Introduction: Alternative Discourse, Meaning-Making, and Shaping of Knowledge

"What interests me is . . . to research films about African history, because our history has been written by others and not by us." That said, Sarah Maldoror positions herself as the rightful author of African history: to visualize an alternative narrative to a so-called official History written by others. Similarly, Safi Faye excavates the history of the village of Fadial as told by the elders, who, in their reinterpretation, their disremembering, "reconstitute a past where there has never been foreign domination and this story is transmitted to the children . . . by refusing a history of foreign domination, they show that they are not slaves, they are not colonized . . . and this is normal, as it is their own history, a history that continues." Hence, she gives voice to the village elders by valorizing an oral history that was often marginalized as a result of colonization. Similarly, the women featured in this section engage in a project of articulating alternative discourses on African knowledge production, reinterpreted through African womens' voices.