Meaninglessness: Time, Rhythm, and the Undead in Postcolonial Cinema

by Vlad Dima

Overview

For too long, the approach to seemingly universal experiences like love, death, and even time in film has been dominated by the Global North. But what if such explorations developed horizontally instead? Drawing from both European and African cultural theorists, including Gilles Deleuze and Wole Soyinka, Vlad Dima invites us to consider what happens to postcolonial African film if we no longer privilege the idea of time. How else might we understand the cinematic image, and how would its meanings change? Meaninglessness: Time, Rhythm, and the Undead in Postcolonial Cinema is a study of meaning and meaninglessness through the figure of the undead, beginning with francophone Africa and extending to postcolonial France. Through the analysis of films like Mati Diop’s Atlantics and Jean-Pierre Bekolo’s Miraculous Weapons, Dima shows how the African cinematic image may produce meaning without any attachment to European time, and how that meaning is connected instead to the philosophy of negritude and to the notion of rhythm. Meaninglessness introduces the concept of the rhythm-sequence as a new way to understand the African moving image.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781611864380
Publisher:	Michigan State University Press
Publication date:	09/01/2022
Series:	African Humanities and the Arts
Pages:	220
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Vlad Dima is a professor of African Cultural Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has published numerous articles, mainly on francophone and French cinemas, but also on francophone literature, comics, American cinema, and television. He is the author of Sonic Space in Djibril Diop Mambety's Films (2017) and The Beautiful Skin: Football, Fantasy, and Cinematic Bodies in Africa (2020).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction xi

Chapter 1 Meaning 1

Chapter 2 Less 41

Chapter 3 Ness 81

Chapter 4 Meaninglessness 115

Conclusion 139

Filmography 143

Notes 145

Bibliography 175

Index 185

Editorial Reviews

Vlad Dima offers an important re-evaluation of the meaning (less-ness) of time in postcolonial cinema through a deep and compelling exploration of the undead from Africa to postcolonial Paris. The book casts a unique light on the entanglement of time, death, and love in a haunting way. So much to take in, not only in the text but also between the lines, or as the author would say, ‘between the shots.’”
—BÉNÉDICTE BOISSERON, professor of Afroamerican and African studies, University of Michigan

From the Publisher