Subproject C06: Streaming Series: Spatial Stories and the Production Regimes of Afronovelas
SFB 1265 Re-Figuration of Spaces – Technical University of Berlin
Duration: 2022–2025
This subproject focuses on the production of spatial stories in pop culture, using streaming series as an example. In recent decades, series have become powerful mass media offerings with a wide reach. They tell stories about, in and through the world, contributing to the formation of collective spatial stories and conveying interpretations of current spatial change. Through the analysis of Afronovelas, the subproject examines spatial stories of West African (upper) middle classes, which show (previously little-studied) projections of a successful life and their everyday spaces in a West African metropolis.
This is done not only through film analysis, but also through spatial and cultural sociology, by examining the spatial stories in the context of their production regimes. The West African series landscape, which is currently undergoing radical change, is home to three competing production regimes as our research has shown: The first is a remnant of the colonial era and follows the model of international cooperation under the auspices of France; the second is the product of a growing regionalisation dynamic that is leading to the emergence of a West African private-sector audiovisual production industry; the third is driven by the emerging platform economy and produces translocal co-productions of series. The question was, on the one hand, whether and, if so, how the production of fictional cinematic spaces differs between the production regimes and, on the other hand, whether a tension can be observed here between spatial stories of refiguration and refigured production conditions.
These three production regimes can be read as spatial figurations, whose points of contact and overlaps have been the focus of the analysis. They are each paradigmatic for a refigured order and, by addressing two significant major social challenges of recent decades, namely decolonisation and mediatisation, are particularly insightful for research into the refiguration of spaces. In order to find answers to these questions, the subproject has pursued a multimodal qualitative research approach that includes a series analysis of three West African Afronovelas, a focused ethnographic study of the production of fictional spaces on the series set, and an institutional mapping of the three production regimes.
Publications:
• Dibinga, D. (2024) „La décolonisation spatiale dans les séries sénégalaises : l’exemple de Karma“, in: Modern & Contemporary France, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/09639489.2024.2411232
• Dibinga, D. (2025) „Mise en espace des séries de qualité. L’exemple des coproductions Canal+ et Plan A en Côte d’Ivoire“, in: Akofena Abidjan, n° 15. https://doi.org/10.48734/akofena.n015.vol.6.15.2025
• Marguin, S. and Dibinga, D. (2025) „Conflicts on modernities. The spaces of health care in French Speaking West African popular culture“. In: Knoblauch, H., Pfetsch, B. & Sommer, V. (Eds.), Conflicts in Space – Spatial Conflicts. Current Research Perspectives, Routledge London (S. 71-94), https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003542810-5
• Marguin, S. and Dibinga D. (2025) „Refiguring the Production Regime of Soap-Operas. The Case of Afronovelas in francophone West Africa“, in: Space & Culture, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/12063312251363098
• Marguin, S. and Dibinga D. (2025) „Stereotypical Home Making. Deconstructing the Production of Spatial Stories in West-African Afronovelas“, in: Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies (accepted, to be published in 2025)
• Dibinga, D. (2025). Spatialisation de l’imaginaire urbain ouest-africain francophone à travers les familles et corps multiples dans les séries Karma et Cacao. In M. Diouf (Hrsg.), Geocriticism of Francophone Literary and Artistic Spaces. Presses Universitaires de Limoges. (accepted, to be published in 2025)
Project Team
Dr. Séverine Marguin
PhD candidate: Daddy Dibinga
Student Assistant: Inès Gartlinger, Mara Oppermann
Further information: https://www.sfb1265.de/projekte/geplante-teilprojekte-fuer-die-beantragte-zweite-foerderphase-2022-2025/