Modern Media and Culture in Senegal: Speaking Truth to Power

Abstract

Abstract:In a You Tube video, a young man performs a satirical poem about Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade. The author brilliantly sums up Wade's tenure in one minute. He compares the president to “a rat's hole” and makes fun of his physical features while emphasizing many ways in which Wade has failed the nation. Some viewers thought the performance was disrespectful of the president, and others feared for the author's safety. This article argues that although the World Wide Web gives voice to African youth, it can be a dangerous space, especially for artists. The viewers' negative comments and their concern for the author's life is a modern response to his art and a consequence of its presentation on the Internet. If viewed through the lenses of traditional Wolof oral forms, however, the poem's harsh rhetoric takes on less controversial meanings that the viewers did not seem to understand.

The Weightless State

“…APIX's executives are not modern griots, but the ways they approach their work have most certainly been shaped by centuries of praise‐singing, storytelling, oral documentation, and patron‐client relations 13 . Their PowerPoint presentations bear the traces, too, of Wolof‐language theatrical dramas that grapple with social change or historical events (Coulibaly 2019); of long‐standing performative joking practices that both illuminate and maintain social hierarchies between ethnic groups, generational cohorts, or family clans (de Jong 2005; Gueye 2011); and of the marked emphasis placed on “sartorial mastery” as a mode of communication (Mustafa 2001; see also Grabski 2009; Heath 1992) among both women and men. In ways both implicit and explicit, Elhadji and Nafissatou drew on established performative conventions to breathe new substance and weight into the otherwise thinly developed slides.…”

The Origins of Senegalese Homophobia: Discourses on Homosexuals and Transgender People in Colonial and Postcolonial Senegal

“…As many observers have noted, then, homophobic logic involves appeals to both masculinity and morality and, as in Uganda, is used as a tool for diverting public attention from dire social and economic conditions. This has been particularly true during the past decade when the promises of the country’s former president, Abdoulaye Wade (2000‒2011), of better wages, improved living conditions, and freedom were largely unfulfilled (see Gueye 2011:29). A significant part of the country’s desperation was displaced onto homosexuals and transgender people as many Senegalese retreated into antihomosexual moralistic discourses as a means to appease their rage against a regime that had left the country in shambles.…”