Naturalism and Temporality in Ousmane Sembène's Xala

The article analyzes and discusses Ousmane Sembène's Xala, a satirical novel that ruthlessly exposes the many obstacles littered along Senegal's path towards an independent identity. Focusing on the novel's inspiration from Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, as well as—more indirectly—Georg Lukács's critique of naturalism, the article argues that Xala's literary form explores the links between ideologically disjointed temporal and spatial dimensions, which can only be re-connected negatively, through a principle embodied symbolically in the figure of the xala (meaning the curse of impotence). By bringing together different, and mutually exclusive, dimensions, the literary form of Xala traces the underlying causes and effects of neocolonialism a decade after Senegal gained independence.