From Constituency to Fragment: Senegalese métis and originaires as colonial-era communities, élite representations, and the development of africanité

This thesis investigates the cultural histories of two colonial-era communities and their francophone élites from Senegal’s urban Quatre Communes enclaves, in a combined study of their counter-hegemonic activity and published representations. Analysing case-studies and key texts concerning, respectively, dual heritage, Catholic métis, and the partially enfranchised, mostly Muslim originaires, I identify three dynamics in their consolidation and marginalisation between the nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. Embedded in shifts from colonial-era communal to national discourses, these trajectories manifest in public representations by, and published representations of, prominent members.