Atlantic Bound

A preliminary tour d’horizon of Francophone African literature

As stated, the domain of Francophone African literature is complex stretching over different periods of time, physical spaces (including continents) and movements. There is a notable tendency to conceptualize the field as a transcontinental phenomenon, rather than a national one though national literary traditions and institutions do certainly exist. In this Francophone African literature differs from other literary fields where inclusion (or exclusion) is heavily dependent on, at times, perceived national or regional affiliation, such as French literature or Québécois literature. Efforts to delineate the Francophone African literary field have generally relied on a generational model composed of four very loosely (and at times controversial) ‘generations’ of African writers: that of the pioneers (1920–30), of Négritude (1930–60), of decolonization and disenchantment (1960–90) and, finally, that of the postcolony (1990–present). The generational découpage proposed here by Wabari has not been endorsed by all scholars of Francophone African literature.¹⁴ In Black France: Colonialism, Immigration and Transnationalism, Dominic Thomas argues that ‘[t]‌he kind of homogeneity implied by these attempts at categorization must be registered at all costs, since it is precisely the bilateralism of French-African relations that continues to inform literary works’.¹⁵ I certainly agree with this point, and notably with Thomas’ isolation of Franco-African relations as constituting a central factor in any discussion of Francophone literary production by African authors. We will return to this issue throughout the book. Thomas’ concern also mirrors that of Lydie Moudileno who criticizes the generational model vis-à-vis its reproduction of an ‘arbitrary and reductive parallel between the reading of history and the reading of a literary corpus’.¹⁶ Indeed, defining African authors in terms of their ‘generation’ (effectively, in relation to their year of birth) and reading their texts according to a palette of pre-established aesthetics and themes with which they may or may not actually engage runs the risk of not reading these works in their full and individual complexity and of neglecting any potential national, transnational and transgenerational influences or, conversely, their notable absence. That said, the generational model is useful for condensing and recapitulating the historical contours of French-language African and Afrodescendant writing and for situating within it the contemporary writers that feature at the heart of this book. It is therefore en connaissance de cause that I have recourse to it.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, France occupied vast territories: Afrique occidentale française [French West Africa], Afrique équatoriale française [French Equatorial Africa], mandates over Togo and a portion of Cameroon, Madagascar, the French Somali Coast, the islands of Réunion and Mauritius and the archipelago of Comoros. Most of the formerly French-controlled African territories achieved independence in 1960 though some are still colonial territories of France. Others, though officially independent, remain closely affiliated with France through Francophonie membership and well-entrenched economic, political and military ties some of which are being tested by current upheavals in notably West Africa and what appear to be new alliances with nontraditional national partners. In the literary field at least, authors from the former and current Sub-Saharan colonial territories of France, and even those of Belgium, maintain strong connections with the European metropolitan centre and its publishing structures. This history of prolonged (post)colonial domination is at the very inception of African literature written in French and has retained a key position in the long list of thematic preoccupations that tend to be associated with fictional writing by contemporary Sub-Saharan authors including Diome and Miano.

The first generation of African writers arose somewhat unintentionally and was composed of former students who progressed through the French educational system designed to facilitate the administration of colonial territories. Continental writers of this first generation generally mirrored the aesthetics and structures of the classical French poets to whose works they were exposed during their studies. African literary scholar Lilyan Kesteloot notes that the average young, literate Sub-Saharan of the era’s personal library consisted namely of European, if not specifically French classics: the works of Paul Verlaine, Victor Hugo, William Shakespeare, Marie-Henri Beyle (Stendhal), Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (Molière), Honoré de Balzac, Gustave Flaubert, and the exotic literature of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Pierre Loti, Robert Randau, Lucie Cousturier and the Tharaud brothers (amongst others).¹⁷ Those aspiring to write themselves were often ‘adopted’ by French writers through a parrainage system of mentorship and sponsorship which continued beyond the first generation and was premised on the colonial hierarchy of knowledge transfer from the ‘established’ European writer to the ‘aspiring’ African one. French writers contributed prefaces to numerous African literary works thereby endorsing the literary merit of those who had penned them: Randau wrote the preface for L’Empire du Mogho-Naba by Dim Delobson from Upper Volta (modern-day Burkina Faso), Robert Delavignette for Karim by Senegalese writer Ousmane Socé and Georges Hardy for Doguicimi by Beninese author Paul Hazoumé.¹⁸ In their attempts to assimilate their identity within that of the culture of the colonial power, African intellectuals went as far as to produce texts that denounced the ‘barbarian’ nature of their own societies thus validating the logic upon which European imperialism was erected. Many had spent time in Europe physically as either students or fonctionnaires of the colonial state, or at least imaginatively through their immersion within the French colonial school apparatus established across Sub-Saharan Africa. Characteristic of the pioneer generation’s production (amongst others) are Les trois volontés de Malic by Senegalese author Ahmadou Mapaté Diagne, Force-bonté by his compatriot Bakary Diallo and L’esclave by the Togolese writer Félix Couchoro.¹⁹ These were authors who were, by and large, looking with admiration from the African continent towards the European one.

