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  • ‘La Parole construit le pays’: théâtre, langues et didactisme au Katanga (République démocratique du Congo) by Maëline Le Lay
  • Pierre-Philippe Fraiture
‘La Parole construit le pays’: théâtre, langues et didactisme au Katanga (République démocratique du Congo). Par Maëline Le Lay. (Francophonies, 4.) Paris: Honoré Champion, 2014. 490pp.

This exacting study bridges the gap between literary studies, sociolinguistics, and anthropology. Maëline Le Lay spent fifteen months in Lubumbashi exploring the city’s literary scene and collecting, by way of participant observation, vital data from its main agents (academics, playwrights, and representatives of local theatre groups). The approach is original and breaks away from what could be called, by analogy, armchair literary scholarship. In this respect, it is significant to note that Le Lay engages critically with scholars such as Alain Ricard, Johannes Fabian, or Karin Barber, who have all analysed the links between language, political power, and African popular culture. The book provides detailed insight into the Congolese linguistic situation and the competition between French, which has since colonization retained its status of official language, and Lingala, Kikongo, Tshiluba, and Swahili, the four main vehicular languages. The issue of diglossia is central to the author’s argument and enables her to draw parallels between the present context of linguistic rivalry and tension and that which prevailed under Belgian rule. Indeed, she convincingly claims that [End Page 468] language preference — French or Swahili in the case of Lubumbashi — underpins Katangese playwrights’ ambition to contribute usefully to the development of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The author demonstrates here that the notion of literary field — free from political interferences according to Bourdieu — does not apply to the Lubumbashi context. Albeit autonomous from Paris, Brussels, and Kinshasa, this literary scene lacks internal independence owing to its heavy reliance on political and religious institutions but also, interestingly, on some non-governmental organizations and their attempts to engage in ‘Theatre for Development’ (p. 322). This context is used as the basis for dissecting the main features of twenty-five texts in French (by Katsh M’Bika Katende and Yvon Kibawa) and nine plays in Swahili published and/or performed between 1973 and 2009. Le Lay is keen to show their authors’ tendency to embrace a didactic style of writing and to perpetuate the colonial legacy of using theatre for the advancement of political and religious ideals. Invariably, their plays have been driven by an ambition to endorse objectives of national (re)construction promoted by political regimes under Mobutu and after, and to convey moral (that is, Christian) contents. She regrets the apocalyptic tone adopted by these playwrights, in addition to their inability to interrogate more systematically their history and the discourses of a cultural field ‘balisé par des injonctions bienpensantes’ (p. 439). She also deplores their propensity for wishful thinking as they invariably call for ‘un ordre nouveau quiémergera du chaos’ (p. 431). As exemplified by the arresting sociolinguistic analysis conducted by Le Lay (and particularly her focus on various writing strategies such as code-switching, loanblends, and ‘orthopraxy’), this smooth passage from chaos to order is invalidated by the texts themselves and the deep linguistic and cultural malaise engendered by diglossia. This excellent monograph is a significant contribution to the study of Congolese literature. Whilst exploring very spatially circumscribed issues, it also provides a number of very useful theoretical insights into cultural diglossia in Africa and beyond.

Pierre-Philippe Fraiture
University of Warwick
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