Hyenas in the Enchanted Brothel: "The Naked Truth" in Djibril Diop Mambéty

This article examines how the revolutionary African cinema of Djibril Diop Mambéty reconceptualizes what is conventionally termed sexuality, pleasure, or eroticism, under colonialism and neocolonialism. Critically, it argues against puritanical interpretations of continental film work and for an anti-imperialist black body politics freed from puritanical imperialism or its project of dominating desire of all kinds. In particular, it demonstrates how Mambéty's magna opera, Touki-Bouki and Hyènes, expose and resist what Frantz Fanon called "the naked truth" of colonization, or the capitalist empire of the West, toward an ecstatic politics of pan-African revolution.