Joseph Gaï Ramaka's Karmen Geï and Female Subjectivity in the African Urban Landscape

Filmed in Senegal in 2001, Karmen Geï reinvents from the city's margins an unyielding female presence, pits it against a more subdued masculinity, and shakes up the cultural foundations of a society steeped in patriarchal validations. Karmen's unprecedented individuality is analyzed alongside the differing attitudes of other women to bring out the dynamics of female subjectivity in the African urban space. Taking the Senegalese cultural framework as emblematic of the larger African sociopolitical space, this essay examines the urban female as the embodiment of the evolving realities of a continent caught between individual freedom(s) and its stifling traditions.