African Languages and Societies Commons^™

Réalisme Merveilleux Et Rire Macabre Contre La Zombification, Anastasil Delarose Makambo

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The substance of this analysis is to use fiction, especially the novel, to observe Haiti and Black Africa some 200 years and 40 years, respectively, after independence. The contemporary novelists of these two time periods stress “zombification”, which is their common destiny. They denounce it by means of several scriptural strategies, such as magic realism and macabre laughter. The first contributes to reveal “zombifying” authorities such as houngans, wizards, politicians and their militia. The second is used to make “zombificators” ridiculous by showing how their ranting leads them to appear weak before their rebel victims.

Du Bateau Négrier À L’Avion Négrier : Haïti, Les Puissances Esclavagistes Et Le Monde Noir, Cilas Kemedjio

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The main argument of this study may be outlined as follows: colonized communities in the world economy being integrated by means of “historical fatality” from slavery to colonialism and neo-colonialism. The counter-movement of decolonization, as exemplified in the Haitian revolution, was meant to propose a more humane outbreak of enslaved peoples on the world scene. The account of globalization reveals that Haiti was forced into the world economy through the modality of extortion, which denied the most vulnerable members of Haitian society their basic humanity. The failure of the Haitian revolution to reverse the course of historical fatality opened the …

Satire, Désordre, Folie Et Régénérescence : Lecture De Quelques Romans Africains, Augustin H. Asaah

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Satire has the goal of reforming society and humans through the exposure and denunciation of evils. Using four novels, Beyala’s Tu t’appelleras Tanga, Touré’s Destins parallèles, Ken Bugul’s La folie et la mort and Nganang’s Tempsde chien as reference points, this article attempts to demonstrate how postcolonial Francophone African satire meets the criteria of the sub-genre. The four works deploy weapons of satire such as irony, contrast, verbal violence and exaggeration to lay bare the stench, madness and degeneration associated with neo-colonial order. As in all satirical works, the tableau of collective misery here encompasses a challenge to readers to …

A Man And His Four Wives (Part 2), George Tucker Childs

Mani, a Disappearing Language of Sierra Leone and Guinea

The second of four parts of the telling of the folk tale "A man and his four wives."

A Man And His Four Wives (Part 3), George Tucker Childs

Mani, a Disappearing Language of Sierra Leone and Guinea

The third of four parts of the telling of the folk tale "A man and his four wives."

The S-Aux-O-V-Other Syntagm In Atlantic, George Tucker Childs

Applied Linguistics Faculty Publications and Presentations

As the largest language phylum in the world and the most geographically widespread (Williamson & Blench 2000), Niger-Congo understandably exhibits some variation at all grammatical levels. Basic word order stands as no exception to this generalization, and there have been partisans for both an SOY and an SVO reconstructed word order. Gensler 1994 attempts to reconcile the two by claiming that neither proposal is correct; he suggests that both SOY and SVO are derived from Proto-Niger-Congo *S-AUX-O-V-Other. Because of the pattern's "quirkiness" (being found virtually nowhere else in the world) and because it is so widely attested in geographically widely …

Mani History, George Tucker Childs

Mani, a Disappearing Language of Sierra Leone and Guinea

Audio and transcriptions of an interview with Morlaye Boyo Keita, who describes the history of the Mani people, and how they came to be situated in their current location

The Segregated Distribution Of Middle Class African American Households In The Pittsburgh Metropolitan Statistical Area, Jay L. Newberry

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

This research analyzes the residential distribution of middle-class African American households in the Pittsburgh Metropolitan Area to determine if the "middle class" status affords them greater integration with the dominant white group. Using 1990 and 2000 census income data for white and black households in the Pittsburgh MSA, lower, middle, and upper class categories were created in both groups for comparison against the black middle class category via five segregation indices. This research found that, although the African American households experience varying degrees of segregation by class, all are highly segregated from the white group with middle class African American …

'The Aids Is Coming And There Is Nowhere To Run...': Culture, Gender, And The Politics Of Kisongo Maasai Women And Girls' Vulnerability To Hiv/Aids (Immune Deficiency, Tanzania), V. Corey Wright

