{"pk":42996,"title":"Black Atlantic Currents: Mati Diop’s Atlantique and the Field of Transnational American Studies","subtitle":null,"abstract":"This essay reads French-Senegalese director Mati Diop’s 2019 film \nAtlantique,\n \na Senegalese-French-Belgian coproduction, to argue that its oceanic focus gestures at the haunting histories that suture the US and Senegal. \nAtlantique\n, spoken in Wolof, explores global and local class inequalities through a romance narrative that foregrounds the lasting effects of colonialism and economic imperialism on Senegal. Despite this distinct national context, \nAtlantique\n was quickly absorbed into a global media stream, picked up by Netflix and distributed to more than one hundred and sixty-five million subscribers. While \nAtlantique \nappears to tackle the ravages of capitalism on a global scale by highlighting labor migration and the disruptive effects on the women left behind, a close reading of the film reveals a more complicated and transnational story. \nAtlantique \nforces us to also think about the United States. The American continent in the colonial era formed the tragic third corner in the triangular Atlantic economy based on the slave trade. Placing \nAtlantique\n within a Black Atlantic trajectory yields a richer, more politically invested reading of the film that simultaneously helps us to rethink the political work that film can do in a globalized world. In particular, I posit that \nAtlantique\n’s circulation to the US and Europe helps reverse the traditional patterns of flow, North to South, West to East, as such challenging limited understandings of the US's cultural and political ties to Senegal.After a discussion of production and circulation, I therefore turn to a close reading of the film and the paratext surrounding it to proffer a theory of how films like \nAtlantique \ncan help us rethink the potentialities and investments of transnational American Studies as a field.","language":"en","license":{"name":"Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives  4.0","short_name":"CC BY-NC-ND 4.0","text":"Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.\n\nNonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes.\n\nNoDerivatives — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material.\n\nNo additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0"},"keywords":[{"word":"Mati Diop"},{"word":"Senegalese film"},{"word":"class exploitation"},{"word":"djinn"},{"word":"refugees"},{"word":"Transnational American Studies"}],"section":"Articles","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4k3816ts","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Suzanne","middle_name":"Christine","last_name":"Enzerink","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of St. Gallen","department":"None"}],"date_submitted":"2020-03-04T02:35:54-08:00","date_accepted":"2020-03-04T02:35:54-08:00","date_published":"2021-06-27T00:00:00-07:00","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/jtas/article/42996/galley/32046/download/"}]}