COUNTER-ANTHROPOLOGICAL NARRATIVES: COLONIAL AND POSTCOLONIAL SOCIAL LIFE IN THE LITERATURE AND CINEMA OF SEMBÈNE OUSMANE

Sembène Ousmane’s novels and films interrogate African social life from within, offering a counter-anthropological perspective that challenges both colonial and postcolonial epistemologies. This study analyses works such as God’s Bits of Wood, Xala, Ceddo, Borom Sarret, and Moolaadé to demonstrate how literature and cinema function as instruments of ethical, social, and historical knowledge. Sembène foregrounds agency, relationality, and moral deliberation, showing that communities actively negotiate authority, tradition, and social norms rather than passively embodying them. Women, in particular, emerge as central ethical actors, shaping communal life and challenging patriarchal and colonial misrepresentations. Religious practices are depicted not as static rituals but as dynamic frameworks for ethical reasoning and social cohesion. Through cinematic techniques—close-ups, spatial framing, and ensemble staging— Sembène transforms observation into participation, rendering moral and social agency vividly legible. The study reveals that African societies, as depicted in his oeuvre, are historically conscious, morally reflective, and relationally grounded, contradicting reductive portrayals that dominate colonial anthropology. By synthesising literary analysis, film studies, and social theory, the paper argues that Sembène constructs a methodology for understanding African life from the inside out, where ethical negotiation, communal deliberation, and historical awareness converge. Ultimately, Sembène emerges not merely as a storyteller but as a theorist of social life, whose counteranthropological vision illuminates the moral, social, and relational fabric of postcolonial Africa, offering insights that are both urgent and enduring.