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This thesis outlines the research findings and implications for practice generated from the, “A Gender Issue: Reducing the Vulnerability of Kisongo Maasai Girls to HIV/AIDS” project, which was a participatory action research (PAR) study in collaboration with the Kisongo Maasai in Northern Tanzania. The objectives of the study were to explore the factors that may contribute to girls’ vulnerability to HIV/AIDS, and develop a culturally-specific framework that may contribute to effective design and administration of program and policy-level interventions. The findings of this study illustrate the ‘politics of health’ that determine girls’ vulnerability to HIV/AIDS. It presents a cultural analysis …

Chaos Temporel Et Chaos Romanesque Dans Allah N'Est Pas Obligé D'Ahmadou Kourouma, Nathalie Roy

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This paper proposes an analysis of time representation in Allah n’est pas obligé with concepts taken from Temps et récit. It aims to show that in relation to Kourouma’s novel, one of Ricoeur’s hypothesis is revealingly insufficient. This hypothesis actually questions representation modes occuring in the text, exposing one of the sources of fictional chaos.

Parties Annexes

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

No abstract provided.

Transcrire L'Horreur Sur L'Espace De La Page, Bernadette Ginestet-Levine

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Rachid Boudjedra’s Timimoun uses the theatrical convention of a minibus taking tourists to the desert. In this mini-bus, news from the outside world is brought through the radio, which plays the part of a messenger. The narration moves forward by a progression of press releases that report bombings committed by terrorists. The barbarian nature of the acts is transcribed on the page by means of typography. The spatial/visual convention itself is set in concentric lexical fields – liquid, then desertic – erected as fences in an attempt to confine the unbearable.

Trop De Soleil Tue L'Amour : Une Expression De L'Écriture Du Mal-Être De Mongo Beti, Rodolphine Sylvie Wamba

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The classical and dissident African writer Mongo Beti perpetually uses the theme of man’s quest for freedom in everything he does. In fact, the philosophy of “Rubénism” is found in each of his works. Given that man must survive in the “ocean of shit” he lives in, the writer, using a popular language, freely chooses to add some humour to everyday life. Thus, the text we studied appeared as a genuine thriller, complete with comedy and tragedy, which presents a deviation from more formal writing. This is the main idea of this analysis, which consists of showing Trop de soleil …

La Vie Et Demie Ou Les Corps Chaotiques Des Mots Et Des Êtres, Caroline Giguère

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Due to its polysemy, corporality has several functions in the works of Sony Labou Tansi. More than descriptive or thematic elements, the novelistic bodies in La vie et demie are at the same time meeting points for multiple meanings, objects and producers of discourse. This study aims to demonstrate how the writing of the body is symbolic of a disorder that characterizes the forms and contents of Sony Labou Tansi’s novels and invites the reader to reflect on language and its power.

Face À La Meute – Narration Et Folie Dans Les Romans De Boubacar Boris Diop, Susanne Gehrmann

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The article analyses the narrative techniques and the theme of madness in three novels by the Senegalese writer Boubacar Boris Diop, caracterised by narrative polyphony and metatextual reflexion on the production of a story. The speech of protagonists affected by “intellectual madness” plays a strategic role in the structure of the novel which, as a hybrid genre, draws on oral and literary traditions in a still splintered aesthetic. The image of the pack represents an unreasonnable society condemning a so-called mad individual whose madness consists in bringing a counter-memory of the foundation myths.

Folie Et Écriture Dans Calomnies De Linda Lê, Ching Selao

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article proposes to explore the many faces of madness through a reading of Linda Lê’s Calomnies, in which two narrative voices are presented. The following shall demonstrate how this novel reproduces a “romantic” perception of madness as encountered in Michel Foucault’s work. Although this narrative text introduces a mad narrator speaking in the “I” persona, it nonetheless points out the difficulties of letting madness speak for itself. These difficulties are also examined in this study.

