Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Fatou Diome: Une Création Entre Les Arts, Sada Niang

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

As she began her career in the 1980s, Fatou Diome inherited a rich tradition of literary texts and media productions, African cinema among them. Since she also hailed from a country known as "francophone", it is hardly surprising that her novels resonate with the style and narratives of African, French and other European writers. In this article, we propose to unveil a few of these artistic threads which may have informed and inspired Fatou Diome.

Qui Est Done « L'Homme De Barbès » ? Le Probleme Du « Nègre » De L'Écriture Migrante Dans Le Ventre De L'Atlantique De Fatou Diome, El Hadji Moustapha Diop

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This paper attempts to revisit the figure of "l'homme de Barbes" as a new form of invisible subalternity deeply inscribed within the texture of Fatou Diome's Le ventre de l'At/lntique, this landmark novel said to usher in a new era in migrant literature, at the intersection between the postcolonial and the transnational. In this respect, Diome's novel is indeed seminal, but from a geocritical perspective. Thus, I argue that the man of/from Barbès must be read as a figure greater than the sum of his narrative and discursive parts. Unlike the Parisian "black bazaar" tagged onto his persona, the "multiplicity …

Espaces Topologique Et Phénoménologique Dans Le Mal De Peau Et Le Retour Au Village, Mahamadou Lamine Ouédraogo

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Le mal de peau by Monique Ilboudo and Le retour au village by Kollin Noaga are two Burkinabè novels featuring Sibila and Catherine (for the first) and Tinga (for the second). The study questions the part of spatiality in the semantics of indexed texts: how does space mean in these novels? This problem is attacked from two angles. First, it is a matter of identifying the modes of meaning of the topos. Secondly, it is about seeing how the body, as a phenomenological space, can articulate meaning.

Passage, Unité Nationale Et Écriture Du Mythe Dans Falagountou De Yamba Élie Ouédraogo, Alain Joseph Sissao

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The metaphor of national unity through the passages of the eponymous hero Falagountou Yamba Elie Ouédraogo: myth of unity or unity of the myth? Yamba Elie Ouédraogo brushed a gargantuan romantic mural in her latest novel Falagountou. Falagountou appears in many ways like a quest for the Grail of identities to form identity. These passages of the hero mythical half-man, half-Hercules – like the epic of Gilgamesh – crosses different regions of Burkina Faso who report a culmination of the intermediate time, in-between, to apprehend modalities that govern the construction of crises, utopias, individual projections. In this, the novelist is …

Littérature Et Pratiques Rituelles : Le Statut Sémiotique Des Signes Mystiques, Yves Dakouo

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This paper is part of our research project on the analysis of social practices as they appear in the framework of literary works, notably in narrative prose. This does not consist in undertaking a thematic approach of these, but rather considering them as the fourth level of immanence and relevance of the plan of semiotic expression. Therefore, the study is part of the rhetoric of downward integration that occurs when a higher level of immanence occurs at a lower level, like here where practices (4th level) occur in fiction text (2nd level). In this respect, is considered as “ritual practice” …

Villes Et Espaces Africains : Pour Une Géocritique En Contexte Postcolonial, Yves Clavaron

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

As for geocritics, postcolonial studies consider questions of representation according to a contextualizing approach, scrutinizing geogrophical and sociopolitical settings. This paper aims at studying methodological affinities between geocritics and postcolonialism in order to observe to what extent Bertrand Westphal’s approach could respond to a postcolonial context and allow for an interpretation of African space – mainly urban – in a few francophone novels by Mongo Beti, Bernard Dadié, Ahmadou Kourouma, Henri Lopes, Alain Mabanckou, Patrice Nganang and Tierno Monénembo.

Roman Féminin Africain : Pour Une Géocritique, Mbaye Diouf

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Based on novels published in the 2000s by Fatou Diome and Bessora, this article poses that in a postcolonial context marked by the intensification of population migration, as well as the international circulation of authors and the renewal of aesthetic categories, the current generation of female African novelists are constructing a new imaginary of space that resemanticizes textual territories through literary languages that are both unusual and personalized. Novels like Cyr@no or Le ventre de l’Atlantique rectify the real insular or urban topographies to which they refer by giving a connotated or new meaning to their own narrative, descriptive and …

