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Full text release has been delayed at the author's request until September 01, 2024

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Visual Culture, Crises Discourse and the Politics of Representation: Alternative Visions of Africa in Film and News Media

Moot, Dennis
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6328-2875
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1596021641358625

Abstract Details

2020, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, Interdisciplinary Arts (Fine Arts).
This dissertation explores the role of African media in shaping Africa’s image through both the analysis of newspapers over the course of the 2014 Ebola crisis and an exploration of African films. This methodology redeploys aspects of Africa’s (in)visibility in global politics and discourse on representation in geopolitics. Placing African film and media organizations at the center of analysis in this study is vital, as they add diversity of voices to the conversation about Africa’s image in the media. The dissertation looks at how Africa is framed as perpetually “in crisis.” Specifically, the research engages analysis of African film and media depictions under the premise of crises to advance Africa’s visual culture and representation. I am interested in exploring how coverage of the 2014 Ebola outbreak in The Inquirer, a major English newspaper in Liberia, compares with that in the New York Times coverage of the 2014 Ebola outbreak. Likewise, I explore how African cinema frames and represents crisis through three films – Xala (Ousmane Sembene, 1975); Pumzi (Wanuri Kahiu, 2009); and Les Saignantes (Jean-Pierre Bekolo, 2005). I argue that African films speak to the possibility of positive anticipated outcomes ignored by western scholars, and, therefore, possess the agency to decolonize minds. For instance, Pumzi and Les Saignantes offer an outlook on Africa’s challenges and possibilities through newly imagined futures. Precisely, the selected films first address Africa’s crisis in relation to the political, economic, and environmental struggle as well as gender discourses and, second, offer a prescription of development and progress. How do African filmmakers and media personnel, through their various creative works, reconstruct Africa’s global identity? Finally, I advance that this research gives voice to how Africa frames crisis. This dissertation interrogates an unbalanced global power structure that has been typically Eurocentric. Taking an opposing position, this project foregrounds Africa’s representation of crisis from an African-based perspective. The academic discourse of this dissertation is situated within several disciplines: African Media studies, Cultural Studies, African Film Studies, and Visual and Popular Culture. These disciplines intersect within the ideological debates about Africa’s politicized representations, usually from a postcolonial standpoint, to redefine and reconstruct cultural misrepresentations. The dissertation concludes that though Western media continues to negatively frame Africa as a place of unending crisis, Africa’s media, scholars and journalists are taking equal ownership of its crises and reshaping the continent’s image in the global scene. It confirms that Africa’s media such as the selected films and new media that are analyzed in this study, portray Africa in a way that corrects misconceptions and reshapes the continent's identity for the rest of the world.
Andrea Frohne (Committee Chair)
Erin Schlumpf (Committee Co-Chair)
Steve Howard (Committee Member)
Ghirmai Negash (Committee Member)
211 p.
African History; African Literature; African Studies; Art Criticism; Art Education; Art History; Communication; Comparative Literature; Mass Communications; Mass Media
African Media; African Cinema; Identity Formation; Ebola; Crisis; African Films; Xala; Pumzi; Les Saignantes; Representation; Media Studies; Cultural Studies; Film Studies; Visual Culture; Postcolonial Identity; The Inquirer; New York Times

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Moot, D. (2020). Visual Culture, Crises Discourse and the Politics of Representation: Alternative Visions of Africa in Film and News Media [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1596021641358625

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Moot, Dennis. Visual Culture, Crises Discourse and the Politics of Representation: Alternative Visions of Africa in Film and News Media. 2020. Ohio University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1596021641358625.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Moot, Dennis. "Visual Culture, Crises Discourse and the Politics of Representation: Alternative Visions of Africa in Film and News Media." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio University, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1596021641358625

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

ohiou1596021641358625
© 2020, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Ohio University and OhioLINK.