Rethinking the Diaspora through the Legacy of Slavery in Rachid Bouchareb’s Little Senegal

Rachid Bouchareb’s Little Senegal (2001) sheds light on different experiences of African migration, dramatizing the protagonist Alloune’s investigation into the traces of slavery to pinpoint the legacy of forced displacement in the construction of the African diaspora. The film articulates the fantasy of a past through reconstructing Alloune’s genealogical tree, which displays the distance between the African character and his African American counterparts. Bouchareb interrogates the legacy of French colonialism on the postcolonial subject while exposing the limits of the diaspora as a unifying concept among Africans and African Americans.