Content area
Abstract
Many scholars, critics and popular culture agree that colonialism has impoverished, marginalized, destabilized and deprived Africa of her voice for years. Africa has been in danger of losing its identity within the global economy by fast internalizing an array of colonial cultural traits. Foreign languages and religious beliefs have fragmented it. Its patriarchal tendencies inherited from colonialism have robbed African women of their voice and dignity. Western consumer culture has lured it away from its value systems. This study set out to demonstrate how African students studying in the West in the 1940's started a systematic process of disengagement from the colonial syndrome; a process which materialized in the acquisition of political independence in the 1960's by many African countries. This study has demonstrated how African writers, political activists and artists and finally African filmmakers continued this process of colonial disengagement by using many channels of expressions, writings and films to articulate the struggles and prospects of the African people. This study examined 14 selected films from the former major colonial blocs of the continent south of the Sahara to examine how foreign religions affected Africans. The study purposely included films from the Mahgreb region because its strong Arab culture requires another vast area of studies. The aim of this study was to answer the following questions: (1a) What is postcolonial theory? (1b) Can postcolonial discourse be an apt channel of expression for the Africans to define themselves? (2) In what ways have foreign religions affected Africans? (3) What are the strategies employed by African women to reclaim their rights and human dignity from the yoke of colonial/neocolonial domination, patriarchy and African tradition? (4) What is African Identity? The work is grounded in postcolonial theory as its analytical tool. Postcolonial discourse, a process of disengagement from the colonial syndrome and of bringing the marginalized to the discursive center as well as an avenue for addressing the global disjunctures, offers Africans ways of looking at the continent's relations with the rest of the world from African perspective. It has helped Africa to speak up; it sees cinema as an important tool of self-definition with roles of men and women bound together in a common destiny for a new Africa.
