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Journal

2006

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

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Articles 1 - 14 of 14

Full-Text Articles in History

Murambi Et Moisson De Crânes Ou Comment La Fiction Raconte Un Génocide, Josias Semujanga Dec 2006

Murambi Et Moisson De Crânes Ou Comment La Fiction Raconte Un Génocide, Josias Semujanga

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article shows how literary fiction is able to narrate the event of genocide so as to shatter the rational explanations of the world that are the accepted framework for discourse. It studies two texts written on the Rwandan genocide: Murambi by Boubacar Boris Diop and Moisson de crânes by Abdourahman Waberi.


La Représentation Du Politique Dans La Littérature Gabonaise, Jean René Ovono Mendame Dec 2006

La Représentation Du Politique Dans La Littérature Gabonaise, Jean René Ovono Mendame

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

From which viewpoint do Gabonese writers relate to the realities of the political and social policies of their country and what place do political players occupy in their works? Why do they hesitate so much to denounce the problems of their society? Why is there such a pronounced silence within their literary works? This article raises these delicate and complex questions. The report produced on the evolution of Gabonese writing affirms that writers’ silence is the product of self-censorship. They are condemned to fear saying anything, not only because of potential reprisals, but because they are, for the majority, political …


L'Islam En Termes Chrétiens : Quand L’Aventure Ambiguë « Croise » Pascal Et Saint Augustin, Mbaye Diouf Dec 2006

L'Islam En Termes Chrétiens : Quand L’Aventure Ambiguë « Croise » Pascal Et Saint Augustin, Mbaye Diouf

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

If it is recognized that The Ambiguous Adventure is one of Africa’s most studied texts, it should also be noted that most analyses of Cheikh Hamidou Kane’s novel are general sociological commentaries on a mythologized Africa or on a society that is caught in the snares of its own mythic “values.” These commentaries often forget that the text is also the passage through a history that was imposed on Africa, and one which the writer tries to interpret in his own way. If Kane’s text plunges into the Christian faith by invoking Pascal and Augustine, it is in order to …


L’Historiographie Positiviste Au Miroir De La Fiction Littéraire, Kasereka Kavwahirehi Dec 2006

L’Historiographie Positiviste Au Miroir De La Fiction Littéraire, Kasereka Kavwahirehi

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

In its study of L’Écart by V.Y. Mudimbe, this article examines the critical and ironic mirroring of the discourses of the social sciences. By highlighting the pretensions of scientific discourse, Mudimbe’s fiction reveals the ambiguity and the limits of positivist methodology in a postcolonial context.


La Traversée Des Savoirs Dans Le Roman Africain, Justin K. Bisanswa Dec 2006

La Traversée Des Savoirs Dans Le Roman Africain, Justin K. Bisanswa

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The African novel refers to a socio-political as well as a literary History, but does so with guile, expressing this History from an angle. Referring constantly to the social and human sciences, to the point of competing with them, the novel vacillates between dependency and autonomy. It thus proposes a specific knowledge of society, its functioning, and the individuals who constitute it. However, its true intention is not to copy the world, nor even to imitate its life, but to provide a miniaturized replica of both, and set itself up as a vast metonymic duplicate of a certain universe.


Le Romancier Africain Et L'« Énigme D'Arrivée », Bernard Mouralis Dec 2006

Le Romancier Africain Et L'« Énigme D'Arrivée », Bernard Mouralis

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The theme of travel occupies an important place in African literature for two reasons. The earliest African writers wanted to substitute their own discourse for the one that had been produced by the West for centuries and which was long considered to be the sole legitimate discourse on Africa. By portraying African heroes and/or narrators who embarked on voyages to Africa or to Europe, African writers showed that the African too could be a traveler. The second reason is linked to generic considerations. Since the time of Don Quixote, the novel unfolds as an itinerary moving from one point to …


Les Enfants De La Guerre : Adolescence Et Violence Postcoloniale Chez Badjoko, Dongala, Kourouma Et Monénembo, Koffi Anyinefa Jun 2006

Les Enfants De La Guerre : Adolescence Et Violence Postcoloniale Chez Badjoko, Dongala, Kourouma Et Monénembo, Koffi Anyinefa

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This essay deals with the representation of African child-soldiers in three novels and an autobiography. Why do children take part in African postcolonial civil wars? How are they portrayed? These children are not —as public opinion would often have it— only the victims of postcolonial violence, but are also agents of social change. Their violent involvement in political affairs constitutes the most radical form of their determination to be heard, and the most eloquent form of their protest against their precarious living conditions in a postcolonial Africa in crisis.


