Investigating the Coloniality of Film Production: Towards a Structural Approach to Race and Racism
"Enquêter sur la colonialité de la production cinématographique. Pour une approche structurelle de la race et du racisme" with Evé Mayenga
Although race has long been the subject of sociological research and reflection in French-speaking academic circles, it now appears to be emerging as a scientific object of study in its own right. In recent years, amid growing social critiques of racism and the coloniality of knowledge, the number of dissertations, dedicated forums, and specialized publications has increased. The incorporation of racial themes into mainstream academic spaces suggests both the scientific legitimization of race as an object of study and a reconfiguration of the sociological approaches used to examine it. While these themes were introduced into French-language research through a materialist lens, recent studies have increasingly aligned them with constructivist approaches to analyzing power relations. This paper examines the theoretical and political limitations of this shift through research on cultural production. It draws on doctoral research conducted between 2017 and 2022 on a public funding scheme for so-called “diverse” cinema. The research began from the constructivist premise that examining the racialization of populations designated as belonging to “diversity” provides a particularly valuable empirical entry point for analyzing the racial relations that structure the French audiovisual sector. However, this premise did not withstand empirical investigation of “diversity” policies. Although studying processes of racialization made it possible to document manifestations of racism, it proved insufficient over the course of the research to identify their causes and structural mechanisms. In the case of cinema, focusing on the forms of racial othering produced by films, institutions, and industry professionals was not, in itself, enough to grasp the power relations governing the distribution of benefits and professional positions. Who—or what—benefits from the symbolic marginalization of racialized groups and their exclusion from access to the means of production? By reframing the question in these terms, the research revealed the centrality of coloniality to the analysis of the production structures of French cinema.
About the speaker:
Evé Mayenga holds a PhD and teaches political science. His research examines the racial relations that structure intellectual and cultural production. He has conducted several studies on the academic circulation of intersectionality and on “diversity” policies in French cinema. An associate researcher at CESSP and a postdoctoral fellow with the ARCHERIF project at Aix-Marseille University, he is currently preparing his dissertation for publication.
When: October 8, 10:00 AM until 12:00 PM
Where: ULB, building S, 12th floor, room Rokkan or online (Teams)
This seminar will take place in French
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