Littératures africaines et comparatisme (review)

These proceedings date back to a conference focusing on African literatures held at the University of Paris Ouest Nanterre la Défense in 2008. They are divided into four sections, “Quelles frontières pour les études littéraires,” “Horizons continentaux,” “Littératures africaines et héritage européen,” and “Migrations et disporas,” and are augmented with a preface by Jean-Marc Moura, one of France’s most esteemed specialists in the field of “francophone postcolonial studies.” As Moura points out, “le comparatisme a eu du mal à intégrer les littératures extra-occidentales à ses objets d’enseignement et de recherches” ‘the field of comparative literary studies in France has struggled to incorporate non-Western works in its curriculum and research’ (5), a remark echoed in the opening chapter by Charles Bonn, who observes the “peu de place que tiennent les littératures francophones, et plus particulièrement celles du Tiers-Monde ou des immigrations, dans l’enseignement universitaire français” ‘limited space occupied by francophone literatures, especially those originating in the third world or in the context of immigration’ (13). Indeed, if the problematic status and critical reception of postcolonial studies in France are now well-known, the institutional impact these heated debates have had on comparative African literary studies has in turn received less critical attention. As this book underscores, this can be partially attributed to infrastructural reasons.

For the most part, the field of comparative literary studies in general in France can be characterized by its adherence to, what are often, outmoded paradigms of canon formation concentrated on various European language traditions and providing an analytical and critical framework that proves inadequate when it comes to addressing the complex levels at which diverse African literatures are produced, excluding, as Charles Bonn shows, “identités problématiques, migrantes, transnationales” ‘problematic, migrant, or transnational identities’ (14). Not surprisingly then, recourse is made to those critical models developed, for the most part, in English-language scholarship in postcolonial studies, world literature, and global literature. After all, this pluri-disciplinary research has played a determining role in expanding the curriculum in language departments in the United States (and elsewhere) and to accounting more accurately for the broader experience of Europe in the world during and since colonialism. For example, the United States has been particularly receptive to “francophone” African and Caribbean writers for some time now—Édouard Glissant, Maryse Condé, Assia Djebar, Alain Mabanckou, Patrice Nganang, Emmanuel Dongala, and Abdourahman A. Waberi—whereas such institutional appointments remain inconceivable in France.

Molly Grogan Lynch considers the various blind spots in the 2007 Manifesto for a World Literature in French and in those subsequent attempts to decode the “postcolonial” in both the French notion of “littérature monde” and the English-language term “world literature.” Conceptual and theoretical frameworks developed in other research environments offer the potential of enriching our readings of cultural, political, and sociological materials in other languages, but how does one begin to engage in such comparative analysis given the complex manner in which national literatures were conceived and elaborated in the aftermath of colonialism, asks Dominique Ranaivoson in her contribution? Likewise, language and orality in the African context (as examined in Ursula Baumgardt’s essay) share particularities that cannot automatically be explained without elaborating a new analytical apparatus, one that would simultaneously have to address how analogous language traditions (the case of Swahili, for example, in Elena Bertoncini’s “Les trois littératures swahilies”) exist in transnational contexts. In turn, contributors suggest what can be learned from a comparative focus organized thematically (le “roman d’apprentissage” or Bildungsroman, as discussed by Christine Le Quellec Cottier) in terms of “European” influences on African texts or writers as different as Valentin Y. Mudimbe, Léopold Sédar Senghor, or Cheikh Anta Diop, whether they be from antiquity (as in Bernard...