Femme Nue, Femme Noire : Tribulations D’Une Vénus, Lydie Moudileno Jun 2006

Femme Nue, Femme Noire : Tribulations D’Une Vénus, Lydie Moudileno

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article examines the return, in two contemporary novels, of the figure of the “naked black woman” as an emblematic site of difference. Two women of African origin take back this twice-appropriated figure and use it to question the ways in which the materiality of the body is again being written into contemporary postcolonial society. The aim of the essay is to underline the means and meaning deployed in these new appropriations of African icons, while pointing to some possible limits to the symbolic passage from the colonial imagination to a postcolonial one.


Hannah Arendt, Boris Diop Et Le Rwanda : Correspondances Et Commencements, Isabelle Favre Jun 2006

Hannah Arendt, Boris Diop Et Le Rwanda : Correspondances Et Commencements, Isabelle Favre

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

While the social and political sciences account for a relatively large number of books on the 1994 Rwandan genocide, there are still very few literary texts on the subject. Taking Hannah Arendt’s concept of beginning as its point of departure, this article begins with an analysis of the “act of writing” before going on to examine the dynamic interplay between philosophy and literature via Boris Boubacar Diop’s novel Murambi, le livre des ossements (2000).


Faire Taire Les Silences Du Corps Noir, Cilas Kemedjio Jun 2006

Faire Taire Les Silences Du Corps Noir, Cilas Kemedjio

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

From the middle passage to modern day red light districts, from human zoos to the “compassionate” forum of the TV screen, the display of the black body has long formed the narrative thread of a monologue uttered by a West pleased with the sound of its own voice. The staging of the black body can be said to have rendered black voices silent, and this study sets out to break this silence.


L’Imagination Du Corps Greffé : Filtres Bilingues, Mireille Rosello Jun 2006

L’Imagination Du Corps Greffé : Filtres Bilingues, Mireille Rosello

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Contemporary narratives featuring organ transplants speak of a painful but also life-saving contact when the “donor” body is African and the receiving body is European. At this point the surgical operation and that of the imagination assume a whole other dimension, as the inequality and interdependence of these two bodies invite the reader to re-imagine the links between the concept of the “body,” on the one hand, and culture and language, on the other. This article looks at the transplanted body as an imagining machine capable of articulating a vision of itself different from the one that words impose upon …


Sony Labou Tansi : La Question Du Bas Matériel Et Corporel, Boniface Mongo-Mboussa Jun 2006

Sony Labou Tansi : La Question Du Bas Matériel Et Corporel, Boniface Mongo-Mboussa

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

According to Mikhail Bakhtin, the material and corporeal “lower stratum” includes the symbols that refer to the nether regions of the human body. By adopting this approach to writing in a dictatorship, Labou Tansi most likely wanted to protect his work and himself from possible reprisals by his country’s political authorities. More importantly, however, this move constitutes a strategy of subversion of Marxist ideology: the focus on the material and corporal “lower stratum” (indistinguishable from the carnivalesque) is a form of resistance to what Bakhtin calls official discourse, and becomes a way of reclaiming the writer’s literary autonomy.


De L’Économie Politique À L’Économie De La Différence Corporelle. Représentations Du Spectacle Sportif Dans L’Imaginaire De La Jeunesse Africaine, Jean Sob Jun 2006

De L’Économie Politique À L’Économie De La Différence Corporelle. Représentations Du Spectacle Sportif Dans L’Imaginaire De La Jeunesse Africaine, Jean Sob

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Today’s African youth have chosen the economy of corporal performance over political economy, as a way of reconquering the dignity that was lost to them lost in the collapse of African countries. The undeniable success of African athletes all over the world has given rise to diverse representations in people’s imaginations: while young Africans consider sports to be a unique way of gaining both national and international recognition, a particular strain of racism in Western countries would use black athletes to procure certain warm and reassuring emotions for “civilized” populations frozen into the permafrost of consumer society.


L’Inscription Du Corps Dans Quatre Romans Postcoloniaux D’Afrique, Augustine H. Asaah Jun 2006

L’Inscription Du Corps Dans Quatre Romans Postcoloniaux D’Afrique, Augustine H. Asaah

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

More and more, contemporary African literature dwells on the body —as the subject and object of desire, as a refuge and as a commodified and objectified victim. Using as reference points four novels —Calixthe Beyala’s C’est le soleil qui m’a brûlée and Femme nue, femme noire, Williams Sassine’s Mémoire d’une peau and Nimrod’s Les jambes d’Alice— all of which inscribe the body onto and into the text, this article seeks to analyse diverse manifestations of the textualized body. Works of alienation and dispossession, these four texts also focus on corporeal quests for equilibrium. The presence of the body in the …