“Acts” of Disability Politics in Francophone African Literature and Film

As we reflect on the 20th anniversary of the inauguration of the Americans with Disabilities Act, it is clear that the U.S. has had a crucial role in defining not only what constitutes disability rights, but what disability as a category of study means for society, culture, history, economics, politics, etc. Indeed, the ADA served as the source of inspiration for the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Disabled Persons adopted in 2006 and now ratified by 138 countries, including many in sub-Saharan Africa. Not yet ratified by the U.S., the Convention has articulated a broader, more comprehensive vision of disability rights. While the Convention has yet to make marked change—especially in countries with limited resources—its elements seem to have been prefigured by writers, artists, and filmmakers. To be sure, these voices are often the most strident in exposing injustices and calling for change.       As a literary and cultural studies scholar, then, I will look less to the history of disability in Francophone Africa than to the ways in which postcolonial writers and filmmakers have addressed the sociocultural and political treatments of disability and disabled persons in their works. The West African country of Senegal is an ideal case study, given its robust literary and cinematic traditions as well as its privileged relationship with France, its former colonizer. In Senegal in particular, the early postcolonial period hardly marked an abrupt shift away from Western values. Attitudes towards disability, for example, are inextricably linked to conflicting ideas surrounding bodily difference, aesthetics, capitalism, and charity—inherited from the West, from Islam, as well as from local traditions.     To be sure, since the 1970s, there have been numerous Senegalese films and novels that have directly and indirectly critiqued the treatment of disabled persons and/or the health marginalized.