The appropriation of colonial culture coupled with a devaluation of African cultures eventually abated and what manifested in its place was a desire to correct the stereotypical and largely false images of Africa, its peoples and cultures. Importantly, this need to rewrite Africa was not restricted to continental writers and expanded to include Afrodescendant authors from other colonial territories under French administration, such as those of South America and the Caribbean. Novelists played a specifically important role in this prise de conscience. René Maran, the son of Guyanese parents born in Martinique, was the first Afrodescendant writer to win the prestigious Prix Goncourt in 1921 for his novel Batouala: Véritable roman nègre.²⁰ Within this text, the author criticized aspects of the colonial regime as witnessed in Oubangui-Chari (the modern-day Central African Republic). The novel divided opinion amongst its readership with some praising its contents and others deeming it scandalous in reaction to passages critically evaluative of the colonial enterprise. Despite being awarded the esteemed Prix Goncourt, Maran’s novel deemed ‘dangerous’ in nature was banned in all French colonies. He was additionally compelled to resign from his post as administrator of Oubangui-Chari, a post that he had occupied for thirteen years, and to return to France in catimini where he continued to write albeit discretely. Maran’s novel remains significant as it marked a turning point in the thematic preoccupations of Afrodescendant French-language writers who began to question the premises, methods and consequences of European colonization. These themes would resurface only a few years after Batouala’s publication in the intellectual excitement and fervour of 1930s inter-war Paris. The influential Négritude movement was about to be born.

The Négritude movement succeeded that of the pioneers and left an undeniably significant mark on the Francophone African literary field inaugurating what would come to be recognized as a distinctly diasporic project of collective identarian revalorization. Young mainly Afro-Caribbean students from the French colonial territories arrived in Paris from the 1930s and established reviews including La revue du monde noir (1931), Légitime défense (1932), L’Étudiant noir (1935) and the distinguished Présence Africaine (1947). Though the inception of such journals was concentrated in Paris and driven by Antillean students, the reviews eventually attracted Afrodescendant intellectuals (not all Francophone) from around the world: Haitians (Philippe Thoby-Marcelin, Léo Sajous, Jean Price-Mars), Guyanese (Félix Éboué), Afro-Caribbean (René Maran, Lionel Attuly, Louis Thomas Achille, René Ménil, Étienne Léro, Jules Monnerot) and Afro-American (Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Alain Locke).

Motivated by experiences of oppression and discrimination, the writers of Négritude sought to assert their collective cultural specificity as Afrodescendant intellectuals, to fashion a transnational albeit heavily ‘transatlantic black identity’ in opposition to the policy of assimilation.²¹ If the thematic preoccupations broached by the writers of Négritude changed quite drastically from those of the first generation of African writers, their aesthetics still drew predominately from those of the European authors to which their colonial education had exposed them. Inspired by the works of Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Arthur Rimbaud and André Breton, their literary texts operated an inversion of dominant value systems critiquing western rationalism, promoting what they saw to be an ‘authentic’ and collective African identity and revolting against European models of colonialism and capitalism. Importantly, the site of this transnational movement and advocacy in the name of all people of African descendent was the imperial capital of Paris which, as underscored by Brent Hayes Edwards, allowed for the ‘boundary crossing, conversations, and collaborations’ that were necessary for the type of internationalism to which Négritude aspired to take place.²² What was conceptualized as Francophone African literature at the time thus endorsed a new diasporic directionality beyond the continental entities of Africa and Europe.

