Dalia Hatalova Blog Post #6/15

I was reminded of Ousmane Sembène's film Moolaadé from 2004 while reading Lisa Parks' article on infrastructure in Zambia. While Moolaadé takes place in Senegal, it describes issues of female genital mutilation, a prevalent practice throughout Africa. More importantly, a central premise of the film is tying women's emancipation from the practice to listening to the radio. The limitations on access are equated with patriarchy when the men gather the women's radios as punishment. A final sequence parallels the men's burning of the women's radios with the women rising up together in a display (1:48:00). Radio and television are positioned by Sembène as a key toward cultural progress. 

Parks observes of the women she spoke with in Zambia, "the women's responses represented a gendering of the global digital divide, suggesting that rural Zambian women are geographically, socially, and economically positioned in ways that inhibit their capacity to learn computing and access the Internet, even though their labor and daily living routines (carrying water, farming, preparing food) may support other's Internet use" (Parks 132). With new technologies, radio and television are increasingly replaced by the broader information infrastructure of the internet. The potential for building feminist movements around global networks appears to be a point of strength. 

In an article for the New York Times during the height of the #MeToo movement, Nicholas Kristof argues for the movement being one that extends beyond national barriers as a global human rights movement. Amongst other cases, he cites the cases of genital mutilation in Africa. Such unity is only possible through internet infrastructures, whereby collectives can jointly organize with others over different geographical locales. However, despite the optimism of such change from my Western perspective, I wonder if it is possible for groups with different issues to find support through something such as #MeToo, which began as a Western movement. Contrarily, incorporating other cultures within the umbrella term may replicate previous effects of colonization, such as missionary work. 

Instead of attempting to organize cultures through internet participation that would utilize a Western framework because of the unfortunately predominantly Western infrastructure (as Parks notes in her article, even the language used online is predominantly English), providing information that will allow for ideas that will be further shaped by communities may be a more fruitful way for the emancipation of women to be enacted. In Moolaadé, it is interestingly the community gathering around the pile of radios in a new spirit of togetherness that becomes the focal point instead of a rescue of the old infrastructure or building of new ones. While the information from the radio may spur their knowledge of other women practicing Islam who go on pilgrimages not being cut, it is the internal workings of the community that are paramount in negotiating this information within their own community. While these are complicated culture issues, Sembène's film provides an interesting ground from which to view the intersection of rural communities and technology.