The Black Renaissance in Francophone African and Caribbean Literatures 0786436638, 9780786436637

Table of contents :
Contents
Preface
Introduction: Post-Negritude and Literary Theory
1. The Quest for Originality
2. Paradigm of the Griot
3. Negritude of Incompossibility and Negritude of Compossibility
4. The Griot, His Word, His Body
5. Fanon’s Will to Unity
6. Reiterating Griotism
7. Black Women Writers’ Dilemma with Theory
8. New Nomadologies
9. The African Critic as a Griironist
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

The Black Renaissance in Francophone African and Caribbean Literatures

The Black Renaissance in Francophone African and Caribbean Literatures K. MARTIAL FRINDÉTHIÉ

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Jefferson, North Carolina, and London

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Frindéthié, Martial K. (Martial Kokroa), ¡96¡– The Black renaissance in Francophone African and Caribbean literatures / K. Martial Frindéthié. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7864-3663-7 softcover : 50# alkaline paper ¡. African literature (French)— Black authors— History and criticism. 2. Caribbean literature (French)— Black authors— History and criticism. 3. Blacks in literature. 4. Griots in literature. 5. Negritude (Literary movement) 6. Oral tradition — Africa. I. Title. PQ3980.5.F75 2008 840.9'896 — dc22 2008008020 British Library cataloguing data are available ©2008 Martial K. Frindéthié. All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cover photographs ©2008 Shutterstock Manufactured in the United States of America

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Box 6¡¡, Je›erson, North Carolina 28640 www.mcfarlandpub.com

Contents Preface Introduction: Post-Negritude and Literary Theory

1. The Quest for Originality 2. Paradigm of the Griot 3. Negritude of Incompossibility and Negritude of Compossibility 4. The Griot, His Word, His Body 5. Fanon’s Will to Unity 6. Reiterating Griotism 7. Black Women Writers’ Dilemma with Theory 8. New Nomadologies 9. The African Critic as a Griironist

1 3 17 38 58 64 77 92 108 125 161 178 183 195 205

Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index

v

Preface This book is articulated in three folds. The first part of this book, which comprises the first four chapters, traces Francophone African and Caribbean literatures to a diversity of sources and shows that these literatures have paradoxically constituted themselves as molarized totality from eclectic borrowing. I argue that this first moment, which coincides with the advent of Negritude, is the moment of an ontological (awareness of biological di›erence as evidence of essential di›erence), theological (the black hero as black messiah, but also the black people as chosen people), and teleological (promise of an accomplished common racial history, whereby the last ones become the first ones) legacy, a legacy that I have termed griotism. The second part of the book, comprising chapters 5, 6, and 7, shows evidence of the formidable grip that griotism still has on Francophone African writers and the di‡culty for these writers— and their faithful audiences— to function outside the discursive boundaries of griotism in the post–Negritude era. I argue that griotism is a perlocution that, at all levels (political, economic, social), maintains the Francophone subject in a constant state of unforgetfulness. The chapters of this second part, which focus on Fanon, Mudimbé, the champions of Creolity (Bernabé, Chamoiseau, and Confiant), and well-read African women writers (Aminata Sow Fall and Mariama Bâ), illustrate how well invested griotism remains in Francophone literature, even among intellectuals who pretend to disturb the order of Negritude. The last part of this book, chapters 8 and 9, seeks to identify a literary posture that subverts the insidious discourse of griotism to propose, without apology, a discourse that is conducive to autonomy on all fronts despite the temptation for selfpreservation from isolation, starvation, and retribution. After a perusal of the writings of Fatou Keïta, Régina Yaou, Maryse Condé and Réda Bensmaïa, and after a quick assessment of the maverick political management of the ¡990s in the United States, I conclude that it is, for the Francophone intellectual, once again, perhaps, at the despair of all critics of indeterminacy, in the postmodern ethics of undecidability that lies the promise of this new and liberating gesture capable of defying blind allegiance to cultural paradigmaticity. 1

Introduction: Post-Negritude and Literary Theory I owe you … nothing more than you owe me. I don’t need to join you in your ghetto, because I’ve got my own. We have to counter people who say “I’m this, I’m that,” and who do so, moreover in psychoanalysis terms (relating everything to their childhood or fate), by thinking in strange, fluid, unusual terms: I don’t know what I am — I’ll have to investigate and experiment with so many things in a non-narcissistic, non–Oedipal way. Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations, ¡972–¡990

It would be instructive to investigate the development of Francophone African literatures in relation to the theoretical and ideological tug-of-war being waged by proponents of structuralism and champions of poststructuralism. An examination of the epistemological choices of influential black French intellectuals could shed light on the present situation of emergent black French nations. In the perspective of tracing the theoretical development of Francophone thinkers, and by ricochet, the ideological positioning of the French-speaking nations of Africa, and to some extent, the Caribbean, it becomes pertinent to undertake a cursory visit on the scenes of contemporary literary theories. Of the two most discernible theoretical schools competing to control the field of literary theory, that is, structuralism and poststructuralism, the majority of black French writers seem to have chosen the former. The reason for this preference is both historical and ideological. Historically, the black renaissance in French letters is one foster child of structural epistemology that still finds it di‡cult to sever ties with its father. Ideologically, structuralism contains a crowd-gathering potential that appeals to postcolonial societies, for which group morality and action-oriented movements against true or imagined neocolonial interests are still deemed essential.

3

Introduction

STRUCTURALISM’S INFLUENCE ON SOCIAL SCIENCES Before the two European wars, the field of the humanities was extremely reductive. Social scientists would naturally explain the world according to European truth contents. The discourse that accounted for the non–European remained mired in a biased cultural perception reinforced by Ferdinand de Saussure’s structural linguistics, which has had an inspiring and legitimizing e›ect on social sciences in the first half of the twentieth century. At the inception of his structural philosophy, which two of his committed students posthumously disseminated as Cours de linguistique générale, Saussure made a choice that determined not just the direction of his entire research, but also, and most importantly perhaps, a great part of early twentieth-century Western thought.¡ In the first chapter of the Course, the linguist established some working dichotomies of which language/ speech, synchrony/diachrony, and signified/signifier would become determining for social sciences. Saussure asserted that language (langue) belongs to the field of synchronic or static linguistics. The objective of synchronic linguistics, he emphasized, is to research the logical and psychological relationships linking elements that form a system. Speech (parole), on the other hand, belongs to the domain of diachronic or historical linguistics. The goal of diachronic linguistics is to examine the relationships between successive terms that are not necessarily constructing a system.2 From this distinction, Saussure dismissed the study of speech, which he regarded as susceptible to idiosyncratic variations. Because Saussure wanted an object of investigation that would be immune to individual tempering and the study of which he could conduct without having to examine the psychological motivations of the community that uses it, he privileged the synchronic analysis of language. Language was thus taken as a closed system, a self-su‡cient object of investigation, to be examined immanently, that is, without reference to any outside elements. Saussure’s conception of language was that language is a universal transparent instrument of communication that remains peripheral to the subject whose use of it amounts to a mere passive recording from a fixed stock of meaning.3 Although Saussure ascribed some creativity to the individual subject, that creativity amounted to merely selecting and combining appropriate words from a cultural or inherited bank for the purpose of creating meaning. Before the first European war, Saussure’s structuralist tradition became 4

Introduction

a fashionable model for such social sciences as anthropology and ethnology. Working from the premise that the structure of culture is similar to that of language, and that culture functions by way of selection and combination of forms, just as language functions by way of syntactic combinations, Western scientists proceeded to interpret non–Western cultures with Western tools and standards that they took for granted as accurate, universal, and transparent. Scholars like Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, Gustave LeBon, and Joseph Conrad filled library shelves with treatises and fictions about the primitive non–Westerner, presumptuously underlining his or her needs and desires. Structuralism imposed upon the Western scholar of the prewar era such a narrow outlook on the world that even the European discourse apparently sympathetic to the non–European remained soiled with allusion of the non–Western as primitive. In a so-called appeal for blacks’ self-determination and self-government against France’s assimilation policy, LeBon displayed a telling example of structuralist logic’s failure to apprehend otherness: It is a childish chimera to believe that governments and constitutions count for anything in the destinies of a people. The destiny of a people lies in itself and not in exterior circumstances. All that can be asked of a government is that it shall be the expression of the sentiments and ideas of the people it is called on to govern, and by the mere fact that it exists, it is the image of that people. There are no governments or constitutions of which it can be said that they are absolutely good or absolutely bad. The government of the king of Dahomey was probably an excellent government for the people it was called on to rule over, and the most ingenious European constitution would have been inferior for his people. This truth is unfortunately ignored by statesmen who imagine that a mode of government can be exported, and that colonies can be governed with the institutions of the metropolis. It would be as futile to wish to persuade fish to live in the air, under the pretext that aerial respiration is practiced by all superior animals.4

For LeBon, human beings could be divided into superior and inferior races; and di›erent races can share neither the same political spaces nor similar constitutions, as their minds are constructed di›erently. Todorov appropriately warned against Le Bon’s pseudo-anti-assimilationist discourse. The parallel that LeBon establishes between human races and animal species is troubling. His argument for political relativism finds its basis in a claim for cognitive relativism carefully disguised in a sermon for political self-determination.5 LeBon argues that so-called inferior races are more inclined to dictatorship, vassalage, and decadence; they deserve that one respect their political choices, as these are preferences more adapted to their general imperfection. LeBon cites the Anglo-Saxons’ success in the United States as 5

Introduction

confirmation of their superior origin. Unlike the imperfect Latin race, he argues, the English race is endowed with such qualities as a significant degree of homogeneity, a high level of will to power, a determined energy, an absolute self-control, a sentiment of independence, an outstandingly stable morality, a clear idea of duty, and a dynamic religious opinion. Therefore, LeBon predicts that despite sharing the same continent as the Anglo-Saxon race, the Latin race will never be stable, as it is intrinsically contaminated and low-grade. At most, the Latin race will only try in vain to pollute the so-called pure English and must ultimately resign itself to a life of vassalage.6 LeBon’s pseudo-relativistic discourse typifies some of the most moderate European convictions about non–European cultures during the prewar era. It is part of the larger European structural ploy that worked at making black societies the object of Europe’s discourse.

FROM TERRA INCOGNITA TO TERRA EXOTICA The prewar European intellectual community was without doubt imbued with a sense of self-su‡ciency and egotism. However, in the midst of the disenchantment and the depression that the first European war brought to Western societies, Europe’s collective outlook on the communities outside its boundaries began to change. The war that caused the great white race to turn against its kind started to sow seeds of skepticism and cynicism as regards the ideal of a unified European community writing a common telos. European writers and artists— many of whom experienced the trauma of the battlefields— started to question the collective idea of a pure and authentic Western world, source and depository of History, Civilization, and Knowledge. Consequently, these writers and artists began to express their interest for the foreign and the unfamiliar. The historical event, hitherto regarded as a universal totality, became, with the surge of the surrealist and expressionist movements, fragmentary, in the Benjaminian sense of the term.7 In the ¡920s, the idea that God might not be necessarily white, that he might be anywhere, and that the soul used to looking for it only in “great” places might have missed it, swept Europe, and especially Paris, with such force that it created an unforeseen rush and an extraordinary interest toward anything which was thus far considered out of the ordinary.8 No field of artistic or social research, James Cli›ord recalled, could remain unresponsive to the rise of surrealism. For the humanities, Africa, America, and Asia became equal fields of scientific investigation.9 Notwithstanding this shift of interest in the humanities, for most Euro6

Introduction

pean writers of the ¡920s and early ¡930s, Africa, the Americas, and Asia looked important only insofar as these continents intervened as the exotic other necessary for creating — through some hodgepodge of the strange and the familiar — the delirious and outrageous avant-garde sense of bereavement. Investigations in the humanities became increasingly works of collection and juxtaposition, works of montage of cultural artifacts. Investigations in the humanities became ever more works of collage. Interestingly enough, it is this same strategy of collage — which, one will readily admit, bears a depressing historical dimension, inasmuch as it traces back to the moment of avant-garde exoticism that reified Africa as the dark side of Europe — that the precursors of Negritude adopted at the inception of the black renaissance in French letters. The ideological shift within the boundaries of the humanities in the ¡920s, which confronted Europe’s universalistic thesis with the antithesis of culturalism, established a fashionable canon for literature: Africa, the Americas and Asia were evoked in European letters less and less as terra incognita and more and more as exotic, primitive alternative spaces to Europe. The Western patchwork that revealed the non–Western other paradoxically fixed alterity in a sightseer’s experience and alienated it through the gaze of the West. Nevertheless it is that tourist perception of Africa as Europe’s other that motivated the black students in Paris, as they were, in turn, creating the collage of Negritude, this counter-literature to European racist literatures. The works of the pioneers of black French letters, such as Léopold Sédar Senghor and Aimé Césaire, although inspired by a sense of cultural relativism, remained, nonetheless, within the paradigm of structuralism. These works sprang from the necessity to formulate — this time through a countermeta-narrative to European meta-narrative — an onto-theo-teleological discourse of blackness. Negritude is structural in the sense that Pierre Bourdieu articulates his own work against the backdrop of structuralism and, say, poststructuralist epistemology such as deconstruction. Negritude is an epistemology of di›erence, but of exhausted di›erence, of a di›erence that, lest it should dilute the preeminence of black super-struggle, cannot a›ord to engage in political-ideological free play.

THE POSTSTRUCTURAL REPULSION The wide-ranging postcolonial fervor for poststructuralism and deconstruction in particular has had little e›ect on the black renaissance in French 7

Introduction

letters. Derrida’s critique of central authority, which in Commonwealth literatures has incited the emergence of a great number of marginal agencies, was greeted with much skepticism by Francophone writers, who, at best, have chosen to approach it with a certain Bourdieuian prudence. Of all the criticisms leveled against structuralism in the aftermath of Saussure’s linguistic philosophy, the most enlightening is certainly the deconstructionist denunciation of structuralism’s essentializing principle. The most damaging assessment of Saussure’s structuralism came from Jacques Derrida, who contended that Saussure’s linguistics rests on a deterministic center — logocentrism — the myth that a central authority, reservoir of social knowledge and truth, governs all systems of thoughts. This sovereign unity — which Derrida also names epistémé— is generally invoked through a variety of referents—eidos (presence of the thing to the sight), ousia (presence as substance/essence/existence) the self-presence of the cogito, the co-presence of the other, and more. These various manifestations of logocentrism, which, Derrida insists, tend to convey the “historical determination of the meaning of being in general as presence,” have persisted in Western metaphysics since Plato.¡0 Saussure’s linguistics, Derrida contends, conforms to this determination for presence; it is only concerned with terms in presentia, and Saussure’s obsession for presence shows best in his analogy between the system of language and a game of chess: But of all the comparisons that might be imagined, the most fruitful is the one that might be drawn between the functioning of language and a game of chess…. The respective value of the pieces depends on their position on the chessboard just as each linguistic term derives its value from its opposition to all the other terms.¡¡

Saussure’s metaphor gives away his inclination, in the study of language, to take into account only what is here and now as would a chess player. It is this fascination for the thing as being only insofar as it is present — present to the senses— which Derrida criticizes in Saussure. To counter this Western logocentrism to which Saussure abides, Derrida inaugurates a new moment for human sciences, characterized by a radical questioning of the power of epistémé. This new moment, which puts in question the laws that govern the desire for the center, Derrida argues, also frees language from the exclusive domain of linguistics and causes it to invade all problematics.¡2 Paradoxically enough, the father of modern structuralism, Saussure himself, first enunciated Derrida’s radical vision that questions the concept of center. It is Saussure who first announced a science of the life of signs— semiotics or semiology — that would teach humanity what signs are made of and which laws govern them.¡3 Thus it is by taking into account elements that Saussure 8

Introduction

intentionally left out of his investigation — the terms in absentia—that Derrida came up with his Grammatology or science of writing.¡4 Derrida’s main argument is that the dependable anchor, that on which the whole theory of the structure rests, is the very factor that actually dismantles the argument of structurality. Structuralism is obsessed with one of the major flaws of Western thinking: It rests on the privileging of a transcendental signifier. Thus attacking the notion of bi-univocity between signifier and signified as proposed by Saussure, Derrida suggests that a signifier, or a word, relies for its meaning on its di›erence from another signifier, which in turn relies on its di›erence from other signifiers in a never-ending play of signifiers, a play that is always “play of absence and presence,” and which “must be conceived of before the alternative of presence and absence.”¡5 Derrida proposes two e›ects, a relationship of di›erence between signifiers and a delay in determining the meaning of a signifier. To represent this doubling e›ect of meaning Derrida coins the term di›érance, meaning to di›er and to defer. Derrida’s method of argumentation is typical of deconstruction; it is by means of Saussure’s fundamental concept—di›erence—that Derrida dismantles Saussure’s theory, and correlatively, the modern foundational grounds, such as, the Hegelian discourse of the unified structure and the Freudian discourse of consciousness, on which it stands. Hence, for Derrida, language — as the language of deconstructionist criticism illustrates so well — is always a play, an unresolved riddle, a puzzle, the pieces of which are never absolutely present but perpetually to be looked for, as the very shapes of those pieces are never totally given. However, on behalf of the skepticism of deconstruction it would only be fair to ask the following questions: How does the theory of di›erance make sense? In the name of what is one to read Derrida and grasp, even before one agrees or disagrees with him, the “thing” in his theory, that is, the concept of di›erance? Derrida himself seems to raise that question and so, answers it by virtue of his reservation about his own theory of skepticism. I believe that it is this self-doubt that demythologizes the notion of meaning or anchored signifier in Derrida’s own theory and prevents it from becoming a doxology or meta-theory. We have no language — no syntax and no lexicon — which is foreign to this history [the history of Western metaphysics]; we can pronounce not a single destructive proposition which had not already had to slip into the form, the logic, and the implicit postulations of precisely what it seeks to contest. To take one example from many: The metaphysics of presence is shaken with the help of the concept of sign. But … as soon as one seeks to demonstrate in this way that there is no transcendental or privileged signified and that the domain or play of signification henceforth has no limit, one must reject even the concept or word “sign” itself — which is precisely what cannot be done.¡6 9

Introduction

Instead of an arrested di›erence, such as the one o›ered by Saussure in his analogy of the chess game, Derrida’s economy of di›erance opens up the possibility of di›erence of di›erence, an endless positing of di›erence, a constant scene of re-invention and becoming. With Derrida, the identity of di›erence itself becomes problematized in favor of the incessant di›erence of identity, a most a‡rmative attribute of deconstruction.

THE BOURDIEUIAN PRUDENCE Not everyone seems impressed with Derrida’s postmodern epistemology. For Bourdieu and Wacquant, postmodernism metaphorizes political irresponsibility: Certain philosophers (Lacoue-Labarthe, Lyotard) displayed more clearly than ever before their profound political irresponsibility … Derrida is, on this point, no doubt the most skilled and the most ambiguous insofar as he manages to give the appearance of a radical break to analyses which always stop short of the point where they would fall into “vulgarity” … situating himself both inside and outside the game, on the field and on the sidelines, he plays with fire by brushing against a genuine critique of the philosophical institution without completing it.¡7

Bourdieu assigns himself a place somewhere between Saussure and Derrida, whose positions he castigates as being respectively too far right and too far left. Bourdieu intends to come onto the scene of sociology as a precursor. To do so, he has to disrupt existing theories. Therefore, in the style of Lacan’s controversial re-reading and re-directing of Freud, Bourdieu re-introduces the theory of Marx to a new Hegelian dialectic; one that, according to him, dares to go beyond a purely structural reading. By doing so, Bourdieu hopes to substitute in lieu of a mechanical dialectic a true dialectic that takes into account the e›ects of history on the protagonists (agents) in the field of production. Bourdieu’s method consists of incorporating into the theory of the field a component that Saussure left aside, the diachronic factor. Thus, Bourdieu’s analysis pretends to operate on a dual plane (synchronic and diachronic). For Bourdieu, what is at stake in the sociological investigation is less a question of class struggle than one of a game. Players are taken in by the game; they oppose one another, sometimes with ferocity, only to the extent that they concur in their belief (doxa) in the game and its stakes. They grant these a recognition that escapes questioning. Players agree by the mere fact of playing and not by way of a “contract,” that the game is worth playing.¡8

All the agents involved in the game understand and agree on its rules. These 10

Introduction

agents, by virtue of the historical component, which Bourdieu recuperates, come into the field of production with their particular historical schemata. With much subtlety, Bourdieu makes room for di›erence, a di›erence within certain limits. The game, according to Bourdieu, takes place in a relational field within which social agents compete for stakes (interests). Not only are the positions of those agents objectively defined, but so, too, are the relations between those positions. Consequently, occupants of positions in the field, while competing for stakes, relate to one another according to (historical) paradigms that the very position they have in the field of production imposes upon them. Bourdieu’s subject still remains locked up within the walls of historical stigmatization, and the diachronic stereotypes that he or she carries are not so easy to subvert. Bourdieu nicely terms these stereotypes habitus. Habitus is a socialized subjectivity…. Rationality is bounded not only because the available information is curtailed, and because the human mind is generically limited and does not have the means of fully figuring out all situations, especially in the urgency of action, but also because the human mind is socially bounded, socially structured. The individual is always, whether he likes it or not, trapped — save to the extent that he becomes aware of it —“within the limit of his brain,” as Marx said, that is, within the limits of the system of categories he owes to his upbringing and training.¡9

Bourdieu’s view is deterministic. The sociologist seems to claim that the individual’s e›orts to express himself or herself within the margins of the socio-historical diagram (habitus) are only the manifestation of a common or social arrival at a particular stage of the teleological voyage. The only way Bourdieu distances himself from the argument of the global village is to suggest specific subcommunities— in lieu of the notion of classes—functioning with specific subtexts; and it is precisely only within the contours of those subtexts that Bourdieu’s subject is permitted to navigate. To proclaim his break from structuralism, Bourdieu conceives of subjectivity, so long as that subjectivity remains trapped within the confines of habitus. Bourdieu’s criticism has a twofold importance. The diachronic component, rejected by Saussure and recuperated by Bourdieu, allows the latter to put forth the claim of the passing of structuralism and the mechanistic reading of Marxism — with its consideration of economic states as just the resolution of contradictory forces. By bringing into the field of analysis the historical factor, Bourdieu intends to posit himself as a groundbreaker that seeks to draw attention to the (historical) process in the formation of those contradictory forces. As some critics have noted, this reformative attitude is nothing new among the new Marxists. It is a tradition that can be traced 11

Introduction

back to Engels, and which is perpetuated by Althusser, one of the targets of Bourdieu’s sharpest criticisms.20 Paradoxically enough, this double strategy of recuperation of theory and denial of appurtenance to theory by which Bourdieu seeks to appear innovative (the new Marxist) is what he criticizes in others. This masked appropriation which is legitimized by the denial of borrowing, is one of the most powerful strategies yet to be employed by philosophy against the social sciences and against the threat of relativization that these sciences have held over it. Heidegger’s ontologization of historicity is, indisputably the model of this operation. It is a strategy analogous to the double jeu which allows Derrida to take from social sciences (against which he poised) some of his most characteristics instruments of deconstruction.2¡

With the open criticism of Derrida and Foucault (and the whole field of postmodernity), Bourdieu intends to shy away from what he seems to define as the purely speculative aspect of philosophy and its lack of courage in proposing any viable theory. It is therefore to sociology, and particularly to historical sociology, not philosophy, that belongs the right “to forge concepts, to construct models, to produce more or less pretentious theoretical or metatheoretical discourses.”22 At the same time, however, Bourdieu refuses to elaborate a definitive theory or to create permanent concepts and models that would be applicable to the analysis of any field of production, arguing that concepts are living document, definable only insofar as they are put to work. If it is true that the human being is a social animal, it is even more true in the logic of habitus that the individual has no ability to transcend the crowd, to think outside of his or her religious congregation, political party, family unit, and, as we often see in Negritude, race. Thus my analogy between Negritude’s ontological discourse and structural relativism’s concept of habitus stands. The debate that opposes structuralists to poststructuralists ought to be of importance for whoever wishes to understand Francophone literatures. Critics who wish to comprehend Francophone literatures need to study their theoretical bedrock. In the tumultuous race for definition, Francophone literatures have remained more unified under the surface than one might think. Like Bourdieu, the champion of social habitus, the proselytizers of black ontology, would have us believe that individual acts are bound by a predetermined social codifying. In the perspective of the logic of habitus, everything turns out for the best as disinterested individuals enter (invest in) a field of competition (a game) the rules of which they totally understand and accept. Their friendly emulation raises the stakes, and whatever the outcome of the game, a game already codified by virtue of their social 12

Introduction

history, everyone —from the rich capitalist investor to the poor hourly worker who sells his or her labor — is satisfied. The logic of the field, with its tendency to socialize every aspect of individual initiative, finally ends up legitimizing the very things it criticizes. Although I would retain from Bourdieu that social agents do what they have internalized as their “taken for granted,”23 as his concept of habitus is relevant in describing Negritude as a patriarchal discourse propagated through what I shall describe later as the aesthetics of griotism, insofar as that concept resists the possibility of individual’s walking out of canonization, it becomes the consecration of a transcendental symbolic order.24 The notion of strategy, the very idea of nonparadigmatic posture, seems antithetical to habitus as Bourdieu uses the term. According to him, the subject’s future plans and choices are strategies only insofar as mental schemata dictate them. The agent does what he or she has to do without posing it explicitly as a goal, below the level of calculation and even consciousness, beneath discourse and representation … by way of internalization of objective chances in the form of objective hopes.25

Habitus is necessarily grounded in the idea of the structural event. It is in this sense that Bourdieu seems to bring us back to the Saussurean determinism, which limits the subject’s creativity to acts of selection from the social stock. Wacquant falls short of admitting that Bourdieu’s logic of the field runs the risk of being interpreted as a political and economic teleological idealization when he writes. Those who understand Bourdieu’s economy of practice as a generalized theory of economic determinism … are victims of a … misreading of his sociology…. By strategy, [Bourdieu] refers not to the purposive and preplanned pursuit of calculated goals … but to the active deployment of objectively oriented “lines of action” that obey regularities and form coherent and socially intelligible patterns, even though they do not follow conscious rules or aim at the premeditated goals posited by a strategist.26

In spite of Wacquant’s strong defense of Bourdieu, it is clear that Bourdieu himself has not come forward with a convincing explanation regarding the relationship between the habitus and the field, a relationship that, as Bourdieu acknowledges, is “double and obscure.”27 The slight historical component Bourdieu adds to structuralism seems to be his strategic move to position himself as the precursor of a new sociology. It allows him to distance himself from Saussure’s bi-univocal thesis and, thus, create the mirage of innovation. Bourdieu’s subjectivity still remains trapped within social 13

Introduction

norms or, to use his own terms, within social “lines of action.” Bourdieu’s dilemma, his di‡culty to position himself on the outside edge of structuralism even as he criticizes the flaws of structuralism is illustrative of the di‡culty to designate a method, a doctrine, without arresting it within the boundaries of the structural machine.

THE LACANIAN TEMPTATION In Francophone black letters, from Senghor and Césaire to Chamoiseau, Confiant and Jean Bernabé, the various attempts to name the identity of the French colonized have resulted in rigidifying ethics that failed to recognize the multifarious aspirations of the Francophone subject. Even Francophone black critics, such as Fanon and Mudimbé, who attempted to explain the situation of the French colonized from a psychoanalytical perspective, have, in my sense, only succeeded in opposing to the colonizing abusive father a black and authentic father from whose authority the black subject’s identity should inevitably unfurl. These critics have generally claimed a di›erence of identity, only to reify an identity of di›erence. The greatest danger in psychoanalytical postcolonial criticism — and according to this work, the most crucial peril in postcolonial theories in general — is the stultifying e›ects of totalization. Like Saussure’s structuralism or Bourdieu’s structural relativism, Lacan’s psychoanalysis has serious limitations, of which the postcolonial Francophone critic needs to be aware. Many of the pioneers in black French letters who, by their priceless hard work, paved for me the way to intellectual freedom — and against whom I sometimes dare to turn an ungrateful critical eye today —fell into the entrapment of Lacanianism. They found Lacan’s parallel between language and the unconscious to be an inspiring stance against the view that apprehended language as a firm and predictable entity. Thanks to Lacan, these pioneers in black French letters could problematize the present condition of blacks in Africa and the Caribbean as being the fact of an inauthentic, and thus salvageable, Oedipal relation between whites and blacks. I believe that it can be productive for the postcolonial writer to work with psychoanalysis so long as he or she remains aware of its limitations. Against strictly structuralist and psychoanalytical approaches, I would advocate the more liberating methods of grammatology and rhizomatics. These methods have the potential of upsetting all notions of determinism in black French letters and restoring to the hodgepodge of Negritude — unfortunately exhausted into the muck of structuralism and neo-structuralism— 14

Introduction

the resonance which I would prefer it to possess, that of a continuous process of production of production. The postcolonial critic, rather than shying away from western epistemologies, needs to engage them in the production of discourses that will e›ectively transform the economic, social, and political conditions of the postcolonial subject. It is only at the price of genuine engagement with theories of social changes, and especially poststructural theories, that Francophone thinkers will really problematize the exclusive and abusive relations that France enjoys with French Africa and the French Caribbean without suggesting in replacement equally engulfing associations.

15

¡

The Quest for Originality Rehearsing the oft-quoted inaugural speech that Michel Foucault delivered at the Collège de France, Vumbi Yoka Mudimbé inscribes the West where Foucault writes Hegel. Pour l’Afrique, échapper réellement à l’Occident suppose d’apprécier ce qu’il en coûte de se détacher de lui; cela suppose de savoir jusqu’où l’Occident, insidieusement peut-être, s’est approché de nous; cela suppose de savoir dans ce qui nous permet de penser contre l’Occident, ce qui est encore occidental; et de mesurer en quoi notre recours contre lui est encore peut-être une ruse qu’il nous oppose et au terme de laquelle il nous attend, immobile et ailleurs.¡ [For Africa, to actually escape from the West means to understand what is at stake in being separated from it. It means to understand how close to us the West, insidiously perhaps, has come; it means to know in what allows us to think against the West, what is still Western; and to measure how our mutiny against it might be a ruse that it opposes to us and at the end of which it is waiting for us motionless, somewhere else.]2

Mudimbé contends that if postcolonial literatures’ project is primarily driven by the metaphysical necessity to run away from the West — and he believes that is the case — then the African critic’s task is, first and foremost, to identify what is still Western in the brew that constitutes African literatures today in order to avoid relapsing into it. If such an endeavor of triage is needed, for the Afro-Caribbean Francophone critic, it should start with separating what in the black renaissance in French letters (Negritude) is assumed from what is essentially original. This is a daunting task, given how much Negritude has borrowed from the West.

NEGRITUDE’S METAPHYSICAL BASES The founders of Negritude, Senghor and Césaire in particular, have never been timid in acknowledging their indebtedness to certain European thinkers, such as Delafosse and Frobenius, who instilled in them a muchneeded sense of pride in African values. At the same time, however, the 17

The Black Renaissance

pioneers of the black renaissance in French letters have wished to downplay Europe’s intellectual suzerainty over them by emphasizing their own scholarly originality. Césaire has insisted that his encounter with André Breton was “une confirmation de la véracité de ce que j’avais trouvé par mes propres réflexions”3 (a confirmation of the truth I had uncovered through my own investigation). In spite of the black intellectuals’ proclamation of self-emancipation, their ties with European epistemologies are too complex and the terms of Western metaphysics too profoundly seated in Negritude’s philosophy to be so easily brushed away. In The Predicament of Culture,4 Cli›ord recalls how the emergence of Paris, in the ¡920s and ¡930s, as the world capital for new cultures and arts as well as the rise of surrealism have precipitated the advent of black French protest literatures— an event which in L’Odeur du père Mudimbé places under the spell of Oedipus.

THE METAPHYSICAL COLLAGE It should come as no surprise that Negritude drew so much upon theories of European philosophers. The consciousness of the black renaissance in French letters did not emerge from nothingness, but rather from within the specific epistemological frame of reference that trained many AfroCaribbean intellectuals in the ¡930s in Europe. Therefore, it was natural that many of the arguments for building Negritude should be borrowed from the arsenal of those against whom Negritude’s campaign was being waged. For the consolidation of their arguments, the founders of Negritude have turned to a variety of European philosophical traditions— some of which many critics thought irreconcilable. Here, the traditions of Hegel, Nietzsche, Frobenius, and Bergson, to cite only these few, have come together indiscriminately, yet very selectively, as the proponents of Negritude have wittingly used them.

NIETZSCHE IN NEGRITUDE Nietzsche’s contribution to the black renaissance in French letters will remain the most unexpected one, considering the philosopher’s alleged association with European, and particularly, German imperialism.5 However, there is abundant evidence to suggest that the father of nihilism, as Nietzsche is often referred to, influenced Negritude at its formative stage. If 18

¡—The Quest for Originality

Nietzsche was well known for his controversial tone, he who once confessed to his sister Elizabeth that he could anticipate how unqualified and unsuitable people would one day invoke him certainly came to reveal himself as a great prophet, too.6 Nietzsche’s language has lent itself to a variety of interpretations, and many critics, writers, and political leaders, from the various corners of the ideological field, have not hesitated, in an attempt to rationalize their positions, to pull him towards their own problematics. Some critics have identified Nietzsche’s notion of the highest man as an endorsement of German imperialist and colonialist enterprises. Thus, for instance, without providing material evidence to support his claim that Nietzsche advocated Nazism — and as if Nietzsche who writes “I obviously do everything to be hard to understand myself ” were not di‡cult enough to fix in terms of what he says— Buttner invites us to read Nietzsche in terms of understood statements, implications, presuppositions and innuendoes. Buttner’s reading par implication misleads him to a‡rm that according to Nietzsche, people should be kept in “healthy unconsciousness by means of religion and mythology.”7 Is not Nietzsche precisely asserting the opposite when he characterizes Christian strict spiritual discipline as silliness and stupidity? The confusion about Nietzsche’s ideological position was created by the philosopher’s determination to write for only the sophisticated few who, like him, thought and walked gangatsrotagati, that is to say, like the Superman emerging from the will to power.8 Nevertheless, Nietzsche’s supposed hermetic texts cannot justify all the sins that critics have unhesitatingly attributed to him. Those who thought to have discovered in his philosophy a backing of the Nazi regime had failed to discern that, unlike Hitler, who strove to be a social force, Nietzsche’s Overman abhors the rules of any binding contract. He is an unconventional hero; more inclined to dismembering consolidated national and state ideals than erecting a crowd into a nation. The black French writers’ various appropriations of Nietzsche’s philosophy reflect the ways some critics have misread the German philosopher.

NIETZSCHE IN THE HAITIAN INDIGENIST MOVEMENT As early as the late ¡920s and early ¡930s, long before Césaire’s Cahier d’un retour au pays natal saw its first publication, a generation of young Haitian poets and novelists were explicitly expressing their attachment to Nietzsche’s philosophy. These young Haitian intellectuals, who founded the 19

The Black Renaissance

Haitian Indigenist Movement, the antecedent of Negritude, saw in Nietzsche’s youthful exuberance and apocalyptic voice a medium to express their disapproval of Haitian political and literary traditions of the time. Politically, after consecutive bloody revolutions led successively by Toussaint Louverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines (between ¡789 and ¡804) a coalition of black slaves and free Mulattos succeeded in liberating Saint Domingue from French colonists and proclaiming it the free state of Haiti on January ¡, ¡804.9 However, the hopes that accompanied the creation of the new nation withered almost immediately, as internal conflicts intensified through the Dessalines Empire and through a Republic marked by its plethora of presidents (twenty-two presidents between ¡8¡8 and ¡9¡5). Finally, the political and social unrest in Haiti led the American Marines to occupy the country in ¡9¡5 under the pretext that the precarious condition of such a strategic nation as Haiti could upset the hemispheric political balance. Culturally, with the American occupation of Haiti — which lasted from ¡9¡5 to ¡934 — and the subsequent importation of Southern American racism in the island, the average Haitian withdrew into a complex of inferiority and a compulsive desire to deny his or her black heritage and to imitate anything European or North American.¡0 As a reaction against this Haitian lack of appreciation for things native and indigenous, Haitian national literature, which since the revolution had evolved from eulogizing revolutionary heroes to flatly reflecting French literary canons, underwent a metamorphosis: Firstly, Haitian national literature turned increasingly disdainful of French and American objectifying stances, which caused Haitians to lose their freedom and to abdicate their political responsibility to the occupying forces. For poets such as Carl Brouard, Jacques Roumain and Thoby-Marcelin, the way to reclaim this individual sense of autonomy was to break all literary and cultural ties with French and Anglo-Saxon American canonicity and delve deep into Nietzschean buoyant irrationalism.¡¡ In addition to attacking dominant Western beliefs and institutions, Haitian literature turned to recapturing Haiti’s lost immediate independent past and ancestral original values. In order to remedy his people’s despondency and lack of self-appreciation under the American Occupation, the Haitian ethnologist, Dr. Jean Price-Mars, undertook to unearth what he claimed was Haiti’s rich indigenous cultural values. Price-Mars’s thesis, which stipulated that Haiti is the heir of an original African legacy, was exposed in his Ainsi parla l’oncle—So Spoke the Uncle¡2— a book whose title recalls in no coincidental terms Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathrustra. Although Price-Mars’s intent was to foster a sense of national pride in 20

¡—The Quest for Originality

the Haitian people, his influence spilled over the Haitian national boundaries and reached not only a whole new generation of Haitians, but also of Antilleans and Africans, such as Césaire, Damas, Diop, and Senghor. Césaire’s assertion that Negritude was first born in Haiti is not only his acknowledgment of the importance of such heroes as Louverture and Dessalines to the black cause, but it is also the expression of his indebtedness to Dr. Price-Mars’s thesis and the whole Indigenist Movement in Haiti for laying down the cornerstone of his own Negritude.

NIETZSCHE IN AFRICAN AND MARTINICAN NEGRITUDE If the Indigenists invoked Nietzsche more for his irrational and iconoclastic spirit, Negritude, on the other hand, identified in Nietzsche’s concepts of Overman and will to power the possibility for elaborating the black Messiah. For Césaire and Senghor Nietzsche’s notions of Overman and will to power could respectively stand as the figure of the black Messiah and the notion of élan vital or force vitale. The proponents of Negritude saw a parallel between the black hero, liberated from the constraints of the rational interpretation of the world characterizing Western thought and the Nietzschean Superman, distancing himself from the mechanical — scientific, technological, and thus, doctrinal and dogmatic — interpretation of the world. For Senghor, Nietzsche’s will to power is relevant to the question of African philosophy and especially to the African belief in a mythical dimension. The will to power is evidence that reality cannot be reduced to a mere concept, and that the necessity for a‡rmation, or élan vital, will always thrust Man to overflow the confines of the concept and to leap intuitively toward absolute reality. According to the Senegalese poet, Nietzsche is proof that black metaphysicians and German philosophers share many similarities. Both German philosophers and black philosophers believe in the necessity to transcend the mere concept in their respective quests for truth: “Le philosophe allemand,” Senghor writes, “ne peut s’empêcher de plonger par-delà la physique: dans la méta-physique. Ainsi le fait le Nègre”¡3 (The German philosopher cannot help delving beyond physics, into metaphysics. Neither can the Negro). According to Senghor, only German philosophers, such as Marx — as regards action and transformation — and Nietzsche — as regards a‡rmation of life — have gone beyond Socrates’s unilateral intellectualism, which reifies rationality as the sole vehicle for reaching out to absolute truth.¡4 21

The Black Renaissance

This revealed nexus between German and African metaphysics remains at the heart of Senghor’s admiration for Nietzsche. Unlike Senghor, however, Césaire has been very cautious in celebrating his Nietzschean heritage, reassessing Negritude’s friendship with Nietzsche in light of the increasing criticism of the latter as an advocate of European colonialist enterprise in general, and of German imperialism in particular.¡5 Whatever the case, it is henceforth clear that Nietzsche’s invitation into the circle of Negritude was issued as the result of a gross misunderstanding in a moment of euphoria. When Nietzsche uses the term Overman or Superman, he tends to do it in conjunction with the will to power. The Nietzschean Overman rising stronger than ever out of the experience of eternal historical recurrence and out the flow of contradictions and opposing forces, that is, out of the will to power, finds in this will both the condition of his coming to being, the Hegelian being-in-and-for-itself, and an overflowing demand to transcend this Hegelian synthesis. Therefore, in Nietzsche’s conception, the will to power stands as both the event that produces the hero and that by way of which this hero writes himself out of the metaphysical teleological narrative. Consequently, rather than rising from the experience of the will to power as a self-assured hero, the Overman comes out of it as an undecidability filled with many uncertainties, contradictions, secrecies, rivalries, conflicting moralities, and desires. From this perspective, both Nietzsche’s concept of will to power and his idea of Superman are supplementarities in the Derridian sense of the term: It is only by being overabundant that they can fill the lack of the subject.¡6 When Nietzsche draws upon his contemporary experience (the space and time of early twentieth-century Europe in general, and Germany in particular), it appears to him that the true hero is the Aristocrat, the evil, desire-driven, life-enjoying, immoral, successful, happy Aristocrat, who lives here and now, not the man of the social contract who finds comfort and strength under binding laws. Therefore, to illustrate what that Superman is not, Nietzsche castigates the group mind, the most telling example of which, he is convinced, remains the Christian crowd. As he writes, Fundamentally, my term immoralist involves two negations. For one, I negate a type of man that has so far been considered supreme: the good, the benevolent, the beneficent. And then I negate a type of morality that has become prevalent and predominant as morality itself — the morality of decadence or, more concretely, Christian morality. It would be permissible to consider the second contradiction the more decisive one, since I take the overestimation of goodness and benevolence on a large scale for a consequence of decadence, for a symptom of weakness, irreconcilable with an ascending, Yes-saying life: negating and destroying are conditions of saying Yes…. [Christian morality] is folie circulaire.¡7 22

¡—The Quest for Originality

Nietzsche’s characterization of group mentality as folie circulaire stands as strong evidence that the philosopher abhors the notion of any leading moral authority preaching to a flock. Therefore, those who, like Buttner, make the claim of Nietzsche’s subscription to the politics of Hitler as well as those who, like Senghor and Césaire, see him as the promised Messiah seem to have failed to apprehend the substance of Nietzsche’s Superman. Hitler, Shaka, Samory, and Louverture were communal forces. Nietzsche’s hero is an individualistic and iconoclastic discrete entity. Furthermore, contrary to Buttner’s perception of Nietzsche, the philosopher’s dislike of anti–Semitism is documented. In a Christmas ¡887 letter, Nietzsche scorns his sister for her association with an anti–Semitic man. You have committed one of the greatest stupidities—for yourself and for me! Your association with an anti–Semitic chief expresses a foreignness to my whole way of life which fills me again and again with ire and melancholy…. It is a matter of honor with me to be absolutely clean and unequivocal in relation to anti–Semitism, namely, opposed to it as I am in my writings. I have recently been persecuted with letters and Anti-Semitic Correspondence Sheets. My disgust with this party (which would like the benefit of my name only too well!) is as pronounced as possible, but the relation to Förster, as well as the aftere›ects of my former publisher, the anti–Semitic Schmeitzner, always bring adherents to his disagreeable party back to the idea that I might belong to them after all.¡8

As have done most critics who have rationalized their positions by citing Nietzsche, the negritudinists interpreted Nietzsche so as to fit their own problematic. Notwithstanding the German philosopher’s professed rejection of any crowd mentality, the proponents of the black panlogism called upon him to testify in favor of communal e›ort and collective consciousness. In the singular political and cultural contexts of blacks’ struggle for liberation from coercion, the black hero— like Shaka, Dessalines, Sundjata Keita, Askia Mohammed, Louverture, Samory Touré, and other foundational figures— was, as Césaire remarks, expected to be a carrier of the world —“porteur du monde, porteur des autres hommes … une sorte de Christ sou›rant” (carrier of the world, carrier of the other men … a sort of su›ering Christ). Such a hero could not a›ord the eccentricities of Nietzsche’s antisocial Superman. For, if Nietzsche’s Superman could open up the possibility of a black Overman, this hero could not, nevertheless, remain unequivocally and categorically a communal force whose struggle would transcend idiosyncrasies so as to totalize blacks’ aspirations. The Overman is oxymoronic to Negritude’s notion of collective freedom. 23

The Black Renaissance

HEGEL IN NEGRITUDE Although in ¡94¡ Césaire characteristically inaugurated Tropiques, a journal dedicated to black poetry, under the sign of Nietzsche, later, in a ¡975 interview with Jacqueline Leiner, the father of Negritude revised his literary ties with the author of Thus Spoke Zarathrustra— pleading, no longer Nietzschean insanity and eccentricity, but rather literary immaturity — and rea‡rmed Negritude’s stronger belief in Hegelian values. Thus he announced. Je ne suis pas nietzschéen, surtout au sens vulgaire de ce terme: la philosophie, la volonté de puissance, etc…. J’ai toujours été dominé par cette idée hégélienne [la réalité universelle], que Senghor et moi nous soulignions à l’époque, et je me rappelle notre joie quand nous avons trouvé cette phrase de Hegel: “C’est par le particulier que se fait l’accès à l’Universel,” que l’Universel c’est l’approfondissement du particulier.¡9 [I am not Nietzschean, not in the vulgar sense of the term: the philosophy, the will to power, etc…. I have always been impressed by this Hegelian idea [universal reality], which Senghor and I used to underline, and I remember our joy when we found out thanks to Hegel, that it is through the singular that one can access the Universal, and that the Universal is the deepening of the particular.]20

Today, Hegel’s racist views on Africa are no secrets to students of African studies. Many scholars, Africanists and non–Africanists alike, have made it their obligation to return to Hegel, and this time, no longer to eulogize him, but rather to bring him “before the court of the Ashanti.”2¡ An assiduous interrogation of Hegel’s texts has finally succeeded in establishing the German phenomenologist as the father of the discourse of blacks’ inferiority and lack of reason, culture, and civilization. Faithful to this anti–Hegelian tradition, Mudimbé reminds us that it is at the very heart of a Hegelian-inspired dichotomization that lies the source problem of the implied superiority of the West and inferiority of Africa as primitive other, “incapable of conceiving functional modes of observation, classification and interpretation”22; and Mudimbé points out that, generally, anthropologists and historians understand [T]he tension between [Africa and Europe] in a more general grid in which four sets of concepts would be opposed: orality versus writing, spatiality versus temporality, alterity versus identity, unconscious versus consciousness. These concepts characterize two types of society: on the one hand, traditional or “primitive” and, on the other hand historical.23

For Mudimbé, the main flaw in dialectical thought is the inclination within the logic of opposition to reify one set of values over another. Remarking 24

¡—The Quest for Originality

that Hegelian dialectic remains a consistent epistemological heritage, which, in Western philosophy, has persisted past structuralism, Mudimbé takes issue with poststructuralism in general, and schizoanalysis in particular. He especially charges Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus with partaking in a universal history of mankind that diachronically progresses from “primitive territorial machines” to “civilized capitalist machines.”24 Nonetheless, as if to give credence to both Foucault’s prediction — that Hegel awaits us at every corner and behind every brush — and Mudimbé’s own prophesy — that the West is watching every one of our gestures— both Fanon and Mudimbé— let us cite these two, only insofar as they, at least, claim to be aware of the West’s desire to smother Africa — relapse into Hegel. The attempts at reversals, such as undertaken by Fanon in Black Skin, White Masks and the Wretched of the Earth or Mudimbé in The Invention of Africa, The Idea of Africa and Tales of Faith, bear alarming Hegelian traces. These projects suggest a dialectical process of the politics of otherness, which, in Fanon, leads to a pragmatic sublation of white values, of white ontology even, and in Mudimbé to an emotional sublation of Western methodological preferences. Fanon does not dispute Hegel’s idea that history is the synthesis of oppositional forces. On the contrary, not only does he agree with this Hegelian premise, but — in setting about to correct what he denounces as an ontological coup de force in Hegel’s dialectic — he takes these forces to be whites’ and blacks’ conflicting desires for assertion, and he posits the black revolutionary at the antithetic pole of the white oppressor. Given that the most vehement critics of Hegel seem to have fallen in Hegelianism, the students of African studies, as shocked and startled as they may be, might understand Negritude’s a‡liation with Hegel, especially at a time when in the euphoria of devising a black revolutionary program, the black intellectuals’ intention was, as Senghor puts it so perceptively, to “prendre aux colonisateurs leurs armes, mais aussi, dialectiquement, contester l’e‡cacité de ces mêmes armes et trouver le secret qui nous permettait d’a›ûter les nôtres”25 (to take the colonizers’ weapons but also, dialectically question the e‡ciency of these same weapons and find the secret that would allow us to improve ours). The important question that both Fanon and Mudimbé raise, and which they, too, must retroactively be called upon to answer, is whether the second agenda in this program has been successfully attained. Reserving this question to be answered elsewhere in this work, lets us only note that as conspicuously racist as Hegel might appear to us today, his idea of the historical event as a unified structure gave the black renaissance in French letters, at the most crucial moment of its birth, when a second’s hesitation could make the di›erence between living in dignity or dying in 25

The Black Renaissance

oppression, the arguments to articulate the possibility of a black social hero leading a community, harmoniously, toward its consecration. For Hegel, the constitution of the State starts with the resolution of the various sparse antitheses. [A] State is well constituted and internally powerful when the private interest of its citizens is one with the common interest of the state, when the one finds its gratification and realization in the other … the epoch when the state attains this harmonious condition marks the period of its blossoming.26

This historical condition, the harmonious state, is attainable as the thingin-and-for-itself, that is, the nodal point of the Hegelian historical dialectic. Negritude saw in Hegel’s dialectic a fascinating model for elaborating a teleological approach to the history of humanity, whereby the current state of black consciousness announced the dialectical resolution of past and present antagonisms. In this perspective the historical advent of Negritude was to be understood as the perfected state of history, the consumption of all previous historical events. In Espace et dialectique du héros césairien,27 Sylvestre Bouelet shows how Césaire imports Hegel’s dialectic in his revision of history as the synthesis of the confrontation of oppositional liberties. The black hero, thrust in the swirl of historical events, battles against the white oppressor, no longer for himself, but rather as a representative of his race, as a communistic force, who gathers the insignificant individual forces toward the edification of common history. Césaire’s notion of la Négritude debout, (upright Negritude), illustrates this Hegelian synthesis. Césaire’s négraille or Louverture and Senghor’s Shaka all stand up and act from the masses and for the masses. As such, Césaire’s tribute to Louverture is a eulogy to the black community at large. The ideal black man, unlike the Nietzschean Overman, and much more like Hegel’s hero, remains a social force. On the other hand, although Negritude’s Samory or Shaka might be comparable to Hegel’s great heroes (Socrates, Napoleon or Julius Caesar, for instance) and, to some extents, to Nietzsche’s Superman, nevertheless, these Western heroes still remain champions of rational spirit. For Negritude, rational thinking delves deep into alphabetical literacy as the measure of intelligence and human-ness. Hegel is known to have argued that the lack of alphabetical literacy in the colonized was evidence of his or her backwardness. In order to promote the black subject as a worthy human being, the proponents of Negritude set about to re-visit the assumed primacy of rationality over irrationality and intuition. Blacks had always been primarily considered a community of orality and of the mytho-poetics, terms that had 26

¡—The Quest for Originality

previously connoted a state of primitiveness and proto-logic.28 Against the primacy of rational thinking, Senghor argues that intuition remains the arché and telos of any knowledge. He especially thinks that intuition constitutes the measure of blacks’ cognition.29 To account for the intuitive propensity of the black hero, the proponents of Negritude turned to the French philosopher Henri Bergson and the German anthropologist Léo Frobenius.

