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African Languages and Societies

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Articles 451 - 480 of 544

Full-Text Articles in French and Francophone Language and Literature

Le Témoignage De L’Itsembabwoko Par La Fiction. L’Ombre D’Imana, Josias Semujanga Dec 2007

Le Témoignage De L’Itsembabwoko Par La Fiction. L’Ombre D’Imana, Josias Semujanga

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Following the Tutsi genocide in 1994, many African writers went to Rwanda, in 1998, and then wrote some novels and other fictional texts about the horror they saw. This study shows how Véronique Tadjo’s L’ombre d’Imana adopts several mechanisms of Traveler’s Narratives, but poses also their limits in ethical thinking about genocide. Tadjo uses indeed the subversion of Traveler’s Narratives by adding other forms of genres like reportage and testimonies. She discusses about the limits of testimony narratives on a genocide.

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« La Femme Qui Pleure » : La Nouvelle D’Assia Djebar Et Le Tableau De Picasso, Farah Aïcha Gharbi Dec 2007

« La Femme Qui Pleure » : La Nouvelle D’Assia Djebar Et Le Tableau De Picasso, Farah Aïcha Gharbi

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article is a study of the dialogue that is maintained between the novel « La femme qui pleure » by Assia Djebar and the Picasso painting that bears the same title. This article also aims to show author’s achievement of the liberation of the feminine subject through an aesthetic means, in other words, through an angle that allows for an encounter between that which has been written and the painting, which combined give the women the right to the word and the image portrayed. The form and the structure that are shared between the novel and the painting appear …

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L’Écriture Tumulaire : Témoignage Sur La Mort, Pour La Vie, Philippe Basabosa Dec 2007

L’Écriture Tumulaire : Témoignage Sur La Mort, Pour La Vie, Philippe Basabosa

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The article proves how the testimony narrative, in writing death and genocide-related atrocities, attempts to restore human dignity to the victims. The narrative space that becomes in that way a burial place and a funeral monument plays also the role of the ''redemption'' of history in order to secure the future. The narratives that the article analyzes constitute at the same time a hymn to life. By creating themselves other destinies, other reasons for life, the survivor and witness authors succeed in overcoming the world-weariness that threatens every survivor of the Itsembabwoko slaughter.

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Le Nouvel « Engagement »? : Rachid Boudjedra Entrehistoire Et Écriture, Hafid Gafaït Jun 2007

Le Nouvel « Engagement »? : Rachid Boudjedra Entrehistoire Et Écriture, Hafid Gafaït

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

According to Charles Bonn and other critics in the 1980’s and 1990’s, North-African literature evolved from a perspective that underlined both the centrality of style, or the writer’s aesthetic standpoint, and the importance of themes, ideas and content, to a production that was dominated by ideology, politics, factual events and testimony. To what extent can this statement be generalized? Does referentiality necessarily exclude literarity? These are questions I will explore on the basis of Rachid Boudjedra’s recent work, which is characterized by an increasingly visible fusion of writing and History. From this, I will consider if what we are witnessing …

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Boudjedra, Écrivain De Langue Arabe?, Touriya Fili-Tullon Jun 2007

Boudjedra, Écrivain De Langue Arabe?, Touriya Fili-Tullon

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This paper is devoted to bilingualism in R. Boudjedra’sliterary practice. Our aim is to show how French and Arabic versions of his books may be read as hypertexts of metadiscoursive value. Considered from this point of view, the differing versions neutralize any genetic approach and make the rules of an “authoritative” translation obsolete.

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La Vie À L’Endroit De Rachid Boudjedra : Entre Subjectivité Et Folie, Sonia Zlitni Fitouri Jun 2007

La Vie À L’Endroit De Rachid Boudjedra : Entre Subjectivité Et Folie, Sonia Zlitni Fitouri

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

In this study of Rachid Boudjedra’s La vie à l’endroit, I will show how the Algerian writer endeavours to put “en abyme” three types of madness (joyful, fatal, hallucinatory); these generate one another in a cause and effect relationship and distance themselves from the delirious discourse of his first novels in order to give an account of a period of terror which struck Algeria under the Muslim fundamentalist threat. We will also show how the character-narrator faces all this madness by setting up his subj bj ectivity as a shield against what he calls “external fear and inner fear”, and …

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Meka Ou Le Lent Retour À Soi, Alexandre Lizotte Jun 2007

