ABSTRACT
Theories of the postcolonial condition often emphasize the demand for an epistemological break with the historical, social, and cultural past as a precondition for a political reconstitution of newly independent societies. While some political leaders introduced such a break through introducing the imaginary of a presumed authentic and unique cultural tradition purported to be shared by all Africans (like Senghor’s “negritude”), a more radical break did already occur during the colonial periods through mimetic practices which seemed to achieve a coping with traumata induced through colonial violence. As example, this chapter will use an analysis of Jean Rouch’s documentary Les Maitres Fous (1954) in which a group of West-African migrant laborers seemed to find a cure against the traumata of the colonial oppression and violence through possession rituals.
While this documentary was heatedly discussed for decades, it seems worthwhile to contrast it with a postcolonial production by the “father of African cinema,” Ousmane Sembene who in his film Xala (“The Curse”, 1975) addresses critically the post-independent “imitation” of colonial vices through the new power elite.
It is the contention of the author that there exists a continuity between colonial and postcolonial practices and forms of representation for coping with traumata of violence. The bridge between the two practices enacted in different cinematic genres seems to rest on the notion of the healing powers of the abject body or, in social and collective terms, the curing of traumata for those who Fanon addressed as “the wretched of the earth” through rituals of affliction.
