44 +0100
>
>Ousmane Sembene
>
>
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>As far as I am concerned, I no longer support notions of purity.
>Purity has become
>a thing of the past. . . I constantly question myself. I am neither
>looking for a school
>nor for a solution but asking questions and making others think. (qtd.
>in Niang 176)
>
>Biography
>
>Born on 1 January 1923 in Ziguinchor, Senegal, Ousmane Sembene is
>assuredly one of the most prominent figures in African film and
>literature. Yet little in his early experience seemed to predispose
>him to a career not only as a major literary figure but also as a
>literary figure, tout court. Primarily self-taught, Sembene has been
>exposed to various experiences and situations that have very often
>turned out to reverberate in his work. As early as the age of 15, he
>started earning his living as a fisherman. Beside working as a
>fisherman, Sembene has also served as a bricklayer, a plumber, an
>apprentice mechanic, a dock worker and a trade unionist -- jobs which
>many people may view as incongruent with, or even unlikely to be
>conducive to, the stimulation of literary talents. But it is this very
>experience which, paradoxically or not, greatly contributed in shaping
>Sembene as the great writer and filmmaker he has become. In this
>respect, Ousmane maintains that his education was a result of a
>training he received in "the University of Life" (qtd. in Amuta 137).
>
>After World War II broke out, Sembene was drafted into the French
>army. He returned to Senegal after the war, but went back to France to
>work in the docks of Marseilles where he became a trade union activist
>and joined the French Communist Party until the independence of
>Senegal in 1960.
>
>
>
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Sembene's Literary and Filmic Aesthetics
>
>In order to do justice to Sembene's work, one has to put it in a
>context where art serves as a creative medium that is primarily imbued
>with a functional aesthetics. As he spans over the experience of his
>people and evaluates its sociocultural values, Sembene uses an
>aesthetics that is largely explainable through consideration of the
>cultural setting to which his work refers. Thus, being very much
>concerned about the uplifting of the living condition of the exploited
>classes, Sembene sees to it that his language remained accessible to
>them. Stylistically, Sembene's incredible gift as a storyteller is
>often translated into his work by smooth and easy shifts between the
>use of standard French and local colloquialisms. It is perhaps this
>concern for having his work accessible to those who constitute the
>primary subjects of his artistic endeavors that motivates his deep
>interest in the visual and the performative. As an artist interested
>in carrying his message through to the socially underprivileged
>masses, a choice can hardly be more felicitous than this, given the
>high illiteracy rate in a country like Senegal.
>
>
>
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>The Writer as Social Critic
>
>Sembene's novelistic debut, Le docker noir, largely mirrors his own
>personal experience as a docker in Marseilles. Since the publication
>of his first novel, he wrote numerous other books and films which in
>one way or another reflect his committed position as a writer or a
>filmmaker. In these works his main preoccupation is to critically
>assume his social responsibility as a critic who refuses to stand by
>as a passive observer while social injustice in post-colonial Africa
>takes on increasingly alarming proportions everyday. The nexus of
>Sembene's literary and filmic work is generally a critique of the
>conflictual relationships between the colonizer and the colonized, the
>state and the people, men and women, the rich and the poor, and the
>elders and the youth. In sum, his concerns are directed to universal
>issues involving tensions that are created by power relations.
>Sembene's depiction of the pervasive tensions between the different
>existential poles that he examines is generally carried out from a
>perspective which ultimately reveals a viewpoint that is both
>favorable to the victims and expressive of a counter-hegemonic voice.
>In this respect, Sembene's work constitutes a revolutionary crusade
>aimed at exposing a certain system that maintains exploitation --
>whether such a system is inherited from African traditions or acquired
>as a legacy of the colonial encounter between Africa and Europe. Such
>a crusade may be viewed in terms of the writer's commitment to stand
>as a genuine griot for his people. As Sembene himself argues, the
>artist should serve as a spokesperson for his/her people, expressing
>the latter's aspirations and fears, and serving as a reflective mirror
>for their experience: "The artist must in many ways be the mouth and
>the ears of his people. In the modern sense, this corresponds to the
>role of the griot in traditional African culture. The artist is like a
>mirror. His work reflects and synthesizes the problems, the struggles,
>and hopes of his people" (qtd. in Pfaff 29).
>
>Naturally, Sembene's artistic engagement is first and foremost a
>political engagement through which the artist can hardly address
>social reality in ways other than political. Such a role as assigned
>to the artist brings to mind Frederic Jameson's argument that the
>intellectual in the Third-World is one that is "always in one way or
>another a political intellectual" whose agenda is dictated by the
>experience of his/her people (74).
>
>In Sembene's books as well as in his films, political engagement is
>often launched from a materialist perspective. Already in one of his
>early novels, God's Bits of Wood -- inspired by the historic strike
>observed by the workers on the Dakar-Niger railway -- Ousmane Sembene
>announces one of the focal trajectories (the interplay between
>political, social, and economic factors) that will later run through
>his entire work. In this regard, and referring to God's Bits of Wood,
>Chidi Amuta rightly maintains that Ousmane puts "a heavy accent on
>economic exploitation and physical violence in the novel. But he
>predicates this perception on an ideological perspective that firmly
>recognizes cultural and institutional practices as contingent on
>economic realities" (138). One may arguably contend that in its early
>stage the bulk of Sembene's critique was directed against colonial
>abuse of power and the concomitant "effects of the colonial experience
>on the cultural values and institutional structures of his referent
>society" (Amuta 138).  His later critical reflection, however,
>generally tends to denounce the perpetration of injustice and the
>maintenance of an exploitative status quo by privileged classes at
>home.
