Islamic incursions into West Africa: Sembene's 'Ceddo' and Conde's Segu
Title:
Islamic incursions into West Africa: Sembene's 'Ceddo' and Conde's Segu
Author:
McCormick, Robert H.
Appeared in:
African and Black Diaspora
Paging:
Volume 1 (2008) nr. 1 pages 111-116
Year:
2008-01
Contents:
The article contrasts two visions of Islamic incursion into western Africa and the resultant tension between the indigenous population and Muslims. Ousmane Sembene's 'Ceddo' depicts, cinematographically, the resistance of indigenous Ceddos in their attempt to maintain their animist autonomy against the forceful imposition of Islam in their rural community. Maryse Conde, in Segu, shows the gradual imposition of expansionist Islam on the Bambara, riddled themselves by internal dissent and weakened by slavery as well as by the diverse attractions, literacy and architecture, of Islam. In his film of the late 1970s, Sembene incarnates the resistance in a young Ceddo princess. In her Segu, the first volume of which was published in 1984, Conde charts a weak-spirited, ineffective resistance that is presented as an initial stage of the decline of the civilization that had impressed Mungo Park, during his first visit to Africa, and continues all the way to the alleged socialism of Sekou Toure.
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