Léon-Gontran Damas, Léopold Sédar Senghor and Aimé Césaire, respectively from French Guiana, Senegal and Martinique, are considered to be three founding fathers of Négritude. Though Damas was never credited with coining the term (this honour went to Césaire), he was recognized by many as being the first to illustrate Négritude through his poetry. Damas published his first poems in the review Esprit from 1934 and his first poetry collection Pigments in 1937.²³ Pigments earned him significant recognition in the student circles he frequented during his studies in Paris and this prestige was only heightened when his collection was prefaced by renowned surrealist poet Robert Desnos. It was the text of another of Négritude’s founding fathers – Césaire’s Cahier d’un retour au pays natal –, a book-length mixture of poetry and poetic prose written over four years from 1935 to 1939, that become synonymous with the Négritude movement.²⁴ It is described as a ‘decolonizing call for freedom’ that, through its ‘valorization of African cultural traditions’, provided a framework for new self and collective identarian conceptualizations.²⁵ The term ‘Négritude’ is thought by many scholars to have first appeared in this text although Raisa Rexer has identified an earlier citation in a 1935 issue of Césaire’s student journal L’Étudiant noir.²⁶ The neologism is nonetheless cited in Cahier d’un retour au pays natal and notably in reference to the Haitian Revolution which, quite understandably, became a key reference point for Négritude writers and particularly so for Césaire for whom Toussaint Louverture, the slave who defeated Napoléon, was very much an icon.

Like Damas and Césaire, Senghor was born into a relatively privileged environment attending French school before continuing his studies in Paris. Of the three founders of Négritude, Senghor was the sole to be born on the African continent. His initial texts were not marked by the same identarian tensions, anticolonial and anti-European views that characterized those of his Antillean colleagues. When Senghor began writing, his work was strongly tainted by immense sentimentality for his homeland, for its natural environment, animist religious practices and Serer culture and traditions.²⁷ This contrasted markedly with the writing of both Damas and Césaire who did not evoke in their respective works their native Guiana or Martinique in the same nostalgic manner as Senghor did Senegal. Senghor’s apparent disinterest in the denunciation of European imperialism in its many forms and the suffering of African and Afrodescendant populations did not remain secondary to his representations of a peaceful African childhood. As he came into contact with French intellectuals and Antillean and American congeners, and notably after serving in the French Second World War effort during which he was taken prisoner, his consciousness of disadvantage and of race sharpened and became more clearly reflected in his writings. That said, Senghor is generally considered to be less ‘radical’ in his Négritude stance than Damas and, singularly, Césaire. He never called for the complete rejection of western values or ideology instead advocating for the amalgamation of aspects of both western and African cultures on the basis of a métissage model.

The works of Damas, Césaire and Senghor as the flagship contributors to Négritude underscore the inherent heterogeneity of the movement in terms of thinkers, preoccupations and reach. They are, however, all bound by a common underlying pan-African objective: the liberation and identarian revalorization of African and Afrodescendant peoples oppressed and abased by centuries of European imperialism. Poetry was similarly a common denominator as Négritude’s intellectuals privileged the poetic form over others. It is crucial to mention, specifically in the context of a book devoted to the study of women writers, that the Négritude movement was overrepresented by men at the expense of many very active female adherents and participants. These women, intellectuals and authors including the Nardal sisters, Paulette, Jeanne and Andrée, and Suzanne Roussi (who became Suzanne Césaire upon her marriage with Aimé), were marginalized and remain to date overlooked in recognition of the birth, drive and direction of Négritude whose transatlantic fervour would soon dissipate with the dawning of a new political era within continental Africa.

Ivorian author Ahmadou Kourouma’s Les Soleils des indépendances and Malian writer Yambo Ouologuem Le Devoir de violence (both originally published in 1968) are generally identified as having signalled the coup d’envoi of the third generation of African writers which arose within a decade of sweeping independences across the continent in the early 1960s.²⁸ This generation, generation ‘D’ – that of decolonization, disenchantment and disillusion – comprises authors including, amongst others, Mongo Beti (Cameroon), Camara Laye, Alioum Fantouré, Williams Sassine, Tierno Monénembo (Guinea), Sylvain Bemba, Guy Menga, Tchicaya U Tam’si (Republic of the Congo), Sony Labou Tansi, Henri Lopes and Valentin Y. Mudimbe (Democratic Republic of the Congo). The historical and social context within which the African continent was embedded at this point in time is key to understanding the reasons behind the general dissatisfaction and pessimism reflected in the works of African writers. The independences so key to pan-African ideology and Négritude literary creation had finally been achieved yet the concrete political and economic realities of independent African nation states painted a picture that was far from that abstractly and idealistically imagined by Négritude’s poets.

