The Yambo Ouologuem Reader: The Duty of Violence, A Black Ghostwriter's Letter to France, and the Thousand and One Bibles of Sex (review)

The reissuing of Yambo Ouoluguem's 1968 novel Le devoir de violence in a new English translation is a tremendous service to those teaching African literature in anglophone contexts. The increasing lack of availability of the older catalogue of African literature is constantly confounding and to be lamented. This publication marks a step in the right direction of making these out-of-print works available to a new generation of students of African literature. As Christopher Wise notes in his preface, the historical and literary importance of this novel in particular is indisputable. Whether read as a response to Senghorian Negritude, an example of postindependence pessimism, or a complicated metacommentary on the status of postcoloniality (whatever that may mean), this novel provides fertile grounds for investigating a variety of concerns central to many courses in African literary studies. Wise adds to his translation of the novel a brief preface that is a lightly revised version of a previously published essay and supplementary materials by Ouoluguem. These include a translation of the entire 1968 collection of satirical essays, Lettre à la France nègre, one brief story from the pornographic short stories (Les mille et une bibles de sexe, 1969) published under the pseudonym Otto Rudolph, and in an appendix, a famous short essay by Kaye Whiteman "In Defense of Yambo Ouologuem" (1972).

The supplementary material definitely enriches the experience of reading the novel. It runs the risk, however, of perpetuating one of Wise's central concerns about the reception of this novel: the reading of Ouologuem's text in and against its European context to the exclusion of West African histories, traditions, and politics. In the preface (and many other essays), Wise eloquently and convincingly argues that the African histories of ethnicity, Islamic conversion, and oral traditions ought to be considered as the primary points of reference for Ouologuem's novel. The supplementary materials "bound" to this translation, however, bring the reader back to the "scandalous" charges of plagiarism leveled against the novel. This is somewhat ameliorated by Wise's inclusion of a brief list of "Suggestions for Further Reading" that include a number of sources dedicated to West African history.

The new translation hews more closely to a literal rendering of the 1968 Editions de Seuil text than the canonical 1971 Manheim translation. Indeed, some of the differences in translation are striking. Two points of divergence in particular could have used some commentary from Wise: his choice to change the title from "Bound to Violence," which, among other things, has accrued a forty-year history, to the new "The Duty of Violence," and Wise's choice to replace Manheim's translation of "la negraille" from "niggertrash" to the patently less offensive "black rabble." Wise does make a small note about this second change, but only as a footnote to the added materials from Lettre à la france nègre. He does not address the reasons behind his choice to change the title of the novel. These departures from the established translation departure bear some explanation.