The Relational Politics of Media Culture in the Age of Post–Third Cinema

This essay reframes African cinema and discusses it along the lines of a philosophy of relationality. This approach not only aligns questions of aesthetics inextricably with questions of politics, but allows us to differentiate a complex epistemology within the realm of the aesthetic itself. It argues against an ideological fixation of fundamental difference, as between Africa and the rest of the world, therefore eschewing Third Cinema’s protocol of didacticism and realism. Instead, with Post–Third Cinema, an aesthetic of sensible intensities comes into focus, leaving the fixed place reserved to the category of African cinema by essentialist thought and moving toward a universal understanding of cinematography in the age of global media culture.