The manner in which independence was attained was not uniform across the former Sub-Saharan colonies as European imperial powers withdrew with varying degrees of thoughtfulness, preparedness and self-interest. Whether independence was achieved through combat, negotiation with the former colonial power or in a combination of the two, one observation remains consistent: the jubilation following the attainment of independence was short-lived. African writers did not remain insensitive to the ills afflicting their newly independent countries of origin. They incorporated them into their writing and adopted a more realistic approach to utopian Négritude, a sombre style bordering on what Kesteloot calls ‘journalistic writing’ that captured ‘the full complexity and often tragicomic convulsions of an evolving Africa’.²⁹ Despite its emphasis on realism, this literary period also saw the rise of the roman du chaos (novel of chaos) and its seemingly hyperbolic qualities which, although they could be interpreted as marking a departure from the documentary style that had come to define continental literature, were more likely a reflection of the difficult conditions defining life in the newly independent states upon which African authors passed judgement, at times brutally, through literature. A portion of these texts were truly apocalyptic in nature and, in some cases, tragically premonitory. Typical of this genre are Labou Tansi’s novels, La Vie et demie, L’état honteux and L’anté-peuple.³⁰ Though published some years later in 1998, Kourouma’s En attendant le vote des bêtes sauvages also has the hallmarks of an apocalyptic roman du chaos through its portrayal of decadent and Machiavellian dictatorship across West and Central Africa.³¹

Texts taking aim at the political and economic shortcomings of African independences were not the only category of literature written and published by African authors at the time. Novels addressing social issues were also prevalent and mused, amongst other themes, over the conflict between traditional values and the influx of modern ones. It was during this generation that women writers from the continent started to make names for themselves and benefit from greater exposure and recognition than those writing during Négritude. They included, amongst others, Véronique Tadjo (Côte d’Ivoire), Werewere Liking (Cameroon; Côte d’Ivoire), Aminata Sow Fall, Ken Bugul and Mariama Bâ (Senegal). Various questions directly relating to the feminine condition, as expansive as women’s education and as specific as the payment of dowries and the practice of polygamy, were featuring more and more in the literary texts of continental authors.

For disenchanted African writers of the third generation, Négritude had lost much of its relevance. The proclamation of a homogenous (and therefore essentialist) cultural identity based on the historically and socially constructed category of race that was initially so paramount to pan-African pre-independence aspirations was now considered restrictive and redundant. Other emerging factors had become the primary concerns of African writers including pressing economic and political situations concentrated within the new African nation states. On the other side of the Atlantic, Afro-Caribbean intellectuals and authors began to repudiate Négritude from the early 1980s for many of the same reasons as their African counterparts. They notably considered Négritude to be too loose a concept to take into account their own cultural singularities. Édouard Glissant was one of the leading theorists who pushed for the dismissal of Négritude and for its replacement by the more specifically Caribbean concept of antillanité theorized extensively in his Le discours antillais.³² The diasporic implications in the literary production of African authors of the third generation were therefore characterized by a tempering of Négritude’s transnational ideals which were replaced by more localized aesthetics and thematics both in Africa and across the Atlantic.

Diaspora would return as a crucial marker of Francophone African literary production for the next and most recent generation of writers, whose dubbed the ‘children of the postcolony’ by Waberi.³³ There are two key criteria for admission into this category. Firstly, and with some rare exceptions, the writers belonging to this generation were born after the wave of Sub-Saharan national independences. Secondly, these writers live for the most part outside of their African nations of birth (most commonly in Europe and North America) and exploit their dual cultural identity in their literary works. These criteria have not been universally accepted among scholars and can appear somewhat flimsy, especially when one considers that immigration has always been a defining feature of Francophone African literary production from colonial to postcolonial times. Yet Waberi’s categorization is useful for accounting for contemporary authors whose personal and professional experiences are indelibly tainted by immigration in a globalized age and who write for a mostly western and immigrant African readership. Typically representative of the literary production of this generation is Bleu, blanc, rouge, the first novel of Congolese author Alain Mabanckou.³⁴ Other authors frequently characterized as enfants de la postcolonie include Sami Tchak (Togo), Calixthe Beyala, Gaston-Paul Effa, Patrice Nganang (Cameroon), Emmanuel Dongala (Republic of the Congo), Boubacar Boris Diop (Senegal) and Waberi himself. Other terminologies and paradigms designed to (neatly) accommodate the contemporary French-language writer of African origin have been advanced. These include Jacques Chevrier’s notion of migritude writing (a neologism combining the words ‘migration’ and ‘Négritude’) which, though rather pithy, could be considered somewhat contradictory in the sense that it associates the migratory element of contemporary African writing with Négritude’s ‘return to source philosophy’.³⁵ Afropolitanism has similarly been proposed as a model for conceptualizing contemporary African literary identities as a transnational phenomenon marked by experiences of mobility and transculturality though it has been criticized for its elitism that does not reflect the majority experience of African migration to notably western locales.³⁶ Two other key theoretical paradigms for conceptualizing diasporic identarian configurations within contemporary African literary production, those of Black Atlanticism and Afropeanism, will be explored at length within this book.