Meka Ou Le Lent Retour À Soi, Alexandre Lizotte

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Inspired by Ferdinand Oyono’s novel Le vieux nègre et la médaille and relying on the works of Albert Memmi and a number of critics of the negro-african novel, what we are proposing here is a reflection on the relation between the colonizer and the colonized. At the very core of our analysis is the character of Meka, Oyono’s main character, who symbolizes the people’s strive for freedom and self-rediscovery and reconquest. Step by step, we follow him through his long and difficult “walk” or journey towards himself, towards his own truth. In our understanding of that whole liberation process, we …

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De L’Écriture De L’Urgence À L’Écriture Du Renouveau, Armelle Crouzières-Ingenthron Jun 2007

De L’Écriture De L’Urgence À L’Écriture Du Renouveau, Armelle Crouzières-Ingenthron

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This critical analysis focuses on Rachid Boudjedra’s trilogy that deals with Algerian fundamentalism. Even though Boudjedra’s famous labyrinthine and vertiginous technique was at first based on the literary, on a pleasure of writing that would in turn trigger political thought – at least until the publication of the political pamphlet FIS de la haine –, his more recent technique reflects an urgency and a writing focused on political thought, both of which give birth to a literary process. Despite the author’s well-known reticence regarding conventional happy endings, he annihilates once and for all terrorism and fundamentalism, and embraces an optimistically …

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Une Révolution Boudjedrienne Des Concepts Historiques : Un Regard De L’Histoire (Fictionnelle) Sur L’Histoire, Laetitia Vincent Jun 2007

Une Révolution Boudjedrienne Des Concepts Historiques : Un Regard De L’Histoire (Fictionnelle) Sur L’Histoire, Laetitia Vincent

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Rachid Boudjedra binds ingeniously fictional and real history and, beyond historic forgery, this author succeeds in transcribing the authentic events of his country. This article exposes one of the novelist’s historic conceptions through which the reader apprehends History : detailed visions alternate and blend with globalizing visions. For this author, nothing must be abandoned or put aside; by analyzing his novelistic writing, a fictional mosaic, we will come to understand his perspective on History.

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Topographie Idéale Pour Une Agression Caractérisée : Roman De L’Émigration, De La Ville Ou De L’Écriture?, Charles Bonn Jun 2007

Topographie Idéale Pour Une Agression Caractérisée : Roman De L’Émigration, De La Ville Ou De L’Écriture?, Charles Bonn

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Published in 1975 after a wave of anti-Algerian racist attacks in France, this novel is first and foremost a statement of urban space, whose labyrinthian subway lines merge with those of writing, and participate in the drawing of spatiality. But this writing, which disconcerts the documentary expectation of the readers, betrays that expectation : instead of describing the daily life of the emigrant, it seizes his marginalization in order to represent itself, both as a victim who is sacrificed like the hero without name of the novel and as the ridiculous object of a narcissistic and ludic utterance.

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Théorie Et Pratique De L’Écriture Chez Pius Ngandu Nkashama, Kasereka Kavwahirehi Jun 2007

Théorie Et Pratique De L’Écriture Chez Pius Ngandu Nkashama, Kasereka Kavwahirehi

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Pius Ngandu Nkashama is mostly known as a literary critic and theorist. But he is also an established novelist, poet and playwright. This essay attempts to show that both his critical work and his creative work share a common dynamic. It shows how, for Pius Ngandu, literary and aesthetic practice is not only a way of life, an existential experience from which he draws the energy to overcome despair and human mediocrity, but it is also a way of participating in the African struggle for freedom and for the conquest of a history that has been confiscated by dictators.

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Le Lecteur Face Aux Stéréotypes : Entre Participation Et Distanciation, Valérie Lotodé Jun 2007

Le Lecteur Face Aux Stéréotypes : Entre Participation Et Distanciation, Valérie Lotodé

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

In some of Rachid Boudjedra’s novels, the study of stereotyped representations proves particularly operational to define the interaction between virtual reader and characters. This article aims to analyze the reader’s reactions to stereotypes. It also attempts to show how the reader oscillates between a participatory reading – during which, recognizing a traditional ideological speech, he is charmed by fiction – and a distancing reading. By means of the analysis of female and male archetypes, this paper will also reveal the implicit reader’s face, and more specifically his/her sexual identity.

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L’Appel Des Arènes: A Postcolonial Development Of The Buildungsroman, Médoune Guèye Mar 2007

L’Appel Des Arènes: A Postcolonial Development Of The Buildungsroman, Médoune Guèye

The Coastal Review

Despite the fact that many critics consider the Buildungsroman obsolete, the genre is still alive. Many African writers have revised the classical Buildungsroman in order to underscore the conflict of cultures and the complex subjectivities of their characters. By analyzing the discourse on identity in L’Appel des arènes, we understand how Aminata Sow Fall recreates the modalities of enunciation found in African traditional literature while structuringL’Appel des arènes with generic patterns from the Buildungsroman.

