Living Precariously in the African Postcolony: Debt and Labor Relations in the Films of Mahamat-Saleh Haroun

Abstract

This article argues that Daratt (2006) and Un homme qui crie (2010), two films by Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, direct attention toward globalization processes in the African postcolony at the level of the male subject and body and as iterated through masculine techniques of self. It considers the film Daratt as a cinematic reflection on debt relations, shifting the critical discussion from vengeance in the context of the Chadian civil war and toward the neoliberal governmentalities of debt. The analysis of Un homme qui crie reads the film as a study of the impact of immaterial violence and abstract injury on the life of Adam, the protagonist, who loses his job and psychosocial grounding when the hotel where he works is privatized. Taken together, these films render cinematically the affective atmospheres generated in an African context of debt, normalized warfare, and precarity. Moreover, they give attention to the somatic and social subjectivities of fathers and sons who are shaken by changing configurations of patriarchy, family, and nation.