BERGSON IN NEGRITUDE In Matter and Memory, Bergson stressed the need to acknowledge rational fact as partial and fragmented, and he suggested the necessity to regain absolute knowledge by means of pure intuition. That which is commonly called a fact is not reality as it appears to immediate intuition, but an adaptation of the real to the interests of practice and to the exigencies of social life. Pure intuition, external or internal, is that of an undivided continuity … For the living unity, which was one with internal continuity, we substitute the factitious unity of an empty diagram as lifeless as the parts which it holds together…. The relativity of knowledge may not, then, be definitive. By unmaking that which these needs [dogmatism and empiricism] have made, we may restore to intuition its original purity and so recover contact with the real.30

Bergson viewed intuition as immediacy of experience, and consequently, the thread to absolute knowledge. For Negritude, concerned with asserting its di›erence by problematizing the growing intellectual rationalism that characterized metaphysics in the first half of the twentieth century, Bergsonism — around which an important number of European romanticists had already gathered — was an opportune moment. While Bergsonism promoted poetic imagination as a possible way to reach out to truth, it also o›ered negritudinists the assurance that no claim had to be submitted to the test of rational thinking in order to be validated. Thus, drawing upon Bergson’s notion of intuitive knowledge, the founders of Negritude posited their movement as a radical dissociation from European rationalism. They insisted on opposing the scientific spirit of Europe to the spirit of the black community, characterizing the latter as imaginative and poetic, arguing that “[black perception] is linked with an intense emotivity, a mystically unified image of the world, a highly developed sense of rhythm and propensity for analogical reasoning and a capacity to appreciate asymmetrical parallelisms.”3¡ The works of the German anthropologist, Frobenius, inspired the claim of innate black sensibility, 27

The Black Renaissance

which Senghor continued to support even after the vehement criticisms leveled against Negritude.32

FROBENIUS IN NEGRITUDE Frobenius’s legacy to Negritude is evidenced not only by the abundant pages that African and Caribbean French writers devoted to him, but also by their explicit fascination with his ideas. In ¡906, the German scholar traveled to the inner land of the black continent, and what he saw during his journey led him to dispute his contemporaries’ acquired ideas about blacks. Frobenius contended that the average European’s notion of Africa being a barren and disease-stricken land inhabited by barbarians and only visited by heroic adventurers and missionaries was not the whole truth. Frobenius did not contest the negative image of Africa so much as he intended to show that this was not all that could be found in the continent. Understandably, Frobenius who undertook an expedition to Africa would not decline the glory that comes with such a “great” endeavor, as he intended to take up his place among the supposed great heroes who have defied the heart of darkness. However, his contention with the general European narrative about Africa was that it tended to speak of forms rather than substance. For him, beyond the continent’s diseases, its cannibalism and the contempt of its inhabitants, the first heroes who ventured in Africa — the sailors who arrived in the continent between the fiftieth century and the seventieth century as well as the missionaries— exhumed some prodigious splendors and saw signs of substantial growth.33 His own experience in Africa, he remarked, confirmed these heroes’ findings. The communities of the inner continent were politically, economically, and socially sophisticated societies. Ce qu’ont raconté les anciens capitaines, ces chefs d’expéditions … est vrai. On peut le contrôler…. En ¡906, lorsque je pénétrai dans le territoire de Kassaï-Sankuru, je trouvai encore des villages dont les rues principales étaient bordées de chaque côté, pendant des lieues, de quatre rangées de palmiers, et dont les cases, ornées chacune de façon charmante, étaient autant d’œuvres d’art. Aucun homme qui ne portât des armes somptueuses de fer ou de cuivre, aux lames incrustées, aux manches recouverts de peaux de serpents. Partout, des velours et des éto›es de soie. Chaque coupe, chaque pipe, chaque cuiller était un objet d’art parfaitement digne d’être comparé aux créations de style roman européen.… Les gestes, les manières, le canon moral du peuple entier, depuis le petit enfant jusqu’au vieillard, bien qu’ils demeurassent dans des limites absolument naturelles, étaient empreints de dignité et de grâce, chez les familles des princes et des riches comme chez celles des féaux et des 28

¡—The Quest for Originality esclaves…. Tous les pays de l’Afrique sont sereins polyglottes et joyeux de vivre … Il y a en [le style africain] le charme d’une naissance énigmatique et très lointaine.34 [In ¡906, when I penetrated the territory of Kassaï-Sankuru, I still could find villages with main streets bordered on each side by four rows of palm-trees and huts, each one decorated in a charming way with art works. There was not a single man who was not carrying sumptuous iron or brass weapons, with encrusted blades and snake skin-covered handles. Everywhere, I saw velvets and silk canvas. Each cup, each pipe, each spoon was a work of art perfectly worthy of comparison with creations of the Roman European style.… The gestures, manners and the moral canon of the entire people, from the small child to the old person, though they remained within absolutely natural boundaries, were imprinted with dignity and grace, in the families of princes and rich as well as those of vassals and slaves…. All the countries of Africa are serene, polyglot and happy to live.… In the African style, there is the charm of an enigmatic and far-away birth.]35

The enigmatic birth of which Frobenius speaks is the creation of humanity; in Africa — where the people have remained in close proximity with nature — the story of the whole humanity can still be authentically recalled long after Europe has sacrificed its authentic memory for technical reasoning. The black students in Europe and in the Americas perceived Frobenius’s conception of Africa as attractive and refreshing in spite of its pronounced primitivism. To those black intellectuals used to hearing degrading comments about their mother land and forefathers, Frobenius’s contention that Africa is the cradle of civilization and the repository of emotivity, dance, rhythm, music, and art came as convenient and echoed in the manifesto of the New Negro. Thus writes Senghor, Disons-le d’abord, les peuples africains, les Nègres singulièrement, n’attendent pas de l’Europe le bonheur. Hérodote soulignait déjà la gaieté des Nègres. Cette gaieté, ni l’esclavage américain, ni la ségrégation à la Malan n’ont pu l’entamer sérieusement. Les Nègres ont puisé dans la colonisation de nouvelles forces pour vivre et chanter. C’est que les Négro-Africains ont, comme premier don, la sagesse, celle qui est l’art de vivre. Ils l’avaient trouvé voilà des millénaires; ils la possèdent toujours. Elle est devenue l’expression naturelle de leur âme, enracinée qu’elle est dans leur subjectivité même, et comme dans leur corps. Elle est l’esprit de la civilisation négro-africaine. Civilisation d’unité….36 [Let it be known that the African peoples, the Negroes particularly, are not waiting for happiness to come from Europe. Herodotus already mentioned the gaiety of Negroes. This gaiety, neither the American slavery nor the segregation à la Malan were able to seriously a›ect it. Negroes found in colonization new forces to live and sing. This is because the Negro-Africans have, as a first gift, wisdom, which is the art of living. They had found it thousands of years ago; they possess it forever. It has become the natural expression of their soul, rooted as it is in their very subjectivity, as well as in their body. It is the spirit of Negro-African civilization. Civilization of unity.]37 29

The Black Renaissance

Frobenius made it di‡cult to define civilization without taking into account the indigenous communities of Africa, Asia, and America. His description — which took into account the practices of the native societies until then excluded — was based on what he called a paideumatic approach; one that went one step further beyond the analysis of forms typical of the previous anthropological tradition. In “Léo Frobenius et le problème des civilisations,” Suzanne Césaire credits Frobenius for bringing the most extraordinary and revolutionary answer to the question of civilization.38 According to Frobenius, human beings do not make civilization; instead, it is civilization that makes them. A force that is anterior to humanity, similar to the vital force, moves people. This force is the fundamental Païdeuma. The study of the manifestations of Païdeuma constitutes a science that Frobenius calls the morphology of cultures. The goal of that science is to understand the organic being of civilization, which is conceived as a metaphysical entity. Frobenius’s analytical method works in two directions, first, a study of forms examining the exterior aspects of civilizations and their distribution in space, and second, a study of substances or of the meaning of life. Païdeuma presents itself in two forms corresponding to two civilizations, the Ethiopian and the Hamitic civilizations, respectively related to plants and animals. The Ethiopian person is spiritual and does not seek to understand phenomena. Instead he or she lets himself or herself be moved by them in a dreamlike fashion. He or she surrenders to life and to its rhythm, like the plant, entrusting himself or herself to the continuity of life. He or she has a patriarchal conception of the clan. The Hamitic, on the other hand, believes in the right to live through struggles against and victories over nature. He or she does not consider the continuity of generations but rather the stability of the individual life. His or her conception of community is matriarchal. From this perspective, the mother is not obliged to stay with a losing husband. She is the wife of the victor. While these two fundamental expressions of Païdeuma have sunk into the depths of unconsciousness in so-called advanced societies (European, Asian, and American), one can still study them in their pure state in the so-called primitive societies of Africa. In Africa, one can still come across men-plants or men-animals. Consequently, the meaning of Africa to the rest of the world is fundamental. Africa has the answer to Europe’s interrogation on both its past and its future. To Europe, Asia, and America, Africa is the continent that will provide historical perspectives and a vision for the future. When technical reason is done alienating the rest of the world, humanity will still be able to find in Africa — the repository of authentic memory — the answer to its anguishes. When the Parisian and the New Yorker, alienated by the machines 30

¡—The Quest for Originality

and discursive reasoning, are on the brink of self-destruction, it is to black race that they will turn in order to recapture a bit of their humanity. Païdeuma is therefore a science of restoration: restoration of Europe, Asia, and America to Africa, but also restoration of blacks to themselves. The Frobeniusian analytical approach enables the black to answer his or her most troubling questions, to understand and to accept himself or herself. Of Frobenius’s role in blacks’ prise de conscience, Senghor writes that “C’est Léo Frobenius, plus que tout autre, qui a éclairé pour nous des mots comme émotion, art, mythe, eurafrique … qui nous aida à charger le mot de sa signification la plus dense, la plus humaine en même temps.39 (Much more than anyone else, it is Léo Frobenius who clarified for us words such as emotion, art, myth, and Euro-Africa … who helped us to load the word with its fullest signification and its most human one at the same time.) Thus equipped with paideumatic knowledge, Suzanne Césaire could go on to answer some fundamental questions about her people, about the true essence of the Martinican.40 Likewise, Césaire’s Notebook of a Return to the Native Land is a paideumatic reflection, which, at the end of a long journey of exploration of all things superficial and formal, leads him to comprehend, beyond mere form (the desolation of his island, the humiliation of his people, and the suggestion of blacks’ inferiority), the true essence of his being. Frobenius, Bergson, Hegel, and Nietzsche are certainly not the only Western epistemologists who have influenced the black renaissance in French letters. The list could be lengthy. However, they will remain the most exhilarating of Negritude’s European connections to trace; for they show that beneath Negritude’s apparent epistemological unpredictability, beyond its apparently random oscillation between Nietzsche and Hegel or Bergson and Frobenius, lay a consistent and well-thought logic of totalization, which saved the proponents of Negritude from any chance encounter with the Hegelian Big Bad Wolf. Negritude, contrary to Mudimbé’s belief, has never been Little Red Riding Hood hiding from the Big Bad wolf. It sought the wolf out in its den. When Senghor a‡rms that “La raison négro-africaine est dialectique” (Negro-African reason is dialectical), he has in his own way, and as complacent as it might appear to some critics, acknowledged some intertextuality, some interdisciplinarity that lacks dangerously in Mudimbé. Senghor, at least, has acknowledged the fact that the West has invaded Africa, and vice versa, as evidenced by his numerous writings on la civilisation de l’universel. For many critics today familiar with a poststructural criticism so suspicious of any contrastive analysis, Negritude’s friendship with Frobenius could appear out of the ordinary. Likewise, critics habituated to the vari31

The Black Renaissance

ous French deconstructionist readings of Hegel — I am thinking, for instance, of Derrida’s stinging critique in Glas— Negritude’s a‡liation with Hegel could be viewed as scandalous. However, for the pioneers of the black renaissance in French letters, Hegel’s historical dialectic had the potentials of placing the black people in the course of human history. Furthermore, where Nietzsche o›ers a rising spontaneous hero, driven by a desire to live, but no possibility to be a subject-supposed-to-know, Hegel o›ers the possibility of the hero who knows truth in its absolute form, the being-inand-for-itself.4¡ For Negritude, the black hero, like the Hegelian subject-thatknows, must wade through conflicting experiences, cancel the non-essential ones, retain the most indispensable ones, and painfully, little by little, arrive at absolute truth. However, he must do it, not by means of reason, but rather by using a typically black spirit, the intuition of which Bergson spoke. Such is the collage that helped Negritude build the myth of the black soul. This myth, it was hoped, would carry the French colonized, not just toward action-oriented movement against the colonizing enterprise of the West, but also, and most importantly, toward the building of the new black nation. For this myth to live on as structure of identification and unification, it had to be consistently passed on to future generations of black intellectuals in a language that reflects and reproduces— in the sense that it is representational of or analogical to— the philosophical or theoretical postulates for which Negritude stood. The pioneers of the black French protest found this language in an ancient art, the characteristic pattern of digression, repetition, and parallelism observable in the rhetoric of the traditional African storyteller. The precursors of black panlogism remarkably inculcated this pattern into the black schoolboys’ and students’ minds in the French colonies as the essence of their being.

NEGRITUDE AS A STATE OF GRACE One great success of Negritude is the re-appropriation of a style proper to oral literatures the propagation of that style, through consistent teaching by such elders as Bernard Dadié, Lylian Kesteloot, Senghor, René Ménil, and Aimé Césaire — to cite only these few — who had a great influence on the Francophone African and Caribbean educational systems. These first African and Caribbean educators were determined to introduce in the early stages of black students’ education what they considered a primordial element of their culture. In Martinique, such negritudinists as Césaire and Ménil, for instance, were widely known and held privileged strategic posi32

¡—The Quest for Originality

tions, which helped them disseminate their beliefs. As Césaire acknowledges, J’étais professeur. Je faisais un cours de littérature pour une classe de première; Ménil, lui, avait une classe de philo. C’était quand même des positions stratégiques assez importantes. Et puis, finalement … on m’a confié une sorte de “petite première supérieure”.… J’avais des disciples. C’était très important. J’ai formé des quantités de jeunes gens qui sont maintenant des hommes — certains sont devenus des amis, d’autres des adversaires, enfin, peu importe! Ils sont tous sortis de moi, de notre enseignement. J’étais un professeur, assez e‡cace, semble-til, et j’ai eu incontestablement de l’influence sur toute une génération.42 [I was a teacher. I was teaching literature to a class of “première” (more or less the American eleventh grade); as for Ménil, he had a philosophy class. These were after all very important strategic positions. And then, finally … I was put in charge of a sort of “superior première”.… I had some disciples. It was very important. I educated numerous young people who are now grown men — some have become my friends, others adversaries, well, it does not matter! They all came from me, from our teaching. I was quite an e‡cient teacher, it seems, and I incontestably have had some influence upon a whole generation.]43

In Africa, the apostles of Negritude exercised their influence at various stages of the academic, religious, and journalistic milieus. Many religious intellectuals as well as politicians viewed in Negritude, respectively, Christian morals of love and a unifying force for national consciousness. Thomas Melone, for instance, a Cameroonian literary critic and university professor and one of Senghor’s most devoted disciples, held a highly visible position in the Ahidjo government; which allowed him to play an instrumental role in disseminating the claims of Negritude in Cameroon and in promoting young Cameroonian intellectuals who espoused his (and Ahidjo’s) cultural rhetoric. As a proselytiser for this religion [Negritude], he [Malone] exercised considerable influence over students who later rose to prominence in the country’s literary intellectual life, and he consistently promoted a cultural nationalism that reinforced the basis thrust of the Ahidjo government’s o‡cial rhetoric.44

Likewise, Lylian Kesteloot, a professor at the École Normale (an institution dedicated to training teachers) and a fervent believer of Negritude, educated many students who went on to become teachers themselves. Furthermore, Kesteloot hosted a weekly radio program in Cameroon about literature in which she campaigned for the integration of African works on school and university reading lists.45 The mastery of Negritude, as one can infer from the high political positions occupied by the first negritudinists, became a state of grace. Undoubtedly, the sort of Negritude that was being propagated by the African and 33

The Black Renaissance

Caribbean intellectuals and perceived by the African or Caribbean student as a means of social promotion was no longer the popular Negritude of the griot. Although it claimed to celebrate African traditional values, this intellectual Negritude was no longer the Negritude of the African, Martinican or Antillean peasants and workers, but rather an intellectualized discourse that helped put the ambitious French educated black above the rural black populations. At all levels of his or her education, the black student was conditioned to believe in the elevating power of Negritude and consequently, in the legitimacy of the political, economic and social conditions of those who, in the name of that enabling structure, were now seeking to reach the top of the social ladder. Nevertheless, the re-invention of African culture or Negritude, which confirmed the superiority of the French literate black over the non-literate, could easily be traced to Maran’s Batouala: un vrai roman nègre. 46 Maran’s novel, with its evocation of African flora and fauna and its interference of French lexicon with African languages, was hailed by the Goncourt Institution as the measure of black rhetoric and was awarded the Goncourt Prize. In the euphoria that followed the reception of Batouala in France, important questions went unconsidered. Did not elevating Batouala amount to promoting the Negro in his place? Was not the eulogy to Maran France’s desire for the castration of black Oedipus, since “at the time of his consecration, Maran was an administrator for the colonial regime, and his writings were corroborating the racist representation of the black in colonial literature,” arguing “the African Black was not yet ready to take charge of his or her destiny”?47 Was not the event of Maran’s consecration France’s attempt to exhaust the black, since the very Europeans who awarded Maran the Goncourt Prize were also indicating that Maran was a genius among blacks but still a schoolboy in France? Was it not the fact that with Maran racist France was hoping to kill two birds with one stone? Without being overtly critical of the white man, Maran had expressed some reservation with regard to the colonial system. However, Maran had also consolidated many of the whites’ stereotypes toward the black person, such as his bestiality, his infantile mind, his cannibalistic instinct, in other words his political, social, psychological, and intellectual inferiority, as have argued such French scholars as LeBon, Letourneau, and Levy-Bruhl. For the colonizer, on the one hand, Maran was the black who was sincere enough to confirm the black person’s inferiority and, correlatively, to cleanse the white person of his guilt complex by providing him with some justification for his invasion of the African continent. On the other hand, however, 34

¡—The Quest for Originality

Maran was the black who dared defy the colonial system; and he was capable of such a remarkable act only because he was the measure of black genius, the exhaustion of black talent, that is, black intelligence at its apex. Thus his winning the Goncourt prize was justified. One could then say “no wonder!” So, the white critic nodded and said: “indeed, Maran was a genius among blacks, but still a schoolboy among whites.” With Batouala, Africa was immobilized, and vanquished in its fixity. France’s victory over Africa could be irreversible only if it was won over the greatest warrior Africa could ever produce. France wanted Maran to be that soldier, so that, by penetrating Maran, France could claim to have penetrated Africa and the black race; it can claim to have conquered this terra incognita. Erected by the white critic to be so, Batouala became a prototype of Negrity, and Maran, its author, the authority or Grand-Narrator of black experience. Consequently, for any black writer in search of recognition, Maran’s novel inaugurated both the themes and, above all, the style to duplicate. It was precisely in the spirit of a reverence to Maran as literary and cultural authority that Ousmane Socé addressed these words to him. Monsieur et cher maître, J’ai reçu de mon ami, L. Senghor, étudiant en lettres, l’article que vous avez bien voulu faire sur mon essai de roman « Karim ». Je vous remercie infiniment d’avoir eu la bienveillance de lire et de parler de ce faible travail. J’ai bien fait attention aux défauts de mon livre que vous me révélez avec tant d’indulgence, et votre critique est pour moi une leçon que je tâcherai de bien étudier pour en tirer profit et me corriger [Midihouan]. [Sir and dear teacher, I have received from my friend, L. Senghor, a student in the humanities, the article that you so kindly wrote about my humble novel Karim. I thank you infinitely for having been so kind as to read and talk about this small work. I have taken good notice of the mistakes in my book, which you point out to me with so much indulgence, and your criticism is to me a lesson which I will study well in order to learn from and correct myself.]48

For many whites, and later black scholars, Batouala paved the way for a black rhetorical identity, as it synthesized the art of the African storyteller or griot. Francophone African text, patterned according to the griot’s narrative, is characterized by its digressive and repetitive pattern.49 However — and this needs to be stressed — that pattern has no essential connection with the condition of blackness. It is a preferred academic canon transmitted to later generations (educated in the French school system) through consistent reinforcement. For the griot — as well as the whole community of oral35

The Black Renaissance

ity of which he is part — that particular rhetorical choice marked by digression and repetition might have important pragmatic implications. Many of the aspects of Francophone African rhetorical structures, which I will discuss in the coming chapter, could also be found in Semitic languages, in the written version of the Koran, and also in Romance languages (as illustrated in the King James version of the Bible for instance). One criticism that I anticipate is that there is a common (Semitic) source to the Koran and the earlier versions of the Bible, and that Islam has had a dominant influence in Africa, which could be the source of the repetitive pattern noticeable in Francophone African rhetoric. These associations, I contend, would be farfetched. Most Muslims in Africa, even when they recite verses of the Koran, neither write nor speak Arabic well enough to have their day-to-day interactive languages influenced by Arabic. In his Interface Between the Written and the Oral, Jack Goody provides a functionalist explanation that is more helpful in understanding the role of the subtexts observable at the microsentential level. According to Goody, these subtexts are parts of dynamics of cues reinforcement. In traditional oral societies where narratives are passed on to generations by means of the spoken rather than the written, certain narratives are juxtaposed with others just to function as roadblocks or insertion points. To the speaker, these subtexts act as a reminder, cuing him/her as to when to insert specific stories, whereas to the listeners they function as topoi that verify the important parts of the total narrative. These sub-narratives, I would also add, are not chosen with the sole prospect of functioning as easily discernible topoi. I suspect that they participate greatly in the organization of a certain symbolism by virtue of which the main narrative gains more acceptability with the community. By a combinatory technique, the subtexts have a dual function of cuing and quilting; therefore, the framework of recall becomes at the same time that of weaving the particular narratives into the collective fabric. The subtexts participate in the structuration of a symbolism of identification. It is thus in their unconscious desire to integrate a discursive community — a community of producers and consumers of things black, postcolonial and exotically Francophone — that many black French writers ended up duplicating a harped on and discernible literary form — griotism. Griotism is characterized by the following elements: 1. a reliance on the verb, an intuitive and natural poetics— as opposed to the letter as forced poetics— as immediate, source of absolute truth. This idea, I have shown earlier, was inherited from the discourses of Henri Bergson and Léo Frobenius. 36

¡—The Quest for Originality

2. a conviction that the word as truth belongs to the griot or any sign that denotes his presence, insofar as the griot remains the quintessential originator and depository of ancestral history. 3. a phallocratic conviction that perceives truth as the province of masculine figures. This conception undermines the autonomy of any feminine discourse that takes as its premises the traditional aprioricities of black French letters.

37

2

Paradigm of the Griot Before the advent of alphabetical literacy in Africa, the particular histories of individuals, families, clans and tribes were mainly preserved and transmitted to succeeding generations through repetitive tellings by the griot.¡ The griot was primarily a poet, singer, and genealogist. Although the griot was not necessarily a notable, his close proximity with chiefs and royalties conferred him special regards. Furthermore, his function as the community’s historian was essential; so people respected him greatly and often consulted him about important matters. In order to be able to always tell his stories the same ways without alteration, this African poet developed a set of mnemonic techniques, whereby he never isolates a story or an individual experience. Instead, every story is part of a communal fabric that embeds narratives in one another in such a distinctive pattern that the individual experience becomes an integral part of the collective knowledge. The proponents of Negritude — and especially Senghor and Césaire — over-celebrated the griot’s narrative technique as the essence of black-ness, convinced that they had discovered in this rhetorical strategy evidence of a black essence to oppose to a white essence.2 In their exhilaration, many African writers did not hesitate to give credit to the griot not only for the entire content but also for the form of their works. Thus, Djibril Tamsir Niane, for instance, claimed that his Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali was the original narrative of a traditional griot recounting the conquest of the king of the Old Mali Empire. This book is primarily the work of an obscure griot from the village of Djeliba Koro in the circumscription of Siguiri in Guinea. My acquaintance with Mandingo country has allowed me greatly to appreciate the knowledge and talent of Mandingo griots in matters of history.… This book is, then, the fruit of an initial contact with the most authentic traditionists of Mali. I am nothing more than a translator; I owe everything to the masters of Fadama, Djeliba Koro, and Keyla and more particularly to Djeli Mamoudou Kouyaté of the village of Djeliba Koro in Guinea.3

According to Niane, his own role was that of a mere transcriber and translator who tried, for purpose of originality, to translate the griot’s work as 38

2—Paradigm of the Griot

literally as possible. For Senghor, part of the colonial educational system based on assimilation was to smother into the African student the (textual) values of Negritude by overemphasizing what he named Francity. Encore que je l’aie toujours combattue, [l’assimilation] présentait, naturellement, des avantages. C’est ainsi qu’en rédaction et dissertation, comme en explication de texte, les professeurs mettaient l’accent sur les vertus de ce que j’appelle la Francité. Ils recommandaient la brièveté de la phrase d’où doit être exclu tout ce qui n’est pas nécessaire. C’est ce qui fait, commentaient-ils, son élégance. Et ils nous apprenaient à nous méfier des mots qui n’expriment pas directement le mot ou le fait, et d’une façon claire. C’est dire qu’ils faisaient aussi la chasse aux mots, expressions, et tournures ou la mélodie l’emportait sur la précision. Sans oublier les répétitions rythmées à l’Africaine.4 [Though I have always condemned (assimilation), it nevertheless, had some advantages. Thus, in composition and dissertation, as well as in explication of texts, our teachers would stress the virtues of what I call Francity. They would encourage us to use brief sentences that excluded anything unnecessary. This, they would comment, is what brings elegance to the sentence. They would also teach us to be wary of words that did not directly or clearly express the word or the fact. In other words, they were on the hunt for words, expressions, and phrasings that privileged melody over precision. The rhythmic expressions “à l’Africaine” were also their targets.]5

Like Senghor and Niane, Francis Bebey, a writer and musician from Cameroon, believes that his prose is typical of the African pattern characterized by its sonorous rhythm and digressive style. I’ve never investigated the way I tell my story.… I rely heavily on the musicians in my country who play the m’vet and tell stories with it. From time to time, they launch into lengthy descriptions about the forest or whatever. And sometimes, they start speaking as though they were a double personality, two people speaking to each other.… There is no transition between the art of narrating and that of singing or playing music.… I never knew of any musician back home who did not tell stories or recite poems. All of the arts blend together as a unity.6

In reality, Francophone African writers were striving to imitate a trend established by an already famous work, Maran’s Batouala, a book that was well reviewed in France, more for its unflattering depiction of Africans and its fulfillment of France’s demand for exoticism than for its literary quality. Furthermore, holding fast to the novel’s prose rich in repetitions, alliterations and musicality, many black writers celebrated Batouala as a faithful rendition of the griot’s art in particular and the African sensibility in general. As writes Abiola, [T]he very structure and movement of Maran’s prose capture for us those elements in the oral tradition of Africa which give it its distinctive flavour. It is a 39

The Black Renaissance style full of these insistent repetitions of words and sonal values weaving a pattern of refrain and of alliterations through his narrative, and which we can now recognize as deriving from those elements which compose the essence of the oral tradition in Africa…. Maran could not have achieved these e›ects unless he had listened with an unusual attentive ear to African speech.7

Thus the rhetorical pattern of Batouala, the Goncourt winner, became for many black French writers the model to duplicate. It was that pattern that most Francophone African writers, in their problematization of the western Platonic-Aristotelian methodological approach to texts, opted for. Some writers were even led into a sizable confusion between the possibility to discover meaning from a text because of accessibility to background knowledge and a pseudo-racial predisposition that would eliminate (for people of the same race) all types of textual opacity, establish total transparency between the writer and his or her audience, and even re-trace the process of enunciation of the text. Without subscribing to a certain biologism that seeks to establish a correlation between rhetorical posture and innate racial predispositions, it is still fair to surmise, in light of what several researchers have observed, that there exists a Francophone rhetorical pattern, which is a learned form, passed on to several generations of educated Francophone Africans, as a preferred academic canon. Using Francis Christensen’s Generative Rhetoric of the Sentence and the Paragraph, which he developed in his Notes Toward a New Rhetoric, I shall attempt to expose that rhetorical pattern to which many studies have alluded. I see Christensen’s analytical tool as one of the best instruments— were a systematic tool to be used at all —for bringing to the surface, or at least to a more graspable level, the abstract movements that ultimately culminate into specific and repetitive rhetorical patterns in black French letters. In fact, Christensen defines four constitutive processes in writing, which are addition, direction of movement or direction of modification, levels of generality, and texture. According to Christensen, writing is a process of addition, and the more one adds, the more precise one tends to be. A modifier added to the noun, verb, or main clause may change the direction of movement depending on the position of the addition (before or after). Consequently, the direction of modification may go forward or backward on the linear chain. With the main clause of a sentence, or the topic sentence of a paragraph, a general statement is made, which may stop the sentence or the paragraph. However, the writer may shift down to lower levels of abstraction or generality, in order to specify a statement or make it less abstract, less general, that is, more singular. Christensen illustrates that concept with this sentence by Steinbeck: 40

2—Paradigm of the Griot 1. Joad’s lips stretched tight over his long teeth, and, 1. he licked his lips, 2. like a dog, 3. two licks, 4. one in each direction from the middle

For this sentence, Christensen proposes the following gloss: A: How did he lick his lips? B: Like a dog. A: But how does a dog lick his lips? B: He makes two licks. A: How two licks? B: Well, one in each direction from the middle.

Christensen’s model is not perfect. It might be criticized for its linear, prescriptive, and structural representation of discourse. For what concerns us in this particular chapter, these reservations should not constitute a hindrance. In the next pages, it is the rhetorical structure of black French writing — as it was propagated by the precursors of a black-oriented curriculum in French Africa and the Caribbean — that will be the object of investigation. Christensen’s method allows for two levels of analysis: At the sentential level, the analysis displays the architecture of the sentence and the cohesiveness of the ideas in the cumulative sentence. At the macro-sentential level, it uncovers the architecture of the whole paragraph and reveals the di›erent layers that constitute textual coherence since it suggests that the paragraph has discoverable and discernible structures. When applied to Francophone African texts, the Generative Rhetoric yields interesting results about expressive and expository writings. It uncovers their texture or layers of addition and, as a consequence, reveals their most general trends with regard to their directions of movement or of modification and their levels of generality. Thus, the analysis of Francophone African texts will verify the following hypotheses: 1. A people’s culture, its esthetic preferences, has a great influence on the rhetorical organization of that people. 2. There is a Francophone African rhetorical preference, which is characterized by digression from the main point, repetition of the essential ideas, and some forms of parallelisms (synonymous, synthetic, antithetic, and climactic parallelisms).8 3. The Francophone African rhetorical pattern draws upon the storytelling 41

The Black Renaissance

technique. That technique is not the daughter of nature and biology, as Senghor would like us to believe, but rather a technique sedimented and fossilized through duplication and habituation. 4. The Francophone African pattern is celebrated, maintained, and transmitted to new generations through the movement of Negritude by influential scholars and critics. Thus the structure of most Francophone African texts will hold particularities both sententially and macro-sententially. The texts I chose to examine were purposely selected with no particular regard for their contents. The only factor determining my selection is their authors’ explicit loyalty to the movement of Negritude and their recognition that their writings hold cultural singularities. My objective here is to expose the structural organization of the texts and not their contents— although I have to admit the impossibility to totally tune out contents.

SENTENCE ANALYSIS FROM EXPRESSIVE WRITING This first analysis will explore sentences drawn from Francophone African expressive prose. The first three sentences are excerpts from Niane’s Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali. In this book, the writer’s concern was to render as faithfully as possible in written form a story recounted to him by a traditional griot. Because of the author’s preoccupation with literal translation, Sundiata can be regarded as exemplary evidence of transcribed orality against which to gauge other selected corpuses. Sentence ¡ 1. Listen then, (V.C.) 2. sons of Mali, (N.C.) 2. children of the black people, (N.C.) 1. listen to my word, (V.C.) 3. for I am going to tell you of Sundiata, (S.C.) 4. the father of the bright country, (N.C.) 5. of the savanna land, (P.P.) 4. the ancestor of those who draw the bow, (N.C.) 4. the master of a hundred vanquished kings. (N.C.) 9

This multi-level sentence shows evidence of repetition and digression in Francophone African writing. It has two verb clusters at level ¡, two noun clusters at level 2, one subject clause at level 3, three noun clusters at level 42

2—Paradigm of the Griot

4, and one prepositional phrase at level 5. As the most important elements are the most repeated ones, level 4 is more important than levels ¡ and 2, which are themselves more important than levels 3 and 5. The main idea of the sentence is then at level 4, and that idea is of course the glorification of Sundiata, the founding figure of Mali. However, that glorification will have no mobilizing e›ect if the audience is not attentive. There lies the importance of level ¡, as the narrator request twice that the audience pay attention. Level ¡ plays a phatic role (introduction, transition, or conclusion); it verifies the regularity and e‡ciency of the common code. Level ¡ could be glossed as follows: —Hello! Do you copy? — Are we on the same frequency?

Sentence ¡ also displays evidence of synonymous parallelism. A re-categorization of the di›erent levels on a semantic basis could slide level 4 into 5 and isolate level 3. Level 5 has an implied or understood structure that makes this integration possible: father [of the savanna land] master [of the savanna land]

The (implied) repetitions at each level sustain a synonymous parallelism. Sentence 2 2. Right at the beginning then, 1. Mali was a province of the Bambara King, (VC) 3. those who are today called Mandingo, (VC) 4. inhabitants of Mali, (NC) 3. are not indigenous, (VC) 3. they come from the East (VP)¡0

Sentence 2 also shows evidence of repetition and digression. It is built on four levels. Level ¡ provides new information, which introduces the main idea to be expanded at level 3. Level 2 plays a phatic role. Level 3, which appears three times, contains the main idea, the Mandingo come from the East. Level 4 is a digression that brings non-essential information on the Mandingo: The Mandingo (Anglicized version of Malinke or Maninka) are the inhabitants of Mali. Here again, the main idea is the most repeated one. Furthermore, repetitions create synonymous parallelism and help maintain the string of the discourse where digression might mislead his audience. Sentence 3 2. Well now, 1. one day when the king had taken up his usual position under the silk-cotton 43

The Black Renaissance tree surrounded by his kinsmen he saw a man dressed like a hunter coming toward him; (V. C.) 3. He wore the tight-fitting trousers of the favourites of Kondolon Ni Sane, (V. C.) 4. and his blouse oversewn with cowries showed that he was a master of the hunting art. (V.C.)¡¡

Sentence 3 is built on four levels with some digression and no repetition. The digressive pattern is conspicuous. By the choice of the phatic element “well now,” the speaker reminds himself of the task at hand. Thus the phatic element functions as topoi. These topoi allow the speaker to launch into digressions that introduce non-essential information (levels 3 and 4). The story, started at level ¡, ends after the digressive pattern of level 4 (the stranger was a master hunter). This sentence is an interesting example of climactic parallelism. The analysis of these three sentences reveal that the cohesiveness of the griot’s discourse is maintained at the sentential level by a great activity of addition: Higher levels of generality or abstraction generate lower levels of generality or abstraction. The multiplicity of levels is also evidence of a multiplicity of shifts, changes of directions of movement. At the same time, the discourse remains coherent due to the great emphasis put on its essential information. In digression, there is a juxtaposition of information that relates to the main idea. In most digressive sentences, the speaker repeats the most essential elements in order to maintain cohesion. Sentence 2 has a structure similar to that of sentence ¡, with three times levels 3 and once levels ¡, 2, and 4. Sentence 3 has a slightly di›erent structure. It has four levels, with one cluster on each level. Levels of generality go lower and lower, from a more general statement to a more specific one. While sentences ¡ and 2 are mainly narrative sentences, sentence 3 is primarily descriptive. Descriptive sentences in Francophone African writings do not di›er greatly from descriptive sentences in Romance or AngloSaxon writings. The need for details requires that each addition elaborate upon the previous idea. On the other hand, however, highly narrative discourses in Francophone African prose leave much room for digression. In narrative discourses, where the direction of movement constantly shifts back and forth, it is repetition that maintains the cohesion of the text. Evidence for such repetitions is observable in Francophone African speech patterns, as it is also noticeable in any other speech pattern. This is why, though digression and repetition are common in Francophone African prose, one should be careful not to essentialize them, as they appear in most communities of orality. In black French literature however, the lines between the 44

2—Paradigm of the Griot

written and the spoken, the formal and the informal, are often blurred. The repetitive pattern — which is not solely African, but a characteristic of oral discourse in general — appears often in Francophone written narrative. This is not just an accidental occurrence. Most African linguistic communities are first and foremost oral communities. Francophone African writers, who learn to be more sensitive to the oral form with which most of their audiences identify, draw upon the common base of oral tradition, as evidenced by this narrative by the Ivorian Bernard Dadié: Yes, he must run; he must flee from these apparitions and return to the world of humans. He ran, and kept running, until he was out of breath…. He wanted to cry out. He screamed and screamed with all his might … what do you think he saw in front of him? A strange creature who reeked and reeked of all the stenches in the world.¡2

Robert Kaplan’s study in contrastive analysis has demonstrated the recurrence of digression in Romance texts. However, the digressive pattern of Romance language is not as accentuated as it appears in Francophone African writing. Digression in Romance (French) pattern is less apparent, perhaps, because of the predominance of written discourse over spoken discourse in Western linguistic communities. Skillful repetitions usually reveal the main idea through synonymous parallelisms: The added modifiers are (semantically) equal and function as emphases, which is very noticeable at the lexical level as well as at the level of formal structures (succession of noun clusters and adjective clusters), as is the case of my literal translation of this excerpt from Amadou Kourouma’s Les soleils des independances. Beggars in tatters, good-for-nothing in tatters, unemployed, all ran up, all stretched their hands. Nothing! There was not a single grain of rice left. Salimata had shouted it to them, had showed it to them. Could they not see the empty dishes? She lifted the plates one by one, presented the bottoms one by one and piled them anew. They ran up nevertheless, they came from all the corners of the market, they crowded, they rushed, they whispered prayers. The seller, as from the depths of a well, raised her head and looked at them; they quieted their whispers and, as silent as stones, showed their hands, their infirmities. Their hallow faces turned cold, even hard, their eyes deeper, their nostrils beat faster, their lips started drooling … the murmurs amplified, rose in clamors and suddenly as to a signal, they all fell on Salimata, attacked her like a horde of mongooses, stripped her, mistreated her and before she had screamed three times, dispersed and disappeared into the market like a flock of birds in the bushes. They abandoned Salimata alone in the sun, alone in the dust, her arms crossed above her head, her cloth pulled, her buttocks naked, her thighs close, her breasts uncovered. She hurried to tie her cloth again, to cover her breasts, to fix herself.¡3 45

The Black Renaissance

Notice the important use of repetitions in the text (evidence of synonymous parallelism). The added modifiers are semantically equal and function as emphases. Repetition appears on the lexical level (beggars, good-for-nothing, unemployed) as well as on the level of formal structures (a succession of noun clusters and adjective clusters): 2. Beggars in tatters, (N. C.) 2. good-for-nothing in tatters, (N.C.) 2. unemployed, (N.C.) 1. all run up, (V.C.) 1. all stretched their hands (V.C.)

or 1. They abandoned Salimata alone in the sun, 2. alone in the dust, 3. her arms crossed above her head, 3. her cloth pulled, 3. her buttocks naked, 3. her thighs close, 3. her breasts uncovered.

In the case of climactic parallelisms, the modifiers are more or less semantically equal, and they appear in clauses of ascendant or descendant order. The climax seems to end with the shortest clause: She hurried to tie her cloth, to cover her breasts, to fix herself

or Beggars in tatters, unemployed in tatters, all stretched their hands. Nothing!

PARAGRAPH ANALYSIS FROM EXPRESSIVE WRITING The analysis of paragraphs will show two things. Firstly, Francophone African expressive prose is very digressive and repetitive. Narrations are rarely linear; so, coherence is sustained by means of repetition of the main ideas. Repetition of the main idea does not only occur in the same paragraph, but it may be carried over several consecutive paragraphs. Here also, 46

2—Paradigm of the Griot

as was the case in the sentence, repetition will point to some forms of parallelisms (climactic and synonymous parallelisms). Secondly, Francophone African expressive paragraphs do not di›er greatly from English ones, as readers cannot rely solely on first or last sentences of the paragraph to understand the text. It is necessary to read the whole expressive prose in order to understand it. The first paragraph to be examined is an excerpt of Niane’s Sundiata. The subsequent paragraphs are from Dadié’s Black Cloth. Paragraph ¡ 1. Kalabi Bamba had Mamadi for son. 2. Mamadi Kani was a hunter-king like the first king of Mali 2. It was he who invented the hunter’s whistle; he communicated with the jinn of the forest and bush. 3. These spirits had no secret from him and he was loved by Kondolon Ni Sane. 4. His followers were so numerous that he formed them into an army which became formidable; he often gathered them together in the bush and taught them the art of hunting. 2. It was he who revealed to hunters the medicinal leaves which heals wounds and cure diseases. 2. Thanks to the strength of his followers he became king of a vast country; with them Mamadi Kani conquered all the lands which stretch from the Sankarani to the Boure. 2. Mamadi Kani had four sons — Kani Simbo, Kanignogo Simbo, Kalabi Simbo, and Simbo Tagnogokelin. 5. They were all initiated into the art of hunting and deserved the title of Simbo. 6. It was the lineage of Bamari Tagnogokelin which held on to the power; his son was M’Bali Nene whose son was Bello. 7. Bello was called bacon and he had a son called Manghan Kon Fata, also called Frako Manghan Keigu, Manghan the handsome.¡4

The above paragraph displays a mixed sequence with coordinate sentences. The coordinate sentences are at level 2. These five coordinate sentences at level 2 could be identified as the repeated and rephrased topic sentence. The apparent topic sentence located at level ¡ is far from suggesting the main idea at level 2. From level 2, the writer digresses. He changes the direction of movement with (implied) subordinate sequences. He then comes back to coordinate sequences. These coordinate sequences enumerate facts or emphasize a point. This is what the sentences of level 2 do. With subordinate sentences, the writer introduces new information and clarifies a statement. The paragraph has no clear topic sentence. Repetition is the key to 47

The Black Renaissance

grasping the main idea. On the semantic level, a lexicometric analysis will show the recurrence of terms such as strength, power, mastery, and royalty, all attributes of Mamadi Kani. While reading a Francophone African prose, one should pay attention to repetitions, as, in case of lengthy digressions, these repetitions provide hints for finding the main idea. Notice how repetitions sustain the main idea in the following paragraphs: Paragraph 2 So Ko‡ left. He was happy to go, happy to leave this house where, ever since he had lost his mother, he had never found a moment’s rest, a moment’s joy. Paragraph 3 The farther away he got from the house — where everything he knew had been in the form of insult, forced labor, and punishment — the happier he felt …

Semantically, the most repeated elements in these two consecutive paragraphs are flight and su›ering. In other words, the main idea is that Ko‡ is leaving, because he is su›ering. “leaving” is the main idea, and “su›ering” is the supporting element. This is confirmed in the following consecutive paragraphs. Paragraph 4 (first sentence) Ko‡ continued on … Paragraph 5 (first sentence) Ko‡ still walked on … Paragraph 6 (first sentence) And still Ko‡ kept going … ¡5

The above sentences are the first sentences of consecutive paragraphs (paragraphs 2 to 4 are consecutive in Dadié’s The Black Cloth; so are paragraphs 5 to 6). These first sentences in consecutive paragraphs illustrate well repetition of the main idea, not just within the same paragraph, but also within various consecutive paragraphs. The analysis of the selected texts also uncovers two essential elements. Firstly, the string of discourse is maintained by the recurrence of coordinate sentences on the same level of the paragraph and by the recurrence of verb clusters on the same level of the sentence. Secondly, on the same level of generality or abstraction, clauses can only emphasize the same point, bring equal details to the main clause or modified clause, or restate an idea already stated; which is evidence of synonymous parallelism. In the sentence, semicolons and commas function as separators of coordinate sequences; also coordinate elements such as and, but, for, yet could be implied, as in the following example which I discussed earlier: 48

2—Paradigm of the Griot Sentence 2 2. Right at the beginning, 1. Mali was the province of the Bambara kings 3. (and) those who are today called Mandingo, 4. (or) inhabitants of Mali, 3. (yet) are not indigenous, 3. (for) they come from the East.

In sentence 2 and paragraph ¡, the ideas of the passages reach completion only at the end. Sentence 2 and paragraph ¡ both contain a string of coordinate propositions. In sentence 2, all the propositions of level 3 emphasize or bring supplementary details to the same element. Sentence 2 and paragraph ¡ contain evidence of synonymous parallelism (where there is repetition of the same idea) and climactic parallelism (because the ideas of the passages reach their completion at the end). Synonymous and climactic parallelisms are strong features of Francophone African prose.

SENTENCE ANALYSIS FROM EXPOSITORY WRITING This analysis, which will examine the structures of three expository sentences (sentences drawn from texts that expose or present a situation), will follow the same method used to examine the expressive sentence. Sentences ¡ and 2 are from Boubou Hama’s Dialogue avec l’Occident. Hama’s books, which were mostly published after Niger’s independence from France (in ¡960), had dominated the literary scene in Niger until the mid–¡970s. Hama is a justified choice for this analysis, as he believes in authentic African philosophical and political values and tries to have his writings reflect those values. Hama often prefaces his books by forewarning his Western audience of his African style and by apologizing for using a linguistic approach based on the tradition of orality, a practice with which Westerners might not be familiar. L’auteur s’excuse auprès du lecteur de la forme de ces textes qui gardent plus d’une fois la liberté d’allure et, du même coup, l’imperfection de la communication orale. Il espère que la richesse de l’information rachètera ces défaillances [unpaginated]. [The author apologizes to the reader for the form of these texts that, in many occasions, keep the freedom of appearance and, at the same time, the imperfection of oral communication. He hopes that the richness of the information will make up for these limitations.]¡6 49

The Black Renaissance

Sentence 3 comes from the speech that the first Guinean president, Sékou Touré, delivered on the occasion of French President deGaulle’s arrival in Conakry. The speech was to express the Guineans’ refusal to be part of the French Community and their desire to gain independence from France. In my translation of Hama’s text from French to English I have made an e›ort to remain as literal as possible. Sentence ¡ Kotia-Nima, après une rapide narration du présent actuel troublé de l’Occident divisé, revient à l’aspect de son continent, à la vision du monde et de notre espèce dont toutes les civilisations admettent l’unité compacte sur le terrain de la biologie accomplie, nonobstant le retard constaté chez une certaine humanité isolée, encore refoulée dans les îles des océans ou dans des réserves, et restée à l’âge du bois et de la pierre taillée, à l’enfance de l’industrie et de science.¡7 Sentence ¡ (Literal translation) 1. Kotia-Nima, (N.C.) 3. After a quick narration of the current reality of the divided West, (P.P.) 2. returns to the aspects of his continent, (V.C.) 4. to the vision of the world and of our species whose compact unity on the ground of accomplished biology all civilizations recognize, (N.C.) 5. in spite of a setback observed in some isolated humanity, (P.P.) 6. still trapped on the islands of the oceans and on reservations (Adj. P.) 6. and kept at the Wood Age and Stone Age, (Adj. P.) 7. in the infancy of industry and science (N.C.).

Like expressive writing, expository writing follows a pattern of repetition and digression. Sentence ¡ is a cumulative sentence built on six levels. It contains many additions and changes of direction of movement. The sentence, whose main idea is to delineate the contradictions and di›erences in human conditions, has a repeated adjective clause on level 6. This expository sentence has a very discernible climactic structure, whereby an idea started at level ¡ only reaches its completion at the last level. The main idea is reached through a series of digressions (levels 3, 4, and 5), which themselves generate some synonymous parallelism (level 6) and antithetic parallelism (the idea at level 4 is re–evaluated in levels 5 and 6). The antithetic parallelism could be glossed as follows: A: Everybody admits the unity of humankind on the ground of accomplished biology. B: Yet somewhere, a civilization is still isolated in Stone Age. 50

2—Paradigm of the Griot Sentence 2 Faut-il, dans les perspectives d’évolution de notre espèce, penser à l’Afrique, au monde marginal dont le destin fut, d’abord, de préparer, d’élaborer l’homme à partir des primates, de le sortir de l’animalité, dans l’espace radieux de notre continent et de son temps stable et doux, de le conditionne, de le modeler en symbiose favorable avec la nature, de l’asseoir dans l’aventure des fictions, autant de réalités se relayant au cours des âges, par des synthèses lumineuses s’exprimant dans le discours énigmatique du Sphinx, dans la grandeur majestueuse des pyramides, dans les dieux à tête d’animal de l’Egypte antique ou dans le symbolisme vivant des fresques qui s’égrènent en tableaux parlants de la Dordogne (France) au plateau Bushman (Afrique) où il continue d’animer l’art sorti des doigts agiles des pygmées.¡8 Sentence 2 (literal translation) 1. It is necessary, (V.C.) 2. in the perspective of evolution of our species, (N.C) 1. to think of Africa, (V.C.) 3. of the marginal world whose destiny was, (Adj. P.) 4. at first, (Adv.P.) 5. to elaborate man from primates, (P.P.) 5. to get him out of animality, (P.P.) 6. in the radiant space of our continent and its stable and sweet time, (Adj. C.) 5. to condition him, (P.P.) 5. to remodel him in symbiosis with nature, (P.P.) 5. to seat him in the “adventure” of “fiction,” (P.P.) 7. so many realities relieving one another in the course of ages, (adv. P.) 7. through luminous syntheses expressing themselves in the enigmatic smile of the sphinx, (Adv. P.) 8. in the majestic grandeur of the pyramids, (Adj.P.) 8. in the gods with animal heads of ancient Egypt or in the living symbolisms of the frescoes that unstring in speaking tableaux of Dordogne (France) to the Bushman plateau (Africa) where he continues to animate “the art” which came out of the agile fingers of the pygmies. (Adj. P)

Sentence 2 has digressive, repetitive, and parallel structures similar to those of sentence ¡. Level 5, the most repeated level, contains the main idea of this lengthy sentence: Africa is the birthplace of modern man. An idea starts on level ¡ and is completed at another level ¡ after a short digression on level 2 (short climactic parallelism). Level 3 digresses to elaborate the idea of level ¡, and level 4 digresses to specify (sequentially) level 3. Level 5 is a lengthy repetitive digression that elaborates on the idea of level 3. The idea of level 3 reaches its completion only on level 5 (climactic parallelism), which is also interrupted by two digressive structures at levels 4 51

The Black Renaissance

and 6. The most apparent parallelism, synonymous parallelism is noticeable at levels 5. Sentence 3 2. Mr. President of the Government of the French Republic, (N.C.) 1. there are moments in the lives of nations and peoples which seem to determine a decisive part of their destiny or which, (V.C.) 3. at any rate, (P.P.) 1. are inscribed in the book of history in capital letters, (V.C.) 4. with legends growing up around them, (Abs.) 4. marking in a particular way the culminating point on the diagram of the arduous evolution of mankind, (Abs.) 1. the pinnacles which express so many victories of man over himself, (V.C.) 5. so many conquests of society over its natural environment. (N.C.)¡9

The analysis of this sentence identifies a marked digressive pattern and points to elements discussed in the expressive sentence (phatic elements), which is understandable insofar as this text (a speech) is meant for a live audience and needs to capture that audience’s attention. The main idea of the sentence (in levels ¡ and 4) is delivered by means of repetitions, only after a careful digression, which is evidence of climactic parallelism.

PARAGRAPH ANALYSIS FROM EXPOSITORY WRITING In most English expository writing, the topic sentence is the first or the last sentence of the paragraph, depending on whether the paragraph is inductive or deductive. The analysis of Francophone African expository paragraph will point to structures that are to some extent similar to the English structures. However, though a paragraph may develop an idea expressed in the first sentence, that paragraph may not necessarily follow a linear pattern. A whole paragraph may be constructed on digression. In this case, repetition of the essential elements will help maintain the consistency of the paragraph. As the next examples will demonstrate, the topic sentence is often accessory in Francophone African prose, and the use of digressions and repetitions is likely to generate parallelisms that are more pronounced than in English prose. Paragraph ¡ Mr. President, this text, like the one that preceded it in the analysis of the sentences is the text of Sékou Touré’s (first Guinean president) response to de Gaulle’s invitation to join the French Community. Mr. President of the govern52

2—Paradigm of the Griot French Republic, there are moments in the lives of nations and people which seem to determine a decisive part of their destiny or which, at any rate, are inscribed in the book of history in capital letters, with legends growing up around them, marking in a particular way the culminating points on the diagram of the arduous evolution of mankind, the pinnacles which express so many victories of man over himself, so many conquests of society over its natural environment. Mr. President, you are coming to Africa with the double privilege of belonging to a glorious legend that exalts the victory of freedom over bondage, and of being the first Head of the government of the French Republic to step on the soil of Guinea. Your presence in our midst symbolizes not only the resistance which saw the triumph of reason over force and the victory of good over evil, but it represents also, and I can even say above all, a new stage, another decisive period, a new phase of evolution. How could the African people be insensitive to these moments— a people which lives daily in the hope of seeing its dignity recognized and which intensifies more and more its wish to be equal to the best. You, Mr. President, undoubtedly know the value of this people better than anyone else, because you were its judge and witness in the most trying hours France has ever known…. Throughout the vicissitudes of history each nation makes its way in accordance with its own lights, and acts in keeping with its particular characteristics and its main aspirations, without the true motive of its actions being apparent. Though the African mind has been initiated in the inexorable logic of means and ends as well as in the harsh discipline of everyday realities, it is constantly being attracted by the great necessities of human upliftment and emancipation.… That is why we want to set those structures right, not by timorous and halfheated reforms, but by starting from their very foundations so that the movement of our societies may follow the ascending line of constant evolution and perpetual improvement. Progress is in fact a continuous creation, an uninterrupted development towards the better and for the best.… Black Africa does not di›er in this respect from any other society or any other people. Guinea is not that geographical entity delimited by the accident of history in accordance with the fact of French colonization, but it is a living part of Africa…. But vast as our field of investigation may be, insu‡cient in the light of our own requirement of evolution. Amidst the spiritual disorder due to colonization, and amidst the profound contradictions dividing the world…. We must try to ascertain exactly the conditions under which so that we can bring them to rudiments of an indispensable evolution without which the betterment to which they legitimately aspire cannot be achieved…. A poor nation has the one advantage that the risk its undertakes run are inconsiderable and the dangers it incurs are fewer. A poor man can aspire only to getting rich, and nothing is more natural than the wish to wipe out all inequalities and all injustices…. As far as we are concerned, we have one prime 53

The Black Renaissance and essential need: our dignity. But there is no dignity without freedom, for any subjection, and constraint imposed and undergone degrades him who is labouring under it, takes a part of his quality as a human being from him, and arbitrarily makes him into an inferior being. We prefer freedom in poverty to opulence in slavery. What holds true for one man is likewise true for societies and races….20

The above text does not respect the (academic) definition of the paragraph as a unit containing at least three sentences. It is important to stress the academic aspect since the formal academic setting was, after all, the fundamental venue for disseminating the rhetorical pattern of Negritude. The arrangement of the text suggests that a sentence alone can constitute a paragraph. The first paragraph, for instance, built on just one sentence, is as long as the second paragraph, which contains three sentences. Paragraph one cannot be called a transitional paragraph; transitional paragraphs, often made up of single sentences, are common in the journalistic style as connectives. Sentence one on the other hand, instead of creating a transition between two major paragraphs, in fact opens the speech. Paragraph one is a full paragraph: It contains an essential idea of its own, which is developed through lengthy digressions. In fact, the whole text digresses on the sentential level as well as on the level of the paragraph. The main idea is Guinea’s refusal to join the French community. The speaker, however, uses three digressive paragraphs. From the fourth to the eleventh paragraph, the text swings between general human concerns and specific Guinean needs, and each time the topic is displaced to a general human concern, it is done through digression. Paragraph 4: Throughout the vicissitudes of history each nation makes its way … (general concern) Paragraph 5: Though the African mind has been initiated. (less general) Paragraph 6: That is why we [Guineans] want … (more specific) Paragraph 7: Progress is in fact a continuous creation … (general) Paragraph 8: Black Africa does not di›er … (less general) Paragraph 9: Guinea is not only … (more specific) Paragraph ¡0: … Universal achievement, universal knowledge … (general) Paragraph ¡¡: Amidst the spiritual disorder due to colonization, and amidst the profound contradictions dividing the world … (general) Paragraph ¡2: A poor nation … A poor man … we [Guineans] prefer freedom in poverty to opulence in slavery (very specific, main idea).