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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.

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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.

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L’Espace Sexué Dans Riwan Ou Le Chemin De Sable De Ken Bugul, Antje Ziethen Dec 2006

L’Espace Sexué Dans Riwan Ou Le Chemin De Sable De Ken Bugul, Antje Ziethen

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

In Riwan ou le chemin de sable by Ken Bugul, the protagonist lives in the interstice between her own house and that of her husband’s, between the life of a woman educated in Europe and the life of a wife subjected to the laws of mouridism. In her circular movement along the sandy road evoked in the novel’s title, she gradually creates a space that allows her to reconcile the two facets of her identity. Merging different genres, stories and languages, the text itself enacts the symbolism of the road as a transitional sphere.

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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.

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Le Système Des Personnages Dans Corruption De Pramoedya Ananta Toer Et L’Homme Rompu De Tahar Ben Jelloun, Magda Ibrahim Jun 2006

Le Système Des Personnages Dans Corruption De Pramoedya Ananta Toer Et L’Homme Rompu De Tahar Ben Jelloun, Magda Ibrahim

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

A comparison of the character systems of Tahar Ben Jelloun’s The Broken Man and Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s Corruption (transmitter text) has made it possible to identify the same type of protagonist at the core of each novel. He is, in short, a mere functionary overburdened with social responsibilities, leading a cramped life and trying to live and breathe. But the portrayal of him in The Broken Man is more precise, and has greater depth. Moreover, the character systems as a whole is richer, more complex and subtle in this last novel, compared with that

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L’Idéologie Du "Topicalisme" Thématique Dans Les Romans Africains : De Yambo Ouologuem À Calixthe Beyala, Kasongo Mulenda Kapanga Jan 2006

L’Idéologie Du "Topicalisme" Thématique Dans Les Romans Africains : De Yambo Ouologuem À Calixthe Beyala, Kasongo Mulenda Kapanga

Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Faculty Publications

This presentation stems from the debate on the quality of the African novel each time an African work — here the novel — is awarded a literary prize. This has been the case since René Maran’s Batouala and until recently with Calixthe Beyala’s Les honneurs perdus (1996). The paper examines discursive elements both constant and new foregrounded at each period of the debate. There are two competing theories at the heart of the discussion that are trying to neutralize each other. On the one hand, there is the entrenched belief of the African continent still in need of epistemological assistance. …

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De L’Écriture Romanesque Comme Traversée Et La Maghrébinité, Kasereka Kavwahirehi Dec 2005

De L’Écriture Romanesque Comme Traversée Et La Maghrébinité, Kasereka Kavwahirehi

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This essay explores how some “Maghrebian” novelists represent and problematize their relation to “Maghrebness” or “maghrebinité”. Using postcolonial theory and Réda Bensmaia's Alger ou La maladie de la mémoire, the author shows how problematic the concept of “Maghrebian literature” can be when one considers its transnational and transcultural poetics and its de-territorialization.

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La Poétique Transgénérique De L’Oeil Et La Nuit D’Abdellatif Laâbi : Du Théâtral Au Filmique Dans Un Roman-Poème, Lucia Trifu Dec 2005

La Poétique Transgénérique De L’Oeil Et La Nuit D’Abdellatif Laâbi : Du Théâtral Au Filmique Dans Un Roman-Poème, Lucia Trifu

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The study proposes a re-reading, a new interpretation of the novel-poetry work L’oeil et la nuit by Moroccan writer Abdellatif Laâbi. In this literary text, the borders of writing are dismantled and new affinities are revealed between writing, performance, theatre and film; all of which aim to redefine the postcolonial

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Entre Intertextualité Et Réécriture, Alexie Tcheuyap Dec 2005

Entre Intertextualité Et Réécriture, Alexie Tcheuyap

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Aesthetic practices have become more and more diversified in contemporary cultures. Although rewritings and adaptations are most common from literature to film, from myth/epic to novels, African filmmakers have recently been inaugurating novelization, that is the literary rewriting of a film. This essay examines the case of the Algerian filmmaker Merzac Allouache, who has written Bab el-Oued City, based on his film Bab el-Oued, in order to escape the technical and practical limitations of cinema. In doing so, he best expresses the challenges of contemporary Algeria, which is permanently threatened by violence and Islamic fundamentalism.

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