Les Pouvoirs Du Récit : Un Remède Au Chaos Du Monde? En Attentant Le Vote Des Bêtes Sauvages, Madeleine Borgomano

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Right from his first novel, Les Soleils des Indépendances (1970), Kourouma introduced the theme of the reversed world, a baroque metaphor for the state of Africa after Independence. In Monnè (1990), telling the history of this reversal, he insisted on its linguistic roots. Consequently, En attendant le vote des bêtes sauvages (1998) shows how this reversal in the context of Cold War, favoured the genesis and development of dictatorial powers leading to an actual apocalypse. This victory of Chaos is told as a donsomana, traditional song of expiation among the Malinke hunters. The forms and magic virtues of this song …

Werewere Liking Et La Poétique Du Jeu Pour Libérer L'Imaginaire Postcolonial Africain, Kasereka Kavwahirehi

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This essay addresses the issue of poetics and political stakes in Werewere Liking's novel, Elle sera de jaspe et de corail. While this novel has been presented as illustrative of the Negro-African aesthetics rooted in orality, the present article argues that Liking's poetics of hybridity is a postcolonial strategy whose aim is the liberation of African imagination and creativity. The essay ends by suggesting some similarities between Liking's project and that of the Congolese philosopher, especially in his philosophical essay, L'Afrique va-t-elle mourir? Bouscu/er l'imaginaire africain. Through their works, Ka Mana and Werewere Liking are examining the conditions for a …

Gommage Et Résistance Dans Le Processus De Mythification Postcoloniale, Robert Fotsing Mangoua

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Using the central figures of Um Nyobe and Patrice Lumumba, this paper aims to show that postcolonial mythology is a confrontation of two tendencies: on one hand, the colonial and postcolonial States, whose efforts tend to rub out history and its great faces, and on the other, artists and thinkers from Africa or abroad who want to establish the memory and the deeds of the missing as a source of inspiration for the present and next generation.

Subversion D'Un Mythe Colonial : Le« Grand Blanc De Lambaréné » Dans Le Roman Francophone D'Afrique, Sylvère Mbondobari

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Among its goals, this study aims to throw new light on the representation of the West in African Francophone literature. In this respect, it will examine some characteristic aspects of the image of the "Grand Blanc de Lambarene" - Albert Schweitzer - produced by the African imagination. For the first time, this paper shows which discursive and structural strategies are used by Sylvain Bemba and Seraphin Ndaot to represent Albert Schweitzer, to express their convictions, and how they confer a thematic or aesthetic aspect to their text. To be fully heuristic, the representation of Schweitzer requires that we reconstitute the …

Mango Beti Et Les Mythologies Postcoloniales : Héritier Et Inspirateur, Nathalie Etoke

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Mango Beti belongs to a nationalist tradition embodied by Ruben Um Nyobe, the Cameroonian revolutionary. This paper analyzes how the writer manages to rebuild the aborted Rubenist ideal through fictional devices. Charismatic leaders such as Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela, who have been able to bring about social change and improve the living conditions of their people, also nurture Beti's political commitment. What is the link between the writer and these inspiring men? Is Mongo Beti himself a similar inspiration for other African writers?

L'Image Des Réfugiés Et Des Personnes Déplacées Dans La Fiction Africaine Francophone, Augustin H. Asaah

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

In their capacity as moralists and committed intellectuals, African Francophone writers such as C.C. Sow, N.N. Ndjekery, M.S. Keita, F. Couao-Zotti, Ahmadou Kourouma, Nimrod and E. Dongala portray various images of refugees and internally displaced persons in their works. This depiction is driven by the perceived need to humanize these displaced members of society by establishing moral/affective bridges between unfortunate members of society and readers. It is also sustained by the desire to reduce the damage caused by wars and natural disasters, as well as the need to reveal the plural identities of humans to the world.

