Noir in the 1980s and 1990s: Decolonizing ideologies

Abstract

This article discusses the growth of noir in France and the United States of America (USA) in the 1980s and 1990s. Under its various forms such as the polar, the sub-genre embraces a leftist agenda, aiming at exploring the rise of domestic issues such as race, gender discrimination, and poverty to expose the dark side of neoliberalism and its ideologies of equality, prosperity, and justice. A decolonial reading of Didier Daeninckx’s Meurtres pour mémoire (1983), Daniel Pennac’s La petite marchande de prose (1989), and Walter Mosley’s Black Betty (1994) demonstrates how the process of narration and a conscious focus on “decent people” threaten ideologies of nation building, consumerism, and gender/racial equality. Through the works of Walter Mignolo and Achille Mbembé, we aim to show how neoliberal capitalism follows the same pattern of appropriation of resources and bodies that has been in place since the Industrial Revolution. A pattern deconstructed by noir writers with the aim of promoting more humanity.