Poétique De La Ville-Symptôme Dans Le Roman Maghrébin, Hassan Moustir

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Postcolonial city is at the heart of maghrebian fictions so that it can be approached as a fundamental element of its particular poetics. In their novels Triptyque de Rabat and Le chien d’Ulysse, Khatibi and Bachi respectively link space as an explicative matrix of the national present and even of what goes beyond characters consciousness. This fact helps to understand the way history figures as a virtual paradigm coming down to space, sometimes threw separate facts, and being part of the personal perception of reality. The concept of reality itself becomes problematic regarding this endless past, we mean the impact …

Non-Lieux Dans Le Roman Africain Postcolonial Francophone : Formes Et Enjeux, Adama Coulibaly

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

In the postcolonial African novel, new places are appearing, next to or replacing the former prison site. They can validly be read as «non-places» whose presence and implications in texts must then be questioned. Attempting a literary re-appropriation of an anthropological notion, this contribution analyzes three novels whose fictions are built around places of transit (of non-places) such as hotel, road and... container. These three figures of the non-place call for a writing of horizontality, rhizome, ephemeral, spatial mobility that reactivate the question of the fictitious or moving identity of the African subject from space.

Writing Africa Today: Research Materials (Library Resources), Holy Cross Libraries

Library Resources for Campus Events

A bibliography of resources available through the Holy Cross Libraries which provide additional information related to "Writing Africa Today," a lecture by Zimbabwean author Petina Gappah held at the College of the Holy Cross February 15, 2018.

Gappah writes critically about the government, social and criminal justice issues, and human rights work in sub-Saharan Africa. Her collection of short stories called "Elegy for Easterly" was shortlisted for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and won the Guardian First Book Award in 2009. Her second book, a novel, "The Book of Memory" is the fictional story of an imprisoned albino …

Essai De Typologie Des Familles Éclatées Dans L’Oeuvre Romanesque De Calixthe Beyala, Clémentine Mansiantima Nzimbu

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

In Calixthe Beyala’s novels, the narrators are in search of their own identity due to traumas experienced in broken families. The expression broken or shattered family (famille éclatée) is used in a broad way, pertaining to principles and responsibilities of marriage, particularly with children. The abandonment of a spouse, regardless of the motive, wounds the family unit. This study uses eight novels to examine the various configurations of families in which the place of biological parents is called into question. This study also shows that abandoned children, in the works of Beyala, cope with the absence of a parent.

Le Devoir De Mémoire Ou Une Identité Ravalée Dans Cicatrices D’Alain Kamal Martial, Katharine Hargrave

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article examines the construction of identity in Alain Kamal Martial’s novel, Cicatrices. Conceived during a rape committed by a group of militiamen, the narrator struggles against a sense of obligation to avenge his mother’s assault, as well as a need to liberate himself from this event. However, under the onus of being a proxy witness, he realizes that he cannot forget his duty of memory because he embodies the inherited trauma of past generations. The crude and powerful immediacy of this text forces the reader to reflect upon his or her own role in the remembrance of past injustices.

L’Animal : Agent Du Biopouvoir Dans L’Imaginaire Postcolonial Alain Cyr Pangop Kameni Et Hervé Tchumkam, Alain Cyr Pangop Kameni, Hervé Tchumkam

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article seeks to understand the status of the animal and its relation to biopolitics in postcolonial fiction. Going beyond and against Graham Huggan’s notion of “postcolonial exotic”, the analysis of the relation between human and animal is twofold: first, describe and interpret the mechanisms of power, and second, show how the figure of the beast which is at the center of political struggle and social conflict makes more complex the understanding of the “discipline and punish” in postcolonial contexts. Ultimately, drawing on the study of selected novels and drama, the aim of this paper is to show that the …

La Fiction Du Génocide Ou Le Partage Des Émotions, Josias Semujanga

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The goal of this study is to show that the fiction of genocide aims to share emotions between the narrator and the reader. It is possible to consider the narrator as representing the real reader and not only as the simple recipient written into the text. This is to say that the narrator is a part of the story but is also the reader’s counterpart as the real recipient, because both-- narrator and real reader-- are integrated in the imaginary world of the story. The role of the author is to construct intermediate mechanisms between the reader and the author. …

L’Empreinte Du Renard De Moussa Konaté Et Les Transformations Africaines Du Polar, Alexie Tcheuyap

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Within sub-Saharan Africa, Moussa Konaté is undoubtedly the contemporary writer dedicated to producing the most original crime fiction. In L’empreinte du renard, he offers a fundamental subversion of the genre that breaks with conventional thought on crime narratives. Moreover, the subversion of the canon accompanies a subversion of political structures by which the end of the story accompanies the end of the postcolonial state as it is known, and often caricatured: the State of corruption. As a result, such intrigue also becomes that of governmentability.

