Geustoul: Re-framing dominant narratives into counternarratives through documentary as a decolonial research method

France has held the key to Senegal’s media and representation since colonization (Landau & Kaspin, 2002). Therefore, the messages disseminated through archives of French films, advertisements, cartoons, documentaries and other forms of visual communication, during and after the 250 years of colonization about Senegalese people, their histories, and realities are severely limited by the French lens, colonial agenda and lack of endemic cultural context (Riley, 2010). France’s stronghold on the power to influence media representation and dissemination is an example of the utilization of dominant narratives (Thackway, 2003). The purpose of this dissertation is to explore documentary, within the African cinema tradition, as an academic means of decolonizing what we know about the Senegalese experience and our methods of coming to that knowledge. Additionally, the aim is to analyze the potential effectiveness of African Cinema and documentary film as counter narrative decolonial research methods in key ways: 1) prompting audiences to rethink the relationship between image-text and truth, 2) reframe dominant colonial narratives through a Senegalese context, and 3) decentering the dominance of colonial narratives in media and academia.