Djibril Diop Mambéty's Decolonial Existentialism: Sartrean Praxis and the Critique of Bad Faith Humanism

This article argues that Jean-Paul Sartre's writings on existentialism and political praxis illuminate the critical decolonial work of Djibril Diop Mambéty's cinema. The article analyses Touki Bouki (1973), Hyenas (1992), Le Franc (1994) and The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun (1999) in terms of Sartre's notions of bad faith, praxis and his critique of bourgeois humanism. This Sartrean reading of Mambéty's cinema foregrounds the relevance of the philosopher's thinking for decolonial film analysis. In drawing out the existentialist dimensions of Mambéty's film-philosophy, the article links the filmmaker's critiques of neocoloniality and universal humanism to adjacent conversations in Africana existentialism and Black studies.