The whole speech develops on a climactic basis. The main idea comes only at the end of the speech. No paragraph can stand by itself. It would be unintelligible. All the paragraphs complete each other harmoniously. Each lexical repetition, each repetition of the same idea, as one can easily notice 54

2—Paradigm of the Griot

in the text, is evidence of synonymous parallelism. The next two passages can hardly be considered paragraphs in English writing; and yet, these two sentences stand as self-contained paragraphs in Francophone African prose. Paragraph 2 Kotia-Nima, tout au long d’un exposé couvrant une large tranche de sa vie, vous a parlé de l’angoisse de son enfance, des préoccupations de son adolescence, du contact de l’homme qu’il était avec la réalité de l’existence humaine, des nations et des peuples.2¡ Paragraph 2 (literal translation) 1. Kotia-Nima, (NC) 2. through an exposé covering a large portion of his life, (PP) 3. told you of the anguish of his childhood, (VC) 4. of the preoccupation of his adolescence, (NC) 4. of the contact of the man that he was with the reality of human existence, (NC) 4. of nations and of peoples. (NC)

Sentence/paragraph 2 contains one major digression introduced by free modifiers at level 2. Level 4 appears three times; it repeats and elaborates on the idea of level 3. This is evidence of synonymous parallelism. Paragraph 3 Il retraça, pour vous, dans leur cadre physique, dans leur milieu ambiant, dans des circonstances de temps et de lieu, la douloureuse évolution qui s’e›ectua en lui par le fait de l’Europe, de sa pensée, par l’action directe de la culture française sur son destin.22 Paragraph 3 (literal translation) 3. He outlined again, (VC) 2. for you, (PP) 5. in their physical context, (Adv. P) 5. in their ambient milieu, (Adv. P) 5. in circumstances of time and space, (Adv. P) 4. the painful evolution that he endured by the fact of Europe, (VC) 6. of its thought system, (NC) 6. by the direct action of French culture on his destiny. (NC)

Paragraph 3 has the same digressive and repetitive pattern identified in paragraph 2. Level 3, which already appears in the previous paragraph, is repeated in this paragraph. Level 2 is non-essential information (digression). Level 5 appears three times. It is a long digression and repetition, not only of the same syntactical level, but also of the same idea. This is a good example of synonymous parallelism. The idea initiated on level 3 is finally stated on level 4 after a lengthy digression (climactic parallelism). 55

The Black Renaissance

Although this analysis is far from reaching perfection and exhaustivity, the examined samples and the analytical method used are reliable and the results credible. The Generative Rhetoric of the Sentence and the Paragraph compellingly displays the architecture of texts, and it identifies their processes of construction. Furthermore, the analyzed texts are culturally relevant. Therefore, it is sound to conclude that the Francophone African rhetorical structure is characterized by digressions, repetitions, and synonymous and climactic parallelism. On the level of the sentence, the important idea is repeated. Repetition maintains the level of cohesion of the sentence. On the level of the paragraph, there are rarely identifiable topic sentences. Digressions are recurrent. However, repetitions of coordinate sentences (sub-topic sentences) assure text solidity. Francophone African writers may even use whole paragraphs to digress. In such cases, the important ideas are repeated in the paragraphs to follow. Generally, digressions in Francophone African prose include two sorts of parallelisms: synonymous and climactic parallelisms. Synonymous and climactic parallelisms are two kinds of parallelisms identified by Kaplan as characteristic of Semitic languages. However, this study cannot make the case for a relationship between Francophone African features and Semitic features. In spite of some Arab (Islamic) influence in Africa, even Muslim religious authorities in Africa do not, for the most part, speak Arabic well enough to have been linguistically influenced by Semitic languages. Islamic Africans have not been more influenced by Arabic than Catholic Africans by Latin. Digression and repetition are simply features of most oral communities, which have persisted in Francophone African writing. It may not be presumptuous to argue that a diachronic analysis will reveal a generational decrease of digression and repetition in Francophone African prose, as African communities move increasingly toward print media. For now, digression and repetition remain strong features of Francophone African rhetoric. Where there is strong digression, there is repetition, and correlatively, where there are numerous repetitions, one is more likely to find some kinds of parallelisms, particularly, synonymous and climactic parallelisms. Digression can also point to some lexical interferences, diachronic interference (presence of words belonging to di›erent states of language in the same discourse), diaphasic interference (for instance, the presence of poetic language in scientific discourse, and vice versa), and diatopic interference (coexistence, in the same text, of words which do not belong to the same historical context of utilization). The interference of highly poetic language in expressive writing, and curiously enough in expository writing, is a common occurrence in Francophone African prose. This practice, which 56

2—Paradigm of the Griot

comes from the tradition of orality, often blurs the lines between the expressive and the expository registers. President Touré’s speech analyzed in this chapter is a good illustration of diaphasy. Following Senghor, many Francophone African writers are known for breaking the expository flow of their essays with poetic language. As in any language, there are idiosyncratic moments that advised readers can identify in Francophone African rhetoric; nonetheless, there still are numerous common deictics borrowed from the griot’s narrative technique — such as digression, repetition, synonymous and climactic parallelisms— which Francophone African writers have unconsciously perfected during their long years of cultural apprenticeship started before elementary school. If writers like Bebey have never investigated these literary common places, it is simply because these shifters have become part of their natural discursive environment, essentials of their logic. The Francophone African pragmatics of performativity di›ers from Romance or Anglo-Saxon pragmatics. The Francophone African asks, demands, orders, and begs di›erently. It is not a fact of nature. It is rather a cultural approach that puts great emphasis on conventions of sociality. Here, writer, text, and audience are implicated in a participative contract. The structure of the sentence and the paragraph is the discretionary decision of the writer/speaker as a member of a community for whom the text henceforth functions as tool of identification with the community. Before being a message support, the text is for the writer a medium through which to create with his or her audience moments of a‡nity. The text is, first and foremost, an indirect pragmatics. It is act of reconnaissance before being message. From this perspective, the language of the text is important, not only by its referential or denotative value, but also and mainly by how it quilts writer, audience, and contents in the same social fabric.

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Negritude of Incompossibility and Negritude of Compossibility “[It] is di‡cult to understand that two times two does not equal four; but does that make it any the more true?” Friedrich Nietzsche —Letter to His Sister

Adam and Eve are sinners for being naked in the Garden of Eden. What a great paradox! Their loss of innocence —sine qua non condition for emancipation from immaturity of childhood to wisdom of manhood/womanhood — is cursed by the divine word. By indexing their nakedness to them and by naming it as sin, God enfranchises his first children as he curses them for eternity. It is enigmatic that “God, giving his only son for the whole human race and being the sole author and master of the salvation of men, yet saves so few of them and abandons all others to the devil, his enemy, who torments them eternally.”¡ We know now — thanks to this paradoxical gesture of indexing, which was repeated time and time again everywhere imperialist Europe dared raise its banners— that the many un-saved ones are none other than the dark peoples. In the colonies of Africa and the Americas, the iteration of this divine gesture by the white missionary, and later the white colonist, helped inscribe whiteness in the Bible by elevating Europe to the level of the Promised Land and the Anglo-Saxon race to that of the Chosen People. The Judeo-Christian logic that places Adam and Eve at the heart of abstract or tactile darkness is a widespread wisdom in the Western world; it rationalizes nakedness as an accursed state of backwardness and primitiveness. Although for some European scholars, primitiveness connotes a certain innocence (Rousseau’s noble savage or Bergson’s intuitive memory) and a primordial sense of sinfulness and truth (Kierkegaard’s dread, Heidegger’s being as primordial rhythmic involvement with things), that is, the closest step to intuitive illumination, self-exploration, redemption, and salvation, it is undeniable that none of these thinkers ever meant primitiveness to connote whiteness. Historically, nakedness, sinfulness and primitiveness are terms that have often been attributed to non–Western and non-literate societies, whose 58

3—Negritude of Incompossibility and Negritude of Compossibility

salvation through Christianity and alphabetical literacy imperialist West regarded as its most significant humanitarian responsibility. Henceforth, the world of the Bible, that in which Jesus is the Savior, and Adam and Eve are naked, primitive and sinners— that is, non-white — is a world that condemns blacks to a life of eternal subordination by raising the stake of their redemption to the level of unattainable ideal, that is, to a state of whiteness. In spite of this, some philosophers have tried to convince us that Adam’s world — which, thanks to some dexterous bigots,2 we have since come to realize is no other than that of the naked black sinner — is the best composition of all the possible and compatible (compossible) worlds that, God in his mercy, chose to be the best world for Adam. Those who make this argument would like us to believe that there could not have been a better world for Adam — let us, henceforth, understand the naked black — than the world in which he sins, for, God, “this supreme wisdom, united to a goodness that is no less infinite, cannot but have chosen the best.”3 Nonetheless, to those who have been living the experience of blackness, to those who have been witnessing the objectification of blacks— however rationalized it may appear — the world of the Bible could not be the best world possible. For the socially trampled-on blacks of Africa and the Americas, it had become clear that the black person should live freely, unencumbered by the West’s attributive judgments and stigmas. For that to happen, the black would need to oppose another world to the world of the Bible that interpellates him/her to exist eternally in the company of the devil. That world would not necessarily be compatible with the Western world. Nevertheless, it would not be inherently contradictory either, precisely because it would not even start envisaging the possibility of submitting itself to Western value judgments. The world of Adam the non-sinner would thus be incompossible — possible but incompatible — to that of Adam the sinner. It would be the counter-world to the world in which Adam the sinner sins, and Jesus the savior saves. In the infinity of di›erent worlds incompossible with one another, the world in which Adam is a non-sinner would be the possible world for Adam not to sin, and Jesus not to be the savior. The world of Adam the non-sinner would reject all other possible worlds insofar as it would be the best world possible for Adam not to sin. Such is the world that Césaire’s Negritude registers. It is an incompossible community that raises the stakes of primitiveness by celebrating ancestral pagan rites and by mocking Europe’s failed e›ort to convert the black. In the Notebook, when Césaire confesses his primitiveness, his trances and anti–Christian practices, the tone of his confessions mocks Le Bon’s, LevyBruhl’s, Letourneau’s, and Levi-Strauss’s racist devaluation of the black. 59

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Césaire’s words defy the whole Western Unified Structure or Christian truth content. In doing so, the Martinican poet ascertains the possibility of the world in which the equation 2 + 2 = 5 is not inherently contradictory any more, insofar as it is the best world for Adam (the sinner) to be a non-sinner, the best world to murder God with capital G.4 Césaire’s Negritude of incompossibility springs from an activism against the white’s complex of superiority, which he witnessed first hand in Martinique. Historically, since ¡635, date of the arrival of the first French contingent in Martinique and Guadeloupe, Martinique has witnessed a racial divide. The first French colonists who landed on the shores of Martinique — most of whom were fleeing persecution and prosecution in Europe — intended to settle for good in their newly found home. So they did their best to secure political power, firstly by nearly exterminating the native Caribbean and secondly by insuring that the newcomers (black slaves, and later, Chinese, Coolie Indians, Lebanese, Syrian) would not rise to political power. The Békés (white colonists) remained the dominant political and economic force all through the first abolition of slavery in ¡794, all through the second European war, up to the French Assemblée Nationale’s adoption of the law that, in ¡946, made Martinique a French Overseas Department. Despite their local influence, the Békés kept their gaze nostalgically turned toward France. Mother France remained their Imaginary-Ideal, which haunted their dreams, and later the fantasies of those to whom they taught to imitate them, the mulattos, and then the blacks. Le colon … transmet à sa descendance une norme culturelle calquée sur le modèle d’origine. Il transmet à ses enfants, qui souvent partent s’humaniser en France, l’idée que toute culture est métropolitaine, toute littérature aussi. Il leur transmet le culte du Centre qu’il porte en lui. Mais il transmettra de même cette idée à ceux qui, par la suite, l’imiteront: aux mulâtres, bien entendu; puis aux Nègres emboîtant ce mouvement après l’abolition de l’esclavage; enfin aux survivants caraïbes éperdus, sans repères.5 [The colonist … transmits to his o›spring a cultural norm fashioned after the original model. To his children, who often go to France to gain some humanity, he transmits the idea that any culture is metropolitan, and any literature, too. He transmits them the cult of the Center in which he believes. But he will also transmit this idea to those who will later imitate him: the mulattos, of course; then the Negroes, who adopted this thinking after the abolition of slavery; Finally to the surviving native Caribbeans bewildered, with no references.]6

Consequently, like most of his black contemporaries in the Caribbean, Césaire’s contacts with the white man were more likely to happen at the price of a psychological violence than on the basis of a mutual recognition. 60

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Although the close proximity of blacks and whites in the Caribbean made it impossible for both communities to ignore each other, each encounter was also the occasion for the white to point out to the black that “his body is black, his language is black, his soul must be black too;” and that he is “the symbol of Evil and Ugliness.”7 Therefore, for the black to live, he had to deny his true identity and assume the identity of the white. In the Caribbean, the black was constantly invited to kill himself in order to live; for he was not just a sinner, he embodied sin itself. Placed in this dilemma, the young Césaire perceived only one possibility out: destroy this depersonalized self created by colonial experience that deceives him. Césaire concluded that he had to kill this false self that hated his real self in order to start anew.8 Hence, for the young Martinican poet, it was question of inventing a world for the black, one that would not take as its premises the stultifying presuppositions of Western rationality whereby 2 + 2 = 4. So imperative was his mission as Césaire was now convinced that the West, which had misled itself, could not pretend to lead the rest of the world.9 Unlike Césaire’s, Senghor’s Negritude is a compossible world to Europe. Despite his struggle for an authentically and singularly African or black reality, there seems to remain in Senghor, this former student of a Catholic school, former graduate of French universities, an irremediably plural dimension, which undermines any claim for the pure. This has built in the Senegalese poet a certain necessity to bring together Isabelle — epitome of the West — and Soukeïna — euphemism for Africa. Senghor’s e›orts to devise a civilisation de l’universel are a testimony to his conviction.¡0 In the poem “To New York,” Senghor’s call for reconciliation culminates into an invitation for blacks and whites to break racial barriers and build a common edifice. New York! I say New York, let Black blood flow into your blood. Let it wash the rust from your steel joints, like an oil of life Let it give your bridges the curves of hips and supple vines¡¡

In “To the Music of Koras and Balaphon,” the poet poignantly indicates his di‡culty to be either/or, to choose between Isabelle and Soukeïna, Europe and Africa; upon his mother’s injunction to select one woman over the other, the poet is thrown in the rift of confusion. Were he to decide, he announces, he would do so only at the eleventh hour, with much melancholy for France, the University, and the right connections.¡2 For Senghor, what is at stake is less the invention of a new world than the re-discovery 61

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and celebration of a glorious African mytho-poetic past to be reconciled with Western reason. Like Césaire’s persuasion in a Negritude of incompossibility, Senghor’s conviction in a Negritude of compossibility emanates from a personal experience. In West Africa, it was never the French colonizer’s intention to settle. He was aware of the temporary aspect of his presence. His goal was to become wealthy enough to comfortably spend his old days in France; and so— although to a lesser extent than his English counterpart — the French colonizer kept his distance from the native West Africans. Privately, the French colonist resented Africa, its climate, and above all its people.¡3 If the French colonist needed the people of West Africa, it was just as auxiliaries or intermediaries between him and the local chiefs. Although he found their so-called primitive manners repulsive, he would not meddle too much in their local a›airs as long as they did not impede his own objectives. In the French colonies of sub–Saharan Africa, the colonizer’s antipathy for the Natives served the Africans in two important ways. Firstly it allowed them a relative autonomy, which helped the Natives forge a real sense of pride in their cultures and traditions. Thus, for instance, Camara Laye’s autobiography, L’Enfant noir (The Dark Child) hardly mentions the white man’s presence; instead, the novel is filled with proud recollections of a childhood of innocence, pagan sacred rituals, wonder, initiation, learning, collective harvesting, love, generosity, solidarity, civility, and above all abundance. Many of Senghor’s poems of remembrance also register this sense of undisturbed pride, abundance, love and security. “Night in Sine,” for instance, takes the poet back to the pre-specular moment of private communication between the mother and the child; but it also recalls the sacred moment when the living are visited upon by their protecting ancestors. “Joal” evokes “the rhapsodies of the griots” during the community gatherings and the plentiful “funeral feasts steaming with the blood of the slaughtered livestock.”¡4 Secondly, this sense of pride in their cultures and traditions prepared the Africans against exterior aggressions. Beside the great African heroes that he eulogizes in many of his poems, and unlike Césaire, who melancholically recalls that his compatriots “have never been Amazons of the king of Dahomey, nor princes of Ghana … nor wise men in Timbuktu under Askia the Great, nor the architects of Djenne….”¡5 Senghor has also in his cultural background specific Senegalese heroes, such as El Hadj Omar Tall, Lat-Dior, Diogo Maye. These local heroes opposed fierce resistances to foreign invaders, Arabs and French alike. Rich of this cultural background, Senghor is convinced that he has much to bring to the table of universal civi62

3—Negritude of Incompossibility and Negritude of Compossibility

lization. Thus, for Senghor, Negritude is less about starting anew than popularizing past and existing traditional values. Despite their di›erences, both Césaire’s Negritude of incompossibility and Senghor’s Negritude of compossibility share the common objective of countering Europe’s negative assumptions about blacks.

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The Griot, His Word, His Body Man is the model and it is his body which is taken for the human body; his reason which is taken for reason; his morality which is formalized into a system of ethics. Moira Gatens—Cartographies: Poststructuralism and the Mapping of Bodies and Spaces

Senghor and Césaire have certainly inaugurated the tendency that, in black French letters, appropriates the spoken/written tension as the black colonized’s predicament between mother tongue and father tongue. Generally, in Francophone letters, the yearning for mother tongue — which is a longing for the spoken —constitutes an allegory of the quest for a moment of sanity grounded in a precolonial, pre-scriptural moment. Consequently, black French letters are crowded with direct or oblique indications of the preeminence of the spoken over the written. The apprehension that most postcolonial writers express toward alphabetical literacy cannot be brushed aside as lacking any valid foundation. The letter was presumably not only an ally, but also, and more importantly perhaps, an advanced sentinel in the colonizing enterprise. The events that led to what Césaire calls la chosification (the thingization) of the colonized people, to their subjugation and near genocide started with a Eurocentric (alphabetic) codification of human-ness. Critics like René Jara and Nicholas Spadaccini have abundantly documented this excessive cult of the grapheme in the colonial imagination. “[In the New World],” they write, “domination … was ultimately achieved through writing which was the primary vehicle for the establishment, rationalization, and control of the overseas institutions of the [Spanish] empire.”¡ Likewise, Allen Carey-Webb highlights that, in the New World, writing functioned ambiguously as a twofold device of inclusion and exclusion. It included the non–Western populations into the Western discursive environment only to better proscribe them.2 Both in Africa and in the Americas, the letter helped push forward Europe’s onto-theo-teleological myth by denying any humanity to the 64

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non–European and by promising him/her salvation at the end of a program of alphabetization. Thus in reacting against Europe’s imperialistic view that “speech was not good enough” to transmit intelligence and the Word of God, and that the spoken mother tongue was as much the devil’s tongue as the scriptures were God’s words, some postcolonial critics revisited the speech/ writing opposition, determined to posit the primacy of the word over the letter, castigating the letter as the invading other that brutally dismantled oral communities under the pretext of enlightening them. For the proponents of Negritude, alphabetical literacy imposes upon the colonized a new perception of the world. Contending that such a perception is devoid of emotion and poetic sensitivity, writers like Senghor, Césaire, and Glissant claim that by accepting the letter, the black person has surrendered his or her predisposition for emotive, intuitive and poetic thinking. The defenders of the word locate emotion in the spoken. They argue that speech antedates writing and remains, therefore, closer to original thought. They view speech as a natural mode of communication whereas written message imposes upon blacks a forced mind-set, which is at the basis of a neurosis in the literate black.3 Elsewhere, the assumed primacy of the spoken over the written has spurred numerous controversies and abundant literatures. The exchange opposing Derrida to J. L. Austin via Searle in Limited Inc illustrates well the spoken/written debate. Austin maintains that speech is a fundamentally non-iterable act, and therefore a reliable conveyor of true intentionality, sincerity and being. Derrida criticizes Austin’s view of speech as emanating from the philosophy of logocentrism plaguing most Western epistemologies since Plato. Derrida argues that Austin denies to the spoken the very elements that sustain it. Repeatability is at the heart of the spoken, for to speak, Derrida indicates, is to rehearse a grammatical gesture whose rules are always already codified.4 In another debate with Gadamer, Derrida reiterates this position by taking to task Gadamer’s perception of language as a means of mutual understanding through dialogue. Gadamer’s tendency to privilege dialogue, as the channel of understanding, indicates that he believes in the originality of speech and, therefore, in the power of speech to carry the speaker’s good will and sincerity. Derrida claims that both in speech and in writing the notion of sincerity is always already pervaded by absence of sincerity, insofar as speech is theatrical in the Austinian sense of the term; it is a stage for the other’s (in)sincerity.5 This is, by no means, Derrida’s assertion of the predominance of writing over speaking. In fact, Derrida plays with the subtleties between speech and writing, which he sees as defined by a relation of supplementarity. 65

The Black Renaissance Writing is the supplement par excellence since it marks the point where the supplement proposes itself as supplement of supplement, sign of sign, taking the place of speech already significant: it displaces the proper place of the sentence, the unique time of the sentence pronounced hic et nunc by an irreplaceable subject, and in return, enervates the voice. It marks the place of the initial doubling.6

Derrida suggests that it is the very fact of writing that creates philosophy’s bereavement for the lost paradise — the moment of original presence in speech. Thus, this moment lies in writing, insofar as it is writing that has made it possible for metaphysics to mourn it. At the same time, this absence (or loss), which is evoked, thanks to the presence of writing, can only be recalled as (lost) presence of speech. Thus, as supplementarity, writing calls for a not so euphoric as well as a not so pessimistic investment. Language is both the place of the subject’s a‡rmation and that of his or her finitude. Such an approach di›ers from Lacan’s view, which apprehends any language — even the mother tongue — as necessarily the place of the Other, that is, the place of the father.7 These various discussions about the spoken/written dialectic seem to have left most Francophone black writers unfettered in their conviction of the preponderance of speech as the locus of authentic subjectivity. The opposition speech/writing — which in black French letters is analogized to the dialectic between first/last, Natives/invaders, authentic/alienated, trustworthy/ insincere, the world of the colonized/the world of the colonizer — deserve serious examination, as the primacy automatically granted to orality has often gone unquestioned. Edouard Glissant, for instance, opposes the letter to the word, identifying the former as a tool of forced poetics and the latter as the instrument of natural poetics. The realm of natural poetics, Glissant maintains, is the traditional culture, that is, the place where the means of expression (language) and the form of expression (the collective attitude toward the language used) “coincide and reveal no deep deficiency.”8 The domain of forced poetics, on the other hand, lies at the intersection of the written and the spoken. This place where mother tongue — the word — and father tongue — the letter — interlace constitutes the site of the black French subject’s lingering malaise, the invasion of its authentic substance by a foreign and ill-intentioned body. There, Glissant suggests, the written threatens to render the spoken impotent, to numb it and keep it in inertia. Glissant’s dichotomies natural poetics/forced poetics and spoken/written mirror the opposition movement/inertia. “To move from the oral to the written,” he insists, “is to immobilize the body to take control (to possess it).” 9 While 66

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the written demands no movement — insofar as for writing to take place, the writer’s body has to remain still —“the hand wielding the pen (or using the typewriter) does not reflect the movement of the body, but is linked to (an appendage) the page”— the oral cannot be removed from the movement of the body. “The utterance depends on posture, and perhaps is limited by it.”¡0 This Glissantian association of speech with movement was already expressed by two of Glissant’s mentors, Senghor and Césaire. In fact, when Senghor, in his now-too-well-rehearsed sentence, announces that “l’émotion est nègre et la raison hellène” (emotion is black and reason is Hellenic), what he perceives as deriving from emotion is movement, performance, and art, all of which are synonymous in his lexicon. Senghor is convinced that if such great surrealists as Alexis Léger or Paul Claudel were able to create movements with their words, that is, if their words, like gold nuggets, could burst and reveal images and ideas, and thus, allow them to touch the true world, it is mainly because they could draw upon black syntax.¡¡ Senghor argues that the black African parole —speech — is first and foremost the expression of a total vision of the world, as it translates an intuitive, poetic, and totalizing vision, that is, a comprehension of the world in the etymological sense of the term.¡2 For Senghor, to understand the world, to comprehend it, to seize reality in its absolute form, one has to become a poet again; for only poets can become one with reality, move into reality, and be born with(in) it. Donc, co-naître, c’est naître avec. Parce que nous sommes avec les animaux, les plantes, les minéraux, tous les phénomènes de la nature, nous pouvons les connaître, aux frontières de notre être, par notre mouvement en même temps que par leur mouvement.¡3 [So then to know (etymologically) is to be born with. Because we are with plants animals, minerals, and all phenomena of nature, we can know them to the limits of our being, by our movement and by their movement.]¡4

Like Senghor, Césaire believes in the miraculous power of the word, as it commands movement, acts upon things and humans in order to transform them, remove them from immobility, infuse life into them, and ultimately free them, by revealing them to themselves: “…le mot a sa musique, sa couleur, sa forme, sa force propre … c’est lui qui me permet d’appréhender mon Moi; je ne m’appréhende qu’à travers un mot, qu’à travers le mot”¡5 (…word has its music, its color, its shape, its own force … it is the word that allows me to understand my inner self; only through a word, through the word, am I able to understand myself ). Although Césaire ascribes revelation potency to the word, he also suggests that words are not necessarily 67

The Black Renaissance

equally powerful. Only true poetic voice is pregnant with movement, generates movement, commands it; in other words, only poetic imagination, can reveal to humanity the absolute face of the world; hence the poet’s primordial role. By means of his imagination, the poet will dig in the depths in order to reveal to humanity the absolute face of history. If spoken language is fundamentally poetry and creation, then the black hero is the Master-Poet; he is a creator. Thus for Césaire, the voice that frees from immobility is the one that perfectly allies itself with movement; it belongs to the Master-Poet or the griot. The griot becomes a sort of Chomskyan ideal speaker/listener in the community of the word. In black French letters, and especially in Césaire’s poetry, the griot’s voice usually speaks a divine order, and the movement that this voice executes in order to liberate the people is both ascribable to a teleological paradigm and metaphorical of the movement of the masculine corporeal’s erection. Although Senghor’s and Glissant’s works index more explicitly the spoken as a reified moment of truth and freedom, it is in Césaire’s writings that the word-astruth-and-freedom is ultimately marked as emanating from a masculine order. With Césaire, the word that commands derives vertically from a Divine Voice distinguishable from the popular voice. In his Notebook, the Divine Voice and the voice of the people function independently, and only toward the end of the poem do these two voices overlap and fuse so as to become harmoniously unified. Césaire’s Notebook could be divided in three sections, which, I submit, mirror the main agencies and movements of the masculine corporeal, horizontality, obliqueness and verticality. In the first segment of the poem, an Omnipresent Voice —certainly the authorial expression — makes some rather un-picturesque and un-sophisticated observations, respectively, about the landscape of Martinique and the inhabitants of the island. Nothing in these authorial pronouncements can come ever slightly close to the idyllic postcard images of the Caribbean countries promised as free vacations to sweepstakes winners in North America and Europe. Nothing is nearly reminiscent of these strong beach boys in tight-fitted white trousers, hastening to turn the boredom of wealthy spinsters into paradisiacal adventures. Instead, what the reader is left with is an island emerging from the Caribbean Sea, and on whose shores congregate the miseries, wretchedness and sorrows of cane workers, which even the sea seems to have rejected. This apocalyptic scene hints that the island has never necessarily been a playground for the successive masses— black slaves from Africa (¡680), Coolie Indians and Chinese (¡853), Syrian and Lebanese (¡875)— who came to people Martinique, this land that the French had succeeded in occupy68

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ing by ¡635, under the pretext of befriending the native Caribbeans and protecting them from the Spaniards. However, the real poverty of the black Antillean comes, not in his or her material lack, but rather in his or her psychological deficiency, which causes him/her to deny himself or herself and turn his or her gaze toward white Europe, its values, and its language. This lack of self-consciousness, the inability for the black Martinican to see, utter, and hear himself or herself, constitutes for Césaire the most damaging e›ect of the colonial policy of assimilation. French colonization has plunged the black Martinican in a state of zombification. It is the authorial Voice that would utter what, in its lethargic state, the people dare neither see nor voice. The Omnipresent Voice’s disclosures are disturbing: Martinique lies submissive, inert, and horizontal. In this moment of revelation by the Omnipresent Voice, the voice of the people remains silent, and movement is absent. Thus Césaire compares both his childhood town and its population to a lost throng unable to name its a·iction.¡6 The people’s voice, trapped in the myth of the mirror stage, constituted upon the gap of the post-specular moment — separation from the imaginary-ideal (mother Africa) and impossibility to incorporate as its own the law of the symbolic (which amounts to France)—cannot utter anything on its own. The people’s voice, until now living an illusory independence, contained in dullness, no longer authentic because forcefully deterritorialized from its original objet petit a, nevertheless tries desperately to re-connect to a self that is not its real self (France). Consequently, its gestures to this e›ect remain clumsy and uncoordinated. In the Notebook, the people’s voice prefigures indecisiveness and vacillation, as it has not yet learned to gather and revolt. Césaire thus analogizes this squatted popular stance to an unsure and cowardly woman.¡7 The people’s voice, which displays all the symptoms of the dialectical polarization characterizing the oedipalized subject of psychoanalysis, has yet to learn to open itself and utter anything a‡rmative or free. In its horizontal posture of submission, inertia, silence, and passivity, this voiceless voice can only receive and give nothing; and what it receives is only corruption, lies, hypocrisy, and fraud.¡8 In this horizontal crowd whose voice is “quicksanded … into the swamp of hunger,”¡9 the gestures are idiotic. In its stance of concession and capitulation, the voice of the people is ill accorded, hysterical, comic and burlesque. This disorganized, disharmonious and awkward movement, which comes from a cacophonous voice that neither raises nor falls— like an empty river that has forgotten to flow — nevertheless, slowly comes to consciousness, thanks to the Omnipresent Voice. The second movement of the Notebook corresponds to this first moment 69

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of prise de conscience; and it is preceded by an analytical phase. Here, the Omnipresent Voice progressively integrates into itself the voice of the people, in order to share its wisdom with the community. Historically, were one in Haiti or French Guyana, one might say that this moment corresponds respectively to the time following the publications of Price-Mars’s Ainsi parla l’Oncle (¡928) or Léon Gontran Damas’s Pigments (¡937). In Martinique it corresponds to the date of Césaire’s Cahier d’un retour au pays natal (¡939) onward. In ¡939, eight years after he first left his native island with a scholarship to study at the Lycée Louis Le Grand, in France, Césaire was back to his former grammar school, Lycée Schoelcher, this time, as a literature teacher. Determined to change the Martinicans’ perceptions of themselves and to foster a renewed sense of pride, Césaire started to o›er his students “a bridge to the African values they had always previously been taught to despise.”20 Together with a few friends, (his wife Suzanne and René Ménil), he founded Tropiques, which lasted five years (¡94¡–¡945), and which helped propagate his ideas about black consciousness. Césaire’s Cahier d’un retour au pays natal is somewhat prophetic of Césaire’s own return and service in Martinique, as he has become the first Representative of Martinique at the French Assemblée Nationale and the Mayor of Fort-de-France from ¡945 to 200¡. It is thus a poetic or Omnipresent Voice — strangely reminiscent of Césaire’s own voice — that takes upon itself to speak for the people. On behalf of his people, the poet is faced with the reality of the black; one that he attempts to comprehend, as he begins to sense that below the mere surface of things lies true and authentic meaning. The poem becomes thus a dramaturgical scene that puts into play a number of antagonisms, contradictions or opposing forces that need to be resolved. The poet, then, suspects the forces that immobilize his people to reside in the letter; for it is by means of the letter, or Western education, that the dichotomizations master/slave, intelligent/childlike, Western/Negro, good/bad, those who created everything/those who invented nothing, Christianity/paganism, light/darkness, victors/vanquished, real/mythical, reason/intuition, written/spoken — and equation of which he always lies on the negative side — made their way into his mind. If the letter cannot be trusted to reveal the authentic nature of blacks, it is the word that needs to be invoked. If the letter is deceiving, immobilizing, and numbing the black person, it is the word that must revive him/her, must interpellate him/her, and bring him/her to life, to being again. It is, first and foremost, the letter that the black person must surrender in order to speak, once again, the natural language of the ancestors. 70

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Leaving the letters amounts to a therapeutic moment; it amounts to leaving the West, the country of those who write yet neither speak, nor feel. The disease of the black person comes from the fact that he/she has been uprooted by the book from the stable, transparent, and univocal world of the phoneme — where 2 and 2 could be 5 and not necessarily 4, where “the forest meows” and “the sky strokes its beard”— and transposed into an inherently incompatible world of the grapheme. Therefore, leaving the letter is tantamount to exorcising the subjective ex-centricity caused by this uprootedness. Only when he or she has surrendered the letter and celebrated the word, only when he or she has been able to command with words, to conjure the lies of scriptural history, only then, would the poet finally become one with his people and proclaim his mouth the mouth of the downtrodden2¡; only then would the Divine or Omnipotent Voice come down from its hills into the valley to erect the people, his people — and confess to them, identify with them, accept them.22 Only then, would this already-sitting-down people start to rise from obliqueness to the final stage of verticality.23 However, by proclaiming itself the voice of the people, the authorial Voice is no less tyrannical than the Eurocentric powers that it has sought to dispel. It becomes itself the place of a concentration of power; a power that ultimately rests in the realm of the poet-griot, a reified masculine figure, an authority that is in the end consolidated for the griot as Grand-Narrator. Senghor’s and Césaire’s poets are reminiscent of these Grand-Narrators whom Nietzsche, in a derisory gesture, names the “genuine philosophers;” they pretend to live according to the law of nature, but they cannot help — by virtue of their dogmatic spirit — going against this very law, which is essentially the law of undecidability. For them, Nietzsche has these unflattering words. In truth, the matter is altogether di›erent: while you pretend rapturously to read the canon of your law in nature, you want something opposite, you strange actors and self-deceivers! Your pride wants to impose your morality, your ideal, on nature — even on nature — and incorporate them in her … you would like all existence to exist only after your own image.24

These self-deceivers are not only moved by a will to unify; they are also prompted by a desire for self-eulogization. In ¡939, Césaire was not writing Cahier d’un retour au pays natal with the humble posture of the griot or paroleur, which Chamoiseau rightly qualifies as a stylistic gesture of authorial self-erasure.

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The Black Renaissance Les conteurs ont donc toujours voulu se faire oublier au profit de leur parole…. Outre sa protection, l’anonymat stratégique du conteur facilite une réappropriation du conte par la collectivité qui au départ en a fourni le thème. Cette réappropriation permet une pérennisation du message.25 [It has always been storytellers’ intent to disappear behind their speech…. Beside the fact that his strategic anonymity insures the storyteller’s protection, it also facilitates a re-appropriation of the story by the community that provided the theme for it in the first place. This re-appropriation guarantees the perennial nature of the story.]26

Neither Senghor nor Césaire intend to observe this authorial distance with their speech. Their reason for that is unequivocal: The stories they tell are theirs, and the heroes they eulogize are none other than themselves. Senghor goes so far as to blur the lines between his foundational heroes and himself. The poems of the Éthiopiques Collection (¡956), written after Senghor’s election as Senegal’s Representative at the French National Assembly, constitute the paroxysm of Senghor’s self-indulgence. In “Letters to the Princess,” a poem meant to be recited or sung to the music of the kora, the instrument that has often accompanied the griot’s eulogy of kings and heroes, Senghor displays his inclination for self-glorification: He is, all at the same time, the Ambassador of black People, the Grand-Priest, and the Master of Ceremonies.27 Similarly, Césaire’s Notebook remains the story of his own comeback as a communal hero, a Martinican Messiah pregnant with knowledge and wisdom, the embodiment of the “New Negritude.” Could he have envisioned a more grandiose homecoming? Césaire’s/Senghor’s griotism is not the griotism of the African griot or the Martinican paroleur. Their invocation of the storyteller does not spring from a genuine appreciation of the role of this ambiguous “bon bougre” in Martinique and praise singer in Africa. They do not intend to sing just any body’s praise; they would rather have their praise sung to them, for they are the chosen ones. Senghor says it with no circumlocution: A world separates him from his gira›e-hunting ancestors. He is a man of refinement, a man of letters.28 The griot is certainly not a hero to the Francophone black writer. However, by rehearsing the tension between the word and the letter, Senghor and Césaire — as well as the black French writers who have imitated griotic gestures— hope to gain some acceptability among a growing black readership. Furthermore, for the contemporary black French writer, the inscription of his or her work within the word/letter dialectic also increases its chance of being accepted — museumified — on the complex international literary and artistic market as an original work. By caving to these demands, the Francophone black writer has consolidated a trend, the rush toward things exotic, which started in the aftermath of the first European war; in addition, the 72

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black writer has fortified the phallocentric tradition and its paradigm of homosocial heroism out of which black French literature grew.29 Consequently, in black French letters, movement as life, freedom, and being, is intimately tied to speech, which orders it. In Césaire, the magic of the word erects the crowd, from the horizontality of coercion and acquiescence to the verticality of emancipation and freedom. However, this consciousness, which passes from flatness to erection, mimics the movement of a rising phallus; and it is not by mere coincidence that Césaire compares the lifeless-ness or (un)consciousness of the crowd to a female body. In Césaire’s and Senghor’s poems in general, the female body is metaphorical of passivity and horizontality while the male body is figurative of verticality. This discourse, which associates the masculine corporeal to life, presence, being, and freedom and the feminine body to absence, unconsciousness, and death is only indicative of the phallo(grio)centric nature of the Afro-Caribbean discourses of liberation. Negritude and its neo-conjectures, are agents for the reification of a precolonial, pre-scriptural order whose approach to gender equity is far from being without prejudice, as Césaire and Senghor still remain at the center of most black French writings as the quintessential griots. While Césaire and Senghor explicitly glorify the black woman as the complement of the black man, implicitly, their dreams of corporeal interchangeability are filled with fantasies of domination and subjugation of the female body. The most conspicuous image of woman that transpires through the writings of Negritude is that of the object of desire of the other. Thus, I agree with Christopher Miller — and for reasons which he clearly delineates, such as the canonical nature of Senghor’s poetry and its vast acceptance and dissemination in West Africa and in the French Caribbean — that Senghor’s poetry, and especially “Black Woman,” opens one small — but revealing — window into the Francophone black gendered imaginary ideal.30 Indeed, in “Black Woman,” Senghor’s language to describe the African woman rehearses the colonial discourse of conquest, penetration and occupation. Senghor figures woman as a promised land or an exotic beauty that stirs up man’s covetousness, and which man should tame, subdue, and conquer. It is at the paroxysm of his desire, that is, at noon, when the sun is vertical above the heads— a subtle indication of the erected masculine corporeal?— that man suddenly discovers woman as the object of his want. Once o›ered to man’s will, woman becomes an appeasing and healing force — the mother or the lover; yet simultaneously a disruptive figure, a distraction that might perturb the focus of man’s activity, and for which she might be punished by death. Henceforth woman is the property of man 73

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who decides of her fate as in one of Senghor’s poem where the great Senghorean hero, Shaka, sacrifices his fiancée in order to obtain total power; and although in his lyricism the hero indicates that he dearly misses his fiancée, a closer reading of the poem reveals the real reason for the hero’s nostalgic lamentation. It is not Nolivé that Shaka misses, but the sexual desires she could arouse in him.3¡ Shaka acknowledges Nolivé’s absence only when he feels in his “entrailles ferventes” (deep belly) a desire that demands to be pacified. Thus, by virtue of the healing ability ascribed to her, woman undergoes a constant deterritorialization in Negritude. She is the hero who shall only live — and die —for others. Woman engenders life; she is bio-physiologically constructed to be pregnant, and give birth, the argument goes; therefore, she is also naturally fit for su›ering. Thus, her narrative is recuperated, as her body is taken over. She is no longer the possessor of her body, she does not make any decision regarding what it is to be woman; instead, she has to become woman according to the discourse of the Other [the phallus] or e›ace herself. The consecration of woman comes— when it does come at all — as the end result of her successful reception and accommodation of the seminal law of the phallus. That law, transmitted in spurts in throws— the throws of the dice — is neither consistent nor repeatable. Yet to become woman in an economy of phallogriocentrism amounts to being capable of fixating the general law that governs that economy, that is, the law of repeatability or iteration of the throws— which man himself has yet to master. Fixating this law is a metaphor for many things, among which, for woman, being pregnant on command — irrespective of man’s own fertility — or even giving man a child of the exact sex he dreams of in his capricious fantasies. Woman is required to play God, and too bad for her if she fails.32 In Negritude, woman’s anatomy metaphorically figures a divine order: When the narratives of the woman that straddles man are lost in the archives of masculinist history as man tells her story, it is in the submissive horizontal position that woman accepts the erected law of man, which, consequently, marks her for domination. While praising Paul Claudel’s poetry for capturing black syntax and vision of the world, Senghor reveals the joker clause that has always regulated the rapport between man and woman in Negritude. Car, il y a dans chaque homme une part de féminité, et inversement. Il en résulte que de nature, à la naissance, une partie de notre di›érence a été e›acée, de notre vide comblé. Mais ce n’est pas su‡sant. D’où le besoin qu’ont, l’un de l’autre, l’homme et la femme.33 [For, in each man, there is a part of femininity, and vice versa. The result is 74

4—The Griot, His Word, His Body that naturally, at birth, a part of our di›erence has been erased, of our emptiness filled. However this is not enough. Which explains the fact that man and woman need each other.]34

Senghor’s rhetoric is not one of mutual displacement in a dialectics of recognition intended to neutralize the rapport between man and woman at the quilting point of comprehension. It is rather a deceptive exercise, the main objective of which is the reification of the masculine corporeal, the penis, as figure of authority; Senghor’s invocation of the metaphor of the unified body is a sly gesture which, to borrow Moira Gatens’s words, “functions to restrict … political vocabulary to one voice only: a voice that can speak of only one body, one reason, one ethic.”35 In Senghor’s tableau of supposed harmony and unity, woman is only the object of the lack of the Other, jouissance of the Other. Irremediably, what man seeks in her is his own satisfaction; and once again, it is Senghor who will give away man’s hidden motive in his relation with woman. Voilà les sens, la chair, et, partant, la femme, incapable de satisfaire, avec notre insu‡sance, notre désir.… C’est encore la femme qui va apporter la réponse à la question qu’elle avait posée en même temps qu’elle comblait le désir de l’homme…. Et c’est parce qu’elle est amour, c’est à dire sentiment, qu’elle invite au dépassement du corps matériel dans la vie de l’esprit. Car l’esprit seul est intelligent, qui ramène la diversité à l’identité et le multiple à l’un.36 [Here are the senses, the flesh, and, consequently woman, incapable of satisfying what comes with our insu‡ciency, our desire…. Again, it is the woman who is going to provide an answer to the question that she had asked as she was satisfying man’s desire…. And it is because she is love, this is to say sentiment, that she invites to the passing of the material body into the life of the spirit. For only the spirit, which brings diversity back to identity and the multiple back to the one, is intelligent.]37

Woman is sentiment and feeling then, and man is spirit, intelligence. It is the naive questions posed by the child like innocent mind of woman that send man into deep reflection and meditation. By virtue of his intelligence, it is man, consequently, who will determine the points of flight, or the lines of deterritorialization. As the union between man and woman are destined to be harmoniously quilted in the symbolic order, it is man though who retains the power to dismember the union, to make it a Body Without Organs, to subtract ¡ from infinitesimal (n-¡), to rhizomatize it. Here again, in this Senghorean onto-theology, it becomes evident that in spite of the proclaimed complementarity between man and woman, the body is not a impartial signifier, but rather man’s corporeal — the phallus— which he vigorously brandishes like a trophy, like the proof of his permanence, that through 75

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which he survives life’s vicissitudes and lives beyond death; woman is the embrayeur (shifter) of man’s passing. Césaire’s approach to Women’s roles is similar to Senghor’s. In Césaire’s plays women remain indi›erent to the hero’s struggle, and their value is second only to his duty. As Clément Mbom notes, women in Césaire’s plays often function as a hindrance to the hero’s mission. Elle utilise tous les moyens à sa disposition pour détourner le Rebelle de son Idéal en ramenant tout à l’enfant, ce qui est considéré comme capital dans une union entre un homme et une femme dans les civilisations négro-africaines…. Césaire semble refuser aux femmes à la fois la capacité et la possibilité de s’élever au niveau de l’idéal révolutionnaire. En e›et, quand elles ne sont pas loin des préoccupations des héros … elles s’opposent à leur idéal révolutionnaire.38 [She utilizes every means at her disposal to distract the Rebel from his Ideal, by reducing everything to the child, regarded as capital in a union between a man and a woman in Negro-African civilizations.… Césaire seems to deny women both the ability and the possibility to rise up to the Rebel’s revolutionary ideal. In fact, when they are not removed from the hero’s preoccupation … they oppose his revolutionary ideal.]39

Although one should not go so far as to qualify Senghor and Césaire — and thus the whole Negritude movement — as constituting a circle of misogynists, there is no doubt that they subscribe to the griotic attitude by virtue of which woman only exists in relation to man. In the next chapter, I will attempt to reveal the insidious nature of griotism and, especially, Frantz Fanon’s extension in post–Negritude of the paradigms established by the founders of the black Renaissance in French Letters. Why Fanon? I say Fanon because, by many critics’ accounts, Frantz Fanon marks, if not chronologically, at least thematically, the break between Negritude and post–Negritude. Furthermore, a number of contemporary critics view Fanon as one of the most original thinkers of the former French colonies.40 I submit that although Fanon does not complacently rehearse all of Senghor’s and Césaire’s claims, he espouses their main paradigms: Fanon’s nomadic stance, which seeks closure in Algeria, mimics Césaire’s return to a Native Land and Senghor’s remembrance of the Childhood Kingdom, a recollection that is governed by the law of the Ancestral Voice. Furthermore, Fanon’s narcissistic or homophiliac tendency (love of the other as the same [heterosexual]) bears an interesting resemblance to Senghor’s and Césaire’s griotic politics of the body.

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Fanon’s Will to Unity Let me observe at once that I had no opportunity to establish the overt presence of homosexuality in Martinique…. We should not overlook, however, the existence of what are called there “men dressed like women” or “godmothers”.… But I am convinced that they lead normal sex lives.¡ They can take a punch like any “he-man” and they are not impervious to the allures of women-fish and vegetable merchants. Frantz Fanon —Black Skin, White Masks

The recent abundant literature about Fanon attests to the contemporaneousness of his work in postplantation and postindependence discourses. Fanon continues to fascinate many postcolonial writers as a singular and exemplary revolutionary whose legacy, like a rare relic, one ought to preserve and pass on to new generations of Afro-Caribbean writers.2 However, this exaltation about Fanon could strike as excessively reflective. Fanon’s originality might have been generally overstated. His gestures conform to, more than they divert from, a general trend inaugurated by the precursors of Negritude, and which is still marking a great part of black French letters. Black Skin, White Masks sketches a Fanonian appropriation of Hegel’s dialectic in the elaboration of an African revolution. Quoting Hegel, Fanon writes that “[S]elf-consciousness exists in itself and for itself, in that and by the fact that it exists for another self-consciousness; that is to say, it is only by being acknowledged and recognized.”3 Associating the dichotomy colonizer/colonized with the paradigms master/servant, white/black, Fanon posits that the relationships between the European and the African are generally structured around the presumptuous penetration and exhaustion of the other. In Fanon’s dialectic, it is undoubtedly the black — not the white — who emerges traumatized from this mutual (mis)representation. While, on the one hand, the black person lives in a permanent complex of inferiority, on the other hand, the white floats euphorically in a superiority complex. Alienated by the gaze of the colonizer, the colonized cannot function properly, that is to say, according to the image he or she has of himself or herself: He or she becomes the object of the other’s (the white’s) consciousness.4 77

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It is through the conflict between being self-conscious and being the object of the consciousness of the other that Fanon takes us into the Hegelian thought, which he further complicates by substituting a key Hegelian term, sublation of the other consciousness, with his own notion of physical elimination of the colonizer by the colonized. In fact, in “Lordship and Bondage,” the chapter of The Phenomenology from which Fanon quotes, Hegel discusses his notion of sublation as the operation by which a subject comes to objective self-consciousness through a cancellation of its necessary otherness. In the Hegelian conception, sublation is an act done by the subject to itself as well as to its other. Therefore, Hegel does not equate sublation to death or physical elimination, but rather to an act of “abstract negation, which cancels in such a way that it preserves and maintains what is sublated, and thereby survives its being sublated.”5 Although he retains the fundamental precepts of Hegel’s dialectic, Fanon contends, however, that only a violent confrontation between the black and the white, the result of which is the elimination of the latter, will allow the former to ascertain his or her being.6 While such a prediction on the part of Fanon might lead his critics to precipitously characterize him as a racist dialectician, his equivocal statements on race relations hardly call for a too hasty conclusion. Fanon’s stance on race has been an exceptionally ambiguous one, and his texts need to be meticulously examined before any final pronouncement — were this possible to achieve —can be made. In Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon acknowledges the French colonized’s situation as fundamentally di›erent from the condition of the black American. For the black in the United States of America, Fanon prophesies the gradual erection of a quilting point, a healing monument, rising out of a surrealist and expressionist tableau of a torn battlefield, white teeth, black limbs, and howling voices. On the field of battle, its four corners marked by scores of Negroes hanged by their testicles, a monument is slowly being built that promises to be majestic. And, at the top of this monument, I can already see a white man and a black man hand in hand.7

Here, the author of Black Skin envisages a dialectics of liberation which is one of negotiation, and which opens up the possibility for both the oppressed black and the white oppressor to re-write a common telos. Nevertheless, Fanon still cautions against any complacent optimism for, as he warns, “we can be sure that nothing is going to be given free. There is war, there are defeats, truces, victories.”8 If Fanon eulogizes the black American, it is because the latter is engaged in a daily violent confrontation for his or her 78

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survival. Black Skin suggests that the African American working to suppress racism and inequality, having by his or her side the liberal white American, wages a struggle that is totally di›erent from that of the Angolan or Algerian peoples against the white invader. As for the French black, Fanon advocates, not a dynamic of cooperation, but rather one of confrontation. He argues that the so-called independent Francophone black who has not won his or her freedom through the therapeutic and cleansing force of violence is a schizophrenic or depersonalized self living in the mirror of identification, and seeking in vain to emulate the white French.9 This Fanonian diagnosis of the Francophone black, which, in Black Skin takes language as the stage of the black French’s neurosis is, if not Freudian, at least Lacanian in its conception of the subject’s splitness in the realm of the symbolic. Like Lacan, Fanon “ascribes a basic importance to the phenomenon of language,” insofar as for him, “…to speak is to exist absolutely for the other.”¡0 This other for whom the black French struggles to define himself at the discursive level is constituted by di›erent layers of which the white Father or the colonizer is the most influential, insofar as the latter governs the symbolic; insofar as, even when the black claims to speak on his own behalf, it is to this white father that the black is for ever tied, and it is his culture and civilization that the black wants to assume. The Black man who has lived in France for a length of time returns radically changed. Even before he has gone away, one could tell from the almost aerial manner of his carriage that new forces had been set in motion…. In any group of young men in the Antilles, the one who expresses himself well, who has mastered the language is inordinately feared. Keep an eye on that one, he is almost white. In France one says, “He talks like a book.” In Martinique, “he talks like a white man.”¡¡

However, the black’s desire to emulate the white father, Fanon shows clearly, is always desire for a lack, insofar as the quest for lactification is an impossible dream for several reasons. Firstly, blackness is biological and unalterable. Secondly, in France’s imaginary-ideal — deeply entrenched in the French person’s personal convictions and private communications— the docile black French, who talks of assimilation and peaceful decolonization and transition to independence, will always remain an inferior and childlike character — like Maran, he will always remain a schoolboy in the country of letters. Besides, Fanon, Césaire and Senghor have all come face to face with this shattered dream. It is nonetheless an illusion that the white father would gladly keep feeding the black as constitutive of the formation of the black’s self. Fanon believes that this depersonalized self, constructed by the colonial experience, and which is full of French dreams with white 79

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breasts, is illusory and will never be exorcised unless through purgative violence. In Martinique, Fanon seems to argue, the prospect of rectifying the prejudice of colonization is bleak. The Martinican black has accepted from the colonizer a false freedom disguised as assimilation. Because he or she was not able to denounce the violence that presupposes this false autonomy, the Martinican has undermined the possibility of his or her absolute independence. Confrontation is what the black from Martinique — and by extension the black French — needs. “The former slave,” Fanon writes, “needs a challenge to his humanity, he wants a conflict, a riot. But it is too late: The French Negro is doomed to bite himself and just bite.”¡2 For the former slave, Martinique will never be a true home; the supposed freedom that the French colonizer o›ered the French colonized on a silver plate would never be an authentic autonomy. Fanon contends that the French colonized, who has accepted freedom, as a gift from the colonizing father, will never again experience this Kierkegaardian dread of liberty that keeps freedom alive. Considering Fanon’s tailored versions of liberation struggles, one might easily be led to believe that his vision of autonomy is nation-specific and eludes Negritude’s unequivocal and overarching panlogism. Perhaps, Fanon’s indications of di›erences in the black people’s struggles and his unmitigated refusal to be “the victim of fraud of a black world”¡3 is what prompted some critics to so hurriedly divorce him from Senghor and Césaire. For Patrick Taylor and Ato Sekyi-Otu, for instance, Fanon is a global theorist of alterity whose texts one shall read as layers of Gadamerian horizons. Therefore, Taylor and Sekyi-Otu see Fanon’s appropriation — and especially his complication — of Hegel’s dialectic as dictated by a sense of urgency: Fanon’s raciological gesture does not amount to an epistemological apartheid, they want to argue; rather, it is prompted by the necessity to render more e‡cient a (Hegelian) methodological tool at the inception of which lies a startling ontological coup de force. Hegel, Fanon contends, brushes away the singular condition of the black as an always already absent other in the struggle for recognition. Consequently, Fanon’s importation and transformation of Hegel’s dialectic of metaphysical violence into a dialectic of physical violence, one is urged to believe, is justified by the necessity to “secure and insulate the unique properties of the colonial experience from the generic properties of being human.”¡4 Furthermore, violence becomes the symbol of identification that unites the people on the same basis.¡5 “Concerning Violence” relives this [Fanonian] absolutist will to unity. Reenacting the breathtaking and self-mystifying hyperbole of nationalist discourse, it 80

5—Fanon’s Will to Unity says of this privileged and delusional moment that “individualism is the first to disappear.” The perverse “idea of a society where each person shuts himself up in his own subjectivity” is excreted from the moral organism. In its place: a radically “di›erent vocabulary of intersubjective relations, that of brother, sister, friend.”¡6

In Fanon’s pharmakon, brother, sister and friend are euphemisms for race brothers, race sisters and class comrades. Race is in Fanon’s argument the primary notional category; Fanon replaces the Lacanian sliding (linguistic) signifier with a (biological) racial one, “…a sliding signifier with equivalences outside discourse…,”¡7 which Fanon ultimately collapses into a gendered appreciation, whereby the Master-Signifier can be spelled out as black-Male. Fanon, however, does not write his black man to amount to any black male, but rather to the sort of (heterosexual) man who is not only black but cannot be feminized/womanized, that is to say, reduced to unconsciousness. Fanon wants his black masculine hero to remain in a state of sleeplessness in order to avoid being snatched by the un-desired white other whose desire for jouissance lurks surreptitiously. Here, it is the white homosexual’s desire of the black male that threatens to alienate the latter. Here also lies in wait the negrophile white woman waiting for the right moment to contain this strong black will; but Jean Veneuse — or Fanon’s personae in Black Skin— knows better: He has learned to remain indi›erent to these white desires seeking a bit of exoticism; for it is for Andrée Marielle that his heart has been pounding, but not for just any white woman. For Veneuse, or Fanon?— and unlike many of his fellow black friends, who, upon their arrival in France rush to the nearest whorehouse for a taste of whiteness— it is more than a desire for lactification. Love has much to do with it. Is not Jean Veneuse reminiscent of Fanon himself, who, we are assured, fell sincerely in love with a white woman and never once noticed the color of her skin? Is not Jean Veneuse so much like Fanon, that is to say, so sincere and cultured, so sentimentalist and un-selfish?—“…a sentimentalist who goes nonstop from singing Spanish songs to translating into English.”¡8 So Jean Veneuse is the quintessential Fanonian black male, a neurotic, of course, but is it not neurosis the primordial condition of the colonized? Is he not, as a colonized, a subject thrust in the rift of a multiplicity of seduction phases, a desire for the taboo (white) mother, an allegiance to race, a wish for invisibility? Has not Fanon himself uttered this agonizing cry? … the white man … had woven me out of a thousand details, anecdotes, stories … I was responsible at the same time for my body, for my race, for my ancestors … I was battered down by tom-toms, cannibalism, intellectual deficiency, 81

