APPROPRIATING EXOTICIST CODES, EXPOSING NEOCOLONIAL AMNESIA IN SUDABEH MORTEZAI’S “JOY”

In my project "Re-imagining Europe in Neocolonial Enslavement Narratives," I examine fictional accounts of human trafficking, particularly those that focus on Black African women who migrate to Europe and end up as sex workers. I introduce the term "neocolonial enslavement narratives" to describe these texts as they depict late twentieth/twenty-first century experiences of enslavement while exposing Europe's ongoing exploitation of its former colonies. Although these texts share a genre lineage with autobiographical slave narratives, which typically focus on U.S. antebellum slavery, they differ due to their fictionalization and contemporary European settings. A key strength of this emerging genre is its challenging of "the powerful narrative of Europe as a colorblind continent," supposedly untouched by the oppressive ideologies it spread globally. By decentering and appropriating the white European gaze, films such as Sudabeh Mortezai's Joy (Austria 2018) contribute to a Black re-imagining of Europe. They also challenge androcentric perspectives in Afropean cultural productions, amplifying the voices of an often-overlooked group within the African diaspora.