>
>Many observers believe that the vast majority of African post-colonial
>states have failed to meet many -- if not most -- of the expectations
>that their people initially associated with independence from European
>colonial rule. And relatedly, for many African people the formal end
>of colonial rule did not produce an end to social injustice and
>drastic economic imbalance. In this context, one may easily understand
>why Ousmane's work continues to be dominated by a desire to spell out
>what he thinks has been going wrong with his society. Thus, he yields
>to a critical examination of post-colonial African societies without
>seeking neither to embellish nor to discredit them, but to simply
>depict a reality in which the intervention of the critic comes as an
>attempt to objectively consider issues that are of critical importance
>to contemporary African societies. In an interview with FranÁoise
>Pfaff, Sembene made his position clear when he argued that "I have
>never tried to please my audience through the embellishment of
>reality. I am a participant and an observer of my society" (40).
>
>Indeed, as "a participant and an observer" of his society, Sembene
>strives (as he recommends young African filmmakers to do the same) to
>"give voice to . . . [the] inner screams" of his people (Niang &
>Gadjigo 177). Yet even if he maintains that he is "neither looking for
>a school nor for a solution," his work elicits a tremendous complex of
>issues that he does not just address. Indeed, the ways in which
>Ousmane Sembene examines the political and socio-economic spectrum
>that is under scrutiny in his work reveal, if nothing else, that at
>least awareness of social injustice can be gained through reading his
>books or watching his films. If ultimately this unasserted goal is
>achieved, then Sembene's work will have undoubtedly managed to create
>a highly needed revolution in the beliefs and behaviors of his
>primarily targeted audience. If that happens, he will have managed to
>contribute to the conscientious creation in his readers of a
>consciousness that strives for the establishment of more equity and
>justice, despite his resistance to appear prescriptive (KassÈ and
>Ridehalgh 191, my translation).
>
>
>
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Works by Sembene
>
>Primary Works
>
>Le docker noir. Paris: Nouvelles …ditions Debresse, 1956. Published in
>English as The Black Docker.
>
>O Pays, mon beau peuple! Paris: Le Livre Contemporain, 1957.
>
>Les bouts de bois de dieu. Paris: Le Livre Contemporain, 1960.
>Published in English as  God's Bits of Wood.
>
>Voltaoque. Paris: PrÈsence Africaine, 1962. Published in English as
>Tribal Scars and Other Stories.
>
>L'Harmattan. Paris: PresÈnce Africaine, 1964.
>
>Véhi-Ciosane ou Blanche Genese, suivi du Mandat. Paris: PrÈsence
>Africaine, 1965. Published in English as The Money Order and White
>Genesis.
>
>Xala. Paris: Présence Africaine, 1974. Published in English as Xala.
>
>Le dernier de l'empire (two volumes). Paris: L'Harmattan, 1981.
>Published in English as The Last of the Empire.
>
>Niiwam suivi de Taaw. Paris: PrÈsence Africaine, 1987. Published in
>English as Niiwam and Taaw.
>
>
>Filmography
>
>[Although Ousmane Sembene has written and directed an impressively
>great number of films, this filmography is limited to a list of what
>may be considered to be some of his major films. What follows is
>therefore not an exhaustive list of his films.]
>
>Borom Sarret (1963). No official English title.
>
>La noire de... (1966). [Black Girl. In French with English subtitles]
>
>Mandabi (1968). [The Money Order. In Wolof and in French. There is
>also a Wolof version with English subtitles]
>
>Taaw (1970). [In Wolof with English subtitles]
>
>Emitai (1971). [God of Thunder. In Diola and French with English 
>subtitles.]
>
>Xala (1974). [In Wolof and French with English subtitles]
>
>Ceddo (1976). [In Wolof with English subtitles]
>
>Camp de Thiaroye (1988). [In Wolof and French with English subtitles]
>
>Guelwaar (1992). [Guelwaar: An African Legend for the 21st Century. In
>Wolof and French with English subtitles]
>
>Photo: From Xala
>
>
>
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Works Cited
>
>Amuta, Chidi. The Theory of African Literature: Implications for a
>Practical Criticism. London: Zed Books LTD, 1989.
>
>Jameson, Frederic. "Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational
>Capitalism." Social Text 15 (1986): 65-88.
>
>Kassé Magueye & Anna Ridehalgh. "Histoire et traditions dans la
>création artisitique: entretien avec Ousmane Sembéne." French Cultural
>Studies.  Vol. 6 (Part 2), no. 17 (June 1995): 179-196.
>
>Niang, Sada & Samba Gadjigo. "Interview with Ousmane Sembene."
>Research in African Literatures 26:3 (Fall 1995): 174-178.
>
>Pfaff, Françoise. The Cinema of Ousmane Sembene: A Pioneer of African
>Film. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1984.
>
>
>
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Author: Serigne Ndiaye, Fall 1998
>
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