African Studies Commons^™

Politique Culturelle : Tradition, Modernité Et Arts Contemporains Au Sénégal, 1960-2000, Kinsey Katchka

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This essay approaches contemporary arts in Senegal and their exhibition from the perspective of cultural policy. This is an especially salient approach in Senegal, where policy has played a significant role in exhibition and creative practice since the colonial period. This history is conventionally examined through a distinctly nationalist framework that reveals the government’s clear distinction between "tradition" and "modernity". State exhibition practice and rhetoric have reinforced this dichotomy, serving to position the Senegalese state as purveyor, definer, and arbiter of cultural heritage. However, diverse creative expressions throughout the capital city of Dakar call into question nationalist rhetoric’s rigid distinction …

Les Limites De L’Appartenance : Composition, Intertextualité Et Langue Dans Les Dents Du Topographe Et Méfiez-Vous Des Parachutistes De Fouad Laroui, Carla Calargé

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

In this article, I examine two novels by Fouad Laroui, Les dents du topographe (1996) and Méfiez-vous des parachutistes (1999). I analyze the difficulties encountered by their narrators when they try to find and define non alienating cultural and geographical spaces to which they could belong. For that purpose, I study the composition of the two novels, the play of intertextuality as well as the language of the main characters.

La Parole Au Féminin : La Narratrice De Cette Fille-Là De Maïssa Bey, Ana Soler

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

In Maïssa Bey’s novel, Cette fille-là, the character of Malika serves as a narrative plea for change. Since her childhood, Malika has strived to create an inward, personal imaginary for herself, as a defence mechanism against a hostile environment. In the workhouse, she adopts the role of storyteller for all those companions of hers, excluded as she is, from society. As the receptor of confidential information, she delights in verbally re-enacting their intimate stories, sprinkling them with accounts of her own experiences. By thus establishing Marika’s voice as a “link-route” to the novel’s subjacent vocal polyphony, the character is presented …

La Dimension Cachée De L’Art Sénégalais Contemporain, Allen F. Roberts, Mary Nooter Roberts

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

For nearly fifty years now, Dakar has been an epicenter of contemporary art, not just for continental Africa but for the entire world. Senegalese artists are well known internationally through participation in biennials, exhibitions, and gallery shows ; and many argue that they are contemporary artists from Senegal rather than “Senegalese artists” defined or constrained by their african identity. Among these, however, some match the global techniques and aesthetics of their works with local meanings derived from mystical Islam. Indeed, this “hidden side” can be very significant to the artists themselves even though it may be ignored by cosmopolitan connoisseurs.

Projets De Collection Et D’Exposition D’Art Sénégalais : Être Mécène D’Art À Dakar, Joanna Grabski

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The collection of Bassam Chaitou and its recent exhibition in Dakar offers a focal point to examine issues associated with private projects of collecting and exhibiting Senegalese art in Dakar. This article considers the relationship of Dakar’s collectors to historical patronage under Senghor and Dakar’s contemporary art scene. It proposes that private Dakar-based projects of collecting make visible a story about local propositions and dialogues about art. Dakar-based projects of collecting reveal a great deal about the city’s art scene, its history, artists, and trends.

L’Éthique De La Différence En Traduction : Le Cas De Deux Romans Africains Francophones Et De Leur Restitution En Anglais, Augustine H. Asaah

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Translation advances the cause of the international community as it plays a vital role in global development and understanding. The literary text needs to be translated before readers from diverse linguistic communities can apprehend and enjoy it. To a large extent, the success of the translation enterprise is a function of the accuracy of the target-text. With illustrations drawn from two francophone african masterpieces, Ahmadou Kourouma’s Les soleils des indépendances and Mariama Bâ’s Une si longue lettre, this article seeks to determine the extent to which the target-texts in English respect the spirit and the letter articulated by the source-texts. …

Raharimanana : « Le Viol Des Douceurs », Patricia Célérier

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

constant and paradoxical paradigm, violence is at the core of the Malagasy writer, Jean-Luc Raharimanana’s work. What are its representations, its modulations and functions in his shortstories, his novel, Nour, 1947, and his narrative, L’arbre anthropophage ? His poetic elaboration of violence puts his production at the juncture of postmodern and committed literatures and gives it a singular value in the world of postcolonial literature.

Biennale Et Effervescence Artistique Au Sénégal : Conjonctions Et Passerelles, Hélène Tissières

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The Dakar Biennial, Dak’Art, plays a key role and is the only event of this kind on the african continent. Held in a country where there is an abundant artistic production, it prolongs Senghor’s objectives (underlining the importance of the collective, intertwining art forms, investing mystical positions). Made of an “In” and “Off”, its structure dismantles divisions between popular/theoretical, accessible/obscure, autodidact/trained and promotes a dialog between people and approaches. Many Senegalese artists proceed in a similar fashion, assembling concepts (orality, signs, cultural references, categories), drawing from the world at large. Inscribing memory, they invite us to interrogate our future beyond …

From Dover To Knysna: Educational Drama Transcends Cultural Boundaries, Anna Visciano

Inquiry Journal 2008

No abstract provided.