Patrice Emery Lumumba : Entre Metaphore Et Metonymie, Justin K. Bisanswa

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The purpose of this text is to analyze the historiography devoted to Patrice Lumumba and the use of rhetoric that launched him into legend. The metaphor characterizes Lumumba in his journey towards death and the alienation of identity, rendering concrete a kind of degradation, of the animated and the unanimated. Further, the metaphor breaks down into a string of fragments, or of metonymical qualities. Lumumba's struggle for justice, equality, purity, truth, and the ideal translates the drama of which he is a victim into an extreme search for the ideal. This drama expresses itself by a notable use of the …

The Atlantic And Mande Groups Of Niger-Congo: A Study In Contrasts, A Study In Interaction, George Tucker Childs

Applied Linguistics Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper presents the effects of long-lasting and pervasive contact between two major language groups of Niger-Congo, both of which diverged relatively early from the parent stock. The influence has been asymmetrical: Mande has more deeply influenced Atlantic than vice versa. The details come from two profoundly influenced languages, Kisi, now completely surrounded by Mande, and Mmani, a closely related language, from which all speakers have switched to the Mande language Soussou.

Le contact entre les locuteurs des langues atlantiques et les locuteurs des langues mande est de longue durée et profond. Les deux ensembles sont très différents typologiquement. À …

Time To Make History, Time To Educate Women: A Narrative Of The Life And Work Of Christiana Thorpe Of Sierra Leone, Whitney Mcintyre Miller

Education Faculty Articles and Research

An examination of the life of Christiana Thorpe, a former nun from Sierra Leone who worked to improve education for girls and served as the only woman in a cabinet of nineteen members (as Minister of Education), then worked with the United Nations Development Programme and UNESCO amidst war and rebellion in her country.

La Critique Et Léopold Sédar Senghor / Léopold Sédar Senghor Et La Critique, Fernando Lambert

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

L. S. Senghor has maintained a double relation with criticism: his poetical work has provoked plentiful critical production and the poet has always been in dialogue with his critical examiners. Furthermore, he has practised literary criticism himself. Criticism relating to Senghor comes from two quite different sources. From 1945 to 1960, the European criticism is outstanding, while the African criticism confines itself more to peripheral questions in the Senghorian poetical work: French language

and "Negritude". The withdrawal of the poet from the political stage in 1980 is a significant date for critical production in Africa. Let us add that the …

L’Aventure Du Discours Critique, Justin K. Bisanswa

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The text traces the course of African Literature’s critical adventure. For a long time, studies have been focused on African identity. The critic is often ethnologic, anthropological, cultural and attracted by exoticism. The critic is also attentive to everything that indicates the difference with occidental culture and without which the African text would only be an outline. There is also the frequent intrusion of empty concepts in African Literature criticism (for example : tradition, relatives, ethnic group, oral character, traditional religion, African rhythm, solidarity, communion between the living and the dead). From the criticism of humor and sources, to criticism …

Le Rôle De La Critique Dans La Réception De L’Oeuvre Romanesque De Rachid Boudjedra, Valérie Lotodé

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The favorable reception given by French criticism to some of Rachid Boudjedra’s novels can’t be explained by their literary quality only. In fact, the media’s opinion has been influenced by the image of the "authentically Algerian writer" that Boudjedra conveyed, as well as by the political context. Since the emergence of Algerian Literature in French journalistic and academic literary criticism, critics are bounded by ideological a priori.

Black Polar, Françoise Naudillon

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

We would like to present some examples of the French Mystery Novel as it is being written by sub-Saharan and Maghrebin authors, as Yasmina Khadra, an author from Algeria. After outlining a history of the genre itself, we will follow a few of the thematic trails taken up by the authors in question. We would like to call specific attention to the strategies of transformation, appropriation and transmutation being used on an already well defined and respected genre whose roots lie in a completely different cultural background (European and North American).

Écriture Du Destin Et Destin De L’Écriture, Regards Croisés Sur René Philombe Et Mongo Beti, Pierre Fandio

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The objectives of self-determination displayed by the Cameroon cultural and political agents look identical. However the present communication, that examines the reception of the works of Mongo Beti and René Philombe in Cameroon and its implications on the relationship between the writers and the dominating political order, reveals that the harmony is only a concealment. In fact, the political order conceives the institution of its own discourse exclusively either in terms of exclusion all nonconformist speech or in terms of its dominance.