The Black Renaissance fetichism, racial defect, slave ships, and above all else, above all: “Sho good eating.”¡9

Only the weak cannot outgrow this crisis, remain stuck in the Oedipal stage. Jean Veneuse, A.K.A. Frantz Fanon, is not a weak man. Indeed, “unlike other Antillean men who journey to France, Veneuse can resist a desire for [any] white women…. He loves his one, specific white woman.”20 This is the test beyond the Oedipal myth, which only the fitted shall pass. This is the test of initiation which a few black males, in their relationships with the white female, shall pass, and which any black woman involved with a white man is destined to fail; for as for the black woman — of whom Mayotte Capécia and Nini are exemplary — an intimate relationship with the white man amount to high crime and treason. For her, Fanon seems to suggest, love’s got nothing to do with it; it is always a question of lactification. [T]he race must be whitened; every woman in Martinique knows this, says it, repeats it. Whiten the race, save the race, but not in the sense that one might think: not “preserve the uniqueness of the part of the world in which they grew up,” but make sure that it will be white.2¡

If Fanon challenges both Hegelian and Lacanian epistemologies on the ground of race, it is not so much in order to open up the possibility of a black ontological reality than to reify a black patriarchal discourse, a theoretical bias that has not gone un-noticed by a new generation of critics in general, and of feminist critics in particular. For Lola young, in Fanon’s narratives, women in general are prefigured within an economy of pathology; and black women in particular are, more often than black men, portrayed as the betrayers of their race. Young argues that, although Fanon’s depiction of black women through Mayotte Capecia’s Je suis martiniquaise could be interpreted as a textual hyperbole whose purpose is to shock, “[his] unforgiving analysis of Mayotte Capecia” still gives away his inclination to probe her unconscious, “even without access to her dreams,” as the desire of every Martinican woman to whiten the race.22 Fanon’s pathologization of the black woman as one that is constantly driven by a desire for passing renders delicate his contribution to contemporary black women’s scholarship. Bell Hooks, for instance, apprehends her engagement with Fanon as a paradoxical one. While Fanon remains, along with Memmi, Cabral, Freire and Malcom X, the “intellectual parents [who] nurtured [her] emergent radical subjectivity,” Fanon is, at the same time, a thinker in whose works she perceives a “profound lack of recognition of the presence of the mothering body, of the female body that thinks.” It is perhaps this symbolic matricide, the fact that Fanon’s emancipatory discourse 82

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seems to suggest that “all will be well when men are able to reach a level … of homosocial … of homophilia: love of men for men, but more profoundly, love of the same,” which precipitated her own conversion into feminist politics as “a journey for the recovery of the mother’s body.”23 Like Hook, Kobenan Mercer reads Fanon as not just guilty of suppressing the female body, but also as bearing the responsibility of conferring to an idealized, essentialized, fixed-black-heterosexual-male the characteristics of a MasterSignifier.24 This Fanonian gesture of pathologizing the female and the homosexual bodies as sick bodies is only one of several indications of how, within the register of his dialectic of recognition, Fanon converts the Nietzschean will to power into a will to unity. In Sekyi-Otu’s falls short of acknowledging this when he writes that. … by virtue of its insistence on the alienated and compulsive character of this will to class power, Fanon’s phenomenological language avoids that idolatry of the autonomous subject which in the existentialist version of social being construes “class relationship and a‡liation as the free invention of a role projected toward the future, rather than determined by the past.” 25

This mitigated admission that Fanon’s discourse is not totally innocent of homogenization raises a number of questions. Although Fanon’s revolution has the appearance of functioning in the margin of mainstream Negritude’s cultural politics of representation as it was propagated by Césaire and Senghor, does not Fanon give more indication in both Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth of a clinical gesture that traces back to Negritude?26 Consequently, are not Fanon’s claims against an all-sweeping, allencompassing black revolution too sporadic and occasional for critics to so precipitously identify in his texts a radical distanciation from a posture that seeks to exhaust di›erence? Should one be so complacently optimistic as to perceive Fanon as a narrativist of liberation, one who has earned his seat in the company of Nietzsche? This is precisely what a few critics have set to doing. In fact, in an attempt to counter the arguments that by “relativizing truth and ethics,” Fanon helped consolidate the despotic regimes that have flourished in Africa in the aftermath of decolonization,27 some scholars have sought to re-read Fanon in order to make him relevant — again and always— to contemporary Afro-Caribbean political discourses. For Patrick Taylor, Fanon belongs in a long line of narrativists of liberation among whom he sees Hegel, Marx, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre, Habermas, Jameson, and of course, Césaire. Taylor proposes that one read Fanon’s works as a number of horizons— in the Gadamerian sense of the term — which organize 83

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into a meaningful whole the diverse experiences of the Third World. 28 Along the same line of argument, Ato Sekyi-Otu, sets out to demonstrate that Fanon is an ironist or a performativist — in so far as his texts are dramaturgical narratives in which the psychoanalytical language functions no more and no less than a metaphorical or analogical trope, as opposed to a foundational or etiological one.29 One critic against whom Sekyi-Otu directs his criticism is Christopher Miller of whom he writes that, “in an egregious confusion of a textual event with authorial intention … [Miller] reads Fanon’s citation of truth-claims made by representative figures … as [Fanon’s] ultimate epistemological and meta-ethical theses.”30 Since Miller has supposedly failed to seize the authentic authorial intention in Fanon’s texts, Sekyi-Otu sees it as incumbent upon him to reveal to us the real Fanonian intentionality. Consequently, he takes us through a pilgrimage, onto the road that led him to the most intimate reserves of the Martinican psychiatrist’s mind. Sekyi-Otu’s style mirrors that of the solemn archeologist that has just stumbled across a sanctum whose truth reveals itself only to the initiates who know how to decipher it. Here, the initiates are the proselytizers of the Speech Act Theory. With what immensely complex and compelling force Fanon’s texts speak to us when we read their contents as speech acts in the moving body of a dramatic narrative! For then these contents reveal themselves to us not as faithful reports of facts or existing states of a›airs…. Rather, they are grasped now as enactments of positions assumed, stances staged, claims advanced by typical characters in a story of experience; now as ironic commentaries, admonitions, exhortations interjected into the utterances and activities of these characters; but always as products of that dialectical movement by which the enacted event or figure is compelled to disclose its incompleteness.…3¡

What Taylor and to Sekyi-Otu seem to share is their optimism in a dialectic of intentionality, the metaphysical foundations of which trace back to John Langshaw Austin. I contend that Gadamer and Heidegger are for Taylor and Sekyi-Otu no more than theoretical detours to arrive at Austin. I thus suggest that the daunting task Taylor and Sekyi-Otu have set for themselves, that of revealing the true intentionality of Fanon’s texts, will meet no more success than Austin’s linguistic phenomenology did. Nowhere in Sekyi-Otu’s book is Austin mentioned; and even SekyiOtu’s reference to Hans Gadamer appears only once in the notes to Fanon’s Dialectics of Experience. However, the link to Austin would be easy to infer for those who are familiar with Gadamer’s notion of “good will” and Austin’s concept of sincerity. Sekyi-Otu’s Gadamer is the one who evokes Plato’s eumeneis elenkoi (good will in conversation), and for whom language is a 84

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means of mutual understanding through dialogue, rather than the Gadamer who, in a correspondence to Dallmayr, might have displayed good will when he noted in the aftermath of a confrontation with Derrida. Along with Heidegger, I see metaphysics in Nietzsche in the process of self-disintegration, so to speak, and thereby in search of a bridge into a new language, into another thinking (which perhaps does not even exist). Perhaps Derrida could have written this last sentence? Especially the part in parentheses at the end — wouldn’t he only need to translate it into French?32

Is there any sincerity in the above lines? Was Gadamer actually conceding defeat in the possibility of a transcendental language likely to bring all individual intentionalities into a nodal point of comprehension? Is it not rather the case that through some sly and final pun at Derrida’s expense, Gadamer was hoping to have the last word in a failed conversation? How are we to know whether a person is sincere or not? Sekyi-Otu claims to have the key to understanding Fanon’s intentionality. As much as we can wish him well, his method ba·es. Paradoxically, Sekyi-Otu resumes a gesture he castigates Fanon’s critics for performing — a hermeneutic gesture, which, he himself charged earlier with transfiguring authorial intention from one text to the other, from one language to the next, and which, accordingly, compels him to probe original textual stocks for authentic signification and to rely only on his own revised translations. Will Sekyi-Otu’s reconstructive enterprise — which leads him to revise existing translations of specific words or phrases whenever he concluded that these translations were simply erroneous or misleading or insu‡ciently attentive to the dramatic intentions and resonances of Fanon’s discourse33— succeed where, according to him, others failed? Drawing upon Patrick Taylor’s suggestions, that Fanon’s works open onto the possibility of the universal freedom of the oppressed people from the specific analysis of the situation of the colonized French, Sekyi-Otu proposes that we read Fanon’s texts as speech acts, in the sense that the “language of the text functions as a performative … that delivers an admonition.”34 There is no doubt that Hans-Georg Gadamer is only a diversion. The real authority in the Taylor/Sekyi-Otu logic is ultimately the author of How to Do Things with Words, J. L. Austin. It is, therefore, to Austin — or perhaps to The Signature Event Context, the scene of the Austin/Derrida debate — that I propose to return, in order to disclose, through the inadequacies of their mentor’s argument, the flaws of the Taylor/Sekyi-Otu reading of Fanon. As Gilles Lane points out in Quand dire, c’est faire, Austin’s decision to develop a taxonomy of speech acts was triggered by his growing dissatisfaction with a tendency in contemporary philosophy to take short cuts 85

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in the study of language and to arrive at premature conclusions. For Austin, one of the main flaws of philosophy is to study language as a close corpus without considering elements of the context of production of utterances. Austin believed that the way to go beyond this obscurantism that determines philosophical investigation is to take into account all the suprasegmentals (psychological, encyclopedic, co-textual/contextual, the entire situation of the production of the discourse, the entire field of idiosyncrasies) constituting the milieu of actualization of the utterances to be studied. It is thus ordinary language, the complexity of which, according to him, has been so far ignored by philosophy, which will constitute his object of analysis. The father of the theory of performativity is highly confident as to the possibility of providing an inventory of all that happens when a given utterance is produced in a given situation. For Austin, the main characteristic of an utterance is its communicative value, regardless of its truth/false value. Thus Austin distinguishes two main categories of utterances, the performative and the constative. While constatives tend to describe, to report or to establish a fact, in performatives the statement of the sentence is the execution of an action, or part of the action. Some examples of performatives are: “I do!” (I do take this woman as my lawful wife), “I do!” being said during the marriage ceremony. “I christen this ship Queen Elizabeth” (breaking a bottle against the ship). “I bet you ten cents that it will rain.” In each one of these cases, an action is performed as the sentence ends. The simple fact of uttering a performative does not su‡ce to perform an action. Some necessary conditions need to be fulfilled such as the appropriateness of the circumstances in which the sentence is said, the authority of the speaker to say them, the appropriate gestures to accompany the performatives, and so forth. Austin insists that the true performative must be uttered with sincerity — the Platonic eumeneis elenkoi invoked by Gadamer as good will in conversation — and in the presence of the necessary circumstances. When Austin mentions sincere performances, he excludes the theatrical performances, or the poems, which he characterizes as fictitious actualizations. Austin exposed his analyses in the course of twelve lectures. However, his obsession to discover constant characteristics defining the performative was met with several di‡culties. Austin’s earlier definitions of constatives and performatives turned out to be unreliable, and the more he tried to hold them as distinct categories of utterances, the more similar they tended to 86

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look. By virtue of a variety of subjective aspectual-modal decisions, a constative can be a performative, and vice versa: Performatives I thank you I am sorry I criticize

Constatives I feel some gratitude I repent I am shocked by

Until the eighth lecture, Austin’s analyses were inconclusive; by the ninth lecture, however, Austin believed he had isolated three elements characteristic of the speech act, to the definition of which he would devote, with more humility, his subsequent lectures. These characteristics are the locution the illocution, and the perlocution. The locution is the speech act insofar as it says something, insofar as it is the production of sounds organized according to a given system of grammar. The illocution is a speech act insofar as it means something in a system of conventionality, and the perlocution is a speech act insofar as it provokes, in precise situations, precise reactions from the receiver in the dialogical relationship. Let us illustrate this with Austin’s more telling examples. (E.¡) Act (A)— locutionary He told me “shoot her!” meaning by “shoot” shoot and referring by “her” to her. Act (B)— illocutionary He urged me (he advised, he ordered me, etc.) to shoot her. Act (C.a)-perlocutionary He persuaded me to shoot her. Act (C.b) He made me shoot her. (E.2) Act (A)-locutionary He told me: “You cannot do that.” Act (B)-illocutionary He protested against my act. Act (C.a)-perlocutionary He dissuaded me, he prevent me from Act (C.b) He stopped me; he brought me to my senses

Austin argues that the task of cataloguing all the speech acts is possible, and he proposes to take as his objects of investigation the genuine (non para87

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sitic) speech acts— those acts that can be distinguished by the sincerity of their intentionality, as opposed to those that are performed on a stage, or recited as poems. The sincerity of the speech act is determined, not only by the presence of the interlocutors involved in the dialogical situations, but also, by the presence of the contextual elements which come into play to constitute the ritualistic moment of the speech act. From this distinction Austin can a›ord to avoid the field of the literary. Derrida takes issue with this restriction, contending that the very nature of the speech act is its iterability, the fact of its repeatability. When the priest baptizes, or when the general orders, they do so by citationality, this is to say, by citing a language the codes of which contain the very possibility of their iterability. Could a performative utterance succeed if its formulation did not repeat a “coded” or iterable utterance, or in other words, if the formula I pronounce in order to open a meeting, launch a ship or a marriage were not identifiable as conforming with an iterable model, if it were not identifiable in some way as a “citation”?35

In this case, the spoken mimics the written, and Austin’s desire to limit his investigative field to the authentic utterance translates philosophy’s malaise in dealing with an exteriority that threatens its idealization of language as a system of communication and its desire to construct a teleological discourse. Therefore, is it not the case that Austin’s gesture anticipates that of Sekyi-Otu, who, while so conspicuously displaying his resentment for what he calls “these days of cavalier refusals of the language of essences,” attempts to rescue the Fanonian description of class formations in colonial and postcolonial societies both from ontological universals and from the problematics of particular, discrete events? Is not Sekyi-Otu trying to have it both ways while, in the name of Fanon, and in a remarkably cunning indication, he espouses essentialism by first debunking its possibility and then revisiting it as a free modifier? An immediate and indeed enduring consequence of Fanon’s strategy of description is that it depreciates or at least calls into question the materiality of the class protagonists and relations it names. It is as if “class” in general is in the colonial and post-colonial contexts a matter of desire, alienated ambition, intentionality. And the paradigm case of class in the periphery, the “national bourgeoisie”— what could it be but “a bourgeoisie in spirit only,” in contradistinction to the metropolitan archetype,36 which is a “direct product of precise economic conditions.”37

The Fanon/Taylor/Sekyi-Otu argument will not resist the play of diݎrance, precisely because the Austinian project, in its delimitation, has not been 88

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able to either. This argument rests upon a philosophy of presence, which Gadamer recalls in his invocation of the good will. Discerning the true intentionality is therefore a matter of good will in conversation. How then, do we account for this Gadamerian good will or Austinian sincerity? Austin is convinced that only in a dialogic situation can sincerity be accounted for, and therefore, intentionality recovered in its absolute form. It is in the same perspective that Sekyi-Otu proposes that Fanon’s texts be revisited as a dialogic act, whereby, An utterance or a representation or a practice we encounter in a text is to be considered not as a discrete and conclusive event, but rather as a strategic and self-revising act set in motion by changing circumstances and perspectives, increasingly intricate configurations of experience.38

Fanon’s discourse is thus to be read as an Austinian utterance as opposed to writing — insofar as the speaker, unlike the writer, is always present. One instance of Fanon’s omnipresence is therefore Sekyi-Otu’s timely revision, which clarifies Fanon’s speech and vouches for the author’s sincerity. Yet how much have we learned since Sekyi-Otu’s intervention? Are we not back to the Austinian bottleneck? Because speech, like writing, is iterable and repeatable, the notion of sincerity or good will becomes an issue. Whose good will is it then? Whose intention does the utterance deliver? Are not the champions of Fanon’s true intentionality suspect of injecting into Fanon’s reading their own intentions? To follow the Taylor/Sekyi-Otu’s argument, one has to believe in Fanon as a magician, one that is constantly revising his own signature, and whose texts act as his own interlocutors, “questioning [his] own depiction of history.” I suggest that Sekyi-Otu perceives an interrogation where most of us would grasp an assertion; and to be fair to him, I shall quote one of his revised translations of the passage he holds up as the quintessence of Fanon’s self-criticism. Decolonization, which sets out to change the order of the world, is, as we can see [on le voit], a program of absolute disorder. But it cannot come as a result of a magical operation, nor of a natural shock, nor of a friendly understanding. Decolonization, as we know it [on le sait], is a historical process: That is to say that it cannot be comprehended [ne peut être comprise], it cannot find its intelligibility nor become transparent to itself except in the exact measure that we discern the movement of historical becoming [le movement historicisant] which gives it form and content.39

When Sekyi-Otu a‡rms that he has extrapolated “self-critical questions” from Fanon’s texts, he just does not know how right he is. Fanon’s texts fail to manage di›erence. 89

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Even for Taylor and Sekyi-Otu, Fanon’s ontological thesis has become an epistemological embarrassment that cannot be explained away, and which one constantly attempts to legitimize. It is unfortunate that Sekyi-Otu, whose attacks on Miller and McCulloch seem driven more by his own sense of who is licensed to speak of Fanon —“our Fanon,” as he calls him — rather than by a genuine interest to disentangle the priorities of Africa and the Caribbean states from the discourses that obscure them, fails to acknowledge the depth of Miller’s and McCulloch’s analyses. I read Sekyi-Otu’s indiscriminate uses of the terms irony and hermeneutics as cognates— especially when he refers to the agency in Fanon’s texts— as somewhat suspect. For my part, hermeneutics and irony are two concepts pointing to two critical postures, and whose fundamental di›erences need to be made clear. Hermeneutics goes, at least problematically, from Greek science of interpretation to Hans-Georg Gadamer and Martin Heidegger, passing through Schleiermacher and Dilthey. Its impulse is mainly normative, denotative and referential. Irony, on the other hand, starts from beyond Nietzsche and Heidegger and finds its momentum in French deconstructionist philosophies, functioning in the manner of a game, play, aporia, chance, coup, écriture or négociation. Even if one were to accept Taylor’s plea in favor of the Martinican writer — that Fanon’s hero, like the hero of a liberating narrative, is “free to err, like the Christian who is free to sin,”40 one could not hide the obvious fact that Fanon’s narrative in Black Skin, White Masks, like Césaire’s in Notebook of a Return to the Native Land or the Christian narrative in the Bible, are totalizing narratives that remain extremely intolerant to modes of individuations. One thing Taylor and Sekyi-Otu successfully point out is that Fanon’s model is stuck in attributive or existential judgments. It is an either/or model, which, like the model of the analyst, subscribes to speech as the reflector of intentionalities. Thus, referring to the colonized, Fanon writes: “My objective, once [the colonized’s] motivation has been brought into consciousness, will be to put him in a position to choose action or passivity.”4¡ With Fanon, one has to be sane or insane; one has to “either accept the challenge of creating a liberal society or tragically and fatalistically legitimate the repetition of oppression.”42 This Fanonian representation tyrannically dismisses the possibility of and, in the Deleuzian and Guattarian sense of the word, that is to say, and as passages, connections, transitions, lines of deterritorialization, or becomings. Fanon’s model promotes, on the one hand, a true, national or Algerian consciousness— and I would agree with Christopher Miller that in Fanon’s Algerocentrism, Algeria is the quintessential nation — and on the other hand, an idiosyncratic or doomed con90

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sciousness. According to Fanon’s discourse, you could only be Algerian or Other. If you were an Algerian, you were saved; you would dance the Douga,43 regardless of whether or not you knew what it meant or where it came from, or how to dance it. If you were the other, you were doomed, marked, and sick. Thus Fanon’s departure to Algeria could be interpreted in a number of ways. It could be understood as a therapeutic move intended to meet the necessary conditions for Fanon’s own restoration. This nomadism, which conforms to griotism, carries at its center nostalgia for a transcendental moment, the mythical discursive order of the African storyteller or griot; and Abiola Irele is right to point out that Fanon is Césaire’s heir.44 Fanon’s departure to Algeria could also be taken as a messianic journey the aim of which is to restore the colonized to essentiality by breaking the chains that hold them prisoner to the gaze of the West. This nomadism — which is prompted by Fanon’s desire to return to the quintessential nation, Algeria — satisfies the griotic teleology theorized by the proponents of the black Renaissance in French letters. Jock McCulloch could not be more perceptive in suggesting that a closer examination of Fanon’s critique of Negritude’s philosophy reveals that Fanon became increasingly sympathetic to Negritude over the years, and that his writings were substantially in agreement with Césaire’s beliefs that racism was the ideology of colonialism, whereby their devaluation of the culture, history and personality of the people they sought to dominate gave the imperial powers strength.45 Undeniably, Fanon’s nomadism was repeating the griotic gesture that sought to restore the exiled black (a sick and mocked subject) to authenticity and essentiality, that is to say, to a psychological and physical home. Even though Fanon’s alternation of claims with disclaimers renders his stance on race extremely ambiguous, his particularly insistent penchant for specific national missions comes with no circumlocution; and too often in Fanon’s conception of national di›erence, the concept of national is excessively valued over that of di›erence. Fanon o‡ciously announces that in the struggle for liberation, “individualism is the first to disappear,”46 implying that the national context is the primary locus of the subject’s investment. Here, Fanon proposes only one way out of sickness; individuals have to renounce their idiosyncratic manifestations in order to integrate the disciplined multiplicity as molarized crowds, pregnant with the socius or the set of attractors proposed by Frantz Fanon, the revolutionary prophet. Obviously, while following Fanon, one risks falling into some sort of onto-theoteleology. Fanon’s will to unity did not fall in the desert.

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Reiterating Griotism La Négritude césairienne repose sur le postulat selon lequel dans les profondeurs de tout Nègre martiniquais, dans son inconscient, survit une parcelle ou un gisement d’Africanité, que trois siècles d’esclavage ont refoulée mais qu’il peut, qu’il doit retrouver par un e›ort de plongée en soi. Raphaël Confiant — Aimé Césaire: une traversée paradoxale du siècle

MUDIMBÉ’S FANONIAN GESTURE As if to continue Fanon’s mission, Vumbi Yoka Mudimbé reiterates the necessity for blacks to ascertain their autonomy by getting rid of their Oedipal ties with Europe. Thus he writes in L’Odeur du père, … il nous faudrait nous défaire de “l’odeur” d’un père abusif: l’odeur d’un ordre, d’une région essentielle, particulière à une culture, mais qui se donne et se vit paradoxalement comme fondamentale à toute l’humanité. Et par rapport à cette culture, afin de nous accomplir, nous mettre en état d’excommunication majeure, prendre la parole et produire di›éremment.…¡ […we would have to get rid of the “scent” of an abusive father: the scent of an order, an essential region, particular to a culture, which is yet presented and lived paradoxically as fundamental to the whole humanity. And in relation to that culture, in order to accomplish ourselves, put ourselves in a state of major excommunication, take over speech and produce di›erently.…]2

However, the West’s involvement in blacks’ dealings is so pervasive and insidious that such an undertaking requires of the blacks a certain level of sleeplessness and vigilance. At any corner, around any bend, the West could be waiting patiently, determined to undermine the blacks’ will to freedom and independence.3 Therefore, faithful to the spirit of disentangling Africa’s priorities from the West’s condescending politics of containment, Mudimbé both adulates Negritude and underlines its limitations in the postcolonial age.4 Mudimbé suggests that an importation of Western epistemologies into African languages could open up the possibility for “un ordre de discours di›érent et 92

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original”—(an order of discourse di›erent and original)— that would answer the Foucauldian questions of “quel est le statut du discours et quel est son ordre? Quelle est la souveraineté qui le gouverne et dans quel sens l’oriente-telle?5—(What is the status of discourse and what is its order? What authority governs it and in which direction?) In his quest for “une pensée africaine authentique qui … rendrait compte fidèlement de l’ordre des normes du discours africains6—(an authentic African thought … capable of accounting for the African discursive norms), Mudimbé announces that it is Jacques Lacan who gives him reason to hope.7 Although in the chapter that deals more saliently with the supposed Oedipal rapport between Africa and the West, the author of L’Odeur du père does not elaborate any further on Lacan’s contribution to his search for African authenticity, one can easily surmise that his approach will be psychoanalytical, and that language will be the primary locus of his analysis. In fact, without subscribing to the rhetoric of physical violence preached by Frantz Fanon, Mudimbé recuperates the image of the schizophrenic protagonist, whom he submits to psychiatry’s clinical discourse of restoration. Thus Both with Fanon and Mudimbé, the schizophrenic subject conforms to the psychoanalytical discourse of griotism, whereby he or she is a sick subject to be cured. The readers of Mudimbé’s works will quickly notice the novelist’s inclination for the split protagonist. Both the plots of Entre les eaux and L’Écart are built around split subjects who try in vain to reconcile two di›erent physical and psychological spaces. Pierre Landu (the revolutionary priest in Entre les eaux) and Nara (the doctoral student in The Rift) find themselves on a precarious edge that makes it dangerous, even fatal, to flirt with the interdicted. The narrative of The Rift— the novel on which my analysis of Mudimbé’s nomadic discourse will mostly focus— is presumably the handwritten diary of Nara, a young historian doing dissertation work on the Kuba people in Zaire. Aminata, a female librarian and friend of the author’s adopted Ahmed Nara. The novel is supposed to be the posthumous transcription of Nara’s journal after the latter died mysteriously in his bed. The story, which, the author assures his readers, has retained both its original content and structural organization, is the disturbing testimony of the main protagonist’s constant battle with societal norms that function as an encroachment on his subjectivity. This is what Nara writes about his inability to protest the stifling rules of civility. And instead of yelling at him, I give in every time and feel guilty. As if I were the one to blame. It is true … I am not innocent … like all adults. But is that a reason? Of course, there is the shibboleth from the Manual of Decomposition that calls for me to be patient.… “One is civilized only to the extent that one 93

The Black Renaissance does not loudly voice one’s leprosy….” Why should they impose pustules on me besides?8

The (anti) hero abhors all that people have resigned themselves to endure in the name of good manners and Civilization. In his view, the price of civility simply borders on torture, as one can see from this encounter with a colleague of his at the Bibliothèque Nationale. He shook my hand emphatically as if he wanted to tell me a secret … or something else…. And again I felt the pressure of his hand, more strongly still. “Well, don’t break it for me,” I said in embarrassment. “Oh, no! Why not? I am so happy to see you again.9

Lacking the fortitude to overtly express his resentment about everyday disingenuous gestures, the young man can only su›er them silently and keep blaming himself and the people around him for such a cowardly stance. In his soliloquies, Nara even secretly problematizes Negritude’s cogitation regarding motherhood, as he views the woman subject — which Aminata epitomizes in conformity to the griotic notion of mothering — as a stifling and unbearable war machine: “She was invading my life, taking the prerogative of applying brush strokes to my being. As if she alone could be my salvation.”¡0 The engulfing mother figure (Aminata — or Africa) is to Nara reminiscent of his French lover (Isabelle — or France), from whom he ran away one night because of her mounting expectations and her desire to understand, immobilize, and totalize him: She was tender: Her look pure, candid. I imagined her with her arms open, ready to take me under her arms, holding her robe widely spread to wrap me up in. Yes, the tepid warmth of a shroud. And Isabelle’s panting breath, which scanned my servitude of the summer nights in a little village of HauteVienne.¡¡

Both with Aminata and Isabelle, Nara lives the same anguish. The mother figure represents a shrouding lover. As if to disturb the exoticism built around Africa and France by the champions of Negritude, the main protagonist of The Rift regards both Isabelle (symbol of Europe) and Aminata (symbol of Africa) as oppressing figures, engulfing him, drowning his individuality, and exhausting his plastic power: Isabelle was the incarnation of Europe, drove me inside herself, convinced that she was able to convert me with her love to the bitter understanding of a revelation in which the plural consideration was to redouble the violence of a suppressed primitivism.¡2 Isabelle, Aminata…. The night su›ers because of them. The gulf…. The abyss…. Mosquitoes … Sewage smells…. The parade creatures in a mob…. And I stay up for a funeral march whose sign I vainly seek. It was my mother.¡3 94

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Because the mother figure often represents an abusive and possessive lover, Nara seems to deterritorialize women from a griotic exhaustive gesture on female figures— as exotic others— only to re-territorialize them as objectivity for his own subjectivity. Furthermore, Nara’s invention — or re-invention — of the feminine other, and particularly of Aminata, clashes against Aminata’s self-representation. Insofar as the writer of The Rift attempts to o›set an individual male’s desire (Nara’s) with an individual female’s desire (Aminata’s), both of which seem to question the negritudinist notion of the black woman’s desire, and because at times Mudimbé seems to shy away from suggesting a totalized vision of femininity or masculinity, the novel hints that it is traversed by a constellation of desires— either met or deferred. One such example — where The Rift appears as a rhizomatic and vertiginous project — in the manner of a vortex — assemblage of desires is observable during a dialogue that takes place between Nara and Aminata on a dance floor. On the one hand, Nara invents the image of the interdicted (motherhood) in Aminata in order to better transgress it: “I adore you, Aminata…. Are you forbidden territory, Aminata?”¡4 On the other hand, Aminata undermines Nara’s premises by contending that Nara’s assumptions about her (as an unattainable femininity) are only presumptuous: “Come now…. You know very well that I am not, Nara.”¡5 However, as soon as Mudimbé o›ers The Rift as the possibility of a constellation of individual narratives— such as Nara’s and Aminata’s counter griotic discourses on sexuality, masculinity and femininity, or a counter-narrative to the Freudian domestic crisis (subjects’ investment in the Oedipus complex)— the author undermines such a possibility. Indeed, in spite of his ostensible promise of an existential black subject, Mudimbé is also quick to deliver that subject to psychoanalysis as a queer, monstrous, or pathological one, that is to say, as an object of clinical curiosity. This authorial gesture — recurrent in Senghor’s, Césaire’s and Fanon’s writings— seems to indicate that any subjectivity in a black society is an anomalous agency to be restored to degree zero of monstrosity, that is to say, to the community of all natural things. Indeed, psychoanalysis in the depths of which griotism plunges has no sense of the unnatural. It is about things either pure or impure, not about idiosyncratic modes of individuation; and within the register of griotism, Ahmed Nara is only unfit; hence his frequent visit to Dr. Sano’s o‡ce. In The Rift, there is the suggestion that Nara’s desire to express his subjectivity — which is mediated through his defiance of social canons— is not normal; it is rather the result of a psychosis experienced during his childhood.

95

The Black Renaissance Are you familiar with the night, Dr. Sano? No, you’re not, are you? I, on the other hand know it all too well: We’ve met and very early on. I was six years old, Dr. Sano…. She [my mother] punishes me: Locks me up in the tool closet…. Forgets me there for several days … a night without end…. And there was a rat in there, yes, a rat.¡6

One might deduce then that Nara’s fear of darkness (the author’s subtle expression of Nara’s refusal to communicate with the sacred [ancestral] spirits of the night?) emanates from a double Oedipal tragedy, a failed relationship with his mother and the death of the Father: I had hardly been locked up when they came to tell her that my father had died…. He was on night duty on the construction site of the Maritime Company…. In any case, I didn’t see my dead father: What I saw in his bed was a huge rat; that is what I saw before I took to my heels…. Do you understand, Dr. Sano?¡7

Mudimbé’s discourse on black subjectivity ends up in a tragic moment that corresponds either to the failure of the schizophrenic (Pierre Landu in Entre les Eaux) or to his death (Nara in The Rift), which is to say that living on the margins of canonicity is more often fatal than rewarding. This gesture is remarkably typical of Mudimbé for whom it is essential that the African find a theory compatible with his or her African-ness. Thus between Frantz Fanon and Mudimbé, the similarity regarding the status of the anti-social or anti-hero is much discernible: He or she cannot survive outside cultural imperatives as an isolated individual. I detect in both writers a shared concern for recapturing the prodigal child and restoring him/her to an original order of discourse, that of griotism. Whereas Fanon tends to see that discourse as rather regionalistic and dictated by the social realities of each nation, with Mudimbé there seems to be a shy endorsement of the continentalistic rhetoric ascribable to the proponents of Negritude. In L’Odeur du père, though Mudimbé acknowledges the precariousness of a purely African theory, he still believes that such a theory is necessary in order to deal with African realities. Consequently he invites black intellectuals to step out of the Western “elevator” that keeps them ideologically prisoners of Western perspectives. Too often marginal discourses are treated in black French letters as being uttered out of dismembered bodies or social failures. In order for these bodies to connect again, for them to remember, one seems to suggest, they will need to delve into the depth of an ancestral art, that is to say into the wisdom of griotism. Beyond the pompous appellations given to the new theoretical cogitations in Afro-Caribbean French letters, the griot still remains this Big Other who agitates the black French writer and to whom he or she remains more attached than to himself or herself. This lack of 96

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originality begs us to inscribe the word suspect on any project in black French letters that pretends to be innovative. It is therefore with suspicion that I set about to examine, in the next pages, the manifesto of Creolity put forth by Patrick Chamoiseau, Raphael Confiant and Jean Bernabé.

FROM NEGRITUDE TO CREOLITY: DIFFERENCE OR REPETITION Is Creolity’s new articulation of the Caribbean experience fundamentally di›erent from Césaire’s Negritude, or is it just another lemon-scented and repackaged griotic conjecture? Despite the claims of originality put forth by Patrick Chamoiseau, Raphaël Confiant and Jean Bernabé, Creolity is nothing more than a repetition of the Césairian gesture. “Palé fransé pa vlé di lespri”¡8 says this Haitian proverb, which the authors of Creolity quote sanctimoniously.¡9 Much more than a simple whim, this aphorism stands in strong opposition to the belief in postcolonial Francophone literature that emancipation of black people is only possible under the leadership of a French-educated messiah, a “Nègre-Fondamental,” such as a Senghor or Césaire.20 The manifesto of Creolity starts with an ambivalent evocation of the contribution that Negritude, in general, and Césaire, in particular, made to the Caribbean struggle for emancipation. Creolity rejects Negritude for its raciological considerations, its tendency to totalize blacks’ experiences, and the hopes that it invests in an unattainable ideal space — the impossible and far-away Mother Africa. Creolity refutes Negritude’s a‡rmation of a common telos for all black people, a claim that is always articulated through typical French language and thoughts; and it castigates the black Renaissance in French letters for being marked by a sign of exteriority that alienates the Caribbean. Linguistically and theoretically, Negritude’s mimicry of French canonicity and, aesthetically, its quest for an authentic (negrofied and berberized) word, grounded in an African precolonial time and space contribute, according to the authors of Creolity, to a greater identity crisis in the Caribbean person. Undoubtedly, the proponents of Creolity strike a sensitive chord of the Senghorean and Cesairean movement. Senghor’s and Césaire’s Negritude shines by their historicist approach. Here, history is the teleological movement of a totally integrated community. With Senghor, there exists a racial explanation of history. The former Senegalese president believes that each race is blessed with a particular spirit, and he holds this explanation to be a fact supported by the Diaspora of black people. Senghor takes the survival 97

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of black culture in America as a proof that all black people are bound, not only by their physical appearance, but also and foremost by a common culture. Lorsque les Nègres furent déportés, par millions, de leur continent aux Amériques, ils n’emportèrent pas apparemment que des haillons. Ils emportèrent, avec eux, l’essentiel: leurs richesses intérieures, culturelles, dont le plain-chant et la polyphonie ne furent pas les moindres. C’est ainsi que les fameux negro spirituals et les blues des Négro-Américains sont en plain-chant polyphonique.2¡ [When the Negroes were deported, by the millions, from their continent to the Americas, they apparently did not take with them just rags. They took with them the essentials: their interior riches, their cultural, riches, of which the plain-song and polyphony were not the least. Thus, the famous black American Negro-spirituals and blues are composed in polyphonic plain-song.]22

As Confiant points out so well in Aimé Césaire: une traversée paradoxale du siècle, the Senghorean claim of black soul is also shared by Césaire, who is convinced that, in spite of the dispersal of the black people all over the world, a common cultural bond has survived, which would not have been possible without the existence of a collective unconscious. Césaire believes that some African archetypes have survived the massive importation of blacks into the Americas, which poetic incandescence can bring back to daylight. Thus Césaire would claim, like Senghor, that culture is a racial reality. How would the champions of Negritude explain, while holding on to the raciological perspective of history and culture, the experience of the Jews, who, in spite of being white have undergone a particular experience, and who, for that very reason, are often perceived as unique and define for themselves a specific culture based on the singularity of their experience? The Negritude ideologists seem to dismiss that case as irrelevant; and it is Jean-Paul Sartre who, in his introduction to Senghor’s Anthologie, will answer on Negritude’s behalf that a Jew, white among white, can pass for a non–Jew and declare himself “man among men.”23 As Senghor’s favorite prefacer acknowledges, racial considerations remain at the heart of Negritude, which is the antiracist racism to oppose to Europe’s racism. This racialist approach to history and culture is at the center of Negritude, and Césaire’s recent attempts to distance himself from it can only strike us as awkward. One will understand, however, that Césaire’s reconsidered attitude toward race came after some very harsh criticism.24 Nevertheless, Césaire’s extraordinary contortions to explain his position on the race issue pose a threat to the very basis of the movement. Il y a beaucoup de gens qui croient que je suis raciste … Je ne peux pas dire que je ne crois pas du tout à l’importance de la race … mais ça se confond pour moi, très 98

6—Reiterating Griotism vite, avec la culture. Quand je me revendique de l’Afrique, cela signifie que je me revendique des valeurs culturelles africaines … Si les nègres n’étaient pas un peuple, disons de vaincus, enfin, un peuple malheureux, un peuple humilié, etc. … je crois, quant à moi, qu’il n’y aurait pas de Négritude. Je ne me revendiquerais pas du tout de la Négritude.25 [There are a lot of people who believe that I am a racist…. I cannot say that I do not believe in the importance of race at all…. But, very quickly for me, race becomes one with culture. When I claim my belonging to Africa it means that I claim my belonging to the African cultural values…. If the Negroes were not, say, a vanquished people, in other words an unfortunate people, a humiliated people, etc. … I , myself, believe that there would be no Négritude. I would not claim to belong to Négritude at all.]26

Not only does Césaire’s new claim compromise the whole Negritude philosophy, but it also sheds some light on the real economy of the movement, which is one of self-marginalization, self-mortification and self-victimization. Why Negritude if, as Césaire now suggests, less attention should be paid to the root (nègre) of his revolutionary coinage than to its concern with su›ering, oppression and humiliation. The truth is that the concept Negritude has much, if not everything, to do with the condition of nègre. Césaire’s defensive attitude makes it now obvious that the central pillar of Negritude, the sustaining of black su›ering, has become a point of great embarrassment. For Negritude to thrive, the su›ering of the black person should be there as a focal point, a point of reference, an idol, embodied as a Big Other to accept the worship of the Negritudinist. Thus the notion of oppression coupled with that of race is what legitimizes the necessity of the movement. Given that Negritude cannot exist without the su›ering of black people, without their humiliation, it is that su›ering and humiliation which, for the sake of black culture’s existence, need to be cultivated and glorified. Since Césaire can identify with his blackness and his Negritudeness only by means of a connection established through su›ering, it is thus necessary for Césaire’s cultural origin, and by extension, for the black’s cultural origin, that Césaire and the black first be victims, in constant search of an unattainable promised land. Thus Negritude is the reification of blacks as eternal victims. Creolity refuses to be part of that community of eternal victims in constant search of an inaccessible black paradise; and by virtue of the very nature of its experience, Creolity proclaims the singularity of its identity. Nous nous déclarons Créoles. Nous déclarons que la Créolité est le ciment de notre culture et qu’elle doit régir les fondations de notre antillanité. La Créolité est l’agrégat interactionnel ou transactionnel, des éléments culturels caraïbes, européens, africains, asiatiques, et levantins, que le joug de l’Histoire a réunis sur le même sol.27 99

The Black Renaissance [We declare ourselves Creoles. We declare that Creolity is the cement of our culture and that it should govern the foundations of our antillanity. Creolity is the interactional or transactional aggregate of Caribbean, European, African, Asian, and Levantine cultural elements that the course of history brought together on the same soil.]28

BEYOND BLACKNESS Thus Creolity goes beyond blackness in order to embrace all the races that constitute the Caribbean experience; it rejects Negritude’s contemplation of the inaccessible, far-away, African promised land in order to articulate its necessity here and now; it refutes the idea of a negrofied discourse in order to ascertain the polyvalence (bilingual sensitivity) of its discourse. After the African independences, Senghor and Césaire’s writings became the bedside Bible inspiring the political decisions of many black African leaders. Negritude’s rhetoric was that, by virtue of his or her biological (racial) and pseudo-psychological (propensity for analogical reasoning, and faculty of seizing the vibrations of the earth, and emotive-ness) di›erences from the white, the black could not and should not live his or her political economic and social life according to imported ideals. The black was to formulate the laws of a politics compatible with his or her blackness. Those foreign ideals could govern black states only after they were negrofied and berberized, refashioned and incorporated into the black’s racial reality — whatever these were.29 Although most African leaders (Sédar Senghor, Jomo Kenyatta, Julius Nyerere, Patrice Lumumba, Kwame Nkruma, Sékou Touré, Ahmadou Ahidjo, to cite only these few) were convinced that socialism was the political system more compatible with black soul, they were also persuaded that socialism was a foreign ideology, which, in order to be e›ective in the edification of black nations, needed to be negrofied and berberized. According to Confiant, for the Caribbean in general, and Césaire in particular, the claim of negrofication and berberization is an impossible dream. Césaire had no cultural foundation upon which to negrofy French language. Whereas Senghor, at least in theory, had Wolof and Sérère languages and the griots of his country in his background, Césaire uttered his first cry in French, and his very French education replaced the remnants of indigenous Creolity with Greek and Latin. Césaire’s e›ort to negrofy the French language by inventing exotic onomatopoeia could only deliver reductive and caricatured views of the black continent.30 Consequently, the circle of Creolity views the Cesairean obsession with 100

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the mother country as the symptom of an identity crisis in the Caribbean. Creole identity, the authors of Creolity argue, di›ers from African identity. Creolity emanates from a variety of deterritorialized experiences, recovered and reconstituted as a molarized artistico-linguistic substance. La Créolité c’est le monde di›racté mais recomposé, un maelström de signifiés dans un seul signifiant: Une Totalité…. Nous sommes paroles sous l’écriture. Seule la connaissance poétique, la connaissance romanesque, la connaissance littéraire, bref, la connaissance artistique, pourra nous déceler, nous percevoir, nous ramener évanescents aux réanimations de la conscience.3¡ [Creolity is the world dismembered but pieced together again, a multiplicity of signified in a single signifier: A Totality…. We are speeches underneath writing. Poetic, romanesque, literary, in other words, artistic knowledge alone will be able to reveal us, to perceive us, to bring us evanescent to the revivals of consciousness.]32

The substratum of Creolity is a certain oraliture —une parole ancestrale —a common heritage in the collective (un)consciousness, kept alive for centuries beneath literature, the Saussurean langue, intolerant of idiosyncratic actualizations, which has survived the evanescence of the griots in Africa and their substitution with the literate person. Ailleurs, les aèdes, les bardes, les griots, les ménestrels et les troubadours avaient passé le relais à des scripteurs (marqueurs de parole) qui progressivement prirent leur autonomie littéraire. Ici, ce fut la rupture, le fossé, la ravine profonde entre une expression écrite qui se voulait universalo-moderne et l’oralité créole traditionnelle où sommeille une belle part de notre être.33 [Elsewhere, poets, bards, griots, minstrels, and troubadours passed the baton to scribes (markers of speech) who progressively claimed their literary autonomy. Here, it was the rupture, the gap the deep ravine between a written expression that wanted to be universal and modern and traditional Creole orality where lies a beautiful part of our being.]34

The project of Creolity is certainly post–Negritude but hardly anti– Negritude. If the writers of Creolity dedicate their work to Césaire, “nous sommes à jamais fils de Césaire,” it is because, as they acknowledge, Césaire has created the possibility of an epistemological moment out of which it became possible to elaborate a theory of Creolity. Although one can sense in Creolity the formulation of an Appolinairean or a Benjaminian notion of the historical fragment, it is more to Césaire that credit is given for not just importing theories of surrealism, but rather for being part of the elaboration of a thought that would allow a rethinking of the Eurocentric ideal disguised as universalism. If, because of Césaire, the Caribbean people has wandered for decades in search of a false identity, its gaze turned outward, toward an impossible, idealized Africa, it is also thanks to Césaire that the 101

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Caribbean people will be able to turn its gaze inward in order to discover its true identity in the experiences of all the forcefully deterritorialized and reterritorialized peoples that constitute Creolity. However, Césaire himself did not rest on his previous claims regarding his Negritude.

NEGRITUDE AS A FLOATING SIGNIFIER It seems to me, however, that Césaire has given the circle of Creolity a gift, which has melted in exchange — a poisoned gift for that matter. Césaire has given Creolity its own suicide. The very moment the authors of Creolity uttered their first protest against, or perhaps praise to, Negritude, they did no more than co-opt Césaire’s attempt to register Negritude as the quilting point of all struggles by pulling it toward the Lacanian point de capiton, where Negritude, violently, presumptuously and pretentiously would become pregnant with all the oppressions in the world. For, to legitimize Negritude as a viable operative concept, Césaire has to confer it attributes of Lacan’s sliding signifier. This way of representing identity seems to be e‡cient in guaranteeing Negritude as an all-encompassing signifier. Thus even though he was not as thorough and systematic as other critics such as Laclau-Mou›e, and particularly Zizek, who imported the Lacanian point de capiton, Césaire, in his latest redefinition of Negritude, could be said to have preceded them, as Zizek’s notion of super struggle, for instance, is remarkably reminiscent of Césaire’s Negritude. In The Sublime Object of Ideology, Zizek attempts to explain what in a word, expression or a sentence, guarantees the meaning of that word, expression or sentence, beyond its descriptive features. However, by transporting that linguistic debate onto the socio-politico-ideological domain, Zizek intends to uncover what constitutes the identity of the rigid designator in the ideological field. Like Lacan, Zizek wants to probe the unconscious. For Zizek, the Lacanian signifiers, the floating signifiers, are quilted at the point de capiton. In other words, if the ideological field is made up of a series of equivalencies (ecology, feminism, human rights, etc.), the point de capiton, the totalizing point of all the floating signifiers, is that particular struggle, the super struggle, which totalizes the others, and the resolution of which is consequently the resolution of all particular struggles. The super struggle does not stifle the possibility that other struggles exist; on the contrary, it is the very condition of their autonomy.

102

6—Reiterating Griotism What is at stake in the ideological struggle is which of the “nodal points,” point de capiton, will totalize, include in its series of equivalencies, these free-floating elements…. The first task of the analysis is to isolate, in a given ideological field, the particular struggle, which, at the same time, determines the horizon of its totality.35

Space does not permit me to give full attention to Zizekian theory’s importation of Lacanian flaws or to the e›ects of presupposition on Lacan’s and Zizek’s subjects. I will only point out that Zizek, who anticipates the objection that his notion of super struggle emanates from a theoretical violence, proposes that the rigid designator, the point de capiton, be understood as just “a pure di›erence” within the field of the signified, rather than a “point of supreme density of meaning.” It is less the point of supreme plenitude than the point of a lack. This concentric or eccentric subject who, from the pages of Lacan, insists that he is not wherever he is the plaything of his thoughts, that he thinks of what he is wherever he does not think to think, is what Zizek defines as a paradox in his theory — the signification that is not yet, the non-graspable fixity. The multitude of floating signifiers, of proto-ideological elements, is structured into a unified field through the intervention of a certain “nodal point” (the Lacanian point de capiton) which quilts them, stops their sliding, and fixes their meaning…. The quilting performs the totalization by means of which they become part of the structured network of meaning.36

This paradoxical operation of signification is made possible only after two Zizekian gestures. First, a re-reading of Hegel’s unified structure, a “return to Hegel,” allows Zizek to dilute the Hegelian dialectic as not a complacent realism. Far from being the story of its progressive overcoming, dialectics is for Hegel a systematic notation of the failure of all such attempts—“absolute knowledge” denotes a subjective position which finally accepts “contradiction” as an internal condition of every identity. In other words, Hegelian “reconciliation” is not a panlogicist sublation of all reality in the concept but a final concept that the concept itself is not all.37

Second, Lacan and Hegel are reconciled on the basis that Lacan is not a complacent ironist. When Lacan says that the last support of what we call “reality” is fantasy, this is definitely not to be understood in the sense of “life is just a dream,” “what we call reality is just an illusion,” and so forth…. The Lacanian thesis is, on the contrary, that there is always a hard kernel, a leftover which persists and cannot be reduced to a universal play of illusory mirroring.38

Thus Zizek can suggest that the meaning of a signifier gets fixed through a 103

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process of retroactivity. However, that meaning is not, or, in other words, it is meaning only insofar as it is desire of a lack; for there always remains an unsatisfied kernel of enjoyment. The logic of Zizek, I believe, follows closely that of Césaire, for whom the unsatisfied kernel of enjoyment, that is to say, jouissance, is collective resentment and deferred salvation from group victimization. With Césaire, black is forever positioned as the antithesis of white in Hegelian dialectic of slave/master, whereby contradiction and the resolution of contradiction constitute the essential elements of being. This reactive dialectic, typical of griotism from Negritude to Creolity, passing through Fanon and Mudimbé, apprehends power less as a will to power than as representation of power. The Che Vuoi? of this dialectic is an exhausted force that a‡rms its di›erence only by reacting to the force that it represents to itself as dominant. Certainly it is anachronistic to make too much out of the rapprochement between the logic of Negritude and Zizek’s exegesis of Lacan. However, Senghor and Césaire did read Jung and Freud. They may have disregarded all that accompanied the Freudian theory — the obsessions, fixations, sexual phantasms— but they certainly did retain the notion that all images are reducible to some primal images, and it did not take them long to realize that for the logic of Negritude this was an opportune argument, namely, that only a stretch of the imagination, through poetry, could make possible that voyage to the source of knowledge. Thus, Césaire writes. Poetic Knowledge was born in the great silence of scientific knowledge…. In short, scientific knowledge enumerates, measures, classifies and kills…. And little by little, man has become aware that beside this scientific and undernourished knowledge another form of knowledge exists. A satisfying knowledge…. The error is to believe that knowledge was waiting for the methodical exercise of thought or the meticulousness of experimentation to be born. I even believe that mankind has never been closer to certain truths than in the first days of the species. At the time [when] mankind discovered with great emotion its first sunrise, its first rain, its first wind and its first moon. At the time when mankind, in fear and rapture, discovered the palpitating freshness of the world.39

According to Senghor’s too well known expression, poetry is emotion, and “L’émotion est Nègre.” As blacks, writes Césaire, “…there runs in our veins a blood that imposes upon us a unique attitude in front of life. We have to respond to the specific dynamics of our complex biological reality.”40 Negritude is an ideological positioning based on racism, the privileging of racial struggle (the super struggle) over all others. Creolity is an ideological positioning based on linguistic consideration. Whereas Negritude 104

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tends to build an identity on a biological fact (the elevated level of melanin of all blacks), Creolity tends to build an identity on a shared language (Creole). Creolity’s mythologization is done with some subtlety, by resolving the question of lack of communicability of consciousnesses at a smaller scale. It is by virtue of the lack of communicability of consciousnesses that Creolity, by evoking Edouard Glissant’s and Saint-John Perse’s allusions to the immutability of liquid and the erasability of sand, can oppose a pays réel or immutable Caraïbes to a pays rêvé or Afrique. Creolity is the moment of possibility of a certain impossibility.

POST-NEGRITUDE AND CREOLITY The incommunicability that confronted Negritude is resolved in Creolity. Chamoiseau Confiant and Bernabé’s new problematization of the Caribbean experience is only as putative as Senghor’s and Césaire’s Negritude. Creolity is another search for the pure, an attempt to discipline multiplicities into one-ness; it is a quest for an original narrative, an enterprise of mythologization of which language is the kernel. Creolity is the pure (ancestral) language built upon the immutability of the oceans that bathe all the deterritorialized Caribbean people (Asian, African, European, Levantine); “Notre Histoire est une tresse d’histoires. Nous avons goûté à toutes les langues, à toutes les parlures.”4¡ (Our story is a quilt made of stories. We experienced all sorts of languages, all kinds of speeches.) What was removable on the soil of Africa and Europe, the pays rêvés (the language of griots and minstrels) is fixed forever in the immutable magma of the oceans that carried the deterritorialized people of the Caribbean world. Oraliture, precisely Creoliture, is essential to Creolity, and the Creole is by nature endowed with a poetic intuition lying low in his or her collective unconsciousness. He or she only needs to be trained to recover this primal knowledge in order to be accomplished, in order to be authentically born again. This is his or her initiation.