What Happened To Africa?, J. Peter Pham

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

The Fate of Africa: From the Hopes of Freedom to the Heart of Despair—A History of Fifty Years of Independence by Martin Meredith. New York: Public Affairs, 2006. 752 pp.

La Pensée Du Témoignage : De La Scène Du Génocide À La Scène Judiciaire, Sélom Gbanou

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This paper intends to study the stories of witnesses of the genocide of the Tutsi people in Rwanda from the angle of both History and Justice. It analyses how the actual event is brought back by the victims’s stories and shows the tormentors that the lives they have undone have been redone in defiance of the effort to wipe out all traces, the basic idea of genocide. Furthermore, the witnesses report seems to be a judiciary scene where, trying to understand what has happened, the victims put themselves in the witness box of their conscience in order to find their …

Le Témoignage Dans L’Oeuvre De Yolande Mukagasana, Théopiste Kabanda

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

this article analyzes the status of testimony in Mukagasana’s La mort ne veut pas de moi and N’aie pas peur de savoir, by bringing out the main narrative strategies allowing to get round the unspeakable. It demonstrates the connection of the testimony, the memory and the history of the genocide in Rwanda as event which marked the humanity in 20th century. This link is studied through the conditions and the postures of testimony, the textual marks of dentification of the addressees and the roles of the testimony.

Bent Familia De Nouri Bouzid : Enjeux De L’Amitié, De La Clairvoyance Féminine Et Du Questionnement, Hélène Tissières

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Bent Familia by the Tunisian filmmaker Nouri Bouzid breaks down silences by questioning norms and power structures, including patriarchal authority. Centered on an exceptional friendship between three women and examining their preoccupations as well as their needs, the film reveals the empowering forces of sharing, insightfulness and engagement. Through the character of Aïda and the intertwinement of arts – in particular music and painting – the film dismantles absolutes and illusions. It encourages deep questioning in order to trace new paths, valuing the clear-sighted contributions of women in a continuously changing society.

Témoigner : Les Voies De La Connaissance, Catalina Sagarra

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The author analyzes the narrations of Survivors of the genocide of the Tutsi, in 1994. A particular attention is paid to how the witnesses express two affects : guilt and responsibility. Their life stories explore these concepts which help them to carry out a search for Truth, which is deeply linked with the sufferings the horror of the past inflicted to them to the point of being haunted by the past. The Survivors ask themselves an array of questions, not always finding a satisfying answer which could bring them some peace. They address their questioning to different agents, telling them …

Maggy Corrêa : Passer Le Témoin, Avec Ou Sans Le Feu Sacré, Isabelle Favre

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

In her book entitled Tutsie, etc., Rwandan Swiss author Maggy Corrêa recounts how in july 1994, she was able to rescue her mother from the Rwandan genocide of the Tutsi. This essay begins by examining the status of the testimonial genre within the literary institution. Then, based on Maggy Corrêa’s text, the analysis will demonstrate how Derrida’s concept of sacramentum can be traced in Corrêa’s adventure, and how this same notion proved to be absent from the United Nations’s discourse taking place in Geneva at the same time.

La Poétique Du Fragment Dans Le Récit De Survivance Au Rwanda, Eugène Nshimiyimana

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The narrative about surviving is by definition an impossible narrative due to the enormity and absurdity of the tragedy. It is characterized by a fragmentary aspect which is a sign of its resistance to utterance. Based on Révérien Rurangwa’s Génocidé, the following reflection proposes to read the fragment as a manifestation of a traumatic memory that language fails to carry out due to the distortion of the signifying process in which the signified seems to take priority to the signifier. The fragment, thus, can be seen as an attempt to recuperate the symbolic, attempt that is always ''unsuitable'' due to …

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.

« 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 …

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.

Sexuality Studies And Lgbtqi Rights In Africa, Sybille Ngo Nyeck

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

The first meeting of the International Research Network, Africa (IRN-Africa) was held in Saly, Senegal, February 8-10, 2007. The meeting was attended by twenty six scholars, artists, and human rights activists from ten countries including Cameroon, Canada, Ivory Coast, Jamaica, Kenya, Namibia, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, and the United States.

Tapping The Wisdom Of Our Ancestors: An Attempt To Recast Vodou And Morality Through The Voice Of Mama Lola And Karen Mccarthy Brown, Claudine Michel

Trotter Review

In this essay, I demonstrate that morality is culture-specific and contextual. To illustrate this point, I focus on Vodou, a religion that has been almost entirely misrepresented in the West, foremost because of its African origins, and that is perceived as having no legitimate basis for morality. I attempt to interpret morality in Vodou by presenting a model of ethics construction based on the true meaning of the religion rather than on the exotica of its myths and ritualizing. My analysis is based on the fact that Haitians seem to have turned to their ancestral religion and to their African …

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 …

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.

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 …

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 …

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 …

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.

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.

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.

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.