Less than One and Double (review)

This work addresses the relevance and applicability of Western feminist theory to African literature. Psychoanalytical criticism and the works of French feminist theorists have met with great resistance because of the issue of appropriateness. Kenneth Harrow does not shy away from this difficulty. Rather, he confronts the question by methodically undoing the various objections stemming from misreadings of Lacan or of Freud and his Oedipus theories. The scope of this study goes beyond advocating the usefulness of an applied Lacan reading. It allows Harrow to redefine certain critical parameters.

For instance, through a Felman-Lacan reading of Ama Ata Aidoo's "Certain Winds from the South," Harrow demonstrates how the critic/reader can engage in a new dialogue with the author/the text. Likewise, Harrow's very detailed analysis of Calixthe Beyala's multiple plagiarisms opens onto a fascinating issue: the subversive quality of her plagiarisms compared to her writing, and yet, a softening of the original texts. In fact, I would have liked Harrow to query further the significance of these displacements within her oeuvre and within French and francophone literatures. In his reading of Loukoum, I would argue for the inclusion of Maman a un amant, because of its additional echoing of the self and doubling. In light of Kristeva's analysis of the pure/impure in the Jewish context, Harrow considers Beyala's introduction of a third term, "African Judaic abject." In Tu t'appelleras Tanga. This is a case where the theoretical development is too lengthy compared to the analysis of the text itself.

Expanding on the title of this study and Homi Bhabha's work on colonialism, Harrow analyzes the role of the double in women's literature. A gradual complexification appears in the series of displacements occurring, from the "sister" in So Long a Letter to the "cousin" in Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions and Beyala's Assèze l'Africaine. Harrow's reading of Nyasha and Sorraya as doubles for Tambu and Assèze is most convincing. Both Bhabha and Irigaray's works help him explore mime and masquerade as ways to resist patriarchy. Bhabha's examination of dislocations of identities and the experience of the relocation allows Harrow to unmask a certain ambivalence and discrepancies central to the enunciative act in Nervous Conditions.

Taking Safi Faye's film Mossane as a point of departure, Harrow reflects on the act of cinematic representation, how it "functions to normalize dominant values, making them appear to be not constructed but natural" (249). Claiming an "unmediated" representation, Faye chooses to subordinate the plot to an ethnographic approach. In doing so, the cineaste does not challenge the established order and stays within the usual parameters of heterosexual economy. In contrast, Jean-Pierre Bekolo's Quartier Mozart functions as the "mocking laughter of the postmodern" (253), using parody as subversion. These comparisons open the question of how to maintain transgressions "without these new categories becoming new prisons" (264). This leads Harrow to reflect on the relationship between the viewer and the image; how not to reproduce the same structure of cultural oppression; how to deal with the issue of voyeurism.

The final chapter focuses on the role of the city in women's texts. Judith Butler's contestation of the usual binary terms tradition-modernity enables Harrow to explore new dynamics in Tanella Boni's Une vie de crabe: the borders between the "beaux quartiers" and the QG (quartier général, the popular quarter), he shows, have dissolved. While the Forbidden is certainly a stimulating element in Léti-Niyous' love, the cultural construction of the incestuous quality of the relationship should be explored further. Through an analysis of Véronique Tadjo's A vol d'oiseau, Harrow beautifully examines the variants of love in/and the city.

In conclusion, Harrow creates new resonances for us. Certainly, he does a very fine job...