Archéologie Du Cachot, Lydie Moudileno

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This essay examines the relationship between writing, memory and prison, as it is deployed in Patrick Chamoiseau’s tenth novel Un dimanche au cachot (2007). In this text, the inscription of the writer within the space of a small prison located on a Martinican plantation, serves Chamoiseau’s larger project to survey the Caribbean territory in order to unveil memorial traces. As it exhumes the ruins of an old disciplinary prison cell, this archeological move triggers a series of crucial transformations: in Un dimanche au cachot, prison writing reclaims a new glissantian “Lieu”, while making room for a therapeutic way of dealing …

Du Chaâba À La Banlieue : Espaces Et Négation De L’Autre Chez Azouz Begag Et Thomté Ryam, Lise Mba Ekani

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article concerns itself with the representations of space in the novels of Azouz Begag and Thomté Ryam. The author observes that from the chaâba to the banlieue, one can assert that the distribution of space suggests the exclusion and the negation of France’s postcolonial other. Ultimately, the article contends that if Beur fiction was pivotal in shedding light on injustice, the banlieue novel blends aesthetics and politics to call for a different France, one in which assimilation and difference can be transcended.

Entre Expatriation Et Apatridie : Les Romans De Gaston-Paul Effa Et Henri Lopes, Yves Abel Feze

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The stories of exile and return from exile of novelists Gaston-Paul Effa and Henri Lopes give themselves to read on how to register a double “desappartenance” and focuses in the heart of their narratives the figure of a now be stateless, alien to itself and to the Other. We propose, therefore, to study the reconstruction of identity as it is the result of emigration and return on the homeland. This leads thus to the conclusion that the stateless defies the nation in order to situate itself and his stories in a transnational space.

De La Littérature Beur À La Littérature De Banlieue : Un Changement De Paradigme, Mireille Le Breton

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article traces the history of “beur” literature and shows the evolution of the literary production emerging from the “banlieues”. Mapping out the itineraries of these two literary trends, the article highlights both the genesis and the thematic and æsthetical articulations of Beur and Banlieue literatures. This article therefore foregrounds a paradigm shift, refl ected in the sensibility of a new wave of novelists.

« Banlieue Noire » : La Question Noire Dans La Littérature Urbaine Contemporaine, Stève Puig

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Just as the “beur” movement started to flourish in France in the 80’s and the 90’s, a new question has emerged in French society in the last decade: the “black question”, which deals with the place of Africans and Antilleans in French society today. At the same time, a new literary genre has emerged: urban literature, which largely tackles themes related to the presence of Afro-caribbean people in metropolitan France. This article seeks to analyze three urban novels which take place in France, and more specifically how characters situate themselves regarding their Frenchness as the French government attempted to redefine …

Violence, Altérité De L’Intérieur Et Citoyenneté De Seconde Zone, Hervé Tchumkam

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article proposes an examination of violence in the French banlieues where riots erupted in the fall of 2005. Building on the observation that violence seems to have become the main determiner for banlieues inhabitants in the media and political discourses, the author scrutinizes Mohamed Razane’s Dit Violent (2006) in order to understand the status of young banlieue dwellers as outsiders within who are caught between second-class citizenship and exclusion from the French public political sphere. It is the contention of the author that the public construction of an enemy within imply shadows a socio-political reality, which is the invisibility …

Mères Migrantes Et Fi Lles De La République : Identité Et Féminité Dans Le Roman De Banlieue, Mame-Fatou Niang

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article examines the writings of female authors from the French suburbs, whose novels feature female protagonists born in immigrant families and engaged in a quest to redefine self. The novels explore the generational differences between these characters and the impact of the quest for self on mother-daughter relations. Their analysis brings light to the authors’ attempt at conjuring the stereotypes generally attached to the banlieue and to immigrant women. I argue that through the evocation of non-hegemonic visions, these novels present the banlieues as dynamic spaces allowing for a new discursive practice of identity and citizenship.

