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Reframing Vernacular Culture on Arabic Fault Lines: Bamba, Senghor, and Sembene's Translingual Legacies in French West Africa

This PMLA cluster invites us to rethink questions of language, script, and literary traditions in a long-historical framework. Several other essays here address the inter-imperial dynamics accompanying the rise of Arabic from a localized dialect to a transregional language with a religious valence. My contribution considers the legacy of the Arabic language in the twentieth-century sub-Saharan West African context, in its contact with Senegalese vernaculars and with French as an imperial challenger. It further explores the broader implications of retracing the longue durée history of Arabic-script vernaculars for comparative work in postcolonial studies.