Postcolonial Genetic Criticism: The (un)making of Ahmadou Kourouma's Les Soleils des Indépendances

This article explores the interface between two fields of enquiry that have developed with rather differing sets of priorities: textual genetics and postcolonial studies. Textual genetics has placed the emphasis on writing as a process, deeply influenced by a whole range of factors both literary and non-literary. Its attendant desacralization of the notion of the 'definitive' text as the prime object of study, or as a privileged site for the understanding of a writing project, further problematizes the nature of textuality. Postcolonial approaches to literary study, on the other hand, have frequently foregrounded the importance of the social, political, and cultural contexts from which texts emerge and to which they respond, thereby often deflecting attention from strictly literary concerns. The detailed consideration of the genesis of Ahmadou Kourouma's first novel, Les Soleils des indépendances, presented here, involves a process of 'un-making' that sees the original manuscript of the novel relegated to the status of an avant-texte of the shorter version, published by Seuil in 1970. The study of this particular dossier de genèse suggests that where textual genetics would appear to correspond most closely to the preoccupations of postcolonial studies is at a macro-structural level.