Spaces of Protest: Seydina Issa Sow's Campus Graphic Novel Sidy

ABSTRACT

Seydina Issa Sow's comic Sidy (2019) depicts a young man from the countryside who travels to Dakar, Senegal to study law at Université Cheikh Anta Diop (UCAD). When the eponymous character arrives, he is disappointed to find overcrowded dormitories and lecture halls. As students protest these conditions, Sidy's friend Abdou supports him and leads a fight against injustice. Although protest has been portrayed negatively in earlier comics such as Goorgoorlou and can lead to violence and harm, Sow's text suggests the generative possibilities of protest under certain conditions. In recent decades, scholars have examined UCAD students’ attempts to create spaces of belonging on campus, whether through protest or other means. Sow uses French with occasional Wolof, as well as recognisable campus iconography, to differentiate the university from the rest of the city, thus distinguishing between students and other groups of young people. Shifts in the comic's panel transition strategies indicate that protest can alter students’ relationships to space. This article examines the text's representation of language, iconic structures, and movement through campus and urban locations to insist that protest creates productive but limited spaces of inclusion.

KEYWORDS:

• Comics
• Senegal
• youth protest
• university students
• campus
• Dakar

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the West African Research Center (WARC) in Dakar, Senegal, with which I was affiliated during the time I engaged in research for this project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Goorgoorlou by Alphonse Mendy, alias T. T. Fons, was so popular as to be made into a successful television programme in the early 2000s. Mendy started publishing Goorgoorlou as individual comic strips in Le Cafard Libéré (The Liberated Cockroach) in 1987 and printed the pages in collected volumes through his own publishing house in the 2000s (Wallin Wictorin 2015, 251; Seck 2018, 263).

2 I use the term “comic” to refer to a narrative expressed through juxtaposed panels in sequence that combine image and text to create meaning. In French-speaking contexts, the term bande dessinée (BD) is generally used to refer to this kind of work. I favour “comics” because I am writing in English and because Sow's influences include a variety of traditions not exclusive to Franco-Belgian BD. Both comics and BD as forms are defined in numerous ways by different scholars (Groensteen 2007, 10–11; Miller 2007, 15–16; McCloud 1994, 4–9).

3 I differentiate between public universities such as UCAD and private universities, of which there are several in Dakar. Private universities have a different student body and relationship to the state than do public institutions (Zeilig and Ansell 2008, 19–20).

4 From 1957 to 1987, the campus was known as the University of Dakar. It was renamed Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar in 1987 (Bathily, Diouf, and Mbodj 1995, 375; Camara and Bodian 2016, 381).

5 Set/Setal, which means “Be Clean/Make Clean” in Wolof, was the youth-led political movement of the late 1980s involved in cleaning Dakarois neighbourhoods (Diouf 1992, 46; Diouf 1996, 243; Fredericks 2018, 100).

6 Y’en a marre (“We’re Fed Up”) is a youth movement centred around rap group Keur Gui. In 2011, the movement spearheaded demands for an end to Abdoulaye Wade's presidency, contributing to Wade's defeat by Macky Sall in 2012 (Fredericks 2014; Touré 2017; Appert 2018).

7 An année blanche (lost year) is the term for an academic year that has been so disrupted by protest or other events that student learning is unrecoverable, and all public students nationally must repeat their year of study.

8 The student amicale (association) is the officially recognised student organisation; it was reinstated in 2012 (Stafford 2016, 77). Camara and Bodian (2016) provide further details about the UCAD amicale.

9 In some examples, this violence has been committed at the behest of the ruling party (Konings 2002).

10 The version used for this research was purchased from Sow at the Foire internationale du livre (International Book Festival), held in Dakar, November 22–23 2019.

11 The Bulle Dakar festival international de la bande dessinée et du dessin de presse (Dakar “Speech Bubble” International Festival of Comics and Newspaper Cartoons) was held for the first time on 1–2 April 2022 and featured numerous Senegalese artists, including both Mendy and Sow. There have not been BD festivals recently in Senegal, so the first edition of this festival speaks to the recent significance of comics as a form. Bumatay (2019) writes that festivals in Côte d’Ivoire and the Congo “serve as havens for artistic freedom and foster trans-African networks” of artists (38). The formation of this festival speaks to the possibility of strengthening similar existing networks in Senegal.

12 There are indeed important ways that UCAD is separate from Dakar. Due to laws protecting academic freedom, public universities in Senegal have broad leverage to govern themselves, and city police cannot usually enter campus (Dia 2015).

13 McLaughlin (2001) similarly indicates that in Boy Dakar, the frame text is entirely in French, while characters’ speech and thoughts “[mirror] the continuum of language varieties found in the urban Senegalese context” (166).

14 There are also examples of cartoons and comics entirely in Wolof, primarily from the 1990s (Cassiau-Haurie 2021). Currently, the cartoonist Odia regularly publishes single-panel political cartoons in the all-Wolof online newspaper Lu Defu Waxu.

15 Literally “fast bus”, these are minibuses for urban transport in Dakar.

16 Here “ci kanam” means “in front of”.

17 The young woman says in Wolof, “I do not share a part in this” and then the equivalent of “I swear” in Wolof followed by “I didn't do anything” in French. All translations of Sidy are my own.

18 For example, a student from the Amicale des étudiants (Student Association) approaches Sidy and provides an ultimately corrupt offer of housing (Sow 2019b, 23). This figure is not connected to Abdou's justice-oriented movement, signalling that there are groups on campus with differing goals.

19 The African Renaissance Monument was built under the presidency of Abdoulaye Wade and is “the most striking of Wade's attempts to mark public space … ” but was ultimately met with criticism and derision because of its cost, use of foreign labour, and culturally inappropriate depiction of the family (Fredericks 2018, under “Infrastructural Fragmentation and Elitism”).

20 COUD stands for Centre des Oeuvres Universitaires de Dakar (Dakar University Services Centre, Camara and Bodian 2016, 387).

21 “Upon entering the interior of the university, the first thing that struck me was the greenery. It was everywhere! / I was proud to walk with my head high the length of this walkway.”

22 Camara and Bodian (2016) focus on the rise of student religious organisations at UCAD given the absence of formal institutional support in recent decades, indicating “a search for a social and psychological safety-net in the face of a precarious situation at the university” (387). Bathily, Diouf, and Mbodj (1995) write about similar student concerns and organisational responses in the late twentieth century (397–399).

23 “Hey, you! Do you know what time it is? It's 8:30 a.m.!”

24 “After class, we hang out on campus. It's an opportunity for us to study and do our homework. Believe me, it is not very convenient!”

25 “We can't concentrate.”

26 “a lively atmosphere prevailed on campus”

27 “a battle … but the war was far from being over … ”

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by an award from the U.S. Fulbright Program, which is sponsored by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, United States Department of State and administered by the Institute of International Education (IIE).