The Liminal Novel: Studies in the Francophone-African Novel as Bildungsroman (review)

Drawing upon Victor Turner’s anthropological work on ties of passage, WangarI wa NyatetU Waigwa argues in this study that the liminal model provides appropriate tools for analyzing African novels of education. To support this thesis, the author presents close readings of three francophone texts: Cheikh Hamidou Kane’s Ambiguous Adventure (1961), Camara Laye’s The Dark Child (1953), and Mongo Beti’s Mission to Kala (1957). All three works were written prior to independence, although Kane’s autobiographical novel was published in the immediate postcolonial period.

In The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1967), Turner examines the three phases of passage: separation, liminality, reincorporation. Studying the liminal phase closely, the anthropologist emphasizes its transformational attribute, explaining that the arcane knowledge, or “gnosis,” obtained in the liminal period is not a mere acquisition of knowledge, but changes the inmost nature of the initiate. Turner designates the isolated geographical space occupied by individuals engaged in ritual passage as the “liminal place.” This is the point at which initiates are situated temporarily between the two fixed points; they are no longer who they were and not yet who they will become. In the final stage, the initiate is reincorporated into the social order and assumes a new role and status within the community.

Following Turner, wa NyatetU Waigwa uses the term liminal novel to designate the Bildungsroman, or coming of age novel, in which the three-part rite of passage to adulthood remains suspended in its middle, or liminal, phase, with the protagonist unable to complete the quest, therefore never experiencing reincorporation. Expanding upon Turner’s concept of liminality, the author adds a metaphorical and a psychological dimension. For example, in addition to the ritual liminal place, the site of the circumcision ceremony in The Dark Child, all places in the novel (as well as the two other texts under study) are posited as metaphoric liminal places. Moreover, the protagonist’s lack of connection to people, African and European, and his difficulty in acquiring knowledge in colonial Africa result in psychological liminality as well.

As wa NyatetU Waigwa notes, the colonial situation that promoted European culture and attempted to erase Africa’s own cultural heritage resulted in the interruption of the traditional rite of passage at the liminal stage and at the same time condemned the colonial subject to an incomplete initiation to European culture. A clear example of the incomplete education occurs in Kane’s Ambiguous Adventure. Samba Diallo leaves the Quranic school, the Foyer Ardent, before completing his Islamic education and returns from Paris before completing his French philosophy degree at the Sorbonne.

In the discussion of Ambiguous Adventure, wa NyatetU Waigwa charts Samba Diallo’s trajectory. Having been reappropriated by the West, the young Diallobé cannot return to his point of departure. This dilemma occurs in large measure because Samba’s aunt, the Grande Royale, assigns to Samba, a noninitiate, the task that belongs to the initiated. She falsely assumes that the gifted apprentice of the foreign discourse can penetrate its secrets with no danger to himself. Yet Samba lacks the rational understanding of his original culture. Having left the Foyer Ardent for the foreign school, he has lost his own society’s system of reference. Hence he remains in liminal space, on the threshold. As wa NyatetU Waigwa explains, instead of completing the passage from liminality to reincorporation, Samba exchanges one liminal space for another (97).

Exploring the concept of liminal space in the other two works, the author finds, when turning to The Dark Child, that Kouroussa represents liminal space. Laye’s home town, flanked by railway tracks, bears traces of European culture, unlike his grandmother’s remote village, Tindican. Similarly, in Mission to Kala, Jean-Marie’s village is neither the bush nor the city, but also a town on the road; its inhabitants are transitional rootless villagers who live with the...