Drama, Desire, and Debate: Mass-Mediated Subjectivities in Urban Mali

In this article, the author takes the engagement of Malian urbanites with US American soap operas and Brazilian telenovelas as a point of entry into an exploration of the forms of public subjectivity that mass-mediated entertainment culture in Mali creates, and simultaneously presupposes. To that end, she examines the extent to which, and forms in which television intervenes in the daily experiences of different groups of urban consumers, as the principal channel through which particular visions of a modern subject-as-consumer are conveyed, yet also locally rearranged. Moreover, drawing on recent scholarship on the articulation of new media technologies, an expanding commercial entertainment culture, and the work of imagination, she assesses the multi-dimensional opportunities and practices of sense-making that soap operas and telenovelas generate as a specific media genre.