TO CÉSAIRE WHAT BELONGS TO CÉSAIRE Palé fransé pa vlé di lespri (Knowledge of French is not necessarily a sign of intelligence); knowledge of Creole is certainly a sign of Creolity: “Aucun créateur créole, dans quelque domaine que ce soit, ne se verra jamais accompli sans une connaissance intuitive de la poétique de la langue créole”42 105

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(no Creole inventor, in any field, will ever be complete without an intuitive knowledge of the poetics of Creole language), we are warned. So then the circle of Creolity is right to do justice to Césaire, to return to Césaire what belongs to Césaire, to praise him and to dedicate him its manifesto. Éloge de la créolité is a mimetism of Negritude; Creolity wants to be to the Caribbean what Negritude wanted to be to the Negro in general. To a larger unity based on race, it substitutes a smaller unity based on language. To an onto-theo-teleology based on a biological di›erence, it substitutes an ontotheo-teleology based on linguistic di›erence. Both Negritude and Creolity problematize a universal identity on the basis of a certain di›erence only to end up edifying an identity of di›erence. The writers of Creolity are right to say “nous sommes à jamais fils de Césaire.” (We are forever the sons of Césaire.) When the child has circumfessed his or her father, no one should deny him/her this claim. Undoubtedly, Negritude engendered Creolity. Both the Father and the son come down from a long narrative of original purity, and one will only have to substitute “Creole” wherever the Father says “Negro,” or “language” wherever the father says “race,” to understand how much the discourse of the son mimics that of the Father. Both the son and the Father speak from the same logic, that of origin. They both agree that the essence of their moi rests deep, beneath scripture, in a discoverable and retrievable primordial ancestral moment of oraliture, as the authors of Creolity write, Le créole, notre langue première à nous Antillais, Guyanais, Mascarins, est le véhicule originel de notre moi profond, de notre inconscient collectif,43 de notre génie populaire, elle demeure la rivière de notre créolité alluviale. Avec elle nous rêvons. Avec elle nous résistons et nous acceptons. Elle est nos pleurs, nos cris, nos exhaltations. Elle irrigue chacun de nos gestes.44 [Creole, our first language to us Antilleans, Guianeses, Mascarines, is the original vehicle of our deep self, our collective unconsciousness, of our popular genius; it remains the stream of our alluvial Creolity. With it we dream. With it we resist and we accept. It is our cries, our screams, and our exuberance. It irrigates each one of our gestures.]45

We certainly have arrived at the junction where Negritude and post–Negritude literatures meet, where the detour by means of the écart leads back to the trace, and where the prodigals are greeted and forgiven by their elders, who foresaw the day of their return and waited patiently for that day to come, a day marked by a sign — Griotism —celebrated under a theme — the logic of origin, the death of the outsider, the survival of the pure. It is within that same logic — and fighting the symbolic black father 106

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with weapons of his own making — that black French women writers have sought to free themselves from the patriarchal grip. So long as women’s desire to ascertain their originality — however impetuous it might be — remains within the code of griotism, it can be tolerated. So far, it has been accepted and even encouraged; for, from within that code, women’s actions do not threaten the viability of patriarchy. So long as these actions are filtered through the sifter of griotism, they do not, to speak like Michel de Certeau, “engage the structure” of that institution, that is, they do not put at stake its very order, its very system of representation, which “grounds both knowledge and politics.”46

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Black Women Writers’ Dilemma with Theory Often, feminist concerns are seen as a divisive, white importation that further fragments an already divided and embattled race, as trivial mind games unworthy of response while black people everywhere confront massive economic and social problems. Sherley Anne Williams— “Some Implications of Womanist Theory” [A]ny African feminism is eventually summoned by its critics, enemies, and even supporters to defend itself against two charges: Eurocentrism and classicism.” Christopher Miller —Theories of Africans Longtemps les Négresses se sont tues. N’est-il pas temps qu’elles (re)découvrent leur voix, qu’elles prennent ou reprennent la parole, ne serait-ce que pour dire qu’elles existent, qu’elles sont des êtres humains—ce qui n’est pas toujours évident — et, qu’en tant que tels, elles ont droit à la liberté, au respect, à la dignité? Awa Thiam —La Parole aux Négresses

Theory, especially postmodern theory, has been under fire from several constituencies among whom Afrocentrists and feminists. The most common criticism Afrocentric critics level against postmodern theory is its aloofness and condescending posture toward Third World cultures. Mudimbé has denounced the accepted idea of the cognitive superiority of the West and the inferiority of Africa as originating from the Hegelian paradigms that have inspired Western anthropologists and historians.¡ In Parables and Fables, Mudimbé remarks that Hegel’s dialectic is an epistemological heritage that has persisted beyond structuralism and throughout poststructuralism. Mudimbé takes issue with such postmodern theses as Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus, which he criticizes as partaking in the tale of universal history, whereby mankind has progressed from “primitive territorial machines” to “civilized capitalist machines.”2 Likewise, Kwame Anthony Appiah argues that although the post-in postcolonial is, like the post-in 108

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postmodernism, “a space clearing gesture” challenging exclusivity in order to make room for new narratives, postcolonial novelists have been “misleadingly postmodern.” Provided postcolonial thinkers are vigilant and engage in the self-reflective gestures of critics like Ouologuem and Mudimbé— who themselves cannot deny their ties to the “African university, an institution whose intellectual life is overwhelmingly constituted as Western, and the Euro-American publisher and reader”— they risk being reduced to manufacturers of the object of postmodern discourse. For Appiah, the postmodern project of problematizing universal identity often ends up positing a certain idea of the Third World demanded by the modern and postmodern reader.3 It is true that even while postmodern theory has promised to displace all notions of centeredness, it has nonetheless retained its own disguised prejudice against emergent literatures, and especially Third World literatures. Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of “minor literatures,” for instance, is illustrative of what can happen under theory’s auspicious project of decentering.4 European and Anglo-Saxon feminists’ positions in relation to postmodern theory are varied. As Mary Eagleton remarks, among many feminists, the word “theory” evokes a sentiment of mistrust. A suspicion of theory is widespread throughout feminism. Faced as we are with a long history of patriarchal theory which claims to have proved decisively the inferiority of women, this caution is hardly surprising. Many feminists see theory as, if not innately male — women are capable of doing it — then certainly male-dominated in its practice and masculinist in its methods.5

Elizabeth Grosz, for instance, takes issue with postmodern theory, contending that the schizoanalytical metaphor of becoming-woman entails a recuperation of the positions and struggles of women.6 This appropriation of women’s agencies operates through a desexualization and aestheticization of being-woman and the legitimation — as a matter of universal imperative, rather than gendered desire — of man’s own reorganization and repositioning to becoming powerful. Grosz also criticizes the becoming-women metaphor as a notion that submits women to men’s canonization and prevents them from exploring alternatives relevant to their specificities. Furthermore, she suggests that Deleuze and Guattari’s constant reference to the machine and to machinic functioning reflects their approval of models that have historically denigrated women and (de facto) excluded them.7 So, Grosz cautions against structural feminists who have complacently endorsed Lacan’s claim that the phallus is absolutely neutral. The phallus, Grosz maintains, is a term that privileges masculinity, or the penis. The socio-political system that enables the phallus to function as the Grand-Narrator (by val109

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orizing the penis) also contributes to the relegation of femininity into the backroom as a castrated and corporeally incomplete organ. Like Grosz, Luce Irigaray takes issue with postmodernism, mostly with psychoanalysis, and especially Lacan’s theorization of sexuality. She charges that the Lacanian model, like Freud’s, has not been able to operate outside the register of the phallus and has remained at a level of sexuation of discourse and within the premise that woman is necessarily meant to be a mother. The whole psychoanalytic enterprise, she argues, is prisoner of that discourse, and the psychoanalyst, in the illusion of knowing, submits the analyzed to the tyranny of his pseudo-truth. Lacan’s truth, she remarks, is veiled in a symbolism of the phallus, which attempts a suspicious separation between the corporeal and the invisible.8 Even as they denounce theory’s shortcomings it would be di‡cult to argue that European and Anglo-Saxon feminists’ positions are non-theoretical. In fact, European and Anglo-Saxon feminists do not hesitate to establish some precarious alliances with theory because of its occasional contributions to the fight against phallocentrism. While decrying Deleuze’s and Guattari’s limitations, Grosz still recognizes that the theory of rhizomatics— as a search for alternatives to a Western paradigmatic thought established since Plato, and as an interrogation — in the manner of Derrida’s grammatology — of the centrality of episteme is relevant to feminists in their particular struggles for self-a‡rmation.9 European and Anglo-Saxon feminists use theory when convenient while at the same time keeping it in check, underlying its missteps. Here, the misapprehension of theory does not imply a total rejection of theory. In fact, Anglo-Saxon and European feminists cannot claim to work outside of theory insofar as the formative structure of their thinking stems from the very theoretical traditions of modernity (Marxism, Saussure’s structuralism, Freud’s psychology) and postmodernity (Lacan’s psychoanalysis, Derrida’s deconstruction or new Nietzscheism). Insofar as black women writers can identify with Afrocentrists and feminists, their own relationships with theory have been complicated. Like European and Anglo-Saxon feminists, they have taken a strong stance against theory. On the other hand, however, black feminists have hesitated to make the kind of alliances European and Anglo-Saxon feminists have established with theory. In America, black feminists like Patricia Collins have advocated an Afrocentric feminism that recognizes as well as draws upon both traditional male Afrocentric perspectives and everyday experiences of AfricanAmerican women.¡0 Collins’s position is the result of a deep suspicion of Western epistemologies. Even when used by Western feminists, Western 110

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epistemologies fail to question the stereotypical controlling images of African-American women as mammies, matriarchs, welfare recipients and hot mommas.¡¡ By relying too much on Western theories, Collins warns, black women risk enabling the recuperation of a few black women outsiders into Western academia in order to validate and legitimate the notion that Western knowledge, acquired through formal education, is transcendental and unquestionable.¡2 Instead, she contends, Afrocentric feminists must take as their most reliable criteria their concrete experiences preserved through informal tellings, dialogues, the inherent good will, empathy, sincerity and accountability of the spoken.¡3 Collins echoes Barbara Christian’s position, which denounces theory’s academic hegemony. Christian charges that the language of literary critical theory “mystifies rather than clarifies [the condition of black women], making it possible for a few people who know that particular language to control the critical scene” and to suppress the kind of literature that is a necessary nourishment for people of color.¡4 Christian locates the sites of a black feminist practice in everyday speech. The task of the black feminist, she contends, is di›erent from that of her white counterpart. The black feminist, she insists, must be a militant and an archeologist. She must move against the tides of a supposedly high world represented by “unintelligible Latin, Greek, the text, the virgin Mary and the nuclear family, priests always before nuns … proper English, Western philosophy … discourse, theory, the canon, the body, the boys (preferably Lacan, Derrida, and Foucault) before the girls.” She must “rememory” and reconstruct past experiences and modes of narratives unjustly labeled as belonging in the “low world … bad English, raunchy saying … cousins, father, aunts, godmothers … sweat, calypso, women and men bantering … the language of the folks … I sure know what she’s talking about … say what?”¡5 Overall, despite their thematic and structural heteroglossia, African-American feminist thoughts have configured into a discernible tradition that claims its ideological singularity as one that is sustained by an authentic cultural motif, that of speech. Black (women) writers constant reference to and overvaluation of such expressions as “voice,” “common sense and intuition,” “connectedness as a primary way of knowing,” “the power of the word,” “oral traditions of storytelling,” “emotion,” empathy,” “sincerity,”¡6 “come down and talk,” “community and dialogue,” “bolekaja,” ¡7 women must speak … speaking in tongues … the ability to speak in and through the spirit,”¡8 which can be interchangeably used as synonyms, leaves no doubt about the centrality of black feminist discourses; a fact that is evidenced in the writings of most Francophone African women. 111

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AFRICAN WOMEN WRITERS’ INEVITABLE COMPLICITY WITH MEN Since the ¡970s black women writers of French expression have become a political force to contend with. Black women writers have appropriated writing in order to “express themselves in their own words, in their own terms, [and] to portray themselves as actors instead of spectators.”¡9 As a consequence of women’s involvement in writing, the emphasis in Francophone black letters is progressively shifting from conjecturing on class and race to pulling the balance sheet of gender and political power. For many critics, her mastery of alphabetic literacy has allowed the Afro-Caribbean woman to reclaim a discursive center that a traditional phallocentric order had denied her for too long. Thus Irène d’Almeida apprehends Francophone black women’s intervention on the scene of writing as an opportunity for them to circumvent the mythic and symbolic roles often assigned to women in black French letters and to ascertain their presence as human “beings of flesh and bones.” She analogizes writing to a liberation force that makes it possible for women to finally say the interdicted, restore themselves from objects at the periphery to subjects at the center, and debate, from a “femino-centric” perspective, topics that speak about their lives.20 By seizing writing, black women writers have been able to unveil the complex making of traditional black societies and expose the extraordinarily subjugating power of patriarchy in the domestic sphere. This disclosure has irremediably invited a scrutinizing of the black woman’s condition by both local and international reformists and called for a new social order, while, at the same time, generating many objections from some black traditionalists. D’Almeida’s observation that Francophone black women’s desire to write is prompted by a strong urge to reclaim a discursive center that has been besieged by patriarchy invites a number of questions. Has not this yearning for re-centering reified the patriarchal order that Francophone black women generally seek to evade? Have they not, in their rush to recover the center, fallen prey to this center’s proclivity for structuration and its resistance to a certain theoretical discourse that has proven e›ective in undermining patriarchy? Is it possible, from within the center — which, as I have been arguing, is governed by a homosocial principle — to speak from a femino-centric perspective? Has not black French women writers’ claim of appurtenance to the center prevented them from making a necessary strategic alliance with theory — the kind of pact that Anglo-Saxon and French 112

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feminists made with postmodernism in order to dismantle the Name-ofthe-Father?2¡ The answers to these crucial questions demand that one probe some of the works that have been produced by black women writers of French expression. For that, I will examine two novels written by two representative Francophone women writers, Aminata Sow Fall and Mariama Bâ. Fall’s L’Ex-père de la nation and Bâ’s So Long a Letter are two novels that reflect the di‡culty for black women writers of French expression to evade the hold of black patriarchy, which manifests itself under the guise of griotism. These two novels are even more important insofar as their authors represent the two main tendencies among black Francophone women writers. While Bâ welcomes her celebration by many critics as the first black African feminist and accepts her responsibility as champion of women’s emancipation against patriarchy, Fall, as for her, refuses to be associated with any form of feminism and crusades for a traditional role for women within the domestic sphere.22 My discussion of Fall’s L’Ex-père de la nation and Bâ’s Une si longue lettre (So Long a Letter) will be less concerned with finding out how true to life the characters of the novels are than understanding how their utterances and gestures reveal, among Francophone black male and female writers, a coalescing authorial stance on gender relations.

CARTOGRAPHIES OF SILENCES The griotic indoctrination on the measure of womanhood, which, in the domestic as well as the professional space, leads women to rehearse and perpetuate roles designed for them by men, seems to have been remarkably successful. Women writers of diverse convictions, such as Bâ and Fall, have imported many of the myths created for them by men. When in Fall’s L’Expère de la nation, Coura confronts her husband who, unbeknownst to her, has married a second wife, her speech only reproduces what is expected of the submissive and acquiescent woman trapped in the West African tradition of polygamy. As if she were to expect her husband’s betrayal, Coura vouches that she will bear her su›ering with great fortitude. Thus, instead of working to annex her own space, Coura, who is aware that the traditional Senegalese family law does not provide her with any better choice than to remain within a failed marriage — vows that she will work at finding the better position on the speck that is so generously assigned to her by her husband.

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The Black Renaissance Si de tout l’univers je ne disposais que d’un grain de sable pour asseoir mon corps, je ne laisserais pas l’univers me comprimer sur ce grain de sable. Je chercherais et je trouverais la position la plus confortable sur ce grain de sable avec l’univers en face de moi.23 [If from the whole universe I only had a grain of sand on which to seat my body, I would not let the universe compress me on that grain of sand. I would seek and find the most comfortable position on that grain of sand with the universe in front of me.]24

If Coura’s deferential stance is understandable given Fall’s vehement refusal to be remotely linked to any sort of feminism, it is nonetheless striking to see how aggressively Fall denounces the African progressive woman — of whom the modern African woman seems to be the epitome. The monstrous African modern woman, as many critics have noticed, is a motif that runs through many of Fall’s previous novels.25 In L’Ex-père de la nation, Fall rehearses this paradigm already present in her previous novels.26 As a result, only caricatures of women dare question men’s power. Accordingly, Yandé, the Head of State’s second wife, is a sharp opposite of Coura, the first wife, along the dichotomy powerful-modern-evil versus powerless-traditional-virtuous. Yandé is a woman of dubious reputation whose will to power leads her to construct some, though creative, nonetheless, diabolical plots in order to secure her husband’s reign against any opposition. The schemes that she weaves with the complicity of Andru, her husband’s trusted French adviser, succeeds in sending to jail some political figures whose rising popularity she perceives as a threat to her husband’s political future. However well-orchestrated Yandé’s political manipulation might seem, Fall spins it as a failure for both Yandé and her husband. By getting involved in politics, the author seems to suggest, Yandé compromises her husband’s (Madiama’s) most precious ideal, the principle of purity. Indeed, Madiama’s grandfather, Mangone, was an executioner for the colonial administration. Mangone’s association with the occupying forces had soiled the family name. To clean his father’s past, Diobaye, Madiama’s father, turns to the purifying sea and becomes a fisherman. The sense of cleanness that he instills in his children, Bara and Madiama, leads the former to continue the tradition of fisherman and the latter to become a nurse, hoping to clean the human race of its diseases. Later, still driven by his commitment to soothe people’s pains, Madiama enters politics and rises to the supreme o‡ce. However, Madiama’s encounter with Yandé proves disastrous, as she sabotages his ideal and makes him a corrupt leader, who is later deposed and jailed. As Fall suggests, it is by stepping out of the bounds of woman114

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hood and by entering the field of manhood — that of politics— that Yandé, the failed woman, causes the fall of the hero and leads the latter to break his important pact with his father, which is “laver la terre d’un peu de ses souillures” (to clean the earth of some of its filth). Henceforth, in his prison cell, Madiama can only ruminate on his failure to uphold his father’s pact with neatness: “Je savais bien que Père y tenait. Je connaissais le prix qu’il attachait à la propreté pour laver toute une génération de la souillure.”27 (I knew how important it was to Father. I knew the price he put on the power of cleanness to redeem a whole generation of its filth.) Although Madiama’s awkwardness is ascribable to his own naïveté about political responsibility, Fall succeeds in portraying Yandé as the woman who betrays the hero. As Madiama revisits his presidency, he comes to conclude that his failure was caused by Yandé’s excessive will to power and his own blind devotion for her; which, in many occasions, led him to make vital decisions based on Yandé’s mere advice while he could have acted after careful and educated assessments of the situations at hand. J’avais moi-même signé des a›ectations à des postes importants sur simple intervention ou par sympathie, sans me demander si c’était dans l’intérêt du pays. Dans la même foulée, et sans faire les vérifications nécessaires, j’avais publiquement lavé de tout soupçon des hommes influents que Dicko, dans son feuillet, avait accusé de pratiquer une véritable saignée sur notre économie en exportant des milliards de francs dans des banques étrangères.28 [I myself had authorized some assignments to important positions on mere intervention or by sympathy without asking myself if it was in the interest of the country. In the same way, and without making the necessary verifications, I had publicly absolved some influent men that Dicko, in his pamphlet, had accused of bleeding our economy by exporting billions of francs to foreign banks.]29

Yandé conforms to the archetypal woman of Césaire’s plays or Senghor’s poetry: She is a nuisance and a distraction for the hero. Even in cases where Yandé’s reactions would seem appropriate, the author of L’Ex-père de la nation refuses to show her in good light. She persistently remains the meddler who refuses to stay in her place. Thus, for instance, when, in order to satisfy his brother’s request to see him, Madiama, the President, decides to drive sixty kilometers into the night, with no escort, one would think that Yandé is right to object by pointing out that for a president this trip was a too risky and irresponsible act, and that his brother should understand that the Head of State had some obligations which superseded family matters. Under Fall’s pen, however, Yandé’s virulent language can only generate much antipathy from the readers of L’Ex-père de la nation. 115

The Black Renaissance Ton frère-là, je me demande pour qui il se prend! Ne peut-il pas venir au Château comme tout le monde! … Trente kilomètres à l’aller et trente au retour, alors que tu pouvais envoyer une voiture le chercher.… Et le plus marrant est que tu ne veux pas d’escorte. C’est risqué. Tu n’es pas n’importe qui.30 [I really wonder who your brother thinks he is! Can’t he come to the Château like anybody else! … Thirty kilometers each way while you could just send a car to fetch him…. And the silliest of all is that you would have no escort. This is risky. You’re not just anybody.]3¡

Yet the pertinence of Yandé’s position is reinforced by the futility of the conversation that takes place between Madiama and his brother, Bara. The substance — or lack thereof — of the conversation between these two men certainly does not deserve that the President be sent for. This episode not only reveals Madiama’s simplistic notion of the presidency, but it also tells something about the writer’s own lack of sophistication in political matters, a fact which marks the novel in several places, and which, fortunately for Fall, could be attributed to some authorial explicit intention to portray Madiama as the generally flawed African political leader. As Madiama discovers how cunning his wife, Yandé, can be, his attempt to understand his own gullibility only leads him to rehash the ancient belief regarding the perfidious and wicked nature of women: “Le demon ne seraitil pas mort en Yandé?” (Could the devil be dwelling in Yandé?) However, Yandé is not the only negative female character of the novel. In L’Ex-père de la nation, all the women involved in politics are failed characters: Fara, the spy, cannot be trusted insofar as she would do anything to make some extra money; Ada, the former secretary ends up in her boss’ bed for promotion; Biram’s wife disappears with her husband’s fortune while the latter is serving a sentence in jail. Fall’s tendency to associate women’s power with repulsive physical or moral characteristics is less merely occasional than indicative of the pervading nature of griotism, the paradigm of which she has welldigested. In the opposite corner of Madiama’s Château, lives Coura, the President’s first wife. Unlike Yandé, Coura was married very young while she was a mere girl. As she reminds Madiama,” …je n’avais que quinze ans et … tu [me] comparais à une mangue à peine à point, pas encore tombée de l’arbre.… Tu m’avais cueillie, ou plutôt ma tante Coumba Dado Sadio m’avait cueillie pour toi….”32 (I was only fifteen years old and … you used to compare me to a hardly-ripe mango, still hanging on the tree…. You picked me, or rather I was picked for you by my aunt Coumba Dado Sadio.) Coura was taught to be a good wife to her husband and a good mother to her children. Her engagement to Madiama was duly celebrated in accordance with traditional 116

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rites. Unlike Yandé, Coura is not involved in politics. She is the woman in her place, calm, composed, not conceited, and unshaken by her co-spouse’s instigation. Mais Coura, en toute occasion, savait tenir la bride haute à ses sentiments. Elle avait tout juste réagi par un demi-sourire en continuant tranquillement à modeler dans le creux de sa main la boule huileuse de riz qu’elle allait bientôt poser sur le bout de sa langue.33 [But Coura, in any situation, knew how to control her feelings. She had hardly reacted with a half-smile while shaping quietly in the hallow of her hand the greasy ball of rice that she soon was going to place on the tip of her tongue.]34

Everything in Coura commands admiration, and her entourage respects her. To her husband, people would say, “C’est une femme fantastique. On n’en trouve plus aujourd’hui de sa race. Elle ne te fera pas d’histoires…”35 (She is as wonderful a woman as one can no longer find these days. She will cause you no trouble.) Coura epitomizes the virtuous traditional black woman as one has learned to recognize her in the literature of Negritude, and especially in Fall’s books. She is the dutiful mother and wife, depository of culture celebrated in Camara Laye’s L’Enfant noir (The Dark Child); she is the ephemeral beauty in Senghor’s poem “Black Woman.” Coura’s desirable quality is her capacity to stay away from men’s a›airs and to accept her su›erings with remarkable stoicism. Coura in L’Ex-père de la nation and Ramatoulaye and Aïssatou in So Long a Letter share many similarities. They have all known the pain generated by men’s deception. The men they loved deceived them all (Coura by Madiama, Ramatoulaye by Modou, Aïssatou by Mawdo). All of them have, in moments of weakness and blind love, let down their guards and regretted it; and all of them have borne their humiliation with great dignity. Nonetheless, as Fall suggests, and as we shall now see in Bâ’s So Long a Letter, the greatness of a black woman is less to have su›ered than to have borne her su›ering with resignation and strength.

INDEED, RAMA, AÏSSATOU’S NO FRIEND … YOU DESPISE HER REBELLION … DON’T YOU? In their analyses of Bâ’s epistolary novel So Long a Letter, some critics have referred to Ramatoulaye’s letter as a journey toward maturation, thus praising Bâ’s novel as a book that stages a positive resistance against patriarchy. Obioma Nnaemeka, for instance, sees a parallel between Bâ’s gesture in So Long a Letter and Derrida’s in Of Grammatology.36 The most positive 117

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assessments of Bâ’s project stem from an appreciation of Ramatoulaye’s letter to Aïssatou as a friend’s missive to another friend regarded as a heroine, and whose resistance the former considers as a model. Even such analyses as o›ered by Christopher Miller, and which suggest that, after all, Rama’s letter might not be a letter, but rather a journal or a diary, do not divert from the premise that Ramatoulaye views Aïssatou as an idol, and that the novel as a whole is “subversive of the francophone African, all-male corpus or (canon).”37 After so many years of exultation about Bâ’s Letter by international critics, I would like to propose a not so enthusiastic reading of the Letter, one that, although it takes into account the character of Aïssatou as she is perceived by her friend, Ramatoulaye, nonetheless, comes to the conclusion that the novel as a whole reproduces more than it challenges patriarchy’s metanarrative on gender. My contention is that it is through her disingenuous and duplicitous invocation of a heroine in exile, Aïssatou, whose own narrative the reader never gets to read, that Ramatoulaye — who by every indication is the author’s mouthpiece — gives away her actual subscription to the phallocentric discourse of griotism.38 Ramatoulaye’s long letter to her friend Aïssatou is a lengthy journey in time that allows the reader to be au fait with events that took place in these two women’s lives. This letter, allegedly a reply to a correspondence from Aïssatou, raises some questions, the most urgent of which are the following : Are we not, as readers, confronted with a fiction embedded in another fiction? Did Aïssatou actually write to Ramatoulaye? Is this letter not the pretext of a diary addressed to herself, which would then be full of fantasized pseudo-resistances substituted to failures? Are we not, in the character of Ramatoulaye, confronted with a schizophrenic? Although this last question might seem pointed, yet it is only by answering it a‡rmatively and by approaching the Letter, the novel, as a schizoidal endeavor that one can start to reinstate Ramatoulaye, and consequently recapture the whole project of Bâ’s Letter as the great feminist enterprise critics often herald it to be. The idea that Rama’s (short for Ramatoulaye) letter might be a diary rather than a real letter has been suggested by a number of critics. Beside Christopher Miller, Susan Stringer, for instance, has indicated that the letter is a therapeutic diary through which Rama revisits the past so that she can “come to terms with it.”39 “To come to terms with” is an expression that suggests both an attitude of resignation and one of departure from. In Ramatoulaye’s case, both aspects of coming to terms with the past deserve to be probed. In the context of Bâ’s project, in order for the expression “to come to 118

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terms with” to suggest a move from the past — the history of female subjugation in the Senegalese society as well as the generating center of this oppression — Ramatoulaye’s false letter, has to be perceived as a positive schizophrenic enterprise in the sense of an a‡rmative and self-vibrating state of becoming; one that bypasses the moment of Oedipal castration and, therefore, destabilizes the patronymic. From this perspective, “coming to terms with the past” could signify breaking from the tradition of patriarchy by simultaneously deterritorializing the meta-narrative of subjugation and reterritorializing it within a thousand other masterless-narratives. The letter would thus be the diary of a schizo, that is, Ramatoulaye, combining a multiplicity of desires, rather than a masochistic enterprise, in the pure psychoanalytical sense of the term, that is, endless postponements of pleasure and subliminal rebellions. From this perspective, Ramatoulaye would function no longer according to the law of iteration of womanhood, but rather according to a law of appearance dictated by undecidability. Here, Bâ’s book could o›er itself as a letter in trance, within which a multiplicity of narratives and characters in metamorphosis randomly relieve one another, in an order decided only by their lines of flight or points of deterritorialization. From this perspective, we, as readers, would not be so quick to o›er so many self-indulging exegeses of Bâ’s position. Neither would Ramatoulaye be the character so defined and penetrated, whom the readers know so well that they anticipate her reactions about social canons, but rather desiring-lines of a woman-man-Modou-mawdou-mother-griot-daughter-Dieng-CouraYandé-victim-Aïssatou-victimizer-lines of flight-n-¡. Within the psychoanalytical register, a letter such as Ramatoulaye’s, with no intended receiver, is therapeutic only insofar as Ramatoulaye, its author, mortifies herself. Armed with a pillow, the analysand has to revisit the scene of her su›ering and win a mock battle against her oppressor by beating him, wailing and screaming at the same time, until all feathers break loose. Those critics who perceive Ramatoulaye’s letter as a therapeutic endeavor cannot a›ord not to agree with this psychoanalytical hypothesis, that the letter metaphorizes calling back the dragon in order to defeat it. Now, have we not learned from the greatest Freudian sympathizer, Lacan, that this is no cure, but only fantasy; and that even in her most revolutionary stance, Rama remains forever tied to the law-of-the-Father?40 Hence, here we are — if we chose to believe such positive analyses as o›ered by Mortimer, Miller or Cham — still stuck with a fantasizing Ramatoulaye, desperately dreaming of revolution, and inescapably caught, not even in the gap of tradition and modernity, but rather in the mirasse from which she writes and from which her rebellious words— since writing, for women, is so pre119

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cipitously analogized to speaking out — like Coura’s in L’Ex-père de la nation, just fade away.4¡ The enthusiasts of Bâ’s Letter are right not to have even hinted that it could have been a schizoanalytical project; Bâ’s Letter is a discourse about sanity and insanity, the same language, which in the Senegalese patriarchal society, relegated such women as Yandé, Ramatoulaye and Aïssatou to the asylum as madwomen. Paradoxically, it is Ramatoulaye who submits her socalled friend, Aïssatou, to this clinical discourse. Occupying the chair of the almighty analyst, Ramatoulaye proclaims herself the purveyor of truth, making some pretentious pronouncements on Aïssatou’s state of mind and life in the United States. So, then, will I see you tomorrow in a tailored suit or a long dress? I have taken a bet with Daba: tailored suit. Used to living far away, you will want — again, I have taken a bet with Daba — table, plate, chair, fork. More convenient, you will say…. Beneath the shell that has hardened you over the years, beneath your skeptical carriage, perhaps I will feel you vibrate.42

This is where those who believe that “Aïssatou’s revolt and subsequent ‘escape’ to America makes her Ramatoulaye’s ideal reader,” and that the latter’s gesture of writing stands not only as her approval of Aïssatou’s departure, but also as her own journey outward, might be mistaken.43 Ramatoulaye neither sees Aïssatou as her heroine, nor perceives her flight to the United States as a positive choice. For Ramatoulaye, Aïssatou has found neither happiness nor love in the United States. On the contrary, she has hardened, has become skeptical, and she has lost all a‡rmative vibration during her long exile. Ramatoulaye expresses much sorrow for Aïssatou whom she sees as a failed woman, one who made the mistake of leaving the sheltered path of womanhood and traveling the unsure route of manhood. Ramatoulaye —certainly Bâ’s alter ego— is not an advocate of spatial journeying for women. She is rather satisfied with subliminal exploration, as she seeks to restore Aïssatou to the very space the latter was trying to evade: “But I will not let you have your way. I will spread out a mat. On it there will be the big, steamy bowl into which you will have to accept that other hands dip.”44 Is Ramatoulaye writing to someone she considers as a role model, as Mortimer suggests, or is she, like a griot, eulogizing the person who just o›ered her a car? Is Aïssatou a hero or is she an exiled friend who has lost her desire to take part in the search for a new way? Apparently Ramatoulaye seems ready and impatient to infuse into Aïssatou those feelings that she lost in her long exile. Ramatoulaye certainly thinks of herself as the true heroine, the Grand-Narrator through whom Aïssatou’s story is unveiled. So, Ramatoulaye and Farmata, her confident, must have much in 120

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common. Like Farmata, Ramatoulaye is a griotte: She sings the glory of a benefactress— the daughter of a mere jeweler, as she puts it — who was kind enough to buy her a car. Never did Ramatoulaye view Aïssatou as a heroine; neither did she espouse Aïssatou’s resistance. If the letter, as alphabetic literacy, is a metaphor for escape, for women it always remains a failed escape. Alphabetic literacy is an imported evil that tests the black man’s strength. As such, it is for him a necessary evil, a sort of initiation or right of passage. On the other hand, the black woman possessed by the letter is incurable. For her the only remedy is exile. So Long a Letter conforms to this griotic paradigm. It is from exile that Aïssatou is introduced to the reader, and it is because she is exiled that she is silenced, and one learns nothing directly from her but rather through Ramatoulaye, the woman-at-home, the black-woman-in-her-place. This is where, in spite of the solemn declaration that Bâ is the first African feminist, she nonetheless sees eye to eye with Fall, who has explicitly declared her non-attachment to feminist ideals. Bâ’s opposition to women’s spatial journeying mirrors Fall’s excessive contortions to make the black male hero travel. In L’Ex-père de la nation, Fall’s objective in organizing Madiama’s substanceless excursion to Bara’s reveals an authorial inclination, an implicit subjugation to the griotic discursive order. Fall falls prey to the griotic expectation for women to firmly resist any spatial journey. Through Madiama’s trip to Bara’s, she insists in creating for her male protagonist the occasion of a spatial journey, a voyage of initiation that leads the President from the chaotic atmosphere of his Château to the serenity of his brother’s hamlet. This opposition of the “modern” versus the “primitive” is the opposition of evil versus good, the non-initiate versus the initiate, the imported versus the local, discursive (scientific) reasoning versus intuitive (mytho-poetic) reasoning, Yandé versus Madiama, but also Madiama versus the more traditional Coura, and temporal journeying versus spatial journeying. Fall’s intent in creating the situation of Madiama’s visit to his brother is clearly to show how Yandé, whose thinking is more geared toward Western values, resists Madiama’s decision to (spatially) come closer to the ancestral moment epitomized by Bara, his profession (a fisherman), and his milieu. By realizing this spatial journey, Madiama undergoes a sort of initiation that cleanses him and prompts him to resign from the presidency. Thus, Fall pays her respect to griotism and proves that she has ingested its phallocentric order and absorbed its meta-narrative that confines women either to a failed spatial journey or to a fantasized, temporal journey, like the one undertaken by the dreaming protagonist of So Long a Letter. This gesture, which in Fall’s and Bâ’s novels reifies the griot’s word as 121

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a transcendental signifier, is not infrequent. It is a recurrence in the writings of Francophone black women. Thus, Warner-Vieyra, in As the Sorcerer Said, tells of the fate of Little Zétou, who dared ignore the warnings of the quimboiseur against physical journeying, and who ended up in a Parisian asylum where she was sane enough to regret her disobedience to the griot. I was a solitary piece of flotsam, washed along by life, with nothing to catch on to…. I had never known this total solitude of the soul which envelops the whole being in an armour of despair…. As the sorcerer had said, “the gods of Africa were not favorable.” Why had I left my country?45

Similarly, one learns, in I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem, of Tituba’s unfortunate drifting from the Barbados to Salem, back to the Barbados. In So Long a Letter, one also learns of Jacqueline’s (the Ivorian woman’s) psychological breakdown as she travels to Senegal. By making women’s spatial journeys a failure and by confining them to temporal or subliminal journeys, Francophone black women writers seem to suggest that the black women’s struggle for emancipation can only be won at home, a physical as well as a psychological “at home.” Psychologically, it suggests an epistemological resistance to a so-called Western ideology, which explains why Ramatoulaye and Aïssatou, two promising students of a white female mentor, fail to make significant changes in Senegal. Because, being the first pioneers of the promotion of African women, there were very few of us. Men would call us scatter-brained. Others labelled us devils. But many wanted to possess us. How many dreams did we nourish hopelessly that could have been fulfilled as lasting happiness and that we abandoned to embrace others, those that have burst miserably like soap bubbles, leaving us empty-handed?46

This failure is the failure of Western ways regarded as incompatible with black realities in general and black women’s realities in particular. It is not with Western weapons that the black women will liberate herself from man’s oppression, Bâ and Fall seem to suggest, but rather by living up to the expectations of the black man in this role that he has carved for her; it is even by going beyond his expectations as regards what his sense of becoming-women is, that she wins her struggle. Thus, the measure of womanhood concerns how well a woman handles her role as a mother, a caretaker, and a healer, as boasts Ramatoulaye, who has given twelve children to her husband. Try explaining to them that a workingwoman is no less responsible for her home. Try explaining to them that nothing is done if you do not step in, that you have to see to everything, do everything all over again: cleaning up, cooking, ironing. There are the children to be washed, the husband to be looked 122

7—Black Women Writers’ Dilemma with Theory after. The workingwoman has a dual task, of which both halves, equally arduous, must be reconciled. How does one go about this? Therein lies the skill that makes all the di›erence to a home.47

This conception of resistance as perfection of one’s expected role seems to border on mortification; it is the cultivation of a certain victimology that religiously mimics the submission to the Omnipotent Other. Under the order of Negritude, there seems to be a submission to su›ering under the imperial enemy whose constant invention consolidates cultural bonds. Under black women’s (negritudinized) resistance there also seems to be the same cultivation of victimization — this time under the bondage of a reified black phallus. Thus in L’Ex-père de la nation, Coura’s protest paradoxically leads her to perfect what her role as a black woman is to be. To her husband who has just announced to her that he his taking in another wife, she declares. Je jure au nom de Dieu que pour toi je ne serai plus une femme parce que, par ma propre volonté, je me fais dès aujourd’hui la réincarnation de ta mère, ma tante Coumba Dadio Sadio. Si tu cherchais en moi la femme, sache que c’est ta mère Coumba Dadio Sadio que tu chercherais et alors, honte, sacrilège, malheur!48 [I swear by the name of God that I will no longer be a wife to you, because from now on and by my own will I make myself the reincarnation of your mother, my aunt Coumba Dadio Sadio. If you happened to look for a wife in me, you should know that it is your mother Coumba Dadio Sadio you would find, and therefore shame, sacrilege and misfortune will be on you!]49

How could it be her decision to become his mother when before she made herself his mother he had already made her so? How could it be her decision not to look at him as a lover when before she decided not to be his lover she was already a mere stranger to him? How could it be her decision to avoid him when long before she could decide, her faded beauty could no longer awaken his desire? How could she be so naive as to make herself the exact sculpture he wanted her to be? In the name of a blind loyalty to ancestral culture and allegiance to authenticity, the black woman’s struggle for emancipation has remained trapped in a negritudinist doxology. Maybe if she would dare open the windows of her ideological penitentiary and look outside into what the black man has taught her to hate as foreign and incompatible with her Negritude, could the black woman seize the multiple facets of her liberation. Maybe would she understand that the West did not antedate freedom; consequently, the West’s language to speak freedom by no means can claim freedom to be its invention. The French black writer’s skepticism concerning Europe and 123

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its ideologies is sometimes a hindrance to his or her political, economic, and social liberation. This prolonged intellectual protest too often leaves the Francophone black writer no other alternative but to write out of Negritude, which functions as a hinge or a filter.

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New Nomadologies To think the unique within the system, to inscribe it there, such is the gesture of the arche-writing: arche-violence, loss of the proper, of absolute proximity, of self-presence, in truth the loss of what has never taken place, of self-presence which has never been given but only dreamed of and always already split, repeated, incapable of appearing to itself except in its own disappearance. Jacques Derrida —Of Grammatology The persistent critique of what one must inhabit, the consistent consolidation of claims to founding catachreses, involves an incessant re-coding of diversified fields of value. Let us attempt to imagine “identity,” so cherished a foothold, flashpoints in this re-coding of the circuit … claiming catachreses from a space that one cannot not want to inhabit and yet must criticize is, then, the deconstructive predicament of the postcolonial Gayatri Spivak —“Postructuralism, Marginality, Postcoloniality and Value”

WRITING OUT OF COMPROMISE: FATOU KEITA AND REGINA YAOU The signature of the griot — which, as I have now demonstrated, is no longer that of the Djeli or the Quimboiseur, but rather what appears like the result of a coup de force, an act of deception, a forgery — seems to have determined the field of Francophone African literatures. However, that false signature, which seeks to represent itself as the sign of a unified heterogeneity, this griotic signature through which a pseudo-authentic order of discourse is maintained, will be tested by another line of Francophone feminine discourse, a style that, for the convenience of designation, I will term here l’écriture du compromis. Inasmuch as one has to find it a birthplace and tutelage, l’écriture du compromis has its locus in Côte d’Ivoire. A careful reading of two representative texts of this literary trend, Fatou Keita’s Rebelle (Rebel) and Regina Yaou’s Le Prix de la révolte (The Price of Rebellion), will 125

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disclose in them this irony whereby the pure is always already marked with the impure; whereby — and to borrow these Derridian words—“within the closure, by an oblique and always perilous movement … the yet unnamable glimmer beyond the closure can be glimpsed.”¡ Indeed, there lies, In Keita’s and Yaou’s texts, a blasphemous gesture in the direction of the sacred, a joyous engagement with the interdicted that paradoxically disturbs the fundamental immobility of the socius, causing it to move indefinitely into the field of the inadmissible, thus jeopardizing the rigid authority of patriarchy, which, faced with the impossibility of a hitherto caressed transcendental ambition, henceforth, has to settle with a quasi-transcendental dream. The notions of transcendental and quasi-transcendental, as I use them in analyzing Keita’s and Regina’s novels, call up two contradictory events. Transcendentality connotes the will-to-domination of patriarchy that rules by way of elimination of dissent and preservation of the edifice of pure interiority from any contaminating exteriority. Quasi-transcendentality, on the other hand, points to the inevitable fact that within the edifice of interiority, the signs of exteriority are already present, and that the subject’s desire to remain pure is already an acknowledgement of his or her impurity. The paradox of the pure as already impure, the interior as already peripheral, the closure as already disclosure, and vice versa, abounds, under various names, in Derrida’s deconstructionist and Deleuze and Guattari’s schizoanalytic projects. In Derrida’s works, this paradox is sometimes the opposition of the original and the derived, the proper/authentic and the improper/inauthentic, the prescriptive and the descriptive. With Deleuze and Guattari, this incongruity represents the antagonism between the regime of reproduction, representation, and castration on the one hand and the regime of production of production of desire on the other. It is the opposition between the tree, which is genealogy, and the rhizome, which is anti-genealogy.2 Through their protagonists’ intense desire to be open to multiplicity beyond the injunctions of a rigid masculinist socius, Rebelle and Le Prix show very tangibly this crisis between the interior and the exterior or the genealogical and the anti-genealogical. Keita’s Rebelle is about a very precautious and audacious feminine resistance. At the tender age of eight, Malimouna challenges the system of representation of Boritouni, a small African community proudly anchored in its centuries-old traditional values. One day, as she was walking in the nearby forest, Malimouna was surprised to see Dimikela, the mythic excision woman, and Seynou, the young hunter, in an embarrassing position. The little girl decided to use this event to her advantage, and she made Dimikela promise to spare her the painful opera126

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tion of excision lest she should reveal what she witnessed to the whole village. On the day of the excision ritual, Dimikela kept her word, and Malimouna kept “ce petit bout [d’elle] qui était doux au toucher”3 (this little part of her body that it felt good to touch).4 However, as Malimouna turned fourteen, her father, who, years ago, had abandoned her with her mother, suddenly remembered that he had a daughter. He married her to the rich Sando, an old trader from a neighboring village. On the wedding night, for fear that her husband should discover that she was not excised, Malimouna panicked and, in a very ironic gesture, she knocked Sando on the head with a statue of fertility that the old man used to keep by his bedside; then Malimouna ran into the night. Thus starts Malimouna’s exile, an exile that leads her, first, to Salouma, the big city, where the mere child that she still is falls in contemplation before a toy store and witnesses, bewildered, the breathtaking rhythm of city dwellers jostling and passing each other with little consideration. Despite her physical alienation from Boritouni, Malimouna has remained faithful to the moral values of her community. She has kept her compassion and precocious maternal instinct, pastoral ethics that her community had impressed on her over the years by virtue of the gendered expectations projected in her feminine condition. Thus, in the city where individualism prevails and anyone remains a stranger to anyone else, it is she who spontaneously runs to assist a road victim. Malimouna était tout à ses pensées lorsqu’un crissement de pneus suivi d’un choc sourd la fit sursauter…. A quelques mètres d’elle, sur la chaussée, une voiture venait de renverser une jeune femme européenne accompagnée de son enfant. Le chau›ard ne s’arrêta même pas et s’éloigna en trombe.… [P]ersonne n’osait s’approcher de la femme allongée sur le sol.… Elle gémissait et implorait de l’aide, tandis que son fils, qui n’avait rien, courait dans tous les sens en pleurant. Malimouna bondit et saisit le petit qui se calma comme par enchantement dès qu’il fut dans ses bras … Malimouna s’accroupit à côté de la femme blanche qui s’accrocha à elle désespérément.5 [The deafening noise of screeching tires and crashing metal startled Malimouna…. A few meters away from her, a car had just run over a European woman who was crossing the road with her child. The driver did not even stop. He sped away. Nobody dared approach the woman who was lying on the pavement, moaning and begging for help while her child was running in all directions crying. Malimouna lifted the little boy, who stopped crying as soon as he was in her arms … she kneeled down by the white woman, who grabbed her arm in desperation.]6

Malimouna’s first gesture of compassion towards Mrs. Calmard is an act that also restores her, as Mr. Calmard, the victim’s husband, impressed by Malimouna’s kindness, o›ers her a job in his home as a domestic, thus giv127

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ing the girl a shelter and a certain moral and material security in this unfriendly and unforgiving environment. This meeting between Malimouna, the little African girl, and the Calmards, the European family, prefigures the preeminent theme of l’écriture du compromis, which is the quest for compromise through a dialectic of recognition, a confrontation that puts in play the acknowledgement and the negotiation of their singular perspectives by agencies involved in a power struggle. Such a confrontation presupposes an appreciation of the other’s condition, not just insofar as that condition is the other’s exclusive situation, but most importantly because the other’s position is always already one’s own position. In Rebelle, this reciprocity between the subject and its alterity is noticeable in the first pages when, exhausted and hungry during her flight from Boritouni, Malimouna finds some strength in the orange that a stranger, who had guessed her dilemma, handed her without any question. It is this same spontaneous drive that led Malimouna to help Michèle Calmard even though she too was in a di‡cult position. The Calmards’ home became the site of a dynamics that allowed particular discrete subjects to become familiar with their alterity’s condition, thus understanding the advantages and limitations that their own condition implies. It is, first, Michèle Calmard who bristles at the idea that Malimouna could be married at such a young age. “Ton mari? s’était étonnée Michèle, la jeune femme. Mais quel âge as-tu donc?”7 (“Your husband?” asked Michèle with astonishment. “How old are you then?”) It is, then, Malimouna who, after doing the inventory of Michèle’s daily activities, arrives at the conclusion that Mrs. Calmard’s life is an existence of mere enjoyment: “Tout semblait si facile. Pas de corvée d’eau ni de bois à couper, pas de mil à piler, pas de riz à trier.… Il était agréable d’être une femme dans cette maison. Michèle était une princesse dont son mari Gérard s’occupait comme s’il la vénérait.”8 (Everything seemed so easy. No water or wood chores, no millet to pound, no rice to clean.… It was wonderful being a woman in the Calmard’s home. Michèle was a princess venerated by Gerard.) Malimouna’s engagement with Michèle allows the young girl to understand how di‡cult her own mother’s life is. Malimouna en regardant [Michèle] pensait à sa mère. La journée de Matou … commençait à quatre heures du matin par la prière. Ensuite, elle balayait la cour, après quoi, en compagnie d’autres femmes, elle se rendait au marigot qui se trouvait au moins à deux kilomètres du village, pour puiser de l’eau. Une fois de retour, elle allumait rapidement le feu de bois et faisait le petit déjeuner … Son mari, s’il ne s’était pas encore rendu au champ, se levait alors pour manger avant d’aller cultiver. Après avoir restauré les enfants … Matou, lorsqu’elle n’allait pas elle-même cultiver dans le champ, s’occupait de la lessive avant de commencer à préparer le repas de midi. Elle faisait manger les enfants et portait sa part à son 128

8—New Nomadologies époux au champ. L’après-midi se passait à piler le riz ou le mil, puis à aller chercher du bois sec pour le repas du soir ainsi que de l’eau au marigot.… Rien à voir avec la vie de Michèle.9 [While watching Michèle, Malimouna could not help thinking of her own mother. Matou’s day started at four in the morning with the Morning Prayer. Then she swept the compound. After that, with the other women, she would go fetch some water at the wells, some two kilometers away from the village. Once back, she would quickly light the wood fire to make breakfast. If her husband were not yet out of bed, he would then get up and eat before going to the fields. After feeding the children, if Matou did not have to go to the fields, she would do the laundry before cooking lunch. She would then feed the children and take some food to her husband in the fields. She whose afternoon would be spent pounding rice or millet and fetching water and collecting firewood for the evening meal.… Matou’s life had nothing to do with Michèle’s.]

Malimouna could have also been confined to Matou’s life, had she been under the excision woman’s scarifying knife. Malimouna’s gesture of rebellion against Old Sando is a symbolic gesture. It is anti-genealogical. It arrests the father’s authority and undermines his transcendental ambition by preventing him to append the signature that maintains the permanence of his law on Malimouna’s body. By knocking out Old Sando and running away, Malimouna makes herself a nomad body. Through such an act, she seems to be saying to Boritouni’s system of reproduction: I am not one of you; I am a revolutionary that follows the lines of flights of desire. Have we not learned that this nomadic feature, this anti-production gesture, is always already inscribed in the system of reproduction as the very element of the restriction? ¡0 Is Keïta not suggesting this paradox when the heroine of her novel escapes from Old Sando’s home by knocking him out with the very symbol of her societal boundary and role, that is, the statue of fecundity, the totem of her reproductive function? Is not Malimouna’s solid friendship with Sanita (the city schoolgirl who first talked her against excision) a sign lurking at the inception of the novel, and which hints that the inside is necessarily invaded by the outside and vice versa? Is not Malimouna, the young village girl promised to excision, the epitome of interiority, as is Sanita, the city girl, that of exteriority? This inevitable mixture of inside and outside, this impossibility to separate the pure from the impure, this necessary intrusion of the quasi-transcendental into the transcendental is also manifest in Yaou’s Le Prix. In fact, Yaou’s whole novel is built around this enigma. Le Prix de la révolte is, as the title indicates, the story of a rebellion and its consequences. After the death of Ko‡ Mensah, his wife, A‡ba, fights against her Akan tradition which demands that the widow be dispossessed 129

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and sent back to her parents, so that her husband’s nephews (precisely his sister’s sons), rather than the deceased’s surviving children, become his heirs. This tradition is meant to insure, if not the integrity of the father’s name, at least, his authority, through the heritage that he leaves to those who are supposed to be undeniably the blood of his blood (the children of his sister, more precisely, the male children of his mother’s daughter), as his children are likely to be the progeny of an unfaithful wife. The ambiguity of this tradition comes from the fact that, in order to persist, the Nameof-the-Father requires the presence-of-the-mother. Yet, it is that very presence that the father must minimize or e›ace in order to preserve his name. The presence-of-the-mother that gives the Name-of-the-Father its authority and raison d’être must disappear for that Name-of-the-Father to be. Several analogies could be derived from this paradox. Within the system of representation, where man’s desire to preserve his trace becomes obsessive, where man is haunted by the possibility that his passage in history could, after all, leave no trace at all, the woman-in-the-margin becomes one of the nicknames of that trace. She becomes the arche-trace, that is, the name of that which, within the very system of representation that seeks to eliminate it, marks the place of its presence, an absence-presence, a presence that is possible only insofar as it is absent, and therefore, makes of this absence a performative: As soon as woman declares “I e›ace myself,” man is. However, for man to be, there first must be a woman who then disappears. By announcing herself as denied sign, by dissimulating her presence, woman, as arche-trace, allows a relationship of man with his alterity.¡¡ Thus, the arche-trace is the nickname of a false trace, of a trace that is possible only insofar as the condition of its possibility e›aces itself. Woman, as the condition of its possibility, is, at the same time, the symptom of the malaise of the Name-of-the-Father. For Yaou, as for Keita, revealing the inadequacy of the proper name of the Father, pointing out how it is always already invaded by multiple, particularly feminine, intensities, amounts, not only to unveiling the importance of femininity in societies governed by patriarchy, but also and above all, demanding from patriarchal societies that they comply with women’s claims of equal rights. For Yaou, as for Keita, to reveal the improper nature of the father’s name by showing how that name is always already contaminated and structured by a thousand intensities amounts to pointing to the importance of femininity in the very society that wants to erase it. It also amounts to demanding from society that women’s rights be recognized and protected. Throughout Le Prix and Rebelle, Yaou and Keita’s objective is clear: It is about reviving the anti-absolutist ashes that lie in wait within every absolutist endeavor. What these two Ivorian 130

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writers set about to show is that the very elements which in every society allow tradition to continue over several generations also open up that society to a dissemination of values that threaten to short-circuit it. However, in Yaou’s and Keita’s works, the notion of the rebellious woman is not a gratuitous one. Women’s disobedience is not merely meant to ridicule men or undercut his authority. Women rebel only after failed e›orts to seek compromise with men. It is only after men’s blind will-to-domination has undercut any possibility for negotiation that women take upon themselves to contest men’s influence by exposing their weaknesses. After having submitted in vain to the Akan rule that requires that her late husband be buried by his relatives, A‡ba, fed up with her in-laws blackmailing methods, decide to break the decorum. So, she takes upon herself to organize Ko‡’s burial. Elle avait attendu deux, trois, quatre jours, une semaine. Le vieil Ezan [son père] avait alors conseillé à A‡ba de songer à ce qu’il y avait lieu de faire. Une délégation avait été envoyée chez les parents du défunt, en pure perte. A‡ba, quoique peinée, avait choisi de prendre les choses en main … En l’espace de quarante-huit heures tout avait été réglé.¡2 [She had waited two, three, four days, one week. Old Ezan (her father) finally advised A‡ba to take the necessary steps. Messengers were sent to the deceased’s family, to no avail. In spite of herself, A‡ba decided to take matters in her own hands…. In less than forty-eight hours everything was settled.]¡3

By organizing her husband’s funerals, A‡ba trespasses a masculine field of performativity. She claims a supposedly male authority, thus reminding all the proselytizers of a so-called divine masculine power that masculine rights are only made possible by a patriarchal culture that has maintained men’s prerogatives by denying women access to education, economic opportunity, and private property. Thus A‡ba insists on educating her in-laws about the contribution that she personally made to her family’s well being. She maintains that what might appear like Ko‡’s personal wealth is, in fact, the end result of a collaborative e›ort between both her deceased husband and herself. For her family to live comfortably, she worked hard in France between classes and in Côte d’Ivoire after her degree. She was not a wife with no resources waiting for everything she needed to be handed to her by a condescending husband. She wanted it to be known that she was Ko‡’s friend and partner. He had more than once relied on her in times of financial hardship. Therefore, she could not sit back and be the victim of an age-old tradition that wanted to disinherit her of everything she had worked hard for. For most Ivorian writers, Western education is treated more as a bless131

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ing than a curse. The reader of novels by Ivorian women writers will hardly detect in them the sort of apologetic and clinical gesture, recurrent for instance in novels by writers such as Bâ and Fall, and which treats the educated black woman as a pathological subject infected with a foreign virus. On the contrary, it is her faith in the liberating value of education — especially for the black woman living under the hard reality of a domestic space governed by patriarchy — that drives the heroine of the Ivorian novel by women writers. Such is the case for Malimouna in Rebelle. Indeed, jealous of the way her husband looks at Malimouna, Michèle Calmard recommends her young domestic to the Bireaus, a French family that takes Malimouna to France. Malimouna’s conquest of the world of alphabetical literacy (France) is not without any di‡culty. It mirrors an initiation trip, such as the one undertaken by the black man in the world of the white man. It is a pilgrimage through which Malimouna finds herself entangled in a dialectic of which she is the subversive negation that sows in the white’s hegemonic spirit doubt about his self-su‡ciency. At the Calmards’ Malimouna figures as the object of Michèle’s and Gerard’s interested gazes. [Gérard] la regarda droit dans les yeux. Dieu qu’elle est belle, se dit-il, comme s’il la voyait pour la première fois. De grands yeux noirs, une peau d’ébène contre cette robe jaune et cette bouche … il détourna un moment le regard comme pour éviter qu’elle ne lise ses pensées.… Michèle venait de se réveiller de sa sieste. Elle sortit à son tour sur la véranda en appelant son mari. — Monsieur Gérard vient de sortir annonça Malimouna.… Malimouna baissa les yeux. Dieu, qu’elle est belle, pensa Michèle. Elle détourna le regard afin que Malimouna ne lise pas cette admiration dans son regard.… Oui … très jolie, avait répété Gérard, avec encore cette lueur dans le regard. Michèle le dévisagea, et lorsque leurs yeux se croisèrent, Gérard baissa la tête en rougissant. Michèle rentra dans la maison.¡4 [Gerard stared at her straight in the eyes. God she is so beautiful, he thought, as if he was looking at her for the first time. Her big black eyes, her ebony skin against this yellow dress, and her mouth … he turned his gaze, lest Malimouna should read his thoughts. Michèle had just awakened from her nap. She walked to the veranda calling on her husband. — Mister Gerard has just stepped out, Malimouna announced.… Malimouna lowered her eyes. God, she is so beautiful! Michèle thought. She tried to hide her admiration from Malimouna by turning her gaze…. Indeed she is beautiful, Gerard thought, with a gleam in his eyes. Michèle stared at him, and when their eyes met, Gerard lowered his head blushing. Michèle returned to the house.]

