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  • Ecritures en transhumance entre Maghreb et Afrique subsaharienne: littérature, oralité, arts visuels
  • Mildred Mortimer
Ecritures en transhumance entre Maghreb et Afrique subsaharienne: littérature, oralité, arts visuels BY Hélène Tissi èresParis: L'Harmattan, 2007.294 pp. ISBN 978-2-296-02794-7 paper.

Using the term "circulations" to designate the movement of ideas, signs, and practices across the Sahara, Hélène Tissières proposes an innovative approach to contemporary francophone fiction. Examining the multiple ways in which postcolonial writers cross the barriers that separate their written work from other forms of expression and other literary traditions, the critic first focuses upon the links between North African and sub-Saharan texts and then brings disciplines such as art and music to the study of postcolonial writing. Finally, she shows how ritual and oral tradition inform contemporary francophone texts of the Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa.

Applying the notion of "circulations" to the study of Maghrebian and sub Saharan literature, Tissières enters a realm that has not received the attention it deserves despite significant bonds across the Sahara: similar colonial history, visual images, and orality. Examining the historical context within which many francophone African writers find themselves, particularly the political and economic instability that leads so many to choose exile, she probes the narrative techniques that convey the sense of loss and disillusionment common to writers of North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa: fragment, irony, parody, repetition, as well as the recurring theme of madness in a world marked by violence.

When she turns to the relationship between writing and oral tradition, the critic notes the importance of proverbs, riddles, songs, epic, and myth to postcolonial fiction. Although this area of inquiry has received significant attention by other critics, the link between contemporary fiction and the visual art has not. Here, Tissière's study is most original. As a literary critic with a strong background in visual arts, she reads signs and symbols in literature and visual arts with great perception. Moreover, to emphasize the importance of visual elements to her study, she includes reproductions of paintings by contemporary artists. Her selection of paintings from Morocco, Algeria, Mali, and Senegal reveals the importance of signs and symbols to African visual arts, a perspective that visual artist share with contemporary writers.

In close readings that follow the theoretical study, Tissières examines the texts of sub-Saharan African writers Werewere Liking and Tchicaya U Tam'si and Maghrebian writers Abdelwahib Meddeb and Assia Djebar. Steeped in the initiation practices of the Bassa of Cameroon, Werewere Liking's text Elle sera de jaspe and de corail combines theater, poetry, visual arts, and music into a syncretic form. Tchicaya U Tam'si's novel Les méduses ou les orties de mer is crucial to Tissière's analysis because of its syncretic dimension: it introduces elements of divination, prophecy, ritual, and the fantastic into the "classic" detective novel. In her analysis of Maghrebian texts, Abdelwahib Meddeb's Phantasia and Assia Djebar's Femmes [End Page 214] d'Alger dans leur appartement and L'amour, la fantasia, Tissière's focus is primarily upon the visual aspects that enter the written text, references to calligraphy in Meddeb's work and Orientalist painting in Djebar's collection of short stories and her novel.

By combining a detailed theoretical study with textual analysis of four major francophone writers, Tissières provides us with an informative study that should encourage students and scholars of francophone African literature to read francophone African texts through a new critical lens. This lens provides an interdisciplinary focus that acknowledges the multiple art forms present in postcolonial fiction today.

Mildred Mortimer
University of Colorado , Boulder
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