Mixing Impossible Genres: David Achkar and African AutoBiographical Documentary

Despite vigorous debate in the second half of the twentieth century about the nature of the autobiographical genre, little critical attention has been paid either to African autobiography or to autobiographical film. Both have instead been dismissed as theoretically impossible for their inability to continue the coherent, individual “I” of the Western autobiographical tradition. This essay responds to such restrictions of the range of autobiography, arguing for a genre with flexible and porous borders and taking as a test case an African autobiographical film, Guinean David Achkar’s 1991 Allah Tantou. Once included rather than excluded, works such as Achkar’s offer new possibilities for the interrelation of autobiography, biography, and history, expanding the boundaries of what has been considered first-person narration.