Langue Et Identité Chez Leïla Sebbar. Vers Une Filiation Renégociée, Cécilia W. Francis

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

In Je ne parle pas la langue de mon père (2003), L’arabe comme un chant secret (2010a), as well as in other components of her intimate prose, Leïla Sebbar reflects on her sense of dispossessed identity due to linguistic exile and an unknown heritage, resulting from ruptures in her paternal filiation. Drawing from the works of Jacques Derrida, Régine Robin and Simon Harel, which form the basis of our argumentation, we examine various dimensions of the severed parental bond. The article proposes to examine how Sebbar’s autobiographical writings, which incorporate scenarios dealing with legacy transmission expressed in terms of auditory …

Parades Banlieusardes. El Hadj De Mamadou Mahmoud N’Dongo Et Les Identités Criminelles, Hervé Tchumkam

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article aims at understanding the relation between crime and identity formations in the French banlieues, especially in the wake of the 2005 urban riots. The essay performs a reading Mamadou N’Dongo’s novel El Hadj at the intersection of aesthetics and politics in order to scrutinize identity formations and related debates at stake in the prisons of poverty and oppression that constitute the banlieues whose inhabitants are the third or fourth generation of the heirs to African immigration in France. Ultimately, the paper contention is that what I call “banlieue parade” stands out as the new model of identity that …

De Stock À Albin Michel : Beyala Et L’Édition, Bernard De Meyer

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Beyala has remained faithful to the publisher Albin Michel for her fictional work since the publication of Le petit prince de Belleville in 1992, but her four fi rst novels had three different publishers. A study of her relationship with the publishing world during this period shows her desire for recognition on the Parisian literary scene, which was ready to take up the challenge by publishing the novel of an unknown African woman writer. A careful analysis of paratextual elements, in particular the titrology, and of the contents of the novels reveals that Calixthe Beyala enters into a direct conversation …

Le Roman Africain : Drame Or Histoire, Bernard Mouralis

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

For a long time, African novelists claimed filiation with realism. But there is in realism a deep contradiction between the will of describing the social world and the will of changing it. From this contradiction, the paper studies : the relation between theatre and novel ; the question of citizenship in the novel ; the place of the novel in front of knowledge and action. The novel shows dynamics and characters living in the time. So, it tends to wander from the principle of knowledge and self-consciousness.

La Dramatisation De L’Écriture Chez Sony Labou Tansi, Georges Ngal

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

As an author always articulates his writing with idioms that reflect a specific time period and a given social group, Sony Labou Tansi talks about “tropicalité”, and gives himself the goal to create multiple “tropicalités”.

L’Art De L’« Écrire » Chez Patrick Chamoiseau, Savrina Parevadee Chinien

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

In the works of Patrick Chamoiseau, the act of writing is a main, recurrent theme. The narrator, often, tries to define himself through his writings which have their own autonomy in the novel. This character questions his writing and is torn by the dissatisfaction he feels to get close to the “breath” of the creole storyteller : the chasm between orality and writing creates suffering. He, then, advocates l’“écrire”, closer, according to him, to the utterance of the storyteller and free of the “constraints” of an occidental writing, which he considers as stamped by the ideology of the Universal.

Enquêtes Occultistes : Les Policiers Antillais Face Au Surnaturel, Françoise Cévaër

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Being rational and Cartesian, the detective novel is often bound by powerful constraints which seem not very compatible with the supernatural and the fantastic often defining West Indian writing. Through the analysis of Martinican Patrick Chamoiseau’s Solibo Magnifique (1988) and Haitian Gary Victor’s Les cloches de la Brésilienne (2006), we will nevertheless see how well they work together, the irrational taking hold of the detective novel, leading paradoxically to the progressive elimination of Cartesian practices and challenging an exclusively rational portrayal of the world.

Le Feu Sous La Soutane, Roman Populaire? Du Génocide À Sa Transposition Fictionnelle, Josias Semyjanga

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

A reflective, first-person account, Benjamin Sehene’s Le feu sous la soutane is the story of memories of a double crime of rape and genocide by a Catholic priest, Father Stanislas. At the beginning of the killings of the Tutsi, some people take refuge in a parish in Kigali. Its priest takes under his protection a few Tutsi women, hiding them in the presbytery. But, the Holy man will rape them. He also participates alongside with the Hutu militia to the extermination of the Tutsi who came to take refuge in the parish. Later the priest took refuge in France where …