Just Like colonial Africa, Malimouna symbolizes the object of Europe’s will to conquer and possess. She represents a mystery to solve, an interdicted pleasure to seek. She is, as Achebe has so perceptively pointed out in dis132

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cussing Conrad’s Congo, what reminds Europe of its own repressed savagery.¡5 Malimouna’s disconcerting presence puts her out of her place in the European imagination. She is no longer the pitiful black girl that allows Europe to fulfill its daily good deed. In fact, she invades the other’s space and renders obsolete the compartmentalization of places by making the other desiring the space that she occupies. Malimouna is the sign of Europe’s disease. She is the sign of the malaise of a Europe that has remained paradoxically racist despite its credo of equality and fraternity. She is the proper name of the Calmards’ anxiety. For that, she must leave. She must go so that things could fall into order again. “Malimouna ne comprenait pas le discours que lui tenait Michèle. Elle l’aimait bien, lui disait-elle, elle n’avait rien à lui reprocher, mais elle devait se séparer d’elle.… C’est ainsi que Malimouna quitta sa famille d’adoption pour se retrouver avec les Bireau.”¡6 (Malimouna could not understand Michèle’s reasoning. She said that she liked her, that she had no complaint against her, but she had to let her go.… That is how Malimouna left her adoptive family and landed at the Bireaus.’) It was, perhaps, too late. Has not the young girl already contaminated the Calmards’ pure European existence? Has she not revealed to the other that his fear of contamination is already an acknowledgement of his impurity? It is Mr. Bireau who will confirm this inevitability. Une nuit … Monsieur Bireau entra sans frapper dans [la chambre de Malimouna] et vint s’asseoir au bord de son lit. Elle se leva d’un bond et alluma la lumière. Il était seulement vêtu d’un caleçon qui cachait à peine la brutalité de son désir. Malimouna recula et se cogna contre la commode.… [Il] s’approcha et l’étreignit … Elle sentait son sou·e court et haletant sur son cou, et des mains velues parcourant tout son corps. “Tu es si belle” répétait-il comme un forcené. Malimouna se remit vite de sa stupeur et le repoussa avec une telle énergie qu’il se retrouva à quatre pattes sur le lit. Elle saisit la lampe de chevet et tout d’un coup, comme dans un flash-back, l’image du vieux Sando lui revint à l’esprit. Elle reposa la lampe à sa place.… Lentement, elle sortit ses vêtements de la commode.… [S]’assura qu’elle avait bien ses papiers.… Cette fois-ci, elle ne s’enfuyait pas. Elle partait.¡7 [One night … Mister Bireau entered [Malimouna’s bedroom] without knocking and sat on the edge of her bed. She jumped up and turned on the light. He was only wearing his underpants; which could hardly hide his wicked desire. Malimouna backed o› until she was pinned against the dresser.… [He] moved toward her and grasped her.… She could feel his short, panting breath in her neck, and his hairy hands were already feeling her whole body. “You’re so beautiful,” he kept repeating frantically. Malimouna pushed him so hard that he found himself seating on all four on the bed. She grabbed the bedside lamp and suddenly, like in a flashback, she remembered Old Sando. She put the lamp back on the nightstand…. Slowly, she gathered her clothes…. She made sure that she did not forget her papers…. This time, she was not running away. She was leaving.] 133

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Because men occasioned all of Malimouna’s exiles, her migrations illustrate the notion that the father is the one who precipitates his own fall. In fact, once she leaves Old Sando’s house, and then the Calmards’ and later the Bireaus,’ a pastor assists Malimouna, and then he, too, alienates her by his persistent demands that she convert to Christianity. She decides to leave him and seek some formal education: “Un jour, elle décida de partir.… Plus [le pasteur] priait … plus il la sentait prendre ses distances. Elle voulait s’instruire … et trouver du travail.”¡8 (One day, she decided to leave…. The more [the pastor] prayed … the more she took her distance from him. She wanted to get some education … and find a job.) This education, so painstakingly acquired, will equip Malimouna to lead her fight against the unfair treatment of the African woman victimized by the African man. Malimouna’s refusal to submit to clitoridectomy is less an act of cowardice than one of principle. She lacks neither bravery nor might. She is simply convinced that excision is demeaning and mutilating to the African woman. In Paris she has shown great courage and determination by submitting to an extraordinary regime of work and studies, braiding clients’ hair during the day and taking classes at night. Later, she registered at the Institut d’Études Sociales with the clear objective of helping her African sisters: “Aider les femmes. C’était les trois mots qu’elle avait lancés lorsque Philippe Blain, le Directeur de l’institut, lui avait demandé quelles étaient ses ambitions. Elle voulait porter assistance aux femmes africaines en France. C’était le défi qu’elle s’était lancée.”¡9 (Help the women. These are the three words that she uttered as soon as Philippe Blain, the director of the Institute asked her what her ambitions were. She wanted to help out the African women in France. This was the pledge she made to herself.) Her intent was to help women like Fanta, a Malian shipped like a parcel in Paris to a man she was promised since childhood; a man that in five years had already made her mother four times. Fanta passait le plus clair de son temps entre les couches, les tétées, la vaisselle, la cuisine et la lessive…. La nuit, elle était constamment réveillée par les pleurs des bébés. Elle aurait pu se reposer quelques instants entre midi et deux heures, mais à ce moment-là, le mari se réveillait et accomplissait son devoir conjugal. Fanta avait les yeux cernés et maigrissait à vue d’œil. Elle avait besoin d’aide.… Elle essaierait de trouver un moyen d’aider son amie.20 [Fanta spent the major part of her time changing diapers, breastfeeding her children, washing dishes, cooking, and doing laundry…. At night, the babies’ cries kept her constantly awaken. She could have had some rest between noon and two o’clock, but this was also the moment her husband chose to do his conjugal duty. Fanta’s eyes showed signs of fatigue. She was losing weight. She needed help.… Malimouna was resolute to help her friend.] 134

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“Aider les femmes,” participate in the emancipation struggle of African women, was also A‡ba’s battle cry in Le Prix de la révolte. Like Malimouna, A‡ba combined manual labor and studies in order to help her husband, only to find herself on the brink of poverty upon his death. Beyond their subjective appearances, Malimouna’s and A‡ba’s struggles in, respectively, Rebelle and Le Prix constitute a super-struggle. It is the battle against any discrimination founded on the masculine/feminine binary dichotomy. Nonetheless woman’s victory does not necessarily imply a reversal of the situation so that, as Fanon once put it in The Wretched of the Earth, the last ones shall become the first ones. Victory in this context is less about rehearsing man’s injustice than exploding the terms of the di›erence upon which that injustice rests. It is about showing that the founding opposition that guarantees man’s superiority is an illegitimate opposition. To say that woman is always already in man, and vice versa, as she is the arche-trace, neither amounts to arguing that sexual di›erences exist no more, or that in lieu of masculine and feminine sexes one ought to reify a third, neutral, sex. I hope to have amply developed this paradox by drawing upon Deleuze and Guattari’s as well as Derrida’s works. Woman as trace or anti-genealogy is a metaphor that points to a larger reality. The generative duplicity that, within the distinction man-father/ woman-mother, names woman only to better dismiss her is an allusion to social and ideological injustices present in Yaou’s and Keita’s societies. Restoring woman through an economy of compromise alludes to broadspectrum fair play. In Yaou’s book the site for the emancipation struggle is the traditional Akan society, less recognizable to the American and European readership. In Keita’s book, the location for the battle retains features of an Islamic Malinke society, such as existing in Northern Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal, Guinea, Niger, and popularized thanks to the works of Muslim writers like Sembène, Camara, Bâ, and Fall, to cite only these few. In the dialectic of the pure versus the impure, which for so long has divided the people of Côte d’Ivoire, and which the political and ideological opportunists have recuperated, the Malinke, who came from the North of present-day Côte d’Ivoire, pushed down by the Moroccan invasion of the sixteenth century, are the antithesis of the Akan from the southern and central part of the country, who migrated in successive waves from present-day Ghana, between the fifteenth and the eighteenth centuries. In her resistance against Old Mensah and the traditional institution he represents, A‡ba needs some strong allies that are also products of disjunctive socio-cultural and transnational syntheses. That synthesis, A‡ba/Yaou creates it at di›erent levels. On the national plane, Yaou rethinks the rela135

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tionship between Malinke Northerners and Akan Southerners, by making Ismael Koulibaly, the Northerner, not only A‡ba’s most trusted ally, but also the greatest architect of the reconciliation between A‡ba and her in-laws. Acting as a bridge and an attentive ear between the two families, Ismael wondered sometimes “si ces dernières années, il avait vécu pour autre chose que pour aider à résoudre les problèmes qui se posaient à la famille de son ami décédé”2¡ (whether he had done anything else in the past two years but helping resolve the conflict opposing his friend’s widow’s to her father-in-law). Moreover, Mr. N’cho, the man who makes it possible for A‡ba to acquire economic independence by hiring her, the director of the West African Insurance Company, is the product of a transnational synthesis. An Ivorian educated in the United States, where he spent twelve years, “il avait ramené une femme très belle, et des manières on ne peut plus … cordiales”22 (he had returned with a very beautiful woman and some extremely cordial manners), which visibly di›ered from the cold and rigidified Ivorian bureaucracy, a product of French influence. In addition, Mr. N’cho had no problem deterritorializing good old French, grafting it with inflexions of American English, in such a manner as to give an apoplexy to the culture police of the French Academy. — Bonjour monsieur N’cho. — Bonjour, ma petite madame…. By the way, comment va le jeune Mensah? — Beaucoup mieux, Monsieur N’cho. Et votre Voyage à San Francisco? — Wonderful, marvellous! … — Je suis venue vous demander de faire préparer mes papiers, je pars en congé. — En congé? My goodness! Mais il y a des mois que je vous suppliais d’y aller, en vain. Maintenant que j’ai besoin de vous….23

Despite his casual posture, N’cho was an excellent businessman, who always rewarded good work. He had total confidence in A‡ba, and he entrusted her, rather than Konan, her male colleague, with the most sensitive tasks. Nevertheless, despite his good intentions, Mr. N’cho was forced to deal with an Ivorian society whose working ethics were still very biased against women. It is reluctantly that Mr. N’cho consented to grant A‡ba her maternity leave. “A‡ba se souvient qu’au moment de la naissance de Loïc, il avait fallu la colère de son mari pour qu’enfin N’cho consentît à lui donner son congé de maternité.”24 (A‡ba recalls that after Loic’s birth, her husband had to intervene before N’Cho would finally agree to grant her a maternity leave.) Here, Yaou casts a critical glance at the situation of the Ivorian woman in particular, and the African woman in general. The author decries how, at the dawn of the twenty-first millennium, the African woman is still left to deal with a professional space arrested in the masculinist outlook of the 136

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Middle Age. Konan, A‡ba’s ex-lover and colleague, who has trouble figuring out the di›erence between friendly professional relationships and sexual harassment, is certainly an allegory of this mindset. — Bonjour ma colombe dit [Konan], en voyant A‡ba. — Bonjour Konan, répondit Sèchement A‡ba. Sa colombe! — Alors te revoilà, fit-t-il en la prenant par la taille. — Bas les pattes, Konan, ordonnant A‡ba en le repoussant avec violence. Tu m’agaces. Tu sais ce que cela veut dire au moins?25 [“Morning my dove,” said (Konan) upon seeing A‡ba. “Good morning, Konan,” A‡ba replied without enthusiasm. His dove! “So here you are,” he remarked, passing his harm around her waist. “Back o›, Konan!” A‡ba commanded while pushing him fiercely. “Stop bothering me. Do you at least know what this means?”]

We should not regard Yaou’s position as a simplistic adoption of travel. I do not think that Yaou is implying that a trip in the space of the other necessarily opens one’s mind and allows one to understand the world in a wider perspective. In fact, the greatest traveler could be more bigoted than the toughest sedentary person. Conrad, Schweitzer, and Frobenius were all great travelers. However, does not Achebe tell us that one has more to learn about the narrow-mindedness of these kinds of travelers than one could learn about the countries they visited?26 What Yaou’s and Keita’s books suggest is that a trip is important only insofar as the traveler allows himself or herself to be penetrated by new intensities. This kind of trip is not necessarily a physical movement, but rather a becoming of the mind that opens itself to foreign fluxes. As Deleuze and Guattari remind us in Anti-Oedipus, this trip is not necessarily one of big movements in extension, but also one that can take place within a bedroom, on a body without organs; for a nomad body could be as reactive as a sedentary body could be positive. The kind of Africa that Malimouna finds in the Parisian foyer after she leaves the minister’s house is indicative of this solipsism. It is a transplanted Africa that is not just the exuberant Africa she missed during her exile, but also a century-old, retrograde, and repressive Africa; one that is entirely closed upon itself, convinced of its self-su‡ciency, where the black woman continues to be an exchange currency in the masculinist transactions. It is an Africa that, this time, is the stage for Fanta’s little girl’s drama, a tragedy that mirrors Malimouna’s and to which Malimouna cannot remain indi›erent. In fact, Noura, Fanta’s daughter, runs away from her parents’ home in order to escape excision. As Malimouna tries to dissuade Fanta from putting her daughter under the brutal knife, she only succeeds in generating disdain from her friend, as the latter learns that 137

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Malimouna is not excised. Finally, Noura is excised, and the French police arrest her parents when she dies of complications from her clitoridectomy. The allies that Malimouna is looking for are not those in whom, as it is the case with Fanta’s husband or Mr. Bireau, life has stagnated in a nomad body. One of the best alliances that Malimouna establishes is the transnational relationship that she builds with Philippe Blain, the Director of the Institut d’Études Sociales. Philippe is, to a certain extent, nomad intelligence in a sedentary body that gives Malimouna access to the most precious tool of her independence, that is, education. Philippe Blain avait énormément contribué à sa réussite tout au long des trois années au cours desquelles elle avait étudié avec acharnement à l’Institut d’Études Sociales qu’il dirigeait.… Lorsqu’il apprit qu’elle faisait des ménages après l’école pour subvenir à ses besoins et payer ses cours, il décida, après avoir consulté son conseil d’administration, de lui accorder une réduction sur ses frais de scolarité. C’était une aubaine pour Malimouna qui lui en fut très reconnaissante.27 [Philippe Blain had greatly contributed to her success during the three years she studied hard at the Institut d’Études Sociales that he managed…. When he learned that she was doing housework after classes to pay for her tuition, he decided to grant her tuition remission. It was a windfall for which Malimouna was very grateful.]

One should not be carried away by this justifiably anti-imperialist, but sometimes excessively Afrocentrist, passion that would tend to see in Keita’s work a sort of betrayal, a quest for lactification, to use this Fanonian neologism, the glorification of the good white who saves the oppressed black woman from the cruelty of the black man. Undeniably, Philippe becomes Malimouna’s lover; she marvels at the ease with which he works around the house and at his kindness and courtesy. It is true that, unlike Old Sando, Philippe “…avait su réveiller la femme sensuelle qui dormait en [elle] … l’avait initiée aux jeux de l’amour … qu’elle aimait [ses] caresses, sa prévenance, ses baisers”28 (…was able to awake the passionate woman in her ... he had taught her love play … she adored his caresses, his attention, and his kisses). It is also undeniable that her compatriots who saw her at Philippe’s arms thought that she sold her soul to the whites. Nonetheless, Keita’s blacks and whites are human, and the transnational coalitions that they create are more tension-fraught than simple. Keita and Yaou’s West and Africa have something to give to each other, lessons to learn from each other, stereotype to unlearn on each other. This can only take place through an economy of reciprocity that unveils the particular perspectives of the protagonists and places them in situations of confrontation. When Philippe learns of the little Noura’s death in the papers, he is shocked to the point of calling Noura’s parents savages. Though she 138

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disapproves of clitoridectomy, Malimouna is o›ended at Philippe’s Eurocentric views, and she immediately confronts him: “Qu’est-ce que tu connais à la barbarie? hurla-t-elle courroucée.… Malimouna était furieuse de l’entendre lui parler de la sorte…. C’était un raisonnement trop simpliste, une vision trop caricaturale.”29 (What do you know about savagery? Malimouna shouted angrily…. She was incensed to hear him speak to her this way…. This was too simplistic a thinking, too caricatured a view.) Malimouna’s reaction underlines Françoise Lionnet’s idea that [T]o defend excision on strictly relativist grounds is … as misguided as to condemn it on universalist and humanitarian ones, since complex psychological phenomena both in Europe and elsewhere have motivated its existence, and only education and information combined with an open and tolerant approach to di›erent definitions of identity and sexuality may eventually succeed in eradicating it.30

Her quarrel with Philippe leaves Malimouna ambivalent. She knows that Fanta and her husband, like all the parents of Boritouni, love their children greatly and hope to do what is best by them. For them, excision is a right of passage, a necessary purification ritual that is no more barbaric than many rituals that still exist in Europe. Malimouna is convinced that for her to better help her female compatriots, she has to reach them at the source, in Boritouni or in Salouma. So, she goes back to her native country, accompanied by Philippe. However, as soon as they land in Africa, some signs at the airport foretell the di‡culty of the task awaiting Malimouna. Lorsque [Philippe et Malimouna] atterrirent [à Salouma] au petit matin, une chaleur moite les accueillit. Elle avait oublié la lourdeur de ce climat tropical. Elle était chez elle, son cœur battait très fort. Philippe la regarda et lui entoura les épaules de son bras vigoureux. Elle se fit toute petite devant le regard du douanier qui avait suivi ce geste d’un air dégoûté.3¡ [At dawn, (Philippe and Malimouna) landed (in Salouma) on a moist and hot day. She had forgotten the heaviness of this tropical climate. She was at home; her heart was pounding. Philippe looked at her and protected her shoulders with his strong arm. The gaze of the customs o‡cer, who had looked at them with disgust, intimidated her.]

The stu›y tropical climate and the customs agent’s disdainful look augur the di‡culty for Malimouna to find the platform of compromise or point de capiton she is looking for between African and Western perspectives. This locus should be suprascientific; it should be at the crossroads of African mysticism and Western science, a moment that reveals itself as the intermingling of two apparently irreconcilable outlooks. In Le Prix Yaou arrives at this moment of conciliation through some very clever allusions. Loic, Ko‡ and A‡ba’s son, coming to his grandfa139

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ther’s home through the backyard door, eavesdrop on his aunt E›oua gossiping about his mother, accusing her of killing his father in order to take over his wealth. The child falls into a traumatic state. He is struck with aphasia. To help the Loic recover his voice, Ismael Koulibaly, his father’s best friend, following the doctors’ recommendation, imitates Ko‡’s voice and encourages the child to reveal the cause of his shock. The strange dialogue between Ismael/Ko‡ and Loic, which incidentally cures the child, and later on, Diane’s (Loic’s sister’s) revelation that she has been seeing the protective apparition of her father in the family home, are signs of the author’s veiled admission of the possibility of interaction between the world of the dead and that of the living. Like most Akan, Yaou does not totally reject the hypothesis of the paranormal. Common Akan belief is a syncretism of Christianity and a psychoanalytical animism that was for a long time represented by such holy figures as prophets Atcho and Papa Novo, legendary for their ability to cure by means of local plants, confession sessions, and invocation of Christian and ancestral gods. However, there appears in Le Prix an e›ort to find rational explanations to irrational phenomena. As if to apply a layer of science to the mysterious, it is under the direction of Doctor Mounier (a French) and his assistant, Doctor Trazié (an Ivorian) that takes place the experiment that gives Loic his voice back. In Yaou’s work, the signs of the coming together of the mysterious and the scientific, of the national and the transnational, and of the known and the unknown are very recurrent ones. In fact, after a terrible tra‡c accident, A‡ba, Diane, and Loic are hospitalized. Ezan (A‡ba’s father) tries to convince Julien (his daughter Manzan’s husband, who is also a doctor) that A‡ba’s accident is the result of a curse by Old Mansah, her father-in-law, who has not given up Ko‡’s heritage. Julien is not so swayed by this supernatural explanation to A‡ba’s accident. Nevertheless, Ezan urges him to draw on all his Western science to save his daughter, promising, as for him, to seek traditional help. Tu sais, Julien, il ne faut pas badiner avec l’esprit des morts! Pour un médecin, évidemment, le mort c’est le corps réfrigéré … mais un mort ce n’est pas seulement cela. De ton côté, Julien, ne lésine sur aucun moyen pour sauver A‡ba. Du nôtre, nous tenterons aussi quelque chose.32 [You know, Julien, one should not underestimate the spirit of the dead. Of course for a doctor, a dead person is no more than a frozen body … but in reality, a dead person is much more than that. Julien, spare no energy to save A‡ba. We will also try something.] Pendant qu’on appliquait sur le corps d’A‡ba la science des Blancs, on essaierait de sauver son âme par la mystique des Noirs. Bien qu’infirmier, Ezan 140

8—New Nomadologies n’avait pas un esprit cartésien; pour lui, l’homme n’était pas seulement un corps; il avait aussi une âme sur laquelle on pouvait agir.33 [While A‡ba was being tended to with Western science, one had also decided to try and save her soul by means of African mysticism. Although he was a nurse, Ezan did not possess a Cartesian mind. For him, a human being had a body and a soul upon which one could act.]

In the meantime, Gnamke, A‡ba’s mother, will burn some candles to the Virgin Mary, and Old Mensah will send a delegation to warn Ezan’s Family that they will be held responsible if anything happens to A‡ba and her children.34 Soon Ko‡’s widow and her children are out of danger, and it remains a mystery whether they were saved by the white man’s science or the black man’s mysticism, by rationality or irrationality, by one’s knowledge or the other’s. Such is the beautiful irony in Yaou’s work: the erection falls, but it falls from being too heavy of its own desire. Patriarchy collapses under its own weight. Is it not the young Loic Mensah, the proper name of the proper name (Ko‡ Mensah) of the proper name of the father (Old Mensah), who must be rejected so that genealogy is maintained, so that the proper name persists? Is it not the young Loic who, like an anti-genealogical grain, comes back through the backyard door as soon as he is rejected through the front door, to test the legitimacy of the Name-of-the-Father? — Grand-père, pourquoi toi et la famille ne voulez pas partager avec nous ce que papa a laissé? — Loïc, ne me dis pas que je ne t’aime pas. Comment peut-on ne pas aimer la chair de sa chair, le sang de son sang? Répondit le grand-père. Si, je vous aime, Diane, votre maman et toi! Surtout toi qui ressembles tant à ton père. — Tu nous aimes, mais alors pourquoi veux-tu nous jeter dehors et tout nous prendre? Insista l’enfant. — Ce n’est pas moi qui le veux, mais la coutume, mon enfant.35 [“Grandpa, why won’t your family and you share with us what Dad left?” “Loic, don’t go think that I don’t love you. How could I not love the flesh of my own flesh, the blood of my blood? I love you all, you, Diane, and your mom. Especially you. You look so much like your father.” “You say you love us, but you want to throw us out and take everything away from us,” the child insisted. “I don’t want to. That is what our custom demands, my child.”]

Paradoxically, it is the culture police’s resolve to enforce their masculinist tradition that exposes the failures of that tradition. A‡ba’s resistance against Old Mensah’s determination is starting to sow seeds of doubt in some minds. First, it is Ezan, A‡ba’s father, who has started to reject the traditional practices that have caused so many disruptions in his daughter’s life. Ezan is an ancient who speaks to the ancients, but only to upset the law that they have 141

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been entrusted with: “A quel siècle vous croyez-vous? Est-ce que vous vous rendez compte que les temps ont changé et que ce qui se faisait hier ne peut pas forcément se faire aujourd’hui?”36 (Which century do you think you’re living in? Do you realize that times have changed, and that what used to be cannot necessarily be today?) To those of his generation who accuse him of giving in to the white man’s law, Old Ezan has this to say: “Non, la loi des Blancs, vous ne vous en moquez pas. La preuve, vous payez vos impôts, vous circulez avec une carte d’identité et vous évitez de faire certaines choses qui vous mettraient en porte-à-faux vis à vis de cette loi-là.”37 (Yes, you do care about the white man’s law. You pay taxes, carry identity cards, and avoid acting in ways that would go against that law.) Cornered by Old Mensah’s rigidity and driven by a legitimate instinct of conservation, the necessity to defend her children and herself, A‡ba has no other choice but to expose the myth of male superiority in the domestic space. She tells her father-inlaw about Ko‡’s financial problems, which she had up to then refused to divulge: “…Ko‡ a eu des problèmes d’argent.… Et n’eût été mon aide, cela aurait tourné au drame … jamais je n’ai cherché à savoir où était passé cet argent. J’ai juste travaillé pour rembourser … je me suis privée de l’essentiel pour que cela puisse se faire.”38 (Ko‡ had some financial problems.… It could have been worse had I not helped him … I never asked him how he lost the money. I only worked hard to pay it back … I deprived myself of essential things for that.) Then she points out that her particular condition is only a synecdoche of the general condition of women in the domestic space. She recalls men’s duplicity and lack of appreciation by invoking an historical event, the famous march of women in Grand Bassam (the first Ivorian capital) to free their spouses imprisoned by the colonial administration: “…nous les femmes, nous serons toujours celles qui travaillent dans l’anonymat et pour rien. Que la femme sue sang et eau pour aider l’homme à réaliser ce qu’il veut, jamais elle n’en sera remerciée comme il se doit.”39 (We, women, will always be the ones who work in anonymity and for nothing. No matter how hard women work to help men realize their dreams, they will never be fully recognized.) For Ko‡’s widow, it is hard time that women rebelled against an ancestral law that refuses to recognize their important contributions to their society’s development. To Old Mensah, who insists that tradition is what it is, and that it will not change just to accommodate A‡ba, the young woman replies that she will accept nothing short of a compromise. Although A‡ba’s mother finds her daughter too inflexible and advises her to submit to tradition, the widow’s passion is already gaining some adepts among the men, especially those who now understand that the injustice against A‡ba could one day be the fate of their own daughters. 142

8—New Nomadologies Non, intervint Kouaho, l’autre frère de Gnamkè [la mère d’A‡ba], je ne suis pas de ton avis. Peut-être par pur égoïsme. Je pense à mes filles.… Est-ce que tu crois que l’attitude d’A‡ba constitue une exception pour longtemps? … Regarde Eba, ta belle-fille. Une fille dynamique qui brasse mille et une a›aires à la fois.… Je ne le souhaite pas mais si ton fils mourait … je ne serais certainement pas parmi ceux qui iraient réclamer l’héritage.40 [“No,” intervened Kouaho, Gnamke’s other brother; “I do not agree. You may say that I am selfish. I am thinking of my daughters…. For how long do you think that A‡ba’s behavior will remain an exception? … Look at Eba, your daughter-in-law, a dynamic woman who manages several businesses at the same time .… I do not wish it on her, but were your son to pass away suddenly … I would not be of those who would want to turn their backs on her.”]

It is certainly in Ama, Old Mensah’s granddaughter (E›oua’s daughter), that A‡ba finds one of her strongest supporter. The young law student with whom Old Mensah likes to discuss, debunks her grandfather’s position: Regarde autour de toi, pépé. Vois tante A‡ba. N’est-elle pas le type même de celle qui s’est fait piéger? … lorsque j’y pense, j’ai honte, honte pour ma famille, mon clan, mon nom et ma condition de femme.… Vous avez traité A‡ba de tous les noms, vous lui avez porté mille coups bas, elle a résisté. Pourquoi ? La réponse est simple : parce qu’elle sait que c’est elle qui est dans le vrai et qu’un jour, si Dieu le veut, vous le comprendrez…. Sa petite fille partie, Mensah s’abîma dans de sombre réflexions. Tout ce monde qui lui disait qu’il était injuste, avait-il raison? … Il se sentait comme un homme debout dans une barque où l’eau s’était infiltrée sans qu’il l’eût su.4¡ [Look around you, Grandpa. Look at Aunt A‡ba. Is she not a trapped woman? … Whenever I think about it, I feel shame; I am ashamed of my family, my clan, my name, and my condition as a woman…. You treated A‡ba in the worst ways possible, you gave her the most coward blows, and she is still standing up. Why? Because she knows that she is right, and that someday, God willing, you will understand it…. Once his daughter left, Mensah shut himself in somber reflections. All these people who told him that he was unfair, could they be right? … He felt as if he was standing in a sinking canoe.]

Does not the straightforwardness with which Old Mensah accepts his grandchildren’s (Ama and Loic’s) criticism as well as his daughter-in-law’s condemnation forebode his readiness for change? Is this not a sign that all Old Mensah is waiting for is that enough people converge toward A‡ba’s position so that his own change of mind would not be regarded as a capitulation but rather has a struggle to the end and a concession prompted by the strength of the opposing camp? Old Mensah’s eagerness to talk and listen to the young generation is that which allows that generation to question the law the he defends. Old Mensah is in fact the sacristan who, in the bell tower, sounds the tocsin for tradition. This is at least what A‡ba seems to be saying to those who are dumbfounded by the happy turn of events: “Je n’ai rien 143

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fait de spécial [pour obtenir la paix]. Je me suis juste entretenue avec le Vieux Mensah. Rien ne nous dit qu’il n’avait pas songé à enterrer la hache de guerre avant notre discussion.”42 (I did nothing special [to obtain peace]. I just had a conversation with Old Mensah. I am convinced that he had already thought of burying the hatchet even before we spoke.) This ambiguity, which the reader might misunderstand as a mere Hegelian dialectic, constitutes one of the central themes in Ivorian women’s literature. The di›erence between Hegelian dialectic and what I have unveiled in Yaou’s and Keita’s works is the emphasis in these women’s work on the notion of nomadic experience. This is a crucial di›erence that needs to be very explicit. For that I shall quote Hegel at length. Self-consciousness has before it another self-consciousness; it has come outside itself. This has a double significance. First it has lost its own self, since it finds itself as an other being; secondly, it has thereby sublated that other, for it does not regard the other as essentially real, but sees its own self in the other. It must cancel this its other. To do so is the sublation of that first double meaning, and is therefore a second double meaning. First, it must itself to sublate the other independent being, in order thereby to become certain of itself as true being, secondly, it thereupon proceeds to sublate its own self, for this other is itself. This sublation in a double sense of its otherness in a double sense is at the same time a return in a double sense into its self. For, firstly, through sublation, it gets back itself, because it becomes one with itself through the cancelling of its otherness; but secondly, it likewise gives otherness back again to the other self-consciousness, for it was aware of being in the other, it cancels this its own being in the other and thus lets the other again go free.43

What are we learning? That the process of recognition necessarily implies an intersubjective relationship, whereby any consciousness of self is contingent upon another consciousness of self and, at the same time, remains distinct from that other consciousness of self. It is this relationship between consciousnesses— the fact that they are both discreet and interdependent — that Hegel characterizes as complex, and which remains at the center of the process of recognition. In spite of their indivisibility, the di›erent consciousnesses of self are unconscious of their necessary reciprocity, each of them remaining certain of its being but not convinced of the other’s being. The certainty of these two consciousnesses, which is only a subjective certainty, and therefore a false one, will become an objective, and thus true certainty only through a life and death struggle, for, It is solely by risking life that freedom is obtained; only thus is it tried and proved that the essential nature of self-consciousness is not bare existence, is not the merely immediate form in which it at first makes its appearance, is not its mere absorption in the expanse of life.44 144

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Nevertheless, as Hegel insists, the arena of the struggle by which the subjective truth of consciousness of self becomes objective must be purely metaphysical for “…just as life is the natural ‘position’ of consciousness, independence without absolute negativity, so death is the natural ‘negation’ of consciousness, negation without independence, which thus remains without the requisite significance of actual recognition.”45 Therefore, it would be explicable that a superficial reading of Yaou’s and Keita’s novels identifies Hegel’s signature in the various intersubjective rapports that are at play in them. The encounter between Mireille (Ko‡’s mistress) and A‡ba (the deceived wife) precipitated by the escapade of their respective children (Frank and Loic Mensah) could be placed under the sign of phenomenality. Yaou’s method allows her readers to first acquaint themselves with the viewpoints of A‡ba (the deceived wife) and Mireille (the cause of A‡ba’s grief ). This presentation of both perspectives that do not contradict each other, because they are not yet in confrontation, gives the readers the opportunity to understand Mireille’s and A‡ba’s feelings, as both of them believe that they have been victimized. Thus the reader learns that Mireille and A‡ba have both su›ered solitude and the anguish of waiting in vain for Ko‡ each time he was at the other woman’s home; and both of them have felt guilty each time he was in their arms and no at the other woman’s home. Each woman is shut within the world of her ideas and her truths. However, these truths are only subjective truths. The worlds in which these two women see themselves as victims exist independently from one another and, like Leibniz’s possible but incompatible worlds, will never meet. Yaou does not stop at this Leibnizian conception of experience. In a gesture that one could rightly qualify as Hegelian, Yaou allows Mireille’s and A‡ba’s singular positions to meet up. — Ko‡, jouissant de l’impunité sociale, pouvait se permettre de jouer les infidèles en toute quiétude. Mais vous [Mireille]? Au nom de quoi agissiez-vous de la sorte? Vous était-il jamais venu à l’esprit que j’en sou›rais? — Je sais que vous avez sou›ert puisqu’en pareille circonstance, il ne peut en être autrement.… Vous disiez que je vous avais volé l’amour de votre mari; sans vouloir vous o›enser, je vous demande si vous étiez sûre qu’il vous aimait. — Voudriez-vous insinuer que Ko‡ m’a épousée sans amour? — Je n’irais pas jusqu’à l’a‡rmer, mais c’est un point de vue à envisager.46 [“As a man, Ko‡ could take advantage of social impunity and be unfaithful. But you, Mireille, in the name of what did you act this way? Did you ever realize that I was su›ering?” “I know that you su›ered. How wouldn’t you? However, do you think that Ko‡ loved you?” “Are you insinuating that Ko‡ married me without loving me?” “This would not be impossible.”] 145

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The confrontation between these two discreet perspectives that found themselves involved in Ko‡’s life is, to remain in a Hegelian posture, a life and death struggle in the world of ideas, where no word is sugarcoated and no truth is hidden. Nonetheless, here stops the Hegelian analogy, for one should recall that in the Phenomenology, Hegel’s consciousness is an absolute singularity confronting another absolute singularity. As Derrida puts it, Hegel’s life and death struggle for recognition opposes consciousnesses totalized through the familial process.47 In contrast, the individuals that evolve in Keita’s Rebelle and Yaou’s Le Prix de la révolte are always already antifamily, anti-genealogical. They are nomad consciousnesses, caught in a perpetual movement of becoming. Malimouna, the main protagonist of Rebelle is certainly the most illustrative character of this infinitive condition. A little village girl with no formal education, she left her native country for France and came back years later as a social worker, escorted by Philippe Blain. However, Malimouna — shall we say Keita?— seems to imply that the terms and conditions of her relationship with France (via Philippe) must not be inscribed in rock. Africa does not have to remain in an abusive relation with itself nor with the West. Africans must have the freedom to establish the alliances they think are fair and to avoid the pacts they see as dishonest. For the millions of Africans who experience every day the lack of reciprocity between Europe and its former colonies, this proposition is of great political, economic, and social weight; furthermore, it translates the very political postures of divorce from France that more and more Francophone African leaders, such as Laurent Gbagbo of Côte d’Ivoire, Paul Kagamé of Rwanda, Paul Biya of Cameroon, Alpha Konaré of Mali, have been adopting toward the increasingly insensitive, even racist and xenophobic French rhetoric of the late Chiraquian and early Sarkozian years. As soon as he arrives in Africa, Philippe Blain adopts the average European’s posture of supremacy and contempt towards the natives Africans. Like these racist Europeans who, in Africa, enjoyed “…un luxe que beaucoup ne connaissaient pas chez eux”48 (a comfort they could never a›ord in their own countries), and who kept telling Malimouna that she was di›erent from her fellow countrymen, Philippe made Malimouna feel guilty of her association with him. She was always talking about freeing her sisters from the bondage of male domination and yet she seemed to overlook France’s bigotry against Africa. Keita’s solution to this state of things is a radical one, which goes counter the general conception of the African woman as a person who is uncertain and who lacks decision power. Having walked upon Philippe’s 146

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sister making racist comments about her, Malimouna is so upset that she falls in the stairs and loses her pregnancy, thereby losing the baby that could have kept her irremediably linked to Philippe. Heartbroken over the death of his unborn child, Philippe decides to return to Paris, a gesture that mirrors the reluctant withdrawal of the colonizing power that leaves its lost empire, nevertheless, in an ultimate nostalgic posture, not without recommending itself to that very empire. Philippe n’avait pu supporter la séparation.… Il l’aimait toujours, avait-il dit à Malimouna, et ne pourrait pas vivre dans la même ville qu’elle sans la voir.… Il avait insisté pour qu’elle garde, au nom de ce qui avait existé entre eux, tout ce qu’il avait acheté pour la maison. Par ses relations il lui avait même trouvé du travail.… Elle pourrait toujours compter sur lui, quoi qu’il advienne. Elle avait son adresse.49 [Philippe was heartbroken by the separation…. He told Malimouna that he still loved her and could not live in the same city as her without being able to see her…. He insisted that, in the name of the time they had shared together, she should keep everything they bought for the house. He even used his connections to find her a job…. She could always count on him. She had his contact.]

Philippe (shall we say France) now gone, Malimouna can give her full attention to a national struggle for the liberation of the black woman from the bondage of the black man. It is Karim — her husband from the same village, who, at the beginning of their relation was not bothered by her condition of non-excised or by her activism — that becomes Malimouna’s toughest challenge. Karim becomes quickly resentful of Malimouna’s popularity within the Association d’Aide à la Femme en Di‡culté (the AAFD) and turns out to be a violent character. Karim cheats on Malimouna and beats her up, which makes Malimouna realize the endemic nature of the syndrome she is combating: Like the women she is trying to help, Malimouna is a battered woman, too. It is, nevertheless, Karim’s moral and physical violence on Malimouna and his eagerness to make her a submissive traditional woman by restricting her movements that strengthen the woman’s desire to free herself; psychologically, Malimouna unshackles herself by telling the story of her flight to a large audience. Physically, she liberates herself by asking for divorce. To make her pay for this humiliation, Karim denounces Malimouna to Old Sando’s relatives, who, convinced that Malimouna is still traditionally married into their family, kidnap her and set about to excise her. As Malimouna is about to go under the knife of the excision woman, two busloads of energized women from the AAFD pour into the village and compel the villagers to let her go. Like A‡ba in Le Prix, Malimouna has won her fight against 147

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patriarchy. However, she remains aware of the fleeting nature of her victory. It is only a temporary relief in the long process of transformation that has to take place before the African woman can finally be viewed as an equal partner to the African man, and to any man for that matter. Other struggles are awaiting her; other transnational anguishes are still to be experienced; other new transcultural alliances are to be established, and other becomings are to be explored. Were we to find among black women writers some forerunners to the kind of vigilant consciousness displayed in Yaou’s and Keita’s novels, were we to locate some antecedents to this gesture by which the social subject is always already expecting the unpredictable, were we to find traces of this literary posture, whereby the interstices of the (en)closure actually open up the edifice of interiority to the exterior, it is perhaps to Guadeloupe and, above all, to Algeria that we might turn.

MARYSE CONDÉ AND THE PACT WITH THE OTHER In a novel, which so convincingly tells of getting around as black, woman, animist, and slave — either taken together or individually — Maryse Condé, the Guadeloupean writer, indicates that, in the recesses of what is being said and all what could be said, there could be opened the space for what is not to be said — which often amounts to the dilemma of the black woman. In I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem,50 Maryse Condé resurrects her main protagonist, Tituba, a black slave from the Barbados, so that, in the world of the living, she can insert her own story in the interstices of conventional History. Conceived in a violent act of rape, Tituba witnessed the hanging of her mother, Abena, who dared to strike her white master, as he was about to rape her. So Tituba, the daughter of Abena, was banned from the Master’s plantation, and she became, by this strange circumstance, a free person at a very tender age. Initiated in the arts of the occult by an old slave woman, Mama Yaya, who raised her unbeknownst to the Master, Tituba became herself a very skilled healer. After the death of her mentor, Tituba retired in a hut by the Ormond River, where she lived a solitary life until she fell in love with an audacious slave named John Indian. Tituba’s love for this slave, whom she married, led her, too, into bondage, as she chose to follow John Indian wherever his master would take him. What makes Condé’s originality among black French women writers 148

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is her ability to interpellate alterity — to say “You too … despite so many di›erences?”— while, at the same time, acknowledging the demands of individual agencies. Condé’s blasphemous gesture in I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem— by which she forms some deliberately precarious alliances with the interdicted — registers both a joyous negation of Hegelian dialectic — which had so far pervaded postcolonial letters in general, and griotism in particular — and a celebration of the pluridimensionality of the subject. Tituba’s unpredictable stance on the maternal function of the female figure is, without doubt, an insurgence against a traditional conception of womanhood in African and Caribbean societies. At the same time, however, as if Condé were hesitant to vex authority, her mutinous discourse in I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem, which is not so apparent, but proceeds, rather, by detours and circumlocutions, seems to duplicate Negritude’s meta-discourse. Although Condé denounces, through her main protagonist, the representation of woman as a mythical being —“What stories had they woven about me?”— she nonetheless shows little enthusiasm in dispelling the fable of the powerful woman as necessarily evil. Recalling her first encounter with the slaves of the neighboring plantations, Tituba is amazed at how much influence she has on them. The minute they saw me, everybody jumped into the grass and knelt down, while half a dozen of respectful, yet terrified eyes looked up at me. I was taken aback. What stories had they woven about me? Why did they seem to be afraid of me? I should have thought they would have felt sorry for me instead, me the daughter of a hanged woman and a recluse who lived alone on the edge of a pond. I realized that they were mainly thinking about my connection with Mama Yaya, whom they had feared.5¡

Coincidentally, however, Tituba’s power and independence seem to be necessarily mediated by her repulsiveness; and it is John Indian, the man who will later seduce her, who underlines this symmetry: “Hey, are you Tituba? It’s not surprising people are afraid of you. Have you looked at yourself recently? … You don’t know how to talk and your hair is a tangle. You could be lovely if you wanted to.”52 Later, as she falls under John Indian’s masculine gaze, Tituba learns both to hate her body and to refashion it into what she believes John Indian would appreciate. It is thus John Indian who reveals Tituba’s “ugliness” to her and gives her the first criterion of womanhood, to be beautiful and less threatening according to what beauty is in the discourse of Man. Up until now, I had never thought about my body. Was I beautiful? Was I ugly? I had no idea. What had he said? “…you could be lovely … your hair is a tangle….” The next morning when I awoke I went down the River Ormond and cut my mop of hair as best as I could.53 149

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As she cuts her hair out of love for John Indian, Tituba also cuts herself loose from her power and her freedom; as if the locus of freedom and power were in her neglected appearance; as if coquetry was not compatible with strength, she abandons herself to John Indian whom she follows into bondage to Boston, and whose phallus keeps haunting her, long after he has betrayed her. When taken from this angle, it is easy to conclude that Condé does not innovate, but rather repeats a paradigm that has time and time again been performed by many Francophone black women writers, and which we have already uncovered in the writings of Bâ and Fall. However, such a judgment on Condé’s I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem could be mistaken. Tituba is far from being a univocal character. She epitomizes such a polymorphous signifier that it becomes di‡cult if not impossible to seize her in a unique and complete tableau at any given moment. She is perpetually a play of multiplicities. She encompasses the desires of the mother and the incestuous lover, the healer and the adulterous, the prolifer and the abortionist (she aborts her first child and helps bring many others to life, or vows to protect her second pregnancy against all odds); she is the voice of tradition but also that of the future. Tituba’s unpredictable stance on the maternal function of the female figure could be read as an insurgence against a traditional conception of the role of women in African and Caribbean societies. In Fall’s and Bâ’s novels, the image of the childless woman is a rare scene. Womanhood is first and foremost synonymous with maternity, and the “good” women of L’Ex-père de la nation are all mothers of numerous children. Likewise, Ramatoulaye, Bâ’s main protagonist in So Long a Letter, has “given” twelve children to Modou in twenty-five years. In this context, a woman’s value is measured by the number of children she has, and a childless family is a disgrace for the woman, who is too often regarded as the sole person responsible for this “failure.” By aborting her first child, Tituba seems to not only question this African and Caribbean notion of woman-ness, but she also challenges a religious (Christian/Islamic) order that forbids abortion and promotes motherhood as one of the primary function of the female figure. As if her mutiny against traditional and religious principles were not shocking enough, Tituba pushes her blasphemy to the point of introducing into Preacher Parris’s home her “hoodoo” practices, and making a pious Jewish’s (Benjamin Cohen d’Azevedo’s) entire family, the collaborators and fervent accomplices in her nocturnal rituals. Nevertheless, as soon as her re-definition of womanhood seems to bring Tituba close to a common perception of feminism, she rebels against a certain feminism (Mama Yaya’s), which wants no part in men’s lives. Mama 150

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Yaya, too, remains an unorthodox ancestral voice in that she is the opposite of the traditional ancestral representation such as epitomized by Madiama’s mother, Coumba Dado Sadio in L’Ex-père de la nation. While Coumba Dadio Sadio views marriage as a fulfilling institution within which women are meant to accomplish their natural duties, Mama Yaya compares marriage with a system of incarceration whereby, under bondage, women lose their freedom to men: You talk about freedom. Have you any idea what it means? Then she disappeared before I had time to ask her any more questions. I took it that she was in a bad mood. Did she have to find fault with every man who lived with me? Why did she want me to live in solitude?54

Like Madiama’s mother, Coumba Dado Sadio, Mama Yaya represents the ancestral voice, but not necessarily the voice of reason. Like the protagonists of So Long a Letter or of L’Ex-père de la nation, Tituba invokes her ancestors’ ghosts. Nevertheless, unlike Ramatoulaye or Coura, for whom it is unthinkable to irritate the ancients, Tituba does not always follow the ancestral advice, as she spends days refusing to communicate with them even when they are trying to contact her. Tituba’s feminism is one that refuses to be enclosed within a fixed paradigm. It is by choice that she follows John Indian to Salem and loses her freedom. Nonetheless, this decision seems to be underscored by something greater than decidability: Tituba is a woman and she has some desires that are greater than all the hatred she harbors against men’s treachery. Her feminism does not erase men from the picture. She enjoys their embraces, and she takes her jouissance with them, as many of them as she can — John Indian, Benjamin Cohen d’Azevedo, Christopher, Iphigène (and even a subliminal homosexual jouissance with Hester) with no feeling of guilt — even though her promiscuity seems to be prompted by a need to find substitutes to the bliss she experienced with John Indian during her American nights. Furthermore, unlike Ramatoulaye, a lifelong prisoner of her tradition (literally four months ten days), and the unsatisfied Coura, enclosed within the walls of the presidential palace, Tituba, the feminist, is a traveler who annexes physical spaces by virtue of the fact that her journeys are spatial journeys of initiation rather than mere temporal ones. This is important, insofar as in Negritude literatures, temporal or subliminal journeys have generally been women’s province whereas spatial journeys have been men’s reserve. In black French letters, the notion of heroism has often been closely tied to the idea of spatial journeying. Consequently, the male hero is first and foremost a traveler. The black leader is often the black man who, hav151

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ing traveled outside the circle of his peers, outside the secure environment of his culture and tradition into the risky, unpredictable, and threatening environment of the other, returns to his people as an initiate filled with the wisdom and the strength that make great champions.55 The journey of the Leader-Fondamental is therefore a spatial round-trip journey, neither a oneway trip into exile — as is the case with Ramatoulaye’s friend, Aïssatou in So Long a Letter —nor a merely temporal, dream-like excursion into time. Both Senghor and Césaire accomplished their trip of initiation by entering the unknown and frightening forest of the West and by returning wiser from it. Their trips mimic the Christian hero’s pilgrimage as it is marked with many emotional, but most importantly, physical obstacles.56 Just as the initiate entering the sacred forest leaves behind him the security of homeland and family, the Nègre Fondamental in search of his accomplishment penetrates the hostile white’s world without his family’s emotional and physical support. The di‡culty of the initiation trip only legitimizes the Nègre Fondamental as a Leader Fondamental; for, having completed his pilgrimage, it is henceforth the initiate who will codify the laws of the initiation process for those who have yet to follow his example. As Senghor and Césaire, now Initiés-Initiateurs and Grand-Narrators, have shown by example, the initiation journey for the black French who aspires to leadership ought to be not mere wishful thinking, but a real round trip to and from the land of the other. For, if journey is a form of initiation, only physical journey is a powerful expression of annexation of speech and space.57 Tituba breaks ground by following the steps of the male heroes of Francophone black letters, as she moves from the Barbados to Salem and back to the Barbados, where she gets involved in the maroons resistance movement. Perhaps, Condé is trying to communicate through Tituba’s flaws and qualities that feminism does not necessarily need to be a house of a single corner nor a perfect one, but rather a place where one is allowed to grope and to express individuality. From this perspective, feminism becomes a concept — rather than a fixed signifier — which finds its definitions within the particular conditions where it is put to work. In I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem, one of the multiple significations of feminism is that it constitutes the place of a possible ideological alliance between the West and the East. It is a place where lines of flight converge, where it becomes possible — be it only provisionally — to forge a common language for naming a common experience. The kind of language which Tituba, the slave, and Mrs. Parris, the Master’s wife, use to understand each other’s pain when abused by Samuel Parris. 152

8—New Nomadologies He struck me. His dry knifelike hand struck my mouth and made it bleed. At the sight of the red trickle Goodwife Parris regained her strength, sat up, and said in rage: “Samuel, you have no right.” He struck her in turn. She too bled. This blood sealed our alliance.58

It is also the kind of idiom which allows Tituba, the black slave, and Benjamin Cohen d’Azevedo, the Jew man, to share their stories of oppression. In the evening, Benjamin Cohen d’Azevedo joined me in the attic where, I slept in a brass bed…. “Tituba, do you know what it is to be a Jew? … Do you know how many of us lost their lives under the Inquisition?” I retorted by interrupting him: “And what about us? Do you know how many of us have been bled from the coast of Africa?”59

The literary mutiny, which Condé seems to express with some reservation, finds its full expression when a philosopher and professor of literature takes upon himself to write a novel which tells about his own experience.

