Forum

August 12, 1999

Dear Editor:

Lynne Rienner Publishers recently published a volume, Yambo Ouologuem: Postcolonial Writer, Islamic Militant, edited by Christopher Wise. The volume includes Wise’s piece (reprinted from RAL) on his recent contacts with Ouologuem and numerous other essays, mostly reprinted. Taken together, the book thus presents a history of the reception of Ouologuem since 1968 along with current interpretations, most notably Wise’s own; it is therefore a significant addition to scholarship on this author.

In looking through Wise’s volume for the first time, I was very surprised to see that it included a reprint of my preliminary article on Ouologuem, “Trait d’union: Injunction and Dismemberment in Yambo Ouologuem’s Le Devoir de violence,” published in L’Esprit créateur 23.4 (Winter 1983). This article was later superseded by the full version of my work on Ouologuem that appeared in my book Blank Darkness (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1985). The article version was reprinted in Wise’s volume without my knowledge or permission. Wise made no attempt to contact me. Permission to reprint was granted by L’Esprit créateur—without consulting me, as the rules and practices of publishing demand. But as John Erickson, editor of the journal, explained in a letter to me, this was an inadvertent procedural omission, for which he apologized. Wise’s actions, however, were clearly the result of conscious choices: not to communicate with me, and to print the preliminary article version instead of the book version. Why would the editor of any volume of essays seek to publish the work of a living scholar without contacting that scholar directly?

I wrote to Wise to raise these questions; in his response (19 July 1999), he offered no explanation of his failure to contact me, and he claimed that his decision to print the article version rather than the book version was due to the high permission fee requested by the University of Chicago Press (not a negligible consideration, as I am well aware). But if Wise had asked me, I would have been able to waive my portion of that fee, thus cutting it in half; in fact, he and/or I might well have been able to persuade the Press to lower or waive the remainder of the fee. Rather than contact me, however, Wise chose to compromise the coherence of his volume, in which all those who cite my work (including Wise) refer to Blank Darkness, but in which the Esprit créateur version is reprinted.

The issue here is not formal permission, since that was granted by the journal. The question is the ethical and collegial responsibility of an editor to living scholars whose work he or she seeks to use. How many of the scholars who read Research in African Literatures, in undertaking to edit a volume of essays, would seek to reprint essays without contacting their authors directly? Few, I hope. I would suggest—quite aside from all the technicalities and legalities associated with permissions—that direct notification, consultation, and correspondence would be a minimal expectation; and in the case of essays that are dated and may no longer reflect the author’s thinking or approach, that a fair chance should be given to revise and suggest new interpretations.

The irony in this should not go unmentioned: one of Wise’s most striking contentions is that Le Devoir de violence “went to press without [Ouologuem’s] full prior knowledge or consent” (7), yet that is the awkward position in which he has put me.

There is no rule-book on scholarly ethics. But I would suggest that the practice of reprinting the work of a living author without notifying him or her directly is clearly wrong—and indeed disturbing.

Sincerely,

Christopher L. Miller

Professor of French and of African and African-American Studies

Yale University

• Forum

October 4, 1999

Dear Editor:

I would like to briefly respond to Christopher Miller’s letter, dated August 12, 1999. As Miller states in his letter, the volume Yambo Ouologuem: Postcolonial Writer, Islamic Militant “presents a history of the reception of Ouologuem since 1968 along with current interpretations.” In the introduction of...