“Can We Imagine a World Without Funds or Banks?” Abderrahmane Sissako's Bamako as African-Utopian Speculative Fiction

Abstract

This article reconsiders Abderrahmane Sissako's 2006 film Bamako as a formal example of sf predicated upon an African-utopian impulse that intervenes in the political closure of capitalist realism and the ontology of debt perpetuated by structural adjustment programs. Due to the radically unlikely events of the film's narrative, in which international financial institutions can be put on trial by ordinary citizens, this article argues that Bamako is best understood as an sf “alternate cosmology” narrative. Moreover, given the pseudo-utopian ideologies of neoliberal and neo-imperial enterprises, this article examines how Bamako operates as the preconceptual figuration of African-utopianism itself. To do so, it first raises a pseudo-African-utopianism in order to negate it and point the way toward the structurally unenunciable, inconceivable content of a radical African-utopianism. As such, Bamako needs to be read as both a desire for and a preconceptual harbinger of African-utopianism and situated alongside the rise of African sf more broadly.

Consumer Credit Card Debt and Immigrants: A Cross-Sectional Study of U.K. Immigrants’ Financial Capability

“…This indicated that the presence of credit debt is likely to increase the total consumer debt owed by an individual. A main reason why credit card debt is likely to cause an increase in total consumer debt is that, unlike other debt (mortgage or auto loan debt), which is fixed, credit card debt is revolving, meaning it is open-ended in nature such that consumers can accrue different amounts of debt each month and pay the minimum of what is owed; this provides the opportunity to spend more up to the limit of the credit card (O'Connell, 2019). According to the results from the 2004 Survey of Consumer Finances, approximately 75% of all participating households owned at least one credit card, and 58% of those holding a credit card carried a balance (total amount of money currently owed on a credit card account).…”