OUT OF THE EXOTIC NATION: RÉDA BENSMAÏA’S THE YEAR OF PASSAGES It is ultimately Réda Bensmaïa who seems to start answering the question of how to render to Césaire/Senghor what belongs to Césaire/Senghor in order to write otherwise. Bensmaïa seems to suggest that, provided one is prepared to acknowledge the intrinsic schizoidal nature of humanity, there is a way out of the collective folly. The Algerian scholar’s writings hint at the fact that the subject is a nomad for whom the teleological discourse of the unified exotic nation is not necessarily the place of identification. What would Frantz Fanon’s reaction be, were he, by the e›ect of an abracadabra of contemporary cyber age, brought back to life, precisely to Algeria, the nation to whose freedom he devoted his life? Today, Algeria is torn by a war that it wages more against itself than against an imperialist power. Since the ¡962 glory of the Front de Libération National, internal factions have been battling one another within the Algerian nation. In compelling narratives that are reterritorialized somewhere at the crossroads of autobiography, theory and fiction, Bensmaïa, tells of the necessity and dangers of functioning on the margin of the concept of Algerianity, and of any nationality for that matter. The subjectivity conceived by Bensmaïa is engaged in a constant battle to debunk all notions of cultural strategy, identity and representation and their subsequent violence of presumptuousness, objectification, fixation, stigmatization, and pragmatic inertia. Bensmaïa introduces a new nomadology, which, were one to toy with sim153

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plistic definitions at all, would be called a practical politics of open end or a metaphysical delaying. The Year of Passages intervenes amidst the violence of Islamist and military ideologies in Algeria. If the book casts a critical glance upon the political, economic, and social life of Algeria as Algerians construct it, it is also very appropriate to say that the historical context that has led to the chaotic North African nation as we know it today is not left untouched. The responsibility of France in this state of things is clearly established along with that of Algeria, which causes Bensmaïa’s novel to wage several battles simultaneously on several fronts. It is only by writing as a schizophrenic that the Algerian born writer succeeds in maintaining his head above the swirling waters which, in every battle, threaten to win him over. The Algerian quagmire today is the result of a desire to run away from an abusive father (France) whose goal was to francophonize the child to the maximum. In that respect, the two main tendencies, which in Algeria cannot stand one another (Arabophone and Francophone), can agree on something, and Bensmaïa’s incisive social criticism spares neither the notion of Francophony nor that of Algerianity: “In Francophony there is Franco! We’ll francophonize them, we’ll francophony them! Then we’ll see what happens! Hey! Get a load of that Francophone! Francophonossimo! I am at your service, Generalissimo!”60 Historically, in ¡962, year of their independence from France, the Francophonized Algerians had enough of Francophony and enough of a white God; and so they decided to get rid of the Francophonissimo-Generalissimo (Gide, Camus, Sartre, Proust) in order to operate a return to the sources “by means of the purifying Islam.” It was no longer fashionable to be Francophone; “What about Gidiot? She [Macha, the narrator’s female alter ego] says. What’d you do with Gidiot? Tu l’as jeté à la poubelle? Did you throw him out? Rumor around the university has it that some of your students think you’re a faggot. Are you aware of that?”6¡ This euphoric period of honeymoon, which saw the departure of the French invader and the erection of national identity in Algeria does not seem to have met the approval of the entire population. The Year of Passages satirizes the Algerian faith in a collective ideological or theological salvation by denouncing the intolerance of Islam through the immobility of the ghostly town of Algiers during the Ramadanic month, when all pleasurable acts (drinking, eating, smoking, fornicating and blaspheming) are forbidden until Dhôr (twilight). Algeria, melancholia, it doesn’t stop, and it’s hard to take, no rectifications!, with one and only one consolation: no dogs in the streets, no cats in the streets, it’s too early for the 154

8—New Nomadologies animal clan, too early for the sebsi smokers and the domino players, too early too for the bearers of shadows, too early too for the men in this city, but that’s because all the bistros of the city are closed, it’s because all the whorehouses of the city are closed and it’s the month of Ramadan all the bars of the city of A* are closed.62

In the local cafés, the Brasserie des Facs and the Tabarin, non–Muslims or Muslim sinners, who meet to socialize and recapture some parts of their daily lives put on hold by the theologico-ideological war-machine, organize a sort of passive resistance to this Islamic tendency to totalize the desires of all Algerians in the name of (Algerian) national identity. This protest is symbolically staged through the consumption of the infidel’s pagan goods, a French Gauloise (brand of cigarette), an American chewing gum, but also a jujube. It is this pluricultural, transnational taste, which one likes sometimes, and which sometimes one swallows with di‡culty, to which one is all the same receptive, that keeps the revolution alive in the book. Such is the taste of The Year of Passages, eclectic, deterritorialized, and constantly in the making. Such is the style of the author: Debunking a world and at the same time learning to live through it. Bensmaïa’s resistance is not original; it is his method that commends admiration. The Year of Passages resists by compression of time and condensation of space. By virtue of the first operation, time is reduced to its cybernetic component, so much so that the passage from one space or species to the next is the dizzying, science fiction like translation or transposition that only retains the imminence that forces deterritorialization and reterritorialization. The circumstances of the narrator’s departure from his homeland are as dramatic as those that lead him from London to Golden Valley, in Minnesota. Some special agents have put out a contract on you, they want to bump you o›…. As you know you are going to be shot down, eliminated wherever you are and no matter what you are doing. Set an example. Our informants are formal: they want to make an example of you … for the time being, the smart thing to do is … to send you to the United States.63

A resistance in any particular space (Algiers, Paris, London, Minneapolis) resonates in all the other spaces. What takes place in the narrator’s attic in Golden Valley, Minnesota, disturbs the imperatives of the sacrosanct month of Ramadan. This explains his being tracked by religious fundamentalists. No matter how far the narrator is from the center — Algiers, or any fundamentalist capital for that matter — he still confronts death. No matter how far he is on the periphery, religious and ideological institutions cannot be saved from his criticism. Cultural bankers can still hear him as if he were whispering in their ears: “immanent and tragic! Tragic because of imma155

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nence! For once we’re not going to look for a foreign element in the enemy’s bazaar! The worm is in the fruit!”64 The narrator is a satirizing “animal in the attic”—satyre dans l’attique. This phrase for which Bensmaïa seems to have a certain predilection almost invites the readers of The Years of Passages to perform — in the same way the narrator of the novel did on several occasions— a few irresistible exegeses: In sacrosanct, there is sacrosaint, Ça crocs— it/id fangs. Ça croque seins —it/id nibbles nipples. In Satyr, there is ça tire— it/id shoots/fornicates.

These glosses only point to something that the narrator has already acknowledged as the essence of his indeterminacy, the transmutability that guarantees his multi-level subjectivities, a becoming-man, a Macha-man (Macha is the narrator’s female alter ego a provocatrix dominatrix), a dogman. A bitch of a woman! Hell, I can’t fuck a bitch…. She dirties everything wherever she goes…. She pisses on everything she passes…. But how I long for her! How she fascinates me! How I want her! O Allah, all-powerful, how can I become a dog? Can I be a dog who doesn’t know he is a dog? Look how I smell things so well! Look how good my snout is!65

The narrator becomes, or is becoming-animal, through a fascination for the multiplicity or the pack, but a multiplicity that already dwells in him. He is becoming-sorcerer, a line of flight. However, what matters is no longer what he is or what he becomes; what takes precedence is rather the process, the becoming— itself, the very element that structural griotism does not account for or treats as a scandal, an idiosyncrasy of degrading nature pervading the pure collective (un)consciousness, By virtue of the operation of condensation, the narrator, a Mrad-RédaMacha-Redmer-Nono-Siphi-schizophrenic-(n-¡)-kind of becoming’s own story is enmeshed in a constellation of narratives. He endorses a plurivocity of desires and speaks in favor of a multiplicity of struggles. The language of The Year of Passages does not shy away from mixing scholarly French with lexical Arabic, Latin, Greek and English interferences, and Bensmaïa makes no apology —“no rectification!”—for taking advantage of the latest print technologies. The book, which is a becoming-theory, becoming-autobiography, becoming-tale, becoming-literature, displays characters stammering between languages, in their own languages even. Characters in The Year of Passages zigzag beneath the surface, like strangers to themselves. Bensmaïa puts forth an open-ended nomadology, a literary mutiny, and a schizophrenic production that does its revolution from anywhere. 156

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Certainly, Bensmaïa’s Africa di›ers in many instances from Césaire’s, Condé’s, or Confiant’s Caribbean, or Senghor’s, Mudimbé’s, or Fall’s Africa. Nevertheless, the Algerian-born author gives us the primeur of an exemplary revolution. He does not operate a return to the authentic sources in order to come back, a few centuries later, with some magical formulae. He does not apologize for using a pseudo-Western language that would be incompatible with his Berberity. He is a nomad that has invaded the world and that the world has invaded. He is henceforth aware that the symbolic sign no longer belongs to anybody — has it ever! In the words of Conley, the novel “tells about how to stay alive and not be killed either by one’s brethren or by the war machine of capital institution.”66 The Year of Passages leaves the established trace— track or path — of griotism in order to speak, in the écart or margin the languages of becomingn-¡ subjectivities. To the postcolonial Francophone writer, Bensmaïa’s novel poses a compelling question: Are the structural grounds on which the colonized French decided the strategies for his or her revolution during the Negritude and post–Negritude eras still valid anchors from which to claim one’s identity? Unlike Mudimbé, Fanon, Césaire or Senghor, Bensmaïa gives no hint that on the margins of the teleological war machine one is necessarily engaged in a losing flirtatious rapport with tragedy. On the contrary, one seems to detect in his writing the suggestion that the way to defer tragedy — which lurks more often from within the collective consciousness than from without — is for individuals to o›er a constant re-invention of themselves. Spivak has called this project of re-invention “teeth cleaning.”67 Bensmaïa styles successfully exemplify this notion of re-invention by preempting both Derrida’s grammatological and a-centered dance and Deleuze and Guattari’s self-vibrating, self-multiplying, always a-signifying, rhizomorphous assemblage. Like Derrida, the Algerian-born writer walks that fine line of self-consciousness by means of which he is always both inside and outside the paradigm, by means of which, his styles always elude style and evade stigmatization. Bensmaïa’s stance, like Derrida’s is a metaphor of displacement, less concerned with duplicating a paradigmatic tendency than subverting the parameter, refusing to be pinned down by any literary or metaphysical tradition. It is a style that allows the writer to delete his own signature as he writes. This exercise — this fleet, or échappée —that always seems to put Bensmaïa one step ahead of his detractors is modeled after Derrida’s skillful syntactic manipulations and his subtle semantic orchestrations, whereby the idea erases the possibility of its own permanence as 157

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soon as it is put forth. This marginal discourse disrupts all notions of centered-ness and cracks open the foundation of the prominent, griotic discourses that have, in black French letters, excluded or marginalized other narratives in the construction and dissemination of social truths. During the years of passage from Senghor, Césaire and Fanon to Bensmaïa, the nomad undergoes a metamorphosis that transforms him/her from a complete, unified and totalized body to a Body Without Organs, a body in becoming. To this degree, however, The Year of Passages seems to disrupt what could be perceived as its own beginning, a certain Deleuzian notion intended for “minor literatures,” a notion that, in my view, both exoticizes non–Western literatures and presumptuously claims to have penetrated the non–Western writer. Curiously enough, Bensmaïa himself was a great defender of Deleuze’s concept of minor literatures. In “On the Concept of Minor Literature: From Kafka to Kateb Yacine” Bensmaïa proposes a very helpful summary of the Deleuzian organic configuration in “minor literatures.” Starting with a plea, or shall we say a pli, a fold, in favor of Deleuze and Guattari, which should preclude any skeptic from questioning the motives of the authors of Mille Plateaux. Deleuze’s e›ort to inaugurate Kafka as the father of “radically new political literature,” Bensmaïa warns, is by no means an attempt to canonize literature.68 Thus, having cleared the path of any possible doubt as regards Deleuze and Guattari’s intention, Bensmaïa goes on to expose the terms of “minor literatures.” The first characteristic of those literatures has to do with the metalanguage, which is often a reappropriation of a major language, its reconfiguration or remodeling by the “minor” writer in order to make it meet the new exigencies imposed by the disturbance of that major language upon the language of the writer or the minor language. Thus Kafka, for instance, is a good example of a “minority” constructing in a major language inasmuch since “as a Jew, living in Prague, who, with no other language than German really available as a cultural medium, [he] will have to leave behind his mother tongue and begin to write in a foreign language,” he should strike us as highly deterritorialized. Bensmaïa suggests, reasonably so, that Kafka’s situation is like that of the Francophone writers, be they from Canada, Mauritania or Senegal. Second, in spite of other concerns discernible in those literatures— such as psychological, linguistic or socio-linguistic — minor literatures are primarily political and correlatively non-individualist. They are communal insofar as “what takes precedence and governs the economy of daily life is no longer ‘a private a›air,’” but rather the concern of political instance (le politique). From this perspective, the writer is no longer 158

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an isolated individual with individual concerns, no longer the Lacanian desiring subject, but rather a desiring machine, an arrangement of n-elements (economic, commercial, judicial, bureaucratic machines). The minor writer’s impossibility to isolate himself or to reflect in terms of individual concerns, his commitment, willy-nilly, to the common cause is what constitutes, according to Deleuze and Guattari, the third term of minor literature. This particular Deleuzian project strikes me as an attempt to canonize or exoticize the literatures from certain areas of the globe. For Deleuze to feverishly seek to reduce the field of investigation of certain (minor) writers or look for traces where the écart has proven possible, is, I contend, sheer fetishism. If postcolonial writings, for instance, have consolidated themselves to the detriment of allowing a flourishing of their di›erences, it is thanks to such enterprises as Deleuze and Guattari’s, which instead of being receptive to the many trends that constitute the field of non–Western European literatures, only reserve the key to the city for a few tendencies, elevating them to the rank of models to imitate, and consequently stifling all marginal manifestations. Without suggesting that the authors of Mille Plateaux are particularly responsible for canonizing postcolonial literatures, I believe that their attitude is very typical of a growing desire to confine writings within some prescribed norms. Since it is clear now that those prescriptions entertain a relationship with the (economic and political) laws of acceptability of literary works—for long, young Francophone-African writers could only be published by conforming to standards established by the elders of the Negritude movement — it is reasonable to be wary of those characterizations. Thus, when Deleuze and Guattari undertake to discuss what they call minor literatures, one is unexpectedly brought to confront the fact that, at this level, it is no longer a question of Body Without Organs— of rhizomatic assemblages less characteristic by their modes of interlocking than by their lines of flight, their lines of deterrritorialization and reterritorialization. Instead Deleuze and Guattari wish to arrive at an exhaustion of flight, an impasse. Like some Grand-Priests, they define, penetrate, arrest, and totalize these literatures in Bodies With Organs, which organs are very well defined. The definition of a model for minor literatures runs against the philosophical optimism of the rhizome, and it is understandable that some feminist writers choose to stay away from Deleuze’s pretentious lectures (Luce Irigaray, Aline Jardine, for instance). In The Year of Passages, however, Bensmaïa has fortunately proven that no definition, not even a Deleuzian one, could exhaust him, as he re-invents the gesture 159

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of the Father. Bensmaïa is this nomad that has long ago stopped to mourn for an authentic home, and for whom the notion of home-ness, because it has no assured-ness, could always be constructed on the margins of di›erence.

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The African Critic as a Griironist It seems that the demand now on everyone’ lips is that Derrida give us an ethics, or at least he make manifest an ethical significance to deconstruction. Robert Bernasconi —“Deconstruction and the Possibility of Ethics”

This demand for an ethics is not addressed solely to deconstruction. It is one aimed at the whole field of postmodern theories, and which translates some structuralist impatience with an alleged postructuralist political irresponsibility and flight into inordinateness, ambiguity, and negative freedom. Inasmuch as I announce, at the inception of this book, the advent of an a‡rmative African critical instrument under the sign of postmodernism, the demand to ascertain the political validity of postmodernism interpellates me, too; and the soundness of this demand should not be taken for granted, but rather apprehended with much suspicion. I — and many before — perceive a solid political postmodern ethics where critics of postmodernism remain so stubbornly cynical. This is simply because I/we am/are less inclined to pin postmodern thinkers to specific super struggles. I do not think fair the condemnation coming from those who demand that postmodern thinkers appose their signatures to particular struggles,¡ while postmodernism could be more politically e‡cacious in suggesting, from an emotionally removed position, encompassing principles of government. For, that is exactly what postmodernism has been doing from its theoretical distance. It has been proposing a political ethics of pluralism; and it is that theoretical distance that is at the heart of so much contention. I believe that past the aspiration to fastidiously attach postmodernism to discriminate struggles, one cannot but acknowledge that there is a postmodern ethics; one that, as Conley has so perceptively suggested, shines through the very postmodern critical approach.2 Postmodernism is a wellthought ethics, which, once put to work, opens up the possibility for a politics of heterogeneity and pluralism. Rodolphe Gashé makes this case for 161

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deconstruction in particular by arguing that deconstruction’s call for desystematization is not a reflection of the theory’s own lack of systematicity. Gashé warns that Derrida’s deconstruction is not a fourre-tout, where in the name of free play, anything goes. Instead, deconstruction is a methodical thought, mindful of a goal. As political ethics, deconstruction provides a unifying principle for integration of alterity by forewarning against the specters of homogenization and stultification that haunt political processes and public discourses. Sure, deconstruction is not a system of continuity, but it is a system all the same, an arrangement that seeks to mediate the undecidables or the features that cannot “be stabilized in the plenitude of a form or equation.”3 These features, arche-traces or arche-syntheses, with which the general system entertains an ambiguous relationship of alternating presence and erasure — as I have shown earlier in my analysis of Yaou’s Le Prix de la révolte —“these features which the indispensable demand for systematicity and system formation must unavoidably presuppose to achieve its goal, but which, because they cannot be interiorized in the system which they make possible, also limit the possibility of systematization as such,” Gashé also refers to them as infrastructures. The infrastructure is a system of concatenated chains [not fragmentary]. Overlappings, recoverings, and intersections between these di›ering structures can easily be made out … they do not form a homogenous body. Owing to the constituting arrangement of their features, they form a fanned-out volume resembling scenes, stagings, synopses, rather than a closed-o› system. Their total arrangement is not governed by unity of a focus or of a horizon of meaning which promises it a totalization or a systematic adjoinment. Although they are linked in several ways and can enter multiple combinations, their chains cannot be gathered once and for all upon themselves in some ideal purity.4

The name of the infrastructure is multiple within deconstruction. It is a metaphor for anything that may come or that is still to come, but most importantly, it is a call to think that multiple name or that pluralistic necessity so as not to be at the mercy of great political perils. From this standpoint, deconstruction has much to o›er on how to reinvent, no only the aesthetics, but also, and more importantly perhaps, the traditional ethicopolitical, by suggesting ways of (re)entering relationships with one’s alterities. Is not politics primarily about ways of entering relationships (of friendship and/or enmity) with one’s alterities? However — and there lies perhaps the di‡culty of making the connection between deconstruction and politics or the political — Derrida’s philosophical gestures in doing so are less unswerving than they are aporetic. This, too, is a promise that prefigures the radical irreducibility of time. Away with finitude! The debate 162

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shall go one ad infinitum for “…our answers and our responsibilities will never be adequate, never su‡ciently direct.”5 It is in aporia, as some critics have observed, that the political pertinence of Derrida’s arguments rests,6 and nowhere, perhaps, has Derrida best linked the aporetic to the political or to politics than in Politics of Friendship, where, reclaiming and glossing Nietzsche’s reversal of Montaigne’s/Aristotle’s quotation —“O friends, there is no friend!”— Derrida inscribes friendship as promise in the fundamental mode of the “perhaps,” friendship clothed in undecidability. So “perhaps,” this aporia, rupturing the typical prejudice and fundamental faith of metaphysics, announces the possibilization of impossible possible connections to come with the philosophers of the future, that is, those capable of thinking the future, those who, like the Deleuzian masochist, are “capable of enduring the intolerable, the undecidable, the terrifying.”7 And when comes the philosopher/politician of the future (not the platonic philosopher-king), but the philosopher/politician cosignatory of the future to come, he or she who puts to use the “perhaps” as the reversal of tradition, the otherwise of tradition, the modality of the possibilization of the virtual, then one shall start to do politics “with the calculation of this conceptual purification [that one] can wage war on [one’s] friend, a war in the proper sense of the term, a proper, clear and merciless war. But a war without hatred.”8 Has he not come yet, this friend of merciless war against friendship, this friend of diversion, who loves only in cutting ties, who invites his friend “to enter into his community of social disaggregation [déliaison], which is not necessarily a secret society, a conjuration, the occult sharing of esoteric or crypto-poetic knowledge,” 9 but a community of friends of solitude, in love of solitude? Has he not come yet in the figure of a cat, of the controversial and the ambiguous, at the threshold of the twenty-first century, this postmodern leader, from whom we had to re-learn a few hitherto forgotten propositions, mainly that Truth is the chattels of no particular ideology or religion, and that what really matters in the ideological struggle are alliances that work and connections that function? Has he not yet come, this philosopher/politician who, in order to learn something about humans, chose the friendship of a cat, the first cat in the (white) House, from whom he became skilled at establishing poststructuralist alliances, alliances that always kept him on his toes, associations that made him self-regulating, paradoxical, unpredictable, and often unrecognizable by his foes/friends (faux-friends) who could not say with absolute certainty where his triangulation would land him? The philosopher/politician did establish connections in a way that 163

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bewildered his friends (or those who could still dare to take pride in such appellation) as well as his foes— are there any foes? Has not, in reply to the dying sage who advised us that “friends, there are no friends,” the living fool uttered for us these profound words that “foes, there are no foes”? His method, as his own persona, was disconcerting. It was anti–Oedipal, antigenealogical. It evaded all ideological footprints known of political engineers and proposed a new covenant, a supple and living contract to be tuned up along the way, as often as necessary. It was unheard of. Was not the sempiternal dualism of American politics meant to remain accentuated in the name of ideological loyalty and party a‡liation? Against the logic of appurtenance came the man-cat, a maverick politician, of whose technique a foe/friend (a faux-friend) once said. He tacks. He doesn’t sail with the wind. He tacks. So if the wind is blowing in one direction, he aims just a little to the left of his destination. When the wind switches, he aims just a little to the right. But always going toward his objectives, not just sailing with the wind.¡0

Need we rehearse his achievements? Would it not be adequate to point to the double bind of this anthropozoomorphic combination, whereby the man and the cat are two strata of the same plane of consistency, whereby, each contains the terms of the other, each serving as a substratum for the other? The man-cat is neither more feline nor more man in terms of his constitution. He is only more man or more feline in terms of his organization. He is not to be understood in terms of augmentation or reduction of his compound substances, but rather in terms of his qualitative arrangement. On the side of man, he is more prone to modes of linguistic, encyclopedic, economic, cultural, and political rigidification, unification, integration, and hierarchization. On the side of the cat, he is more prone to modes of isolation, dissimulation, and becoming. I would not suggest that the kind of the political-social management that the world witnessed under the leadership of the man-cat was the best ever. Nevertheless, it is just human to be amazed by the results it yielded. So much e›ort spent at alleviating the su›ering of the world and bringing human communities together could not leave one unmoved. The man-cat seemed to derive some positive intoxication in being interpellated by the other’s anguish; he seemed to be possessed by a drive to always make somebody’s day, to lend a helping hand across seas and deserts. His style was certainly not the best management technique. It was, nonetheless, management at a high degree of production and distribution of welfare. There is a degree to which, human beings, having finally come to terms 164

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with their finitude, wish to do something positive before passing. Some people may find this jumpstart early, others late, and yet a lot of people may never find it at all. It is not a jumpstart that lies necessarily in religion or philosophy. The cat-man made true these Rortyian words that one needs not be religious or philosophic to have a conscience and that “the fact that one … gets [one’s] premises in church and the other in the library is, and should be of no interest to … audience in the public square.”¡¡ So, this “happy Je›ersonian compromise” the cat-man made his, sending religion back to where it should belong, to the private sphere rather than the public one, all without trivializing religious conviction, but just advising that one not ask us to reveal our most intimate, most private, moments, and one shall not be o›ended by our responses on the grounds of one’s religious moral beliefs. Is it not opportune that political projects have no other important tests to pass but the ability to rally people with radically opposing views on the meaning of human life and the way to individual excellence?¡2 The man-cat has passed this test beyond all expectations, and in a daring way, “by getting citizens to rely less on tradition and to be more willing to experiment with new customs and institutions,”¡3 to organize anew, to build new communities of interest, communities of isolation built on no sacred contract, but resolute to dissolve in order to connect imaginatively, holistically, and polyformously to other communities again, before they fossilize. Polyformous commitment is not inherently contradictory to the subject. It is in fact inherent to the subject. Postmodernism has a few names for this condition, for this oscillation. Lacan, in a paradoxically a‡rmative gesture, has called it a split. Deleuze and Guattari, at the great pleasure of their critics who thought to have finally pinned them, only to be disappointed again, have called it line of flight. As for line of flight, would it not be entirely personal, the way in which an individual escapes on his or her own account, escapes “responsibilities,” escapes the world, takes refuge in the desert, or else in art…? False impression. Supple segmentarity has nothing to do with the imaginary, and micropolitics is no less extensive than macropolitics…. Lines of flight for their part never consist of running away from the world but rather in causing runo›s.¡4

Politics has a few names for lines of flight or splits, or friends, or foes. Politics, and these terms must have gained their strongest charges during the ¡990s, talks of shoots, roots, and grassroots. Such were the achievements of the man-cat, who could not help reminding us that, in spite of his becoming-animal, in spite of his monumental successes, he had also come out from the deepest recesses of Nietzsche’s universe, and that, as such, he was only human, all too human. The 165

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politics of the man-cat, I shall submit, is one of the greatest testimonials of our time, one that does justice to the ethical-political pertinence of postmodernism. It requires much patience, much suppleness, and much tolerance, qualities that seem to be inherently antithetical to structuralism and its propensity for the either or equation.

THE CRACK OF THE WHIP AND THE POLITICS OF SELF-PRESERVATION To do politics in the likeness of the man-cat, to think anything that may come or that is still to come, to conceive the multiple names of pluralistic societies, to envision the possibilization of impossible possible connections to come, requires that one have time, the time to look for the right words, even as the band/tape plays on/records impatiently, we are told.¡5 The band does not have the patience to wait for the right words to be found and yet, over and over again, “political analysis must be begun again, adjusted, refined in each situation, taking into account its greatest complexity.”¡6 The band — the clique —fears silence. It demands that emptiness be filled. It asks for adherence and appurtenance. In this perspective, the philosopher/politician has to render the band productive. He or she has to couch words on the band/tape for the sake or in the name of the impatient band/clique. The band/tape must record rather than lose in emptiness. Sometimes with the injunction to fill the band/tape, the whip cracks, too; in which case, satisfying the band/clique, filling the band/tape amounts to saving one’s life. In this case, fear —fear of isolation, of starvation, of retribution by the band/clique — is what fills the band/tape; in this case, there is no time to look for the right words in favor of pluralism. All the time is utilized in the name of the band/clique, for the purpose of eulogization and mythologization of the band/clique. In this case, preservation instinct kicks in and loads the band/tape. The band/clique is impatient, the whip cracks, and the griot cannot take the time to look for the right words in favor of pluralism — or so he thinks. For the sake of self-preservation, the griot dives into all kinds of ceremonials that prop up the administrations of the autocratic band/clique that roams insolently in Africa: indolence, dogma, eulogization, and mythologization are the order of the day. The griot dives into griotism. Césaire and the late Senghor are the unmistakable progenitors of this most inflexible crack of the whip that generates the need to fill the band/ 166

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tape’s void in the name of the band/clique. It is this rigid and foundationalist spirit in black French letters that I have, up to now, referred to as griotism, and whose political, ideological, and bureaucratic contours I shall now attempt to elucidate, after having earlier explicated its most recurrent poetic manifestations. In his definition of Negritude, Senghor o›ers two perspectives, one objective, and the other subjective. Objective Negritude, he confides, is “un fait de culture” (a fact of culture). It is the maelstrom the economic, political, intellectual, moral, artistic, and social values of all the black peoples of Africa, America, Asia, and Oceania. Subjective Negritude is “l’acceptation de ce fait” (the recognition of this fact of culture), the celebration of this culture, and its projection in the civilization of the universal.¡7 It is not necessary to accept Senghor’s argument of Negritude in order to recognize the relevance of these two perspectives. As I indicated earlier, the ideals of Nietzsche, Hegel, Bergson, and Frobenius were born out of European rationalism. This, in a way, is what Senghor meant when he held that socialism and capitalism are modes of life that evolved from an ethnic and national grounding, but more importantly out of a long processing of European rationalism, a progression that lasted more than twenty centuries.¡8 This explains the importance of the ethnic/racial components as well as the pertinence of the subjective facet in the understanding of any ideology. This is why Senghor observes, not without much grief, that Marxism, which has seduced so many young black people in the aftermath of the African independences, is nothing else than Greco–Latin nationalism and French utopia, rethought by Marx’s Judeo-Rhenan spirit, that Leninism is also Marxism fecundated by Lenin’s Russian spirit, with Russian ethnic and racial realities, and that even when Mao invoked Marx, he did so as a Chinese, with a Chinese spirit and temperament, mindful of the existing local realities of his race, nation, and civilization¡9; of his civilization that is, as would emphasize Senghor, “fille de la race, de la géographie” (the daughter of race and geography).20 For this reason, Senghor exhorted the young black revolutionaries of post-independence Africa to first undertake a spiritual and cultural revolution by returning to the sources of their black civilization, of their Negritude, in order to find there the ground for any political, economic and social act. Senghor urged them, in their desire for revolution, to take into account the fact that Dans presque toutes les langues, le mot qui désigne la civilisation d’un peuple se réfère au pays, à l’ethnie, voire à la couleur de la peau. Latinité, germanité, indianité, européanité se réfèrent à l’ethnie ou au pays. Mais voici quelques mots désignant les peuples qui invoquent les couleurs: Éthiopiens (du grec aithiops: brûlé, noir), Soudanais (de l’arabe sudan: noir) … Les peuples blancs nous voient 167

The Black Renaissance comme des Noirs, et nous-mêmes, dans nos langues négro-africaines, nous nous voyons et nous appelons comme tels, sans honte et même avec une pointe de fierté.2¡ [In almost all the languages, the word that names the civilization of people refers to the country, the ethnic group, even the color of the skin. Latinity, germanity, indianity, europeanity all refer to the ethnic group or to the country. But here are a few words naming peoples that also invoke the colors of these peoples. Ethiopians (from the Greek word aithiops: burnt, black), Sudanese (from the Arabic word sudan: black) … Whites see us as Blacks, and, in our Negro-African languages, we see ourselves as Blacks and refer to ourselves as such, with no shame and even with pride.]22

Consequently, Senghor recommended that any black revolution should rest on authentic black values. It should, first and foremost, be a subjective Negritude, that is, the actualization of principles and morals identified by the proponents of Negritude as true to the black race. The black revolution should first and foremost be griotic. Senghor’s call did not fall in deaf ears. How could it be otherwise? Senghor’s impatience, his theoretical and ideological intolerance, his hostility against the African critics who dared challenge his authority, his propensity to isolate his critics, to psychoanalogize them, was too intimidating. His sentence for the renegades fell like the injunctive crack of the whip. La suprême stupidité, comme on l’a vu faire par certains pourfendeurs de la Négritude, c’est de vouloir expliquer un poème négro-africain avec les arguments de la philosophie ou de la politique européenne — si encore c’était ceux de la mathématique, qui est la science du nombre et, partant, du rythme — quand il fallait dire pourquoi et comment nous sommes émus par ce poème … c’est qu’au fond, trop d’intellectuels négro-africains sou›rent du complexe d’infériorité, et ils sont encore à vouloir penser des idées au lieu de sentir, simplement, la beauté dans une intuition fulgurante.23 [The ultimate stupidity, as we have seen it done by some detractors of Negritude, is to try to explain a Negro-African poem with the arguments of European philosophy or politics— not even those of mathematics, which is the science of numbers, thus, of rhythm — when it was a question of saying why and how we are touched by this poem … the truth is that too many African intellectuals su›er from inferiority complex, which leads them to want to think of ideas instead of just feeling beauty through a dazzling intuition.]24

So, having the menacing crack of the whip as his backdrop and self-preservation as his objective, the Francophone African griot-intellectual filled the band/tape of history with praises of their mythical founders— eulogizing even the failed ones— going so far as to either explicitly or indirectly celebrate them as the measure of leadership, overlooking the questionable precedents of past African rulers, such as, Sundjata Keita, Samory Touré, thus rationalizing the imperfections that abounded in their management styles 168

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as necessarily epiphenomenal of any statesman, and correlatively, excusing the kind of extraordinarily flawed megalomaniac African leaders that still reign over the destinies of countries like Congo, Gabon, Togo, Senegal, Central African Republic, Burkina Faso, Chad, Niger, and Guinea. It is not rare for Francophone African writers— and the examples are legion in Senghor’s poetry — to construct in their tales economies of hierarchical legitimacy, whereby some individuals or some ethnic groups are born to rule while others are born to be ruled over. One such exercise is the Ivorian Bernard Dadié’s adaptation of folktales whose attempt at justifying the Akan’s (one of the major ethnic groups in Côte d’Ivoire) hold on power in his native country appears undeniable. In what he defines as Dadié’s adaptation of African tales, Kunze points to some alterations the function of which deserves to be examined. Although Kunze is cautious not to use the term of myth as he refers to the tales Dadié work with, it is apparent that Dadié’s repackaging has much to do with mythologization of the fictional character and justification of power, in this case, the power of the then-ruling ethnic group of Côte d’Ivoire, the Akan. In comparing the rendering of Akan folktales by the German ethnologist, Hans Himmelhber, who was on a research trip to Côte d’Ivoire between ¡934 and ¡935, with Dadié’s retelling, Kunze points out some significant di›erences. Where Himmelheber’s version reads, Some two hundred years have now passed since a quarrel began in the royal court of the Aafue…. In the hinterland, of the Gold Coast about who should have the throne. Queen Aura had reigned in the town of Kumassi … and when she died the queen’s children fell to arguing: Aura Pokou, her daughter, was the elder; but her brother would not obey her, for he was a man. Most of the men in his tribe took his side, and after some brief battles, he chased his sister and her followers out of the country.25

Dadié’s version, which moves the story from the Ashanti setting to a vague location, changes the historical period and removes the internal conflicts at the heart of the tale. Thus he writes: A long time ago, on the edge of a calm lagoon, there lived a peaceful people of our own tribe. There were many young men, noble and brave, and the women were blithe and beautiful, and their queen Pokou was the most beautiful of all. A long long time, they had lived in peace, even the slaves, the sons of prisoners taken in ages gone by, were happy amongst their happy lords. Then one day they were infested by enemies, like thousands of silk worms.26

While in Himmelhber’s version the narrator keeps some scientific distance from the text and tells the story in such as way as to make the legend sound almost factual, Dadié, on the other hand, hardly disguises his pas169

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sion in his idealization and embroidery of the fictional characters and landscape. In Dadié’s careful griotic adaptation, the men are noble and brave and the women beautiful. Incidentally, the leading figure, Queen Pokou, is the most beautiful of all women; furthermore, the slaves are as content as their lords, and this entire united and beautiful people live blissfully on the edge of a calm lagoon. Only the enemy without disturbs this peaceful atmosphere : “one day, they were infested by enemies like thousands of silk worms.” While Kunze minimizes Dadié’s adaptation, which he sees as genuinely felt need “to preserve the straightforward moral code which pervades the traditional cultures of preclass Baoule society” I see Dadié’s griotic adaptation as an exercise meant precisely for the contrary, an attempt to hide the highly hierarchized structure of Baoule society beset with internal conflicts in order to present a false image of unity and thus legitimize, for the ruled as well as the culturally untrained outsider, an ethnic power grab that is the cause of much contention. Most important of all, Dadié’s griotic re-arrangements are meant to conflate story with history, tale with reality, and ultimately to redefine the Baoule society in ways that conjure up biblical imageries. Dadié’s inscription of biblical metaphors in the legend of Queen Pokou’s people is more conspicuous in episodes where the fleeing tribe faces obstacles. In Himmelheber’s version, Aura Pokou’s ethnic group reaches the bank of a river. After consultation, the oracle announces that a child must be sacrificed to the spirit of the river before the people can cross. Aura Pokou called all her people together and said: “We have almost reached safety, but we are told that somebody must cast his only son into the river.” Now there were many fathers present who had only one son, but none wanted to make this sacrifice for his people. And so, the queen herself took her only child, decked him out with gold and cast him into the river. At once, a great cli› rose out of the ground and divided the waters; the fugitives crossed into the country on the opposite bank and were saved.27

To this, Dadié o›ers the following line: And the medicine man spoke for the first time. “The water is angry,” he said. “It will not be calm until we give it the thing we treasure most….” And each of them gave a gold or ivory bracelet or whatever they had managed to save. But the medicine man kicked it all aside and pointed to the little prince, an infant six months old: “That,” he said, “is our most precious possession.” And the mother clasped her child to her breast in terror. But she was also the queen, and she stood at the edge of the abyss with the smiling child over her head and flung him into the roaring water. Then hippos, giant hippos, surfaced from the depths and formed a row to make a bridge and the people crossed over this wondrous bridge.28

By removing the internal conflicts observable in Himmelheber’s ver170

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sion of the tale, Dadié seeks to create a sense of harmony amongst the Baoule, an impression that the opposing forces, like the thousands of enemies who invaded the calm tribe on the bank of the lagoon, or the hostile river, always come from without and never from within. Also, to the almost e›aced leader of Himmelheber’s version, Dadié opposes a humanist sovereign; one who, in spite of her great love for her child, also understands that there is no greater duty than her duty to her people. Dadié’s leader condenses two biblical figures, the wise Abraham and Moses the helmsman. The traditional society that Dadié presents in his version is an object of desire. It only exists in the author’s imaginary as his vision of the perfect society he yearns for. This functioning as a device of gray intoxication, the tale mixes fabrication and truth, playing on the existence of verifiable topoi that are carefully intermingled with falsehood. Dadié’s dexterous concoction of verifiable historical facts and creative details confers upon the story he tells a certain historical status. This is not to suggest that of the two versions of the tale, Himmelheber’s is the most accurate one, but only to point out the danger of mystification and deception lying in wait when the African intellectual becomes a griot to the ruler, an enabler of bad politics. As is often the case whenever this kind of revisionism has taken place in Africa, such tales as Dadié’s have helped legitimize the position of the autocratic leader and rationalize, consequently, the often-blind loyalty that the despot demands of his subjects. The leader originating from a race of chosen people is the Messiah whose words should be unquestioned and whose wrath one ought not to provoke. Coincidentally, in Dadié’s country of Côte d’Ivoire, from independence in ¡960 to the late ¡990s, political power had been concentrated in the hands of the Baoule tribe, much to the dissatisfaction of the other ethnic groups, who have quietly complained without being able to shake up the formidable political machinery that ensured the Baoule’s period of influence until the ¡999 military coup that toppled President Bédié. As, in the construction of their futures, African people looking for leadership inspiration invoke past resistance heroes, historians, storytellers, and philosophers alike delve too often in mythologization, conflating historical leaders with fictional heroes, and creating a personality cult around less principled leaders such as described by Blaine Harden. If you took a quarter-century’s worth of His Excellencies the African Leader and tossed them in a blender, you would come up with a big man who looks like this: His face is on the money. He names streets, football stadiums, hospitals and universities after himself. He insists on being called “doctor” or “conqueror” or “the wise old man.” He bans all political parties except the ones he controls. His o›-the-cu› remarks have the power of law. He packs the civil 171

The Black Renaissance service with his tribesmen. His rule has one goal: To perpetuate his reign as Big Man…. Beneath a façade of democracy, Big Men buy loyalty, using state resources. What they cannot buy, they compel using state muscle…. A metaphor for the inequality over which Big Men preside is on display outside most African capitals: Alongside a donor-built four-lane highway, there is usually a narrow footpath formed by bare feet. Africa’s ruling elite howls down the four-lane road in private automobiles while peasants shu·e along in the dirt.29

This is the kind of social elite that the Francophone griot-intellectual promotes in Africa. If such promotion is possible, it is particularly because an enabling habitus was already in place, such as, the negritudinist foundationalist obsession for seizing and duplicating a pseudo-authentic African image of the pure, their fascination with uncontaminated black ethics and truth, their melanist approach to the past. Their monumentalistic conceptions of history, their nostalgia for a glorious past, and their desire to relive a lost paradise have maintained the Francophone blacks in a state of constant ressentiment. Persuaded that what once was should be again, that the glorious deeds of ancestors like Shaka, Queen N’Ziga Nbadi Ngola, Samory Touré, should be duplicated, the negritudinized blacks, constantly fed with griotic ideologies by the self-preservationist griot-intellectual can hardly distinguish the African sources of their social malaise from its Western sources, as they displace and condense all social inadequacies into whiteness, convinced that all will be fine once the white demon goes away. Why not? Could the black Fundamental-Leader, the great defender of his people, the Big Man, the Wise Man, the Conqueror of black independence, be wrong? Are not all the woes of Africa the making of imperialism, colonialism, and neocolonialism? Consequently, should not the solution to Africa’s social deficit be decolonization, deneocolonization, and deimperialization? Too busy pointing the accusing index toward the West, the negritudinized black fails to see the oppression from within; he or she fails to see the violence perpetrated by the leader that his or her self-preservationist griotintellectuals have taught him/her to eulogize as Fundamental-blacks, whose thundering voice and aggressive temperament have previously scared away many ruthless Western pillagers of African resources. So, the negritudinized blacks made to see in their leader’s arrogance and intemperate mood swings the qualities necessary in the white dragon slayer know not who to turn to when the tyrants whose praise they so naively sang comes looking for them. The negritudinized Africans taught to venerate anything old like a priceless relic, and who have fallen into griotic conformity, applauding the local powers that eat away at their freedom only to serve them demagogic speeches, will need to recover their plastic power. At a time when a monu172

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mentalistic conception of history has become a common place in contemporary politics, it is only a question of degree; which in one sphere deceives and in the other kills. It is not only in the Third World that foundationalism has become a mode of political conception. Elsewhere, too, it has become fashionable to hide social failures behind the accusatory finger pointed toward an “outsider.” Elsewhere, too, it has become increasingly trendy to dwell on some pseudo-good-old-days of homosociality, refusing to admit that the past is gone forever, that it will never come back, and that, as warns Nietzsche, unless we all agree on an excessively simplified approximation, a coup on the coup of chance, the future is what remains to be built now. At the bottom, indeed, that which was once possible could present itself as a possibility for the second time only if the Pythagoreans were right in believing that when the constellation of the heavenly bodies is repeated, the same thing, down to the smallest event, must also be repeated on earth: So that whenever the stars stand in a certain relation to one another, a stoic again joins with the Epicurean to murder Caesar, and when they stand in another direction, Columbus will again discover America. Only … if it was certain that the same complex of motives, the same deus ex machina, the same catastrophe were repeated at definite intervals, could the man of power venture to desire monumental history in full icon-like veracity.30

It is, indeed a question of degree, which in one hemisphere deceives and in the other kills. Negritude’s weakness is less to have returned to the past than to have stagnated in the past, to have comfortably settled there, taken refuge there, in order to cultivate the old and preserve old habits. This antiquarian and monumentalistic mindset is, once again, what should be known under the appellation of griotism. Griotism is reactive to modes of becoming; it condemns modes of individuation; it denounces lines of flight, but it cannot arrest them. Griotism claims appurtenance to the griot, only to stab him in the back; it borrows the griot’s tools, only to better use it as a brainwashing device. There is an intellectual longing for griotic need, a need for self-preservation that is detrimental to the betterment of the African. The self-conservationist African intellectual lost in contemplation of a seat in the court, in the company of kings, no longer does a lucid examination of the social conditions of Africa. Instead, what he undertakes is performance of eulogy. What is important is that the band/tape get filled, the band/clique get its fill, and the whip crack less often. So, the griot-intellectual becomes the shameless drummer for the many despotic regimes of Africa. The uninspired societal critiques of African university professors who cannot wait to jump into a three-piece suit and occupy a high level position in a ministry belong to this griotic need for self-preservation. 173

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WHAT ROLE FOR THE AFRICAN INTELLECTUAL? I suggest for the African intellectual eager to claim appurtenance to the African storyteller a balancing act analogous to the traditional griot’s gesture of dutiful versatility of which Chamoiseau and Confiant have spoken at length in Lettres créoles. The preeminent rhetorical strategy of the paroleur or quimboiseur of the plantation society, Chamoiseau and Confiant emphasize, lie in feigned naïveté, masquage, and connivance, strategies that allow this “…délégué à la voix d’un peuple enchaîné, vivant dans la peur et les postures de la survie…”3¡ (…the spokesman of a people under bondage living in fear and in the postures of survival) to safely move information from the “habitation” to the plantation.” Through false self-erasure, whereby the conteur créole or oraliturain burlesques himself, mocks his own stories by injecting occasional grotesque exaggerations and vulgarities into them, refusing all responsibility for the stories he tells and, in a cleverly orchestrated act of derision, even inscribes them under the register of the non-veridic, the Caribbean griot is able to subvert his master’s suspicion and thus protect himself, his function, and the message of resistance that he propagates.32 Elsewhere, the griot has been referred to as a sorcerer,33 an idea that for me conjures up more the postmodern aporetic (Derridian posture of double entendre, Deleuzian and Guattarian notion of dédoublement, or Lacanian idea of split) than it suggests actual supernatural power. As a sorcerer, the griot must navigate between sites. He must be both within and without, both at the center and on the periphery of the political machinery in order to anomalously establish alliances and gather memories. There is a film by the Malian Cheick Oumar Sissoko which hints at the kind of suppleness that I am suggesting. The film, Guimba the Tyrant (¡995) is the tale of Guimba, a ruthless autocratic West African king, and his midget son, Jangine. Recounted from the point of view of the filmmaker as griot, the movie suggests, nonetheless, that besides the filmmaker (the main storyteller), two other no-less-important storytellers are competing (on the one hand, the first griot who opens the narration at the beginning of the film, and who could also be the filmmaker’s mouthpiece, and on the other hand, the king’s own griot). It is in fact thanks to all these three griotic agencies that the film, as a story, comes to completion. Actually, these three griotic agencies are more emblematic of various modes of knowledge production than representatives of three di›erent and unrelated griots. By giving equal right to be heard to each one of these reporters of facts— this term deserves 174

9—The African Critic as a Griironist

to be apprehended with much suspicion — the filmmaker is able to avoid a linear rendition of his story and circumvent monopoly of the narrative by a single voice. While the first two griots (the filmmaker and the narrator at the beginning of the film) could be called the griot-without, the third griot could be termed the griot-within. I use the expression the-griot-within to name the reporter of fact whose closeness to the power center causes his narrative to bypass the variegated peripheral individual experiences in order to reproduce and disseminate the values, ethics, and beliefs of the center. Guimba’s personal griot epitomizes the griot-within. His excessive commitment to his monarch blinds him to the tyrant’s excesses and failings. Despite clear evidence of the king’s follies—follies that are reminiscent of such oddities as observable in ubuesque African leaders like Bokassa, Mobutu, Houphouët, Bongo— all self-proclaimed fundamental leaders and benefactors of their people, the king’s personal griot never fails to eulogize him. Were Guimba’s personal griot, the griot-within, left alone to record and transmit history, he would only record and pass on to future generations moments of great deeds by his master. Thankfully, the griot-without is able to denounce the institutional flaws that sap the general system by pointing the finger at the brutal leader’s contempt for morality, justice and legitimacy, and by exposing his ineptitude in leading. The filmmaker’s method of coalescing the griot-within and the griot-without makes the movie into a grotesque art form, a mixture of the farcical with the tragic, the comical with the terrible, whereby the postindependence African subject learns to exorcise the misfortune that struck him/her so hard by laughing it away. Through the griot’s expert metamorphoses, through his masterful ability to both straddle the border of the village and reunite with the constituted crowd at the center of the socius, the segment of the community that venerates the tyrant (the courtiers) as well as those who dangerously mock his excesses (the habitués of the local bars and of the market place) are simultaneously hailed into the same experiential field. Sissoko’s strategy is no di›erent from the tactics used in the ¡930s in the United States to subvert the authority of the Hays Code or the National Legion of Decency. It tells a story in the cracks/interstices of the whip. The whip cracks and the band/clique must be satisfied. In lesser egalitarian societies, the whip cracks so frequently and so close to the nerves that the urge to fill the band/tape with tales of acclamation becomes insupportable for the intellectual. The late Balla Keita, minister of education under the ¡980s Houphouët one-party regime in Côte d’Ivoire had these words of wisdom for dissenting voices: you’d better have both your feet within 175

The Black Renaissance

the system, or you are an outsider. For the African intellectual, it is too often a matter of self-preservation. It is easier to be a griot-within and live than to be a griot-without and perish; and yet, Sissoko’s film teaches us that it is possible not to fill the band/tape on/from one side/site only. There exists the possibility of a critique inspired by the griot’s technique, but that critiquing method must first understand the ironist role that the griot has always played in African societies. That role ought to be that of the African intellectual. The African intellectual, if he or she wants to reclaim a mode of assessment that draws upon the griot’s narrative, if he/she wants to be a griot, can still do it, so far as he or she understands the griot’s method, so far as he or she is a griot-ironist. To e›ective impact their communities even when the whip cracks— and it does crack regularly — the African intellectual ought to be, not a griot-intellectual driven by self-preservation, but rather, a griironist, committed neither to the center nor to the periphery, but only to modes of becoming, to lines of flight. Lines of flight, despite what some critics have suggested,34 are not flight from political responsibility and refuge into individualism. I believe that the progenitors of the term have made it abundantly clear. As for line of flight, would it not be entirely personal, the way in which an individual escapes on his or her own account, escapes “responsibility,” escapes the world, takes refuge in the desert, or else in art…? False impression. Supple segmentarity has nothing to do with the imaginary, and micropolitics is no less extensive than macropolitics…. Lines of flight for their part never consists of running away from the world, but rather in causing runo›s. There is nothing imaginary.35

Lines of flight are immanent to the social field; they are not individual or self-centered, but rather gatherings, assemblages of heterogeneous multiplicities that have escaped filiative, genealogical, relationships. They are anti-genealogical activisms; and because they are not oedipalized, because they break away from the Mommy-Daddy-Me equation, they are accountable only to the causes they serve. Grassroots movements are lines of flight. They recruit from soccer moms, baseball dads, auto-race lovers, nature lovers, white collars and blue collars, Democrats and Republicans, multiplicities concerned with the air they breathe, the water they drink, the food they eat, the healthcare they get; and when the cause for which they gather is achieved they part, with no regret, only to form another heterogeneous assemblages with other multiplicities, for other causes. They do not fossilize along familial or party lines, or State institutions. The only common point is the plateau on which they form. But that plateau, that alliance, is a temporary line of convergence; which will dissolve soon after the water is 176

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clean, soon after healthcare is achieved; or perhaps they will connect to other multiplicities, to other roots; and in the process some roots will die and others will be born. African intellectuals ought to be griironists. Their most powerful asset as collectors of information and disseminators of knowledge shall first and foremost be their ability, through the use of aporia, to be great dissimulators. Neither totally committed to the center nor exclusively pledged to the margin, neither unequivocal insiders nor complete outsiders, the griironists shall remain self-conscious actors, always suspicious of any absolutism.

177

Conclusion In several places in this study, I have insisted on the foundationalist aspect of Afro-Caribbean Francophone literatures, which I have qualified as griotic, insofar as these literatures rely on the spoken word — raw material of the quintessentially masculine African storyteller — as locus of absolute truth and legitimacy. I have emphasized that the theory of griotism is culpable of a number of deceptions. Firstly, the claim of its African originality is to be regarded with suspicion. The preponderance accorded to intuitive judgment over rational thinking is paradoxically the outcome of a not so irrational argumentative approach that emerged in the aftermath of the second European War, and which launched a romantic rush toward things exotic and foreign. In this perspective, Bergson’s defense of poetic imagination had a rousing e›ect on Francophone writers, especially on the founders of Negritude, who could now claim the merit of their ancestral spoken traditions by problematizing the centrality of European intellectualism. Secondly, Negritude’s claim of deference to the griot — an assertion the obvious objective of which was to appose a seal of legitimacy on a literary tradition that desperately needed validation from within, as authentic, and approachability from without, as original, probing, and exotic — bore little genuineness. Be it with Césaire or Senghor, Negritude’s writings have displayed a troubling condescendence, not just for the primary audience of the African storyteller, an audience mostly characterized by its pastoral condition, but also, for the African griot. Thirdly, Negritude’s over reliance on the masculine as the originator and depository of authentic ancestral truth has for long undermined the emergence of a‡rmative feminine voices. Notwithstanding its imperfections, Negritude survived the last shudders of European Enlightenment, and its tenets gained wide acceptance among Afro-Caribbean Francophone intellectuals, driving, as evidenced by Afro-Caribbean management styles, social and political praxis. One can appreciate the insidious nature of griotism as an ideologeme — the smallest unit of ideology — by tracing its expressions by way of a variety of referents in the writings of the most hardened renegades among Afro-Caribbean Fran178

Conclusion

cophone intellectuals. The anti–Negritude rhetorical vitality of such rebellious o›spring as Fanon, Chamoiseau, Confiant, and Mudimbé, for instance, could not save them from falling into mimicry of their progenitors’ doctrine. I have revealed that of Negritude, Fanon has retained the griotic totalizing assumptions and hostility to modes of individuation outside racial imperatives. I have demonstrated that Fanon’s own nomadism conforms to griotism, insofar as his teleology ends in a transcendental moment and place: ancestral Algeria, the quintessential nation, locus of physical and psychological restoration of the French colonized from depersonalized subject to authentic self. I have exposed Mudimbé’s importation of the Fanonian psychoanalytical economy of restoration, whereby, for any rebellious consciousness, danger always lurks on the edge of the cultural rift. Mudimbé, I have argued, is too impatient to deliver his fictitious anti-social characters to the clinical discourse of psychiatry as social failures. I have also reveal that despite Chamoiseau, Confiant, and Jean Bernabé clearly stated e›ort to break away from Negritude in order to propose a theory of identity more compatible with the singular condition of the Caribbean subject as a deterritorialized subject with no real attachment to the Senghorian or Cesairean idealized Africa, the manifesto of Creolity, beyond semantic contortions, has proposed little that really di›ers from Negritude. My contention is that though the Creolity project is post–Negritude, it is hardly anti–Negritude. In fact, I have submitted that Creolity, in its search for original narrative, is a reiteration of Negritude. Both Negritude and Creolity, I have argued, seek to recover an original ancestral moment of oraliture. The great theoretical advantage of griotism, that is, of the assumption that for the Frenchspeaking Afro-Caribbean, absolute truth is traceable to a transcendental ancestral moment marked by a patriarchal authority who manifests itself through various recognizable metaphors, is its amalgamating force towards liberation from (neo)colonization. The greatest disadvantage of this assumption is its intolerance to di›erence. In a “thousand” places in this work, I have exposed the stifling e›ects of griotism, and especially its responsibility in preventing the materialization of voices external to the great ontological and teleological project commenced with Negritude, and which put the strong heterosexual black man at the center of Black Cultural Revolution. I have explained how, for a long time, cultural canons and tacit editorial and marketplace conventions have generally forestalled Francophone women writers’ resourceful e›orts as well as their chance to tell/write it all, that is, in ways that freely disclose their female multiplicity. Francophone women writers like Fall and Bâ, by their own circumfession to griotism, have helped me make this case. At the same 179

Conclusion

time, in tackling highly sensitive, even interdicted, subject matters and in fictionalizing successful, a‡rmative women characters in postures that would be frown upon by traditionalists, Keita and Yaou have proven that there still exists great diversity among women writers, and that an easy mistake would be to amalgamate Francophone women writers under the unique verdict of submission to engulfing patriarchal rules. Keita’s and Yaou’s subverting styles that give voices to marginal, controversial, and uncharacteristically alien characters, I have submitted, though they might seem fresh in sub–Saharan Africa, are not totally new in Afro-Caribbean Francophone letters. Two great examples of previous literary insubordination — and others may unveil a thousand more elsewhere — are to be found, respectively, in Martinique with Condé’s and more strongly in Algeria with Bensmaïa’s writings. Nevertheless, the kind of literary tradition that is mostly disseminated in Afro-Caribbean Francophone letters, and which in turn propagates State ideologies to be reproduced by the masses, remains generally under the spell of griotism. My basic argument is that what makes it di‡cult — although not totally impossible — to exorcise that magnetism and to write/speak otherwise is the structuralist substratum in which griotism is couched. As a counter-narrative to European meta-narrative, the black Renaissance in French letters has to camp on solid, unmediated, and uncompromising grounds, where any free play, any idiosyncratic manifestation becomes, not only antithetical, but also, and mostly, dangerous to the common ideal of cultural and political autonomy. Though partly inspired by the cultural relativism of the ¡930s that promoted di›erence of identity, black French letters rapidly developed into an epistemology of exhausted di›erence; one which continues to provide rationale to various undemocratic projects Africa. If, as I have insisted in this book, in most cases, at the onset already, griotism’s structuralized frame of reference causes the Afro-Caribbean Francophone writer/critic to write/speak from within, that is to say, in favor of State ideology, what alternative is there on the horizon for thinking the outside? Can an epistemological program that seeks to reinstate black letters by conjuring up the griot’s tradition still o›er a language or a space that accounts for social and political undecidables? My argument is precisely that the griot’s technique has always been one of mediation, and it is the need to legitimate Afro-Caribbean onto-theo-teleological machinery by finding it a common beginning that has essentialized that technique. I, therefore, suggested that the griot’s style be rediscovered for what it is; that it be rediscovered for the style of irony that it is, and which critics like Confiant and Chamoiseau have lengthily written about, and to which a filmmaker 180

Conclusion

like Sissoko has, perhaps, made some allusions. The griot has always been an ironist simultaneously straddling multiple grounds. It is in this direction, I recommend, that the fascination for an authentic African thought capable of accounting for the African discursive norms, of which Mudimbé writes in L’Odeur du père, should start. I predict that the field of griironism holds one of the most promising prospects in Afro-Caribbean Francophone research.

