Atlantics (Atlantique, 2019) is Mati Diop’s first directorial feature film. The story takes place in Dakar in which luxury hotels are being developed for wealthy foreign customers. The Senegalese construction workers are left unpaid for three months and thus decide to migrate to Spain in search of income, but perish at sea, only to return and possess the bodies of the women they left behind. The film never shows their journey or deaths, but rather focuses on the impact on the women, allowing the men to speak back, with the ocean as a regular focal point in the film. The paper will analyse the Gothic nature and texture of the representation of the ocean to show how it decolonises both Gothic narratives through the figure of the zombie as opposed to the ghost and exploitation since the men return to demand their due.
To do so, the paper will deploy Rebecca Duncan’s concept of the decolonial Gothic which offers a “synthesis of perspectives on the Gothic that emphasise the foundational role of capitalism, with those that underscore the master narrative of Enlightenment”. This paper will deploy the concept of the decolonial Gothic to argue that Atlantics’ ocean addresses Senegal’s exploited place in the capitalist global system. The ocean evokes both the transatlantic slave trade and the contemporary inequal flows of capital. As the paper will show, it simultaneously offers the site for resistance since the men returning as zombies can speak back to demand their small share of the capital owed for their labour.
Citation
Bouet, E. (2024, August). Unwavering Decolonial Hauntings in Mati Diop’s Atlantics. Presented at The Flowing Image: The Ocean On-Screen, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK
