Sonic Space in Djibril Diop Mambety's Films by Vlad Dima (review)

In Sonic Space in Djibril Diop Mambety's Films, Vlad Dima considers the role that sound plays in constructing narrative planes throughout the oeuvre of the Senegalese filmmaker. Dima holds that Mambety's thoughtful use of sound develops currents of storytelling that surround and advance that of the moving picture. For Dima, "[sound] is Mambety's prized instrument and the tool that allows him to introduce the audience to an entirely new scale of stories" (p. 1). Throughout the volume, the author contends that the elements of the soundtrack—speech and effects as well as music—negotiate the sonic space in order to engage in the narratives of postcolonial Senegal. In this pursuit, Dima draws parallels between West Africa's tradition of oral storytelling and the elevated position of sound in Mambety's films, writing that "sound subverts the narrative primacy of the visual and takes its place as the primary narrative venue" (p. 77). Dima appropriately places Mambety's films within their socio-historical context in which the specters of Western colonialism, slavery, and imperialism persist. We are led to find this tension between the First and Third Worlds (and their respective cinematic traditions) embodied in the counterpoint between sound and image. To this end, the author demonstrates a firm grasp of the relevant philosophical, psychoanalytic, and film scholarships. While its ambitious scope is occasionally disorienting, this volume is a successful interdisciplinary study of sound and narrative in Mambety's filmmaking.

The book begins with a substantial introduction that provides a thematic framework for analyzing Mambety's films. Dima situates the filmmaker's work within the context of postcolonial West Africa while simultaneously threading an intertextual narrative throughout the oeuvre. The films do not exist in isolation; instead, themes, characters, actors, images, and sounds recur and seem to speak backward and forward through the chronology of his filmmaking. Dima reserves an inclusive space for studying film sound. In addition to the diegetic (inside the primary narrative) and nondiegetic (outside the primary narrative) spaces, he dedicates considerable time to analyzing the sounds that occupy the uncertain, liminal areas. This "fantastical gap" (p. 30, quoting Robin J. Stilwell, "The Fantastical Gap between Diegetic and Nondiegetic," in Beyond the Soundtrack; Representing Music in Cinema, ed. Daniel Goldmark, Lawrence Kramer, and Richard Leppert [Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007], 186) produces new strands of narrative discourse.

Within the introduction, Dima develops the concept of the "acousmatic panopticon" (p. 34) to explain the ways in which vestiges of Western hegemony persist in Dakar and throughout Senegal. (The term blends Michel Chion's acousmêtre—the disembodied, all-powerful voice—and Michel Foucault's panopticon—the controlling, all-seeing watchman.) The acousmatic panopticon takes on many forms throughout Mambety's films, including loudspeakers, sirens, radios, and even the French dialect spoken within Dakar. Dima returns to this several times throughout the text to describe how power is negotiated in postcolonial spaces. This first section concludes by outlining the structure of the remaining chapters. Each addresses one or two of the Mambety's films and specific issues of film sound and narrative, including diegetic and nondiegetic spaces, geography, fantasy, trauma, and voice.

Chapter 1 examines the aural space in Mambety's third film, Touki Bouki (1973). Dima holds this film up as the "aesthetic and thematic lynchpin" of the filmmaker's oeuvre (p. 41). Its signature treatment of the image is a marked departure from the standards of contemporary African film. The rhythm of the image is often quick, disorienting, and even alienating. Shots frequently concede spatial continuity to embrace thematic counterpoint. This is demonstrated in the opening sequence, which jumps back and forth between the tranquility of the sub-Saharan plains and the interior of a slaughterhouse. The contrast is jarring and forms a compelling dialectic. We further learn of Mambety's aesthetic within the...