Fears, Doubts and Joys of Not Belonging

Chapter 4. Out of the Circle: United Marginals in Francis B. Nyamnjoh’s The Travail of Dieudonné

83 Chapter 4 Out of the Circle: United Marginals in Francis B. Nyamnjoh’s The Travail of Dieudonné By Adaku T. Ankumah Alienation has been a topic of interest in the literature of the twentieth century. Haakayoo Zoggyie notes in his recent publication on the same topic that though the reasons for alienation may be different, alienation is found in people in the “deepest recesses of the Amazon forest to the most sophisticated city on our planet” (9). Indeed, the pages of literary texts reveal characters whose alienation comes from their abject poverty to E.A. Robinson’s character Richard Cory who is “richer than a king” and who “glittered” as he walked by to make onlookers envious, but went home one night and “put a bullet through his head.” In Cory’s case here mentioned, one may question if his final act is the result of his fears, doubts or joys of not belonging and/or belonging. However, researchers and theorists who write on alienation tend to focus much attention on its negative psychological effects—the powerless, meaningless, isolationist existence of those on the outside looking in, distanced by their “lacks.” Richard Schmitt, professor emeritus of Philosophy in Alienation and Freedom, describes the life of the alienated thus: “One day follows another, often boring and repetitive, sometimes utterly catastrophic, but always incomprehensible and not under anyone’s control at all.” He concludes that “[a]lienated lives lack intelligibility” (77). The powerlessness of the alienated has been defined by Melvin Seeman as “the expectancy or probability held by the individual that his own behavior cannot determine the occurrence of the outcomes, 84 or reinforcements, he seeks” (784). He accounts for this powerlessness from Marx’s explanation of the worker not being a contributing factor in production. Thus though he is involved in production, he has no decision-making role. Based on Seeman’s definition, it stands to reason that on a continent where people’s lives have been determined by outside forces, alienation will feature prominently in the literature produced in Africa. However, critics have challenged this notion of alienation located from the outside and impacting the lives of another group. For instance, in his published inaugural lecture at the University of Ibadan in 1982, “In Praise of Alienation,” a title that appears oxymoronic, the Nigerian professor and critic Abiola Irele challenges what he refers to as the “pathology of alienation as inscribed in our [Africans’] experience as a colonized people” (202). Generally, proponents of the alienated African position suggest that in the traditional past, citizens enjoyed an edenic relationship with their culture, before the intrusion of colonialism, when “things fell apart.” Irele contends that instead of viewing alienation negatively, Africans could reverse the negativity by seeing Western civilization as providing “the paradigm of modernity to which we aspire” (202). In other words, Africans must use the tension which exists between themselves and Western culture and civilization brought by colonialism in order to catch up with the rest of the world (224). Obviously, this capitulation to “modernism” and the former colonial masters has drawn much criticism both inside and outside of the continent, given the fact that Irele at one point championed the cause of Negritude in Anglophone Africa. However, some contemporary African writers reject this path to “disalienation,” which again suggests that Africans cannot solve their problems unless they look to the West for a solution. Writers like Cameroonian-born author Francis B. Nyamnjoh have chosen a different approach to address the problem of otherness, alienation and dispossession of the masses in many African countries. 85 Recognized in March 2013 as the African Hero of the Year for 2013 by the African Student Union of Ohio University, Francis B. Nyamnjoh wears many hats, including that of a social anthropologist and a novelist. In The Travail of Dieudonné, Nyamnjoh’s protagonist, Dieudonné, an elderly man who initially works as a houseboy for a white couple in an African country, drowns his woes in alcohol. He does not, however, allow his exclusionary status as a “nouveau pauvre,” one marginalized by class, birth, race, ethnicity, religion, etc. render him voiceless and powerless in a society where the leaders and the “nouveau rich” exploit them. Far from feeling estranged from himself or his community, Dieudonné and others disenfranchised in his community, subvert the negativity of exclusion, alienation and marginalization, by empowering themselves and taking control of their lives. Dieudonné’s alienation...