Dakar Wolof and the Configuration of an Urban Identity

The turbulent period of political and social unrest at the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s in Senegal gave rise to the Set Setal movement in which the city of Dakar was recreated in the historical imagination of its youth. This essay argues that the Set Setal movement coincided with the emergence of a self-conscious urban identity among the Dakar population, evidenced by a variety of artistic expression that focuses on and exalts the culture of the city. Central to the notion of an urban identity is the role of Dakar Wolof, a variety of the language that has significantly diverged from the more conservative dialects spoken in the rural areas, primarily by incorporating massive lexical borrowing from French. Dakar Wolof is portrayed in sustained written form for the first time in two comics that appeared during this period: Boy Dakar by Ibou Fall and Aziz Bâ, and Ass et Oussou by Omar Diakité. This essay discusses the hybrid nature of Dakar Wolof and its depiction in written form in the two comics. Finally, it is argued that Dakar Wolof has had a profound effect on the notion of ethnicity in the Senegalese context and has contributed to the emergence of a de-ethnicized urban identity.