Can the Subaltern Stream?: Trauma, Intersectionality, and Netflix

Abstract

My article examines the ways in which colonial history intersects with manifestations of subjective and narrative memory in the present. I discuss two Netflix original series to trace the development of contemporary responses to intergenerational, intersectional trauma. Hugo Blick’s Black Earth Rising depicts a Rwanda living under the dominion of both external and internal responses to its historical trauma: the corrupt domestic politics of a remade republic confront the power of organizations that erase the details of a past fraught with complexity, while courting a global public’s approval. In Lupin, director George Kay uses the character of Assane Diop to explore the lingering effects of explicitly colonial trauma, and the many-layered ways it continues to play out in racial politics and social divisions – while having recourse to a well-known figure from French popular literature of a different age. Along with a study of the series’ focus on time, memory, and trauma, I address the remaining problematic politics of streaming itself, which – even while claiming to delve into the wrongs wrought by colonial powers upon the developing world – nonetheless prioritizes narratives from the global North in its representation of developing nations, even to the point of limiting those nations’ access to the streaming platforms that claim to offer them global visibility.