13 NOVEMBRE - Séance 6 - Radio, infrastructures et la création de publics

SEANCE EXCEPTIONNELLE en présence d'AÏSSATOU MBODJ-POUYE, directrice de recherche au CNRS et directrice de l'Institut des mondes africains (IMAF), et de DINA LIGAGA, Associate Professor à l'Université de Witwatersrand (Afrique du Sud) et chercheure invitée à l'EHESS et à l'IMAF (voir leurs profils ici: https://imaf.cnrs.fr/spip.php?article111 et ici: https://www.wits.ac.za/people/academic-a-z-listing/l/dinaligagawitsacza/ )

Dina Ligaga nous présentera ses recherches sous la forme d'une communication intitulée "Radio and the formation of African listenerships" vous trouverez un résumé ci-dessous: 

The 1940s marked an important turning point in the way that radio was conceived of in Africa. Scholarship emphasizes the significance of African voices in the formation of black publics. Liz Gunner (2019), Thokozani Mhlambi (2019) and Sekibakiba Lekgoathi (2009) writing on South African radio, speak of the significance of hearing an African announcer speaking in an African language on intended audiences. Black listeners congregated around radio sets not merely for content, but also because they identified with the language and speakers. K.E. Masinga’s first Zulu broadcast in 1941 is identified as having created the first connection between the colonial and the African world in South Africa (Gunner 2019; Mhlambi 2019). The African voice eventually brought together what Gunner terms ‘the black modern’, a transnational ensemble of black publics brought together through similarities of experiences particularly under oppressive conditions (Gunner 2019). In addition, as Lekgoathi argues, there was a chance to gather culturally relevant and grounded knowledge through languages and programming such as radio drama (2009, 577). In Kenya, the 1940s were equally significant for the growth of African language radio, albeit along a different trajectory. While Masinga’s voice grew in significance in South Africa, African presenters in Kenya remained marginalized and heavily surveilled. In this paper, I think about the idea of a local African listenership, and contemplate a method of mapping these listenership, particularly in a content where the archive does not easily yield the information. I argue that Africans as a listenership inhabited the broadcasting space in peripheral but interesting ways. They were referenced in memoranda and letters exchanged between colonial officers; brought to life through address and often spoken about in paternalistic terms. 

Lecture obligatoire: A VENIR

Lectures complémentaires:

• Mbodj-Pouye Aïssatou, 'Radio and the road: infrastructure, mobility and political change in the beginnings of Radio rurale de Kayes (1980-early 2000s), The Journal of African History, 62.1 (2021): 125–149.
• Anwar, M. A. (2025). Worker power in self-organised networks: Algorithmic management, solidarity and resistance on platforms. Platforms & Society, 2. https://doi.org/10.1177/29768624251369063 (Original work published 2025)
• de Seta, G., Pohjonen, M., & Knuutila, A. (2024). Synthetic ethnography: Field devices for the qualitative study of generative models. Big Data & Society, 11(4), Article 20539517241303126. https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517241303126
• Jedlowski, Alessandro.« Afriques audiovisuelles : appréhender les transformations contemporaines au prisme du capitalisme global ». Politique africaine, 2019/1 n° 153, 2019. p.7-27.

• Arthur Asseraf. Electric News in Colonial Algeria. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2019.

• Hajer ben Boubaker, 'Le Maghreb des ondes: un enjeu colonial', France Culture, LSD, 8 épisodes, 2024: https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceculture/podcasts/serie-le-maghreb-des-ondes-un-enjeu-colonial#concept-about 
• Summers Carol, (2015). Slander, Buzz and Spin: Telegrams, politics and global communications in the Uganda Protectorate, 1945–55. Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History. 16. 
• Moorman, Marissa J. Powerful Frequencies: Radio, State Power, and the Cold War in Angola, 1931–2002. 1st ed., Ohio University Press, 2019.
• Brennan James, 'Radio Cairo and the Decolonizationof East Africa, 1953-1964', in Christopher Lee (ed.), Making a World after Empire: The Bandung Moment and Its Political Afterlives,  Athens, Ohio UP, pp. 173-195.
• Scales, Rebecca P. “Dangerous Airwaves: Propaganda, Surveillance, and the Politics of Listening in French Colonial Algeria.” Radio and the Politics of Sound in Interwar France, 1921–1939. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. 207–257.
• Grabli, Charlotte.« La ville des auditeurs : radio, rumba congolaise et droit à la ville dans la cité indigène de Léopoldville (1949-1960) ». Cahiers d'études africaines,2019/1 n° 233, 2019. p.9-45.