Shaken Wisdom: Irony and Meaning in Postcolonial African Fiction

Chapter Three: Pragmatics and Ahmadou Kourouma’s (Post)colonial State

65 ch a p ter t h r ee Pragmatics and Ahmadou Kourouma’s (Post)colonial State Rather than the dry tree that is expected to fall, it is the green tree that crashes. —Igbo proverb Ahmadou Kourouma is perhaps the ideal author to consider as we turn toward pragmatics. Though his first novel, Les soleils des indépendances (1970), radically undermined the assumptions of stylistic heterodoxy in the use of the French language by African writers,1 his life and career were by no means dominated by stylistic debates. A practical person , a soldier, a dissident in exile, an actuary who left a gap of twenty years between his first novel and his second (Monnè, outrages et défis), Kourouma consistently sought to use the language of fiction to address issues of social and political oppression. He was arguably one of the most powerful voices raised in the critique of governance in postcolonial Africa. His irony is thus a locus of meaning and of doing: how irony works, why it is necessary, and how it seeks to act on the reader’s worldview necessarily come together in our analysis of two of Kourouma ’s great postcolonial narratives, Monnè, outrages et défis and En attendant le vote des bêtes sauvages. By focusing on what Edgar Lapp (1992, 12)2 refers to as “verbal irony,” we will be able to read a number of ironic utterances as they are represented in Kourouma’s fiction as the kind of verbal practice to which our previous discussions of semantics, interpretation, and argumentation have pointed.3 This broader view of discursive practice will complement the argumentative analysis of irony proposed by Berrendonner and show how, in the context of African literature, irony is defensive as well as offensive , artistic as well as political, and subversive as well as traditional. Shaken Wisdom 66 Viewing irony not as a “linguistic form” but as a “specific way of dealing with language (and not language alone)” (12), Lapp bases his inquiry on a series of questions (13–14) that can be applied to Kourouma’s representation of ironic communication in the context of Koyaga’s trial in En attendant le vote des bêtes sauvages: 1. What factors, other than purely linguistic ones, are involved in the production of an ironic expression? 2. In what way is the intended ironic meaning (eigentliche Bedeutung ) derived from the literal meaning? 3. How can ironic expression be distinguished from other forms of indirect communication? 4. What is the communicative function of ironic expressions? 5. Can irony in general be adequately described through linguistic methods or does it demand an interdisciplinary approach and, if so, what sort of interdisciplinarity would be needed to study irony in African literary discourse? Immediately after the introduction of the donsomana, or purifying ritual , of Koyaga, whom Bingo, the sèrè (master of ceremonies), refers to as one who will remain “with Ramses II and Sundyata, [ . . . ] one of the three greatest hunters of humankind” (3),4 Tiécoura, the koroduwa, or responder, is invited to contribute his “grain of salt” (4).5 Tiécoura gives the donsomana his own interpretation: “President, General, Dictator Koyaga, we are going to sing and dance your donsomana during five festive sumu. We shall tell the truth. The truth about your dictatorship . The truth about your parents and your collaborators. All the truth about your filthy tricks and your bullshit; we shall denounce your lies, your numerous crimes and assassinations” (4).6 He is, as will be the consistent pattern throughout the book, abruptly called to order by Bingo, the sèrè: “Stop insulting a great and righteous man of honor like Koyaga, the father of our nation. If you don’t malediction and misfortune will pursue you and destroy you. So stop it! Stop it!” (4).7 In one sense, linguistic factors already manifest in these two utterances are sufficient to indicate the presence of ironic intentions. The koroduwa’s utterance contradicts the sèrè’s initial honorific form of address while the koroduwa is speaking as a participant in the same ritual process. Even the koroduwa’s initial apostrophe suggests the same deferential attitude toward Koyaga. While Tiécoura’s claim to a discourse of truth may shock the spectator/reader, what is more significant Pragmatics and Ahmadou Kourouma’s (Post)colonial State 67 is that he claims that this truth telling is part of the...