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Callaloo 23.4 (2000) 1349-1362



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Kourouma's Monnè As Aesthetics Of Lying

Karim Traoré


Since the Négritude Movement the question of identity of African Literature has been asked in different ways both by writers and literary critiques. In her last book African Novels and the Question of Orality (1992), Eileen Julien gives us a sharp summary of the debate on orality and writing. After having discussed the main positions ranking from racist Eurocentric conceptions to blind and unconditional advocating of Africanity, she concludes that the question of orality and writing/literacy is actually a biased one for it makes out of an "accidental fact" an "essentialist myth." Furthermore, it confines a series of African literary productions (written or oral) in the single tight room of orality. Indeed, most of the time essentialist discourse is not based on any text, but it is part of a general anthropological consideration, or a metalanguage used by writers themselves to account for their source of inspiration. Insofar, it is no wonder that textual evidences cannot support most of the claims.

On the other hand, a too powerful anthropological approach like the one illustrated in Miller's Theories of Africans, tries to take culture--actually the cosmogony or belief system--into account, and therefore often forgets that we are dealing with a fictional work and not with a sociological essay. I would like to contend that not every detail in a literary production is necessarily based on "key-values" like the Mande nyama (vital forces) or on ethnicity.

This paper intends to offer a reading of Monnè by the author of The Suns of Independence, Ahmadou Kourouma, as possible theory of African literature. Kourouma's position in this novel reconciles in a literary discourse the two types of meta-discourse mentioned above. Indeed, Monnè is not only a fictional work, but also a deep reflection on the philosophy of narration. Whereas Georges Ngal is very explicit about the question of discourse in his novel Giambattista Vico ou le viol du discours africain, Kourouma remains implicit. He practices a deconstruction of discourse by using parodic features, and by narrating the same events from different perspectives. These procedures are so consistently carried out that they become a real aesthetics of narration, of "Lying." 1

Monnè is about a king named Djigui, and his reign during the French colonization. Djigui, King of Soba is informed that "Fadarba" and his troops are coming. He is told that nobody can resist them. Samory, a more powerful King, asks Djigui to join him in the battle against the invaders. It is not a simple alliance, but a submission. After a moment of hesitation, Djigui eventually accepts to be a vassal of Samory. Samory adopts a new guerilla strategy, which consists of simply moving away with the population of his kingdom. But Djigui cannot follow him in that because he does not want to leave his homeland, and he does not want to flee: he is ready to fight and die. [End Page 1349]

One day suddenly the French are in Soba, Djigui's capital. They ask him to surrender. In a relatively crude language he defies the French captain, asking him to go beyond the hill and then try from there to conquer his village. But the interpreter Moussa Soumare, who came with the French, renders Djigui's words in a way that makes the captain shake hands with the king: Soumare told the captain that Djigui welcomes the French troop and gives them the Kurufi Hill as place to settle. Soumare explains to Djigui why he did not translate his bluster to the white man:

Tu as deux fois la chance. Ta première chance est qu'aucun des officiers blancs ne comprend le malinké. . . . La seconde est que je me nomme Moussa Soumaré, les frères de plaisanterie des Keita et, en raison du pacte qui lie nos deux clans depuis les temps immémoriaux, je ne peux te faire du mal. [. . .] Je suis ton frère à plaisanterie, donc je te connais. Comme tous les Keita tu es un fanfaron irr&eacute...

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