Violence in the Postcolonial Ghetto: Ngozi Onwurah's Welcome II the Terrordome (1994)

As a film-maker who likes to transgress ideas of what is commonly expected from a black female artist to be making, British-Nigerian director Ngozi Onwurah has shown a particular interest in the various expressions of violence throughout her filmography. Her first feature film, Welcome II the Terrordome (1994), specifically grapples with themes of violence, memory, reincarnation and embodiment. The film follows the story of the McBride family: first as slaves, as the filmmaker evokes an ancient Igbo legend, and in their reincarnated life in the ghetto of Transdean, better known as the ‘Terrordome’. More than twenty years after its release, I will question Welcome II the Terrordome’s representations of violence through the ideas of postcolonial theorists Frantz Fanon and Achille Mbembe.