Teledrumming (1922-1971)

Abstract

Teledrumming (1922-1971) examines the cultural history of Francophone anticolonialism through the lens of media studies and critical theory. I argue that African drumming and women’s labor function as the “media” of anticolonialism in the French empire. My analysis centers on an object called the “tam-tam,” which refers to African drums as both musical instrument and communication technology. Since antiquity, people in West and Central Africa have used drums to “talk” across long distances, much like telephones. I use the term “teledrumming” to name this mediatic process instantiated by African drums. From the Haitian Revolution onwards, anticolonial groups have consistently used teledrumming to send out a “call” for revolution, beckoning colonial subjects to rise against their domination. Focusing on the twentieth century, this dissertation examines how both original and remediated forms of teledrumming structure anticolonialism. Teledrumming, I argue, is entangled with women’s labor: the tam-tam’s call is inseparable from women’s song, performance, and invisible work. Chapter 1, “Racial Melancholia,” studies the works of André Gide, Marc Allégret, and Joséphine Baker. I argue that drumming and women’s performances melancholically resist the white French psyche, as in Baker’s 1935 film Princesse Tam-Tam. Chapter 2, “Fellow Drummers,” examines how Négritude men such as Aimé Césaire imitate tam-tam rhythms in their poetry (for example, in “Tam-Tam I”) to create an anticolonial consciousness. At the same time, Négritude women such as Suzanne Césaire invisibly labor to transcribe and publish the men’s poetry. “Tele” and “drumming” thus take starkly gendered, remediated forms for Négritude. Chapter 3, “Interpellation,” studies historical representations of anticolonialism in the works of Ousmane Sembène, Bernard Binlin Dadié, and Ferdinand Oyono. I argue that tam-tams and women’s song interpellate, or produce, anticolonial subjects in 1940s French West Africa. Chapter 4, “Percussive Echoes,” primarily considers the relationship between drumming and women’s ululating song in the Algerian Revolution (1954-1962), with a focus on the works of Frantz Fanon and Gillo Pontecorvo. The central tasks of this dissertation, as such, are to valorize the tam-tam as a sophisticated African technology and to recover the subjectivity of women who have been relegated to techne.