Trickster Strategies in Alain Mabanckou’s Black Bazar

Throughout world folklore, tales of animal trickery such as the West African tales featuring Anancy the Spider showcase the use of cunning and thievery to overwhelm stronger foes. In several such tales, Anancy leads a liminal life on the edges of society, which provides him easy access to communities while allowing him to maintain a safe distance. He uses shape-shifting abilities to fool his opponents or his victims and manipulates language through Signifyin(g) processes to trick his prey or enemy and disrupt social practices. In Black bazar (2009), the Franco-Congolese writer Alain Mabanckou draws upon these three trickster strategies to illustrate the complexity of francophone migrant identities in Paris. In so doing, Mabanckou emerges as a master trickster himself who elaborates a new Francophone discourse of migrant identity.