L’impact des missions chrétiennes dans la constitution des champs littéraires locaux en Afrique ed. by François Guiyoba, Pierre Halen (review)

In the heated debates about the status of postcolonial studies or the aftermath of colonialism in France and in the francophone countries, one of the less discussed topics remains the weight of the notorious colonial trinity as the core structure of the imperial power.¹ Referring to this controversial subject, the French historian Jean Suret-Canale wrote, “La trinité qui préside à l’origine de l’entreprise colonial comprend l’administrateur, le militaire et le missionnaire. En marge de l’appareil officiel, ce dernier a souvent précédé les deux autres”(443) ‘the trinity that presides from the beginning of the colonial enterprise consists of the administrator, the officer, and the missionary. On the fringes of the official apparatus, the latter has often preceded the other two.’ This special issue of six essays of the review Etudes Littéraires Africaines, edited by François Guiyoba and Pierre Halen, examines closely the influence of the third element of the trinity—Christian missions—in the birth and development of francophone African literary fields. This publication is the second of only two groundbreaking studies in the comparative missionary literature in francophone Africa.²

Using Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of literary field, Guiyoba and his colleagues argue that, since they were less intertwined with the two other “official” entities of the trinity, religious organizations gained a much larger autonomy from the colonial government’s control, such freedom bolstered them to systematically assist the emergence of francophone African literary genres, “les quelques cas étudiés ici montrent que les missions et les églises ont effectivement constitué, certes parmi d’autres, des acteurs essentiels de la mise en place des champs littéraires modernes en Afrique à l’ère colonial” (20) ‘The few cases studied here show that missions and the churches have indeed been, admittedly among others, essential actors in setting up modern literary fields in colonial Africa.’ Indeed, through their nonprofit organizations, such as elementary schools, junior high schools, churches, seminaries, printing houses, publishing houses, and bookstores, Christian missions were real nurseries and places of systematic education of civil servants, priests, and future social, political, and intellectual elites, including the first generation of writers.

In this educational process, however, Alphonse Moutombi asserts in his article on colonial Cameroon that the French assimilationist politics, which prescribed French as the only language to be taught in schools at the expense of African languages, seriously undermined the obvious contribution of Christian missions. Denominational schools were entirely under the missionary’s administrative supervision and yet, because they were largely subsidized by the French imperial power, they eventually fulfilled the colonial agenda and became powerful mystifying screens for the French. As a result, observes Moutombi, “[l’]école coloniale, tant publique que privée confessionnelle, constituait la pierre angulaire de tout l’édifice colonial” (50) ‘the colonial public or denominational school was the keystone of the entire colonial edifice.’

Notable early African writers, such as Ferdinand Oyono, Benjamin Matip, René Philombe, and Mongo Beti, were indeed schooled in Catholic and Protestant institutions and their writings were certainly inspired by religious themes and Christian ideologies. Such a fact should have predisposed them to enthusiastically testify to their Christian faith, or to demonstrate at least some sympathy to Christianity (57). But these writers became its fierce critics, bolstered either by an unequivocal anticlerical attitude or a more radical atheist stance in their writings, the most notable being Mongo Beti, with his famous Pauvre Christ de Bomba, which was nearly censored unofficially by the influential Catholic bishop of Yaounde, Bp. Graffin (56).³ Christian missions undoubtedly achieved a productive impact in the education of African elites and writers. Even though they justifiably triggered a rejection from the writers due to their...