De la Negritude a la Creolite: Edouard Glissant, Maryse Conde et la malediction de la theorie (review)

De la Négritude à la Créolité: Edouard Glissant, Maryse Condé et la malédiction de la théorie, by Cilas Kemedjio. Hamburg: LIT, 1999. 334 pp. ISBN 3-8258-3417-4.

Toward the middle of this remarkable study on the subject of theory with regard to African and Caribbean literature, Cilas Kemedjio cites Mongo Beti's poignant question: "Pourquoi ne puis-je pas écrire librement and dans le bonheur, comme les autres écrivains de mon pays d'adoption" 'Why can't I write freely and happily like the other writers of my adopted country [France]?' The answer for Beti is "very simple": he is an African writer, and unlike French writers, he bears the burden of working toward freedom; he cannot take it for granted yet. The aim of Kemedjio's study is, in many ways, to explain the multiple components of this deceptively simple answer, since long after the era of independence struggles, the question of internal liberation continues to plague the African intellectual. How is it possible to write when writing itself has been "fetishized" (51) so that a polar opposition between orality and writing continues to plague our understanding of the relevant epistemological and ontological issues? And if one does write, how is it possible to be heard when the interpretive, methodological, and ideological frameworks within which the work will be received are colored by conceptions of history and culture that owe so much to the hegemony of European thought, methodologies, and institutions? Kemedjio puts Foucault, Bourdieu, Saïd, and Mudimbe to excellent use in his analysis of the way that exogenous criteria of analysis and evaluation undermine the possibility of developing an "imagination théorique" (123) in keeping with the local conditions of production of a literary field. This is a thoroughly persuasive, intelligently argued, and comprehensive overview of a difficult longstanding problem rooted in the "Africanist" traditions of the West. The debates that have animated the criticism of francophone African and Caribbean literature are clearly represented in the first half of the book, which thus provides both the expert critic and the beginning student with an indispensable, state-of-the-art resource.

Kemedjio then goes on to show how Caribbean writers give us the beginnings of an answer to the questions posed above: literature itself can be a theoretical discourse linked to geopolitical realities (as it is for Glissant), a space of symbolization, and a way to provide an internal critique of endogenous cultural traditions; literature thus creates a new imaginary that is an implicit answer to the dramatic historical conditions that frame its emergence. By pursuing the kind of institutional legitimation that "theory" has provided within the Western academy, Kemedjio argues that African critics only fall victim to yet another instance of what Mudimbe calls "l'odeur du père" (the smell, or lingering influence, of the father). But the paradox is that Kemedjio's theoretical sophistication is the ground that allows him to de-essentialize the standard opposition (since Plato banned poets from his Republic) between literature and critique or philosophical argumentation and fictional creation. This is not an impasse, however: it is the condition of possibility of a new discourse that will continue to strengthen the links between the text and its contexts within postcolonial studies.

The book is marred by some unfortunate editing problems: numerous typos, a few stylistic problems, and some unnecessary repetitions that the publishing house should have helped to correct. Kemedjio's talent deserves better.

Françoise Lionnet

Françoise Lionnet is Professor of French at the University of California-Los Angeles.

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