181

Notes INTRODUCTION

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ¡978), 280. 13. Saussure, ¡6. 14. Although Saussure suggests that the relationships between the terms of language are based on “di›erences,” he still views these di›erences as oppositions between terms in presentia. Consequently, Saussure fails to radicalize the signifier the way Derrida radicalizes it in his Of Grammatology. 15. Derrida, Writing and Di›erence, 292. 16. Ibid., 280–8¡. 17. Pierre Bourdieu, and Loic Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ¡978), ¡54–55. 18. Ibid., 99. 19. Ibid., ¡26. 20. Ferry and Renault write:

1. See Cours de linguistique générale, translated by Wade Baskin as Course in General Linguistics (New York: Philosophical Library, ¡959). Hereafter, page numbers for Saussure’s work will refer to this English edition. 2. Saussure, ¡40. 3. Ibid., ¡56. 4. See Gustave LeBon, The Psychology of Peoples, translated by Lilian A. Clare (New York: G.E. Stechert, ¡9¡2), ¡36. 5. Tzvetan Todorov, On Human Diversity: Nationalism, Racism, and Exoticism in French Thought, translated by Catherine Porter (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, ¡993). 6. LeBon, Psychology of Peoples, ¡36– 38. 7. Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt (New York: Schocken, ¡969), 256. 8. Michel Leiris and J. Delange, “The Discovery of African Art in the West,” in African Art (New York: Golden, ¡968), 33. 9. James Cli›ord, The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, ¡988), ¡20–2¡. 10. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, ¡974), ¡2. 11. Saussure, 88. 12. Jacques Derrida, Writing and Di›erence, translated by Alan Bass

The call to di›erentiate between mechanical and dialectical determinism is a ritual in the Marxist climate. Nearly a century ago, Engels was already emphasizing it in his famous, often quoted letters to Tarbenkurg, Smidt, and Bloch. In denouncing the economics of the Second International, Althusser himself had the same purpose when he emphasized that Marx did not consider the social space to be a totality organized by the same principle, that is, the development of the forces of production and their contradictions with the relations of production [¡56].

21. Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature, ed. Randal Johnson (New York: Columbia University Press, ¡993), 225. 22. Bourdieu and Wacquant, 90. 183

Notes — Chapter ¡ fullness will lead subjects to bounce from one form of exposure to the next. If Lacan does not allow any autonomy to the subject, it is because he believes that the latter’s independence remains in the custody of the almighty Father whom he or she tries to emulate. 24. Habitus could be used to describe, for instance, the Francophone black woman’s resistance to her own resistance to a mode of femininity imposed upon her by cultural bankers (negritudinists). 25. Bourdieu and Wacquant, ¡28–3¡. 26. Ibid., 24–25. 27. Ibid., ¡26–27.

23. Derrida and Lacan, for instance, have argued this point: There is a conditioning of the social agent. That conditioning is made possible through the legitimization of a certain language. In a seminal study to his psychoanalytical theory, Jacques Lacan took exception with Sigmund Freud’s well-known claim that human beings outgrow their necessary splitness toward a biological and psychological unity, thus announcing that individuals are rather defined at the discursive level, which is itself governed by the “Law-of-the-Father” (Écrits: A Selection, translated by Alan Sheridan [New York: W.W. Norton, ¡977], ¡–7). For Lacan, di›erent layers of otherness— of which the Name-of-the-Father is the most influential, constitute the subject. Therefore, through language, the subject is forever tied to a Father, whose discourse is indubitably inserted in the subject’s discourse — even when the latter claims to speak on his or her own behalf. Unlike Freud, who argues that the subject’s psychological splitness is just one stage in the biological development of humans, Lacan puts forth the claim that, by being born into a linguistic system, the subject is— by virtue of the norms which constitute that system, and which amount to the Father—an eternally split individual, constantly haunted by the desire to be — or to speak —like the Father. This desire to emulate the father, which, according to Lacan, is always desire for a lack, that is, an impossibility to posit signification, and which the psychoanalyst represents with his algorithm S/s (the signifier over the signified), is yet the drive for the formation of the “I” (¡49). For Lacan, the bar separating the signifier (S) from the signified (s) is metaphorical of the gap between the desire for subjective wholeness and the impossibility of attaining this wholeness. Therefore, Lacan argues, their desire to (re)capture a lost or impossible sense of unity and

CHAPTER ¡ 1. V.Y. Mudimbé, L’Odeur du père: essai sur les limites de la science et de la vie en Afrique Noire (Paris: Présence africaine, ¡982), 44. 2. My translation. 3. Jacqueline Leiner, Aimé Césaire: le terreau primordial (Gunter Narr Verlag: Études littéraires françaises, ¡993), ¡¡2. 4. James Cli›ord, The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, ¡988). 5. See, e.g., K. Buttner, “Philosophical and Legal Theories on Colonialism,” in African Studies (Berlin: AkademieVerlag, ¡983), ¡35–53. 6. Friedrich Nietzsche’s letter to Elizabeth Nietzsche, Venice, mid–June, ¡884, in Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche, ed. and translated by Christopher Middleton (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ¡969), 226. The authenticity of this letter has never been established for good, as many believe that it might have been a forgery by Nietzsche’s sister. 7. Buttner, ¡35–53. 8. Beyond Good and Evil, translated by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, ¡966), 39. In the twenty-seventh 184

Notes — Chapter ¡

185

18. The Portable Nietzsche, ed. and translated by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Penguin, ¡976), 456–57. 19. Ibid., ¡38–39. 20. My translation. 21. See Robert Bernasconi, “Hegel at the Court of the Ashanti,” Hegel After Derrida, ed. Stuart Barnett (New York: Routledge, ¡998), 4¡–63. 22. V.Y. Mudimbé, Tales of Faith: Religion as Political Performance in Central Africa (London: Athlone, ¡997), 39. 23. Ibid., 36. 24. V.Y. Mudimbé, Parables and Fable: Exegesis, Textuality, and Politics in Central Africa (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, ¡99¡), 69–72. 25. Senghor, Liberté IV: socialisme et planification (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, ¡983), 399. 26. Monroe C. Beardsley, The European Philosophers from Descartes to Nietzsche (New York: Random House, ¡960), 558. 27. Remy Sylvestre Bouelet, Espace et dialectique du héros césairien (Paris: Harmattan, ¡987). 28. See, e.g., Gustave LeBon, Les lois psychologiques de l’évolution des peuples (Paris: Alcan, ¡894); Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, Les fonctions mentales dans les sociétés inférieures (Paris: Alcan, ¡9¡2), translated by Lilian A, Clare as How Natives Think (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, ¡925); La Mentalité primitive (Paris: Alcan, ¡922), translated by Lilian A. Clare as Primitive Mentality (Boston: Beacon, ¡923). As early as ¡900, a young medical student in Paris, Jean Price-Mars, privately confronted Gustave LeBon about his theory of the inferiority of blacks. His confrontation with LeBon precipitated Jean Price-Mars’s anthropological vocation. Later, in “African Animism,” Price-Mars took issue with Lévy-Bruhl’s thesis of the inferior mental capacity of the black and his concept of “pre–logical” in referring to the mind of the so-called “primitive.”

aphorism of the book, Nietzsche writes that It is hard to be understood, especially when one thinks and lives gangasrotagati, among men who think and live di›erently — namely, kurmagati (I obviously do everything to be “hard to understand” myself )— and obviously, one should be cordially grateful for the good will to some subtlety of interpretation.

In the notes to the ¡966 edition of Beyond Good and Evil, Walter Kaufmann explains these two Nietzschean terms as follow: “Gati means gait; srota, the current of a river, and ganga is the river Ganges. So the word means as the current of the Ganges river moves. Kurmagati: as the tortoise moves. 9. Haiti is what the first inhabitants of the island (the Arawaks Indians) used to call their land before the Spaniards exterminated them by ¡5¡4. 10. Ghislain Gourage, Histoire de la littérature haïtienne (Kraus Reprint, ¡973), 229–33. 11. See, e.g., Thoby-Marcelin’s ¡926 poem “sainement,” in Naomi M Garret’s The Renaissance of Haitian Poetry (Paris: Présence Africaine, ¡963), 94. 12. Jean Price-Mars, Ainsi parla l’oncle (Imprimerie de Compiègne, ¡928), translated by Magdaline W. Shannon as So Spoke the Uncle (Washington, D.C.: Three Continents, ¡983). 13. Léopold Sédar Senghor, Liberté III: Négritude et civilisation de l’universel (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, ¡977), 342. 14. Léopold Sédar Senghor, Liberté V: le dialogue des cultures (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, ¡993), 226. 15. Leiner, ¡3¡–32, ¡39. 16. See, e.g., Derrida’s discussion of supplementarity in the works of LeviStrauss in Of Grammatology and especially in Writing and Di›erence, 278–93. 17. Basic Writings of Nietzsche, ed. and translated by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Modern Library, ¡968), 784, 790. 185

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CHAPTER 2

See So Spoke the Uncle, translated by Magdaline W. Shannon (Washington, D.C.: Three Continents, ¡983), 83–¡0¡. 29. Senghor, Liberté V, 228. 30. Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory (New York: Urzone, ¡988), ¡83–85. 31. Abiola Irele, The African Experience in Literature and Ideology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, ¡98¡), ¡7¡. 32. See Léopold Sédar Senghor, Ce que je crois (Paris: Grasset, ¡988). 33. Tropiques V: 65. 34. Ibid., 67, 70 35. My translation. 36. Senghor, Liberté III, ¡48–49. 37. My translation. 38. Suzanne Césaire, “Léo Frobenius et le problème des civilisations,” in Tropiques I, eds. Aimé Césaire, Suzanne Césaire, and René Ménil (Fort de France, April ¡94¡), 27–36. 39. Léopold Sédar Senghor, Liberté IV, 399. 40. Suzanne Césaire, “Malaise d’une civilisation,” in Tropiques V, 45. 41. Georg Wilhem Friedrich Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, translated by J.B. Baillie (London: Allen and Unwin, ¡9¡0), 234. 42. Leiner, ¡¡5. 43. My translation. 44. Richard Bjornson, The African Quest for Freedom and Identity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, ¡99¡), ¡85. 45. Ibid., ¡79–82. 46. René Maran, Batouala: A True Black Novel, translated by Barbara Beck, and Alexandre Mboukou (Washington, D.C.: Black Orpheus, ¡972). 47. Caroll Yoder, White Shadows (Three Continents, ¡99¡), 56. 48. My translation. 49. See full discussion of the Francophone rhetorical preference in Chapter 2.

1. Other words to designate this African genealogist and poet are Djeli or Djeliba in Bambara or Djoula, Guewel in Wolof, Diali in the Sudan, Oko in Alladian (a language from the Akan group in Côte d’Ivoire). Although in the French Caribbean the word griot came into the literary lexicon with the popularization of Negritude in the Americas, the function of the griot has always existed there, and the person who performed this function was referred to as the quimboiseur and had the same social status as the African griot. Hereafter, for purpose of simplification, I will use the term griot for both the African griot and the Caribbean quimboiseur as their social roles and significances remain similar. 2. Senghor, Je crois, ¡58. 3. D.T. Niane, Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali, translated by G.D. Pickett (London: Longmans, Green, ¡965), vii. 4. Senghor, Je crois, 20–2¡. 5. My translation. 6. Norman Stockle, “Toward an Africanization of the Novel: Francis Bebey’s Narrative Technique,” New West African Literature, ed. Kolawole Ogungbesan (London: Heinemann Educational, ¡979), ¡04, ¡09, ¡¡0. 7. Abiola Irele, The African Experience in Literature and Ideology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, ¡98¡), ¡3¡. 8. I am using these terms as Robert Kaplan defined them. According to Kaplan’s definition, synonymous parallelism is the balancing of the thought and phrasing of the first part of a statement or idea by the second part. Synthetical parallelism is the completion of the idea or thought of the first part in the second part. With antithetic parallelism, the idea stated in the first part is emphasized in the second part, and with climactic parallelism, the idea of the passage is not completed until the end 186

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187

9. Ibid., 69, 77. 10. See Senghor, Liberté III. 11. Léopold Sédar Senghor, The Collected Poetry, translated by Melvin Dixon (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, ¡99¡), 88. 12. Ibid., ¡8–¡9. 13. See Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized, intr. Jean-Paul Sartre, translated by Howard Greenfeld (Boston: Beacon, ¡965). 14. See Senghor, Collected Poetry. 15. Césaire, Notebook, 60.

of the passage. See “Cultural Thought Patterns in Intercultural Education” in Composing in Second Language, ed. Sandra Mackay (Harper & Row, ¡984), 43–62. 9. Niane, 4. 10. Ibid., 2. 11. Ibid., 4. 12. Bernard Dadié, The Black Cloth: A Collection of African Folktales, translated by Karen C. Hatch (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, ¡987), 20. 13. Amadou Kourouma, Les soleils des indépendances (¡990), 288–89. 14. Niane, 3. 15. Dadié, 20–2¡. 16. My translation. 17. Boubou Hama, Dialogue avec l’Occident (Paris: Présence Africaine, ¡969), 2¡. 18. Ibid. 19. Sékou Touré, “Speech delivered on the occasion of President’s DeGaulle’s arrival in Conakry” in Africa In Prose, eds. O.R. Dathorne, and W. Feuser (Penguin, ¡969), ¡75. 20. Ibid. 21. Hama, ¡9. 22. Ibid.

CHAPTER 4 1. Nicholas Spadaccini, and René Jara, eds. and comps., ¡492–¡992: Re/Discovering Colonial Writing (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, ¡989), ¡0. 2. Allen Carey-Webb, “Other Fashioning: The Discourse of the Empire and Nation in Lopez de Vega’s El nueve mundo descubierto por Cristobal Colon,” in Amerindian Images and the Legacy of Columbus, eds. René Jara, and Nicholas Spadaccini (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, ¡992), 434. 3. Frantz Fanon has amply discussed that splitness. See Black Skin, White Masks, translated by Charles Lam Markmann (New York: Grove, ¡967), ¡7–40. 4. Jacques Derrida, Limited Inc., translated by Samuel Weber, and Je›rey Mehlman (Northwestern University Press, by permission of John Hopkins University Press, ¡988), ¡8 5. See Diane P. Michelfelder, and Richard E. Palmer, Dialogue and Deconstruction: The Gadamer-Derrida Encounter (Albany: State University of New York Press, ¡989). 6. Derrida, Grammatology, 28¡. 7. See Écrits. 8. Edouard Glissant, Caribbean Discourse: Selected Essays, translated by J.

CHAPTER 3 1. W.G. Leibniz, Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil, ed. Austin Farrer, translated by E. M. Huggard (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, ¡952), ¡26. 2. See, e.g., LeBon, The Psychology of Peoples and Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind. 3. Leibniz, ¡28. 4. Césaire, Notebook, 5¡–53. 5. Patrick Chamoiseau, and Raphaël Confiant, Lettres créoles: tracées antillaises et continentales de la littérature (Paris: Hatier, ¡99¡), 38. 6. My translation. 7. Fanon, Black Skin, ¡80. 8. Césaire, Notebook, 55. 187

188

Notes — Chapter 5 36. Senghor; Liberté III, 358. 37. My translation. 38. Clément Mbom, “La femme dans le théâtre d’Aimé Césaire,” Aimé Césaire ou l’athanor d’un alchimiste, Proceedings of the First Colloquium on the Works of Aimé Césaire (Paris, November 2¡–23, ¡985), 225–29. 39. My translation. 40. See Patrick Taylor’s The Narrative of Liberation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, ¡989), and Ato Sekyi-Otu’s Fanon’s Dialectic of Experience (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, ¡996).

Michael Dash (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, ¡989), ¡2¡. 9. Ibid., ¡23. 10. Ibid., ¡22. 11. Senghor, Liberté III, 348. 12. Ibid., 350. 13. Ibid., 360. 14. My translation. 15. Leiner, ¡¡7. 16. Césaire, Notebook, 35. 17. Ibid., 37. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid. 20. See Refusal of the Shadows: Surrealism and the Caribbean, ed. Michael Richardson, translated by Krzysztof Fijalowski and Michael Richardson (London: Verso, ¡996), 7. 21. Césaire, Notebook; 45. 22. Ibid., 73. 23. Ibid., 8¡. 24. Friedrich Nietzsche, Good and Evil, 9. 25. Chamoiseau and Confiant, 6¡. 26. My translation. 27. Senghor, Collected Poetry, ¡03. 28. Ibid., ¡02–¡03. 29. The hero is like the writer, a black heterosexual male. 30. See Christopher Miller, Theories of Africans: Francophone Literature and Anthropology in Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ¡990), 259. 31. Senghor, Collected Poetry, 90. 32. See Irène Assiba d’Almeida, “Angèle Rawiri: ‘I Have Children, Therefore I Am,’” in Francophone African Women Writers: Destroying the Emptiness of Silence (Gainsville: University Press of Florida, ¡994), 87–98. 33. Senghor; Liberté III, 357–58. 34. My translation. 35. See Moira Gatens, “Corporeal Representation in/and the Body Politics,” in Cartographies: Poststructuralism and the mapping of Bodies and Spaces, eds. Rosalyn Diprose, and Robyn Ferrell (North Sidney: Allen & Unwin, ¡99¡), 8¡.

CHAPTER 5 1. My emphasis. 2. Two of the strongest recent eulogies ever written in favor of the Martinican psychiatrist are Patrick Taylor’s The Narrative of Liberation: Perspectives on AfroCaribbean Literature, Popular Culture and Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, ¡989) and Ato Sekyi-Otu’s Fanon’s Dialectic of Experience (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, ¡996). 3. Fanon, Black Skin, 2¡6. 4. Ibid., ¡¡0–¡¡. 5. Hegel, 234. 6. Fanon, The Wretched, 3¡–33. 7. Fanon, Black Skin, 222. 8. Ibid., 22¡. 9. The Wretched, 220. 10. Black Skin, ¡7. 11. Ibid., ¡9, 20–2¡. 12. Ibid., 220. 13. The Wretched, 228–29. 14. Sekyi-Otu, 20. 15. Fanon heralds the power of the violence of decolonization to cement “the people by the radical decision to remove from it its heterogeneity, and by unifying it on a national, sometimes a racial basis” (The Wretched, 3¡7). 16. Sekyi-Out, ¡05. 17. Stuart Hall, “The After-life of 188

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29. Sekyi-Otu, 34–36. 30. Ibid., 34. 31. Ibid., 236. 32. Diane Michelfelder, and Richard E. Palmer. Dialogue and Deconstruction: The Gadamer-Derrida Encounter (Albany: New York: State University of New York Press, ¡989), ¡36. 33. Sekyi-Otu, 9. 34. Ibid., 36. 35. Derrida, Limited Inc., ¡8. 36. My emphasis. 37. Sekyi-Otu, ¡28. 38. Ibid., 5. 39. Ibid., 53. 40. Taylor, 9. 41. Fanon, Black Skin, ¡45. 42. Taylor, 25. 43. See Christopher Miller’s eloquent discussion of Fanon’s all too pretentious and presumptuous totalization of the colonized on the local Mandingo ethos, recounted in Keita Fodéba’s Poèmes africains. 44. Irele,¡38. 45. Jock McCulloch, Black Soul White Artifact: Fanon’s Clinical Psychology and Social Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ¡983), 36. 46. Fanon, The Wretched, 47.

Frantz Fanon: Why Fanon? Why Now? Why Black Skin, White Masks?” in Fact of Blackness: Frantz Fanon and Visual Representation, ed. Alan Read. (Seattle: Bay, ¡996), 2¡. 18. Black Skin, 65. 19. Ibid., ¡¡¡–¡3. 20. Lola Young, “Missing Persons: Fantasising Black Women in Black Skin, White Masks” in Fact of Blackness: Frantz Fanon and Visual Representation, ed. Alan Read (Seattle: Bay, ¡996), 94–95 21. Black Skin, 47. 22. Young, 89–90. 23. Bell Hooks, “Feminism as a Persistent Critique of History: What’s Love Got To Do With It?” in Fact of Blackness: Frantz Fanon and Visual Representation, ed. Alan Read. (Seattle: Bay, ¡996), 76– 85. 24. Kobena Mercer, “Decolonisation and Disappointment: Reading Fanon’s Sexual Politics,” Fact of Blackness: Frantz Fanon and Visual Representation, ed. Alan Read (London: Institute of Contemporary Arts, Institute of International Visual Arts, ¡996), ¡¡4–3¡. 25. Sekyi-Otu, ¡26 26. We shall recall Césaire and Senghor’s tendency to characterize any opposition to their claims of cultural identity as emanating from suicidal or lost bodies and their inclination to look at themselves as prophetic voices. 27. This argument was put forth by critics like Jock McCulloch, in Black Soul White Artifact: Fanon’s Clinical Psychology and Social Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ¡983), and Christopher L. Miller, in Theories of Africans: Francophone Literature and Anthropology in Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ¡990), to cite only these two. 28. Patrick Taylor, The narratives of Liberation: Perspectives on AfroCaribbean Literature, Popular Culture and Politics, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, ¡989), ¡4.

CHAPTER 6 1. V.Y. Mudimbé, L’Odeur du père: essai sur les limites de la science et de la vie en Afrique Noire (Paris: Présence africaine, ¡982), 35. 2. My translation. 3. Mudimbé, L’Odeur du père, ¡6. 4. Ibid., 37. 5. Ibid., 47. 6. Ibid., 43 7. Ibid., 35. 8. The Rift, translated by Marjolyn de Jager (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, ¡993), 8. 9. Ibid., 9. 189

190

Notes — Chapter 7 38. Ibid., 47 39. See Refusal of the Shadow, ¡34–35 40. See Daniel Delas, Aimé Césaire (Paris: Hachette, ¡99¡), ¡7 41. Éloge, 26 42. Ibid., 44. 43. My emphasis 44. Éloge, 44 45. My translation. 46. See Michel de Certeau, The Capture of Speech and Other Political Writings, edited and with an introduction by Luce Giard, translated and with an afterword by Tom Conley (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, ¡997), 26.

10. Ibid., 33. 11. Ibid., 32. 12. Ibid., 22. 13. Ibid., ¡20. 14. Ibid., 49. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid., ¡5. 17. Ibid., ¡6. 18. “Knowledge of French is not necessarily sign of intelligence.” 19. Jean Bernabé, Patrick Chamoiseau, and Raphaël Confiant, Éloge de la créolité (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, ¡989), 47. 20. See Raphael Confiant, Aimé Césaire: une traversée paradoxale du siècle (Éditions Stock, ¡993). 21. Senghor, Je crois, ¡73. 22. My translation. 23. Jean-Paul Sartre, “Orphée noire,” Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache de langue française (Paris: PUF, ¡972). 24. Beside Fanon, who, in his earlier writings, was very critical of the totalizing tendency in Negritude, the movement was strongly criticized as backward in the ¡960s by a group of African intellectuals, among whom Wole Soyinka and Ezekiel M’phalele. 25. Leiner, ¡24–25. 26. My translation. 27. Éloge, 26. 28. My translation. 29. Senghor, On African Socialism, translated by Mercer Cook (London: Pall Mall, ¡964). 30. See Raphaël Confiant, Aimé Césaire. 31. Éloge, 27 32. My translation. 33. Éloge, 35. 34. My translation. 35. Slavoj Zizek, The Sublime Object of Ideology (New York: Verso, ¡989), 88–89. 36. Ibid., 87 37. Ibid., 6.

CHAPTER 7 1. V.Y. Mudimbé, Tales of Faith: Religion as Political Performance in Central Africa (London: Athlone, ¡997), 36–39. 2. V.Y. Mudimbé, Parables and Fables (University of Wisconsin Press, ¡99¡), 69–72. 3. Kwame Anthony Appiah, “Is the Post- in Postmodernism the Post- in Postcolonial?” in Contemporary Postcolonial Theory: A Reader, ed. Padmini Mongia, (London: Arnold, ¡996), 55–7¡. 4. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Kafka: pour une littérature mineure (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, ¡975). See my discussion of Deleuze’s notion of “minor literature” in Chapter 8. 5. Mary Eagleton, Introduction to Feminist Literary Criticism (London: Longman, ¡99¡), 5. 6. See Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, translated by Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, ¡987), 232–309. 7. See Elizabeth Grosz, “A Thousand Tiny Sexes: Feminism and Rhizomatics,” Gilles Deleuze and the Theater of Philosophy, eds. Constantin V. Boundas and 190

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22. See, e.g., Madeleine Borgomano, Voix et visages de femmes dans les livres écrits par les femmes en Afrique noire (Abidjan: CEDA, ¡989), Mineke Schipper, Unheard Words: Women and Literature in Africa, the Arab World, Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America, translated by Barbara Potter Fasting (London: Allison & Busby, ¡985), 48–53, and Susan Stringer’s The Senegalese Novel by Women: Through Their Own Eyes (New York: Peter Lang, ¡996), 49, 7¡. 23. Aminata Sow Fall, L’Ex-père de la nation. (Paris: Harmattan, ¡987), 56. 24. My translation. 25. See Madeleine Borgomano, Voix et visages de femmes dans les livres écrits par des femmes en Afrique francophone, Abidjan: CEDA, ¡989) or Susan Stringer, The Senegalese Novel by Women Through Their Own Eyes. 26. See Le Revenant (NEA, ¡976), La Grève des Bàttus (NEA ¡980), L’Appel des Arènes (NEA ¡982). 27. Fall, L’Ex-père, 82. 28. Ibid., 8¡. 29. My translation. 30. Fall, L’Ex-père, 76. 31. My translation. 32. Fall, L’Ex-père, 59 33. Ibid., ¡4. 34. My translation. 35. Ibid., 54. 36. See Obioma Nnaemeka, “Bâ: Parallels, Convergence and Interior Space,” in Feminist Issues ¡0.¡ ¡990, ¡3–35. 37. See Christopher Miller, Theories of Africans: Francophone Literature and Anthropology in Africa Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ¡990), 277–85. 38. For a discussion about So Long a Letter as an autobiography, see Susan Stringer’s The Senegalese Novel by Women: Through Their Own Eyes (New York: Peter Lang, ¡996), 54–60. 39. Susan Stringer, The Senegalese Novel by Women: Through Their Own Eyes (New York: Peter Lang, ¡996), 52.

Dorothea Olkowski (New York: Routledge, ¡994), ¡89. 8. See Luce Irigaray, Parler n’est jamais neutre (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, ¡985). 9. See Elizabeth Grosz, “A Thousand Tiny Sexes: Feminism and Rhizomatics,” Gilles Deleuze and the Theater of Philosophy, eds. Constantin V. Boundas and Dorothea Olkowski (New York: Routledge, ¡994), ¡89. 10. See Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thoughts: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (London: HarperCollins, ¡990) 11. Ibid., 67–90. 12. Ibid., 206 13. Ibid., 20¡–37 14. Barbara Christian, The Race for Theory” in Contemporary Postcolonial Theory: A Reader, ed. Padmini Mongia (London: Arnold), ¡48–57 15. Ibid., 44–5¡. 16. Collins, ¡0¡–¡9. 17. Williams, 68–75. 18. Mae Gwendolyn Henderson, “Speaking in Tongues: Dialogics, Dialectics, and the Black Woman Writer’s Literary Tradition” in Reading Black, Reading Feminist: A Critical Anthology, ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (New York: Meridian, ¡990), ¡¡6–42. 19. See Irène Assiba d’Almeida, Francophone African Women Writers: Destroying the Emptiness of Silence (Gainsville: University Press of Florida, ¡994), 22. 20. See Irène Assiba d’Almeida, “La Prise d’écriture des femmes francophones d’Afrique noire,” Moving Beyond Boundaries Vol. II: Black Women’s Diasporas, ed. Carole Boyce Davies (New York: New York University Press, ¡995), ¡38–40. 21. I am thinking, among others, of Hélène Cixous’s and Luce Irigaray’s appropriations of Derrida’s deconstructive approach against structuralist analyses, and particularly psychoanalytical models of sexuality. 191

192

Notes — Chapter 8

40. See Jacques Lacan, Écrits: A Selection, translated by Alan Sheridan (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., ¡977). 41. See Mbye Cham, “Contemporary Society and the Female Imagination: A Study of the Novels of Bâ.” Women in African Literature Today (Trenton: Africa World Press, ¡987) 42. Mariama Bâ, So Long a Letter, translated by Modupé Bodé-Thomas (London: Heinemann, ¡989), 89. 43. See Mildred Mortimer, Journey Through the French African Novel (Heinemann Educational, ¡995), ¡36. 44. So Long a Letter, 89. 45. Myriam Warner-Vieyra, As the Sorcerer Said, translated by Dorothy S. Blair. (Longman, ¡982), 65–66. 46. Bâ, ¡4–¡5. 47. Bâ, 20. 48. Fall, L’Ex-père, 58. 49. My translation.

The instituted trace cannot be thought without thinking the retention of di›erence within a structure of reference where di›erence appears as such and thus permits a certain liberty of variations among the full terms…. . The trace, where the relationship with the other is marked, articulates its possibility in the entire field of the entity [étant] … defined as the beingpresent starting from the occulted movement of the trace. The trace must be thought before the entity. But the movement of the trace is necessarily occulted, it produces itself as self–occultation…. The field of the entity, before being determined as the field of presence, is structured according to the diverse possibilities— genetic and structural — of the trace [Of Grammatology, 47].

12. Yaou, Le Prix, 7. 13. All translations of this book are mine. 14. Keita, Rebelle, 63, 64. 15. See Chinua Achebe, “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness,” in Postcolonial Criticism, eds. Bart Moore–Gilbert, et al. (New York: Longman, ¡997), ¡¡5. 16. Keita, Rebelle, 65. 17. Ibid., 68–69. 18. Ibid., 69. 19. Ibid., 83. 20. Ibid., 93, 95. 21. Yaou, Le Prix, 205. 22. Ibid., 68–69. 23. Ibid., 68–69. 24. Ibid., 70. 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid., ¡22. 27. Keita, Rebelle, 97, 98. 28. Ibid., ¡¡7. 29. Keita, Rebelle, ¡27, 28. 30. Françoise Lionnet, Postcolonial Representations: Women, Literature, Identity (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, ¡995), ¡59–60. 31. Keita, Rebelle, ¡32. 32. Yaou, Le Prix, ¡2¡. 33. Ibid., ¡25.

CHAPTER 8 1. Derrida, Grammatology, ¡5. 2. See Gilles Deleuze, and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (University of Minnesota Press, ¡987), 2¡. 3. Fatou Keita, Rebelle (Abidjan: NEI, 29. 4. All translations of Rebelle are mine. 5. Ibid., 48–49. 6. All translations of this book are mine. 7. Keita, 53. 8. Ibid., 55. 9. Ibid., 55–56. 10. See Capitalism and Schizophrenia (University of Minnesota Press, ¡987), 2¡. 11. As writes Derrida concerning the arche-trace: 192

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hor: de la tradition à l’universalisme (Paris: Les Editions du Seuil, ¡988), she writes:

34. In the universe of Akan beliefs, no death is natural. It is often believed that death arrives as the result of a gathering of witches who take turn in o›ering the soul of a member of their family to be eaten at a collective dinner. However, only fathers and their heirs (here, their nephews) or persons from the paternal family can o›er their children to the witches. If, on the other hand, the plot is discovered, and the witches are publicly confronted, then they have the obligation to set their victims free. 35. Yaou, Le Prix, ¡70. 36. Ibid., 27. 37. Ibid. 38. Ibid., ¡58–59. 39. Ibid., ¡59. 40. Ibid., 30. 41. Ibid., ¡89, ¡92. 42. Ibid., 222 43. Hegel, 230. 44. Ibid., 233. 45. Ibid. 46. Yaou, 97. 47. Glas 2, ¡90. 48. Keita, Rebelle, ¡33. 49. Ibid., ¡39. 50. Maryse Condé, I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem, translated by Richard Philcox (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, ¡992. 51. Ibid., ¡¡, ¡2. 52. Ibid., ¡3. 53. Ibid., ¡5. 54. Ibid., ¡62. 55. Thus the great negritudinists have accomplished that journey, which has equipped them with the weapons to speak for the people and to negrofy and berberize any foreign ideal imposed upon their people by the white invaders. I have discussed this aspect of black French letters in Chapter 4. 56. Josiane Nespoulos-Neuville sees in Senghor’s poetry evidence that analogizes his European experience to a frightening initiation process. In Léopold Sédar Seng-

Le paysage d’Europe est jalonné d’objets mutilateurs de toute vision poétique, soit par leur acception propre, soit par leur contexte: couleurs-odeurs de sacrilège et de mort, ils paralysent la respiration, ils asphyxient l’inspiration … [la vision de l’occident] est jalonnée de refus … la nature semble se dérober à ses regards par la brume, par la neige (“la mort blanche”), ou par le brouillard sale de la ville … il ne trouve que l’absence et le vide [37, 38]. [The landscape of Europe is marked with objects that mutilate any poetic vision, either by their meaning or by their context: colors-odors of sacrilege and death, they paralyze respiration and asphyxiate inspiration … [the vision of the West] is marked with rejects (also refuse) … nature seems to slip away from his sight in the mist, in the snow (white death), or in the dirty fog of the city … he only finds absence and emptiness.] [My translation.]

57. Is it not the popular belief that motions in space are capable of positing concrete acts whereas memories are not? By moving our whole bodies from one place to another, we occupy and transform larger spaces: we plant a tree, build a house, till a field, take residence in new places, meet new people, interact with them, and become part of new communities. In other words, spatial journeys allow us to make clear and perceptible statements. Remembrances, memories alone or temporal journeys, even when shared with others, do not a›ect our environment to a great coe‡cient of plastic transformation. Spatial journeys have something that temporal journeys do not have, and while studying the notion of initiation through the motif of journeying it is important not to lose sight of this di›erence. As I have discussed earlier, under (male) negritudists’ gaze woman is feeling and man is intelligence; within this perspective, women are far more 193

194

Notes — Chapter 9 7. Derrida, Politics of Friendship, 37. 8. Ibid., 88. 9. Ibid., 35. 10. Dick Morris, former Clinton adviser, in The New York Times Magazine (May ¡9, ¡996), 39. 11. Richard Rorty, Philosophy and Social Hope (London: Penguin, ¡999), ¡72. 12. Ibid., ¡73. 13. Ibid., ¡68. 14. Gilles Deleuze, and Felix Guattari, Thousand Plateaus, 204. 15. See Derrida, Points…Interviews, ¡974–¡994, eds. Elisabeth Weber and others, translated by Peggy Kamuf and others (Stanford University Press, ¡995), 32–33. 16. Ibid., 33. 17. Senghor, Liberté III: 270. 18. Ibid., 292. 19. Ibid., 294. 20. Ibid., 90. 21. Ibid., 272. 22. My translation. 23. Liberté III, 428. 24. My translation. 25. C. Kunze, “African Folk Literature in the Struggle for National Emancipation: Bernard Dadie’s Adaptation of Fairy tales,” in African Studies, ed. K. Buttner (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, ¡983), ¡6. 26. Ibid. 27. Ibid., ¡8. 28. Ibid. 29. Blaine Harden, “A Continent’s Slow Suicide: A Compilation.” Reader’s Digest. (May ¡993), ¡¡2–¡3. 30. Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, 2. 31. Patrick Chamoiseau and Raphaël Confiant, Lettres créoles, 59. 32. Ibid., 6¡. 33. See Camara Laye, Le maître de la parole. 34. See McGowan. 35. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Thousand Plateaus, 204.

than men prone to memories and remembrances. This phallocentric representation of women in griotism remains less contested than Francophone Black women writers reflect it upon. 58. Condé, Tituba, 4¡. 59. Ibid. ¡29. 60. Réda Bensmaïa, The Year of passages, translated by by Tom Conley (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, ¡995), 86. 61. Ibid., 20. 62. Ibid., 4¡. 63. Ibid., 69–70. 64. Ibid., ¡02. 65. Ibid., 57–58. 66. See Tom Conley’s introduction to the book. 67. See Gayakri Chakravorti Spivak, The Postcolonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues, ed. Sarah Harasym (New York: Routledge, ¡990). 68. In my conversations with Bensmaïa, he has admitted that this essay, a plea in favor of Deleuze and Guattari, was produced at the genealogical moment of his own research.

CHAPTER 9 1. See John McGowan, Postmodernism and Its Critics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, ¡99¡), 70. 2. See Tom Conley, “A Trace of Style.” Displacement: Derrida and After (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, ¡983), 74–92. 3. See Derrida, Positions, 46. 4. Rodolphe Gashé, The Tain of the Mirror: Derrida and the Philosophy of Reflection (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, ¡986), 7. 5. Derrida, Politics of Friendship, 7. 6. See, e.g., Tom Conley in “A Trace of Style,” and Richard Beardsworth, Derrida and the Political (London: Routledge, ¡996). 194

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203

Index Achebe, Chinua ¡32, ¡37, ¡92, ¡95 Adam and Eve: as primitive, naked, and sinners 59 Adia‡, Adé Jean-Marie ¡95 Africa: as barren and disease stricken land 28; as cradle of civilization 29; as the dark side of Europe 7; as primitive other 24; as terra incognita 35 Afrocentric: critics against postmodernism ¡08; feminists ¡¡7 Ahidjo, Amadou: government 33; and socialism ¡00 Akan: beliefs ¡40, ¡93n34; folktales ¡69; tradition ¡29–3¡ Alessandrini, Anthony C. ¡95 Algeria: as locus of physical and psychological restoration ¡79; as quintessential nation 90–9¡ Algiers ¡54, ¡55 Alladian ¡86n¡ Almeida (d’), Irène Assiba ¡¡2, ¡95 Althusser, Louis ¡2, ¡83n20 Anglo-Saxon: feminists’ positions ¡09–¡0; and French feminists ¡¡2 pragmatics 57; race 6, 58 anti-genealogy ¡26, ¡35 anti–Semitism 23 Appiah, Kwame Anthony ¡08, ¡09, ¡90n3, ¡95 Arabic 36, 56, ¡56, ¡68 Arabophone ¡54 arche-trace ¡30, ¡35, ¡92n¡¡ Aristotlelian: methodological approach to texts 40 Arnold, James ¡95 Ashanti 24, ¡69, ¡85n2¡, ¡96 Asia 6, 7, 30, 3¡, ¡67, ¡9¡n22, 202 assimilation 5, 39, 69, 79, 80 Atcho (prophet) ¡40

Austin, John Langshaw 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, ¡95, 200 Azar, Michael ¡95 Bâ, Mariama ¡, ¡¡3, ¡92n43, ¡95, ¡96, 20¡ Bambara 43, 49, ¡86n¡ band/clique ¡66–67, ¡73, ¡75 band/tape ¡66, ¡68, ¡73, ¡75–76 Baoule: society ¡70 Barbados ¡22, ¡48, ¡52 Beardsley, Monroe C. ¡85n26, ¡95 Beardsworth, Richard ¡94n6, ¡95 Bebey, Francis 39, 57 becoming-animal ¡56, ¡65 becoming-woman ¡09 Bédié, Henri Konan ¡7¡, ¡95 Békés 60 Benjamin, Walter ¡83n7 Bennington, Geo›rey ¡95 Bensmaïa, Réda ¡53, ¡56, ¡57, ¡58, ¡59, ¡94n60, ¡94n70, ¡95 Benveniste, Emile ¡95 Bergson, Henri ¡8, 27, 3¡, 32, 36, ¡67, ¡86n30, ¡95 Bernabé, Jean see Creolity Bernasconi, Robert ¡6¡, ¡85n2¡, ¡96 Bible 36, 58, 59, 90, ¡00; on the King James version 36 Biya, Paul ¡46 Bjornson, Richard ¡86n44, ¡96 black feminists ¡¡0 Blair, Dorothy S. ¡92n47, ¡96, 203 Body Without Organs 75, ¡37, ¡58, ¡59 Bokassa, Jean Bedel ¡75 Bongo, Omar ¡75 Borgomano, Madeleine ¡9¡n22, ¡9¡n25, ¡96 Bouelet, Sylvestre 26, ¡85, ¡96 Bourdieu, Pierre 7, ¡0, ¡¡, ¡2, ¡3, ¡83n¡7, ¡83n2¡, ¡83n22, ¡84n25, ¡96, 203

205

Index Bourgeacq, Jacques ¡96 Breton, André ¡8 Brouard, Carl 20 Burkina Faso ¡35, ¡69 Buttner, K. ¡9, 23, ¡84n5, ¡84n7, ¡94n25, ¡96, ¡99

Côte d’Ivoire ¡3¡, ¡69, ¡75 Creolity 97–¡07 Critchley, Simon ¡97 cultural relativism 7, ¡80 culturalism 7

Cabral, Amilcar 82 Caesar, Julius 26, ¡73 Camara, Laye 62, ¡¡7, ¡35, ¡94n33, ¡96 Cameroon 33, 39, ¡46 Camus, Albert ¡54 Canada ¡58 Canning, Peter ¡96 Capécia, Mayotte 82, ¡96 Carey-Webb, Allen 64, ¡87n2, ¡96 Caribbean: subject as deterritorialized ¡79 Central African Republic ¡69 Certeau (de), Michel ¡07, ¡90n45, ¡96, ¡97 Césaire, Aimé see negritude of incompossibility Césaire, Suzanne 30, 3¡, ¡86n38, ¡86n40 Chad ¡69 Cham, Mbye ¡¡9, ¡92n42, ¡96 Chamoiseau, Patrick see Creolity Chinese spirit and temperament ¡67 Chiraquian years ¡46 Christ 23 Christensen, Francis 40, 4¡, ¡97 Christian: crowd 22; morality as folie circulaire 22 Christian, Barbara ¡¡¡, ¡9¡n¡4, ¡97 civilized capitalist machines 25, ¡08 Claudel, Paul 67 Cli›ord, James ¡8, ¡83n9, ¡84n4, ¡97 Collins, Patricia Hill ¡¡0, ¡¡¡, ¡9¡n¡0, ¡97 Commonwealth literatures 8 Conakry 50, ¡87n¡9, 203 Condé, Maryse ¡, ¡48, ¡49, ¡50, ¡52, ¡53, ¡93n50, ¡94n58, ¡97 Confiant, Raphaël see Creolity Congo ¡33, ¡75 Conley, Tom ¡57, ¡6¡, ¡90n45, ¡94n2, ¡94n6, ¡95, ¡96, ¡97 Conrad, Joseph 5, ¡37, ¡97 Cook, Mercer ¡90n29, 202 Coolie (Indians) 60, 68 Cornell, Drucilla ¡97

Dadié, Bernard 32, 45, ¡69, ¡70, ¡7¡, ¡87n¡2, ¡87n¡5, ¡97 Dahomey 5, 62 Damas, Léon Gontran 2¡, 70 Dash, J. Michael ¡97 Davies, Carole Boyce ¡9¡n20, ¡95, ¡97 deconstruction: as critique of structuralism 7–9; and politics ¡62–66 Delafosse, Maurice ¡7 Delange, J. ¡83n8, ¡97 Delas, Daniel ¡90n40, ¡97 Deleuze, Gilles: and Anti-Oedipus 25, ¡08, ¡37; and line of flight ¡65; and minor literatures ¡58–60 Democrats ¡76 Derrida, Jacques: and di›erance 9; and the political as aporetic ¡63; and repeatability 65, 88; and Saussure’s linguistics 8; and supplementarity 65–66; see also deconstruction Dessalines, Jean-Jacques 20, 2¡, 23 diachronic linguistics 4 Dilthey, Wilhelm 90 Diop, David 2¡ Djeli: or quimboiseur ¡25 Djenne 62 Eagleton, Mary ¡09, ¡90n5, ¡98 élan vital 2¡ Engels ¡2, ¡83n20 English race 6 epistémé 8, ¡¡0 Ethiopian civilization 30 Europe: as Promised Land 58 European feminists ¡¡0 Eve see Adam and Eve Fall, Aminata Sow ¡, ¡¡3, ¡9¡n23, ¡98 Fanon, Frantz: as revolutionary prophet 9¡; and the schizophrenic 93; and will to unity 77 femininity 74, 95, ¡¡0, ¡30, ¡84n24 Ferry, Luc: and Alain Renault, French Philosophy of the Sixties ¡83n20

206

Index forced poetics 36, 66 Fort-de-France 70 Foucault, Michel ¡2, ¡7, ¡¡¡ France: as imaginary-ideal 60 Francity 39 Francophony ¡54 Frank, Manfred ¡98 free play 7, ¡62, ¡80 Freire, Paulo 82 French Academy ¡36 Freud, Sigmund ¡0, ¡04, ¡84n23 Friedan, Betty ¡98 Frobenius, Leo: in Negritude 28–32 Front de Libération National ¡53

Guinea 38, 53, 54, ¡35, ¡69 Guyana (French) 70

Gabon ¡69 Gadamer, Hans-Georg: and good will in conversation 86 game 8–¡2; as play, aporia, chance, coup, écriture 90 Garrett, Naomi ¡98 Gashé, Rodolphe ¡6¡, ¡62, ¡94n4, ¡98 Gatens, Moira 64, ¡88n35, ¡98 Gauvin, Lise ¡98 Gbagbo, Laurent ¡46 Germany 22 Ghana 62, ¡35 Gibson, Nigel ¡98 Gides, André ¡54 Glissant, Edouard 65, 66, ¡87n8, ¡97, ¡98 God 6, 58, 59, 60, 65, 74, ¡54, ¡87n¡, 200 Golden Valley ¡55 Goncourt 34, 35, 40 Goody, Jack 36, ¡98 Grand Bassam ¡42 Grand-Narrator 35, 7¡, ¡09, ¡20 Gratiant, Gilbert ¡98 Greek 90, ¡00, ¡¡¡, ¡56, ¡68 Green, Mary Jean ¡98, 200 griironism ¡6¡, ¡80 griot: his word, his body 64; -intellectual ¡68, ¡72–73, ¡76 griotism ¡; as rigid and foundationalist spirit ¡67 Grosz, Elizabeth ¡09, ¡¡0, ¡90n7, ¡90n9, ¡98 Guadeloupe 60, ¡48 Guattari, Félix: and Anti-Oedipus 25, ¡08, ¡37; and line of flight ¡65; and minor literatures ¡58–60

Habermas, Jürgen 83 habitus ¡¡–¡3, ¡72, ¡84n24 Haiti: as heir of original African legacy 20 Haitian Indigenist Movement ¡9 Hall, Stuart ¡88n¡7, ¡99 Hama, Boubou 49, ¡87n¡7, ¡87n2¡, ¡99 Hamitic civilization 30 Harden, Blaine ¡7¡, ¡94n29, ¡99 Hausser, Michel ¡99 Hegel, Friedrich: in Negritude 24–27 Heidegger, Martin 84, 85, 90 Henderson, Mae Gwendolyn ¡9¡n¡8, ¡99 Himmelheber ¡69, ¡7¡ Hitler, Adolf ¡9, 23 Hooks, Bell 82, ¡89n23, ¡99 Houphouët, Boigny ¡75 Ippolito, Emilia ¡99 Irele, Abiola 39, 9¡, ¡86n3¡, ¡99 Irigaray, Luce ¡¡0, ¡59, ¡9¡n8, ¡99 ironist 84, ¡03, ¡76, ¡8¡ Islam 36, ¡54 Jameson, Fredric 83 Jara, René 64, ¡87n¡, ¡87n2, ¡99 Jardine, Aline ¡59 Jennings, Michael ¡99 Jesus 59 Jews 98 Jeyifo, Biodun ¡99 Judeo-Rhenan spirit ¡67 Jung, Carl ¡04 Kafka, Franz ¡58, ¡90n4, ¡97 Kagamé, Paul ¡46 Kane, Cheick Amidou ¡99 Kaplan, Robert 56, ¡86n8, ¡99 Kassaï-Sankuru 28 Kaufmann, Walter ¡84n8, ¡85n¡7, ¡85n¡8, ¡99, 20¡ Keita, Balla ¡75 Keita, Fatou: writing out of compromise ¡25 Kenyatta, Jomo ¡00 Kesteloot, Lylian 32, 33, ¡99 Kierkegaard, Søren 83

207

Index King James: version of the Bible 36 Konaré, Alpha ¡46 Koné, Amadou ¡99 Koran 36 Kourouma, Amadou ¡87n¡3 Kunze, C. ¡69, ¡70, ¡94n25, ¡99 Lacan, Jacques: in black French letters ¡4; in Fanon 79; and floating signifier ¡02; in Mudimbé 93; and point de capiton ¡03; and split ¡65; see also psychoanalysis Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe ¡0 Lanes, Gilles 85, 200 Lat-Dior 62 Latin race 6 Lebanese 60, 68 LeBon, Gustave 5, 6, 34, ¡83n4, ¡83n6, ¡85n28, ¡87n2, 200 Léger, Alexis 67 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm ¡87n¡, ¡87n3, 200 Leiner, Jacqueline 24, ¡84n3, ¡85n¡5, ¡86n42, ¡88n¡5, ¡90n25, 200 Leiris, Michel ¡83n8, ¡97 Leninism ¡67 Letourneau 34 Levi-Strauss, Claude ¡85n¡6, ¡87n2 Lévy-Bruhl, Lucien 5, 34, ¡85n28, 200 Lionnet, Françoise ¡39, ¡92n30, 200 logocentrism 8, 65 London ¡55 Louverture, Toussaint 20, 2¡, 23, 26 Lumumba, Patrice ¡00 Lycée Louis Le Grand 70 Lycée Schoelcher 70 Lyotard, Jean-François ¡0 Malcolm X 82 Mali (Old) 38, 42, ¡86n3, 20¡ man-cat ¡64–66 Mandingo (Maninka, Malinke) 38, 43, ¡89n43 Maran, René 34, 35, 40, 79, ¡86n46, 200 Martinique 32, 60, 68, 69, 70, 72, 77, 79, 80, 82, ¡80 Marx, Karl ¡0, ¡¡, 2¡, 83, ¡67, ¡83n20, 202 Marxism ¡¡, ¡¡0, ¡67 Mbom, Clément 76, ¡88n38, 200 McCulloch, Jock 90, 9¡, ¡89n45, 200

McGowan, John ¡94n¡, ¡94n34, 200 Melone, Thomas 33 Memmi, Albert 82, ¡87n¡3 Ménil, René 32, 33, 70, ¡86n38 Mercer, Kobenan 83, 200 Michelfelder, Diane ¡87n5, ¡89n32, ¡98, 200 Middleton, Christopher ¡84n6, 200, 20¡ Midiohouan, Guy O. 200 Mignolo, Walter 200 Miller, Christopher 73, 84, 90, ¡08, ¡¡8, ¡¡9, ¡88n30, ¡89n27, ¡9¡n37, 200 Miller, Mary-Kay 200 Mohammed, Askia 23, 62 Mohanty, Chandra 200 Mongia, Padmini ¡90n3, ¡9¡n¡4, 20¡ Mortimer, Mildred ¡¡9, ¡20, ¡92n44, 20¡ Mowitt, John 20¡ M’Phalele, Ezekiel 20¡ Mudimbé, V.Y.: and the quest for originality ¡7 Name-of-the-Father ¡30, ¡4¡, ¡84n23 Napoleon 26 natural poetics 36, 66, negritude: of compossibility 6¡–63; of incompossibility 58–6¡ Nespoulos-Neuville, Josiane ¡93n56, 20¡ Niane, Djibril Tamsir 38, 39, ¡86n3, ¡87n9, ¡87n¡4, 20¡ Nietzsche, Elizabeth (sister) 23, ¡84 Nietzsche, Friedrich: in Negritude ¡8–23 Niger 49, ¡35, ¡69 Nnaemeka, Obioma ¡¡7, ¡9¡n36, 20¡ Oedipus ¡8, 25, 34, 95, ¡08, ¡37 Ojo-Ade, Femi 20¡ orality 24, 26, 42, 44, 49, 57, 66, ¡0¡ Overman ¡9–23, 26 Paris 6, 7, ¡8, ¡34, ¡47 Parry, Benita 20¡ Pfa›, Françoise 20¡ phallogriocentrism 74 Plato 8, 65, ¡¡0 presence-of-the-mother ¡30 Price-Mars, Jean 20, ¡85n¡2, ¡85n28, 20¡ primitive territorial machines 25, ¡08 psychoanalysis ¡4, 69, 95, ¡¡0

208

Index Read, Alan 20¡ Republicans ¡76 Richardson, Michael ¡88n20, 20¡ Rorty, Richard ¡94n¡¡, 20¡ Roumain, Jacques 20 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 58

Sundjata Keita 23, ¡68 surrealism 6, ¡8, ¡0¡ synchronic linguistics 4

Said, Edward 202 Saint Domingue 20 Samory, Touré 23, 26, ¡68, ¡72 Sartre, Jean-Paul 83, 98, ¡54, ¡87n¡3, ¡90n23, 202 Saussure, Ferdinand de see structuralism Schipper, Mineke ¡9¡n22, 202 schizoanalysis see Deleuze, Gilles; Guattari, Félix Sekyi-Out, Ato: and Fanon as global theorist 80–90 Sembène, Ousmane ¡35, 20¡, 202 Senghor, Léopold Sédar see Negritude of Compossibility Sérère ¡00 Shaka 23, 26, 74, ¡72 Socé, Ousmane 35, 202 socius 9¡, ¡26, ¡75 Songolo, Aliko 202 Spadaccini, Nicholas 64, ¡87n¡, 202 Spivak, Gayatri ¡25, ¡57, ¡94n67, 202 Steinbeck, John 40 Stockle, Norman ¡86n6, 202 Stringer, Susan ¡¡8, ¡9¡n25, ¡9¡n40, 202 structuralism: influence of social sciences 4 sublation 25, 78, ¡03, ¡44

Taylor, Patrick: Fanon as global theorist 80–90 Thiam, Awa ¡08, 202 Thiong’o, N’gugi Wa 202 Thoby-Marcelin 20 Thomson, Alex 202 Todorov, Tzvetan 5, ¡83n5, 202 totalization ¡4, 3¡, ¡03, ¡62, ¡89n43 Touré, Sékou 50, ¡00, ¡87n¡9 undecidability ¡, 22, 7¡, ¡¡9, ¡63 United States ¡, 5, 6, 30, 3¡, 68, 78, 98, ¡¡0, ¡20, ¡36, ¡55, ¡67, ¡73, ¡75, ¡9¡n22, 202 universalism ¡0¡ violence: as purgative 79–80 Wacquant, Loic ¡0, ¡3, ¡83n¡7, ¡83n20, ¡84n25, ¡96, 203 Walker, Keith 203 Warner-Vieyra, Myriam ¡22, ¡92n47, 203 Wolof ¡00, ¡86n¡ Yaou, Regina: writing out of compromise ¡25 Yoder, Caroll ¡86n47, 203 Young, Lola 82, ¡89n20, 203 Zizek, Slavoj ¡02–4, ¡90n35, 203

209