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Nation-Building, Propaganda, and Literature in Francophone Africa 122 Emmanuel Boundzéki Dongala’s work is concerned with establishing a narrative that challenges official history and questions the intolerance for multiple versions of history. Whether the focus is provided by a discussion of the relationship between Africa and France, Africa and the transplanted people in the Americas, or more recent concerns relating to the complicated path toward democratization since the collapse of the one-party system, his writings address the various mechanisms through which history is recorded and memory constructed, in order to suggest ways in which reconciliation could be achieved. While my argument thus far has attempted to delineate the respective contributions of official writers, the oppositionality of Sony Labou Tansi, and the testimonial mode adopted by Lopes, this chapter begins with an analysis of Dongala’s fascinating trajectory as an author and scholar, gradually expanding the framework in order to focus on the challenges he has articulated in his work against authoritarianism, sketching his contributions to the mapping of a history in which multiple voices are foregrounded , and finally connecting his agenda to the objectives of the National Conferences. In 1960, after obtaining his baccalauréat in Brazzaville, Dongala competed for a scholarship that was being offered for the first time by the United States to African students from francophone sub-Saharan African countries. Dongala became the first Congolese recipient of that scholarship and left for the United States later that year. The traditional destination for African students and those from the francophone Diaspora in general was France or other French-speaking countries (such experiences are well documented through the writings of Léopold Sédar Senghor, Aimé Césaire, Camara Laye, and Bernard Dadié, among many others); this unique and unusual itinerary has played an integral part in building his world view and in shaping the future writer. 5EMMANUEL DONGALA History, Memory, and Reconciliation Death brings its own freedom, and it is for the living that the dead should mourn, for in life there is no escape from history. —MARK BEHR Emmanuel Dongala 123 After spending nine years in Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and at Oberlin College in Ohio, Dongala returned to the Congo at the end of the 1960s. The country was undergoing radical transition toward a scientificSocialist government, and Dongala found it difficult to adjust to this environment . Barely a year passed before he left again, for France this time, in order to pursue his scientific training as a chemist. Dongala returned to Brazzaville in 1979, where he worked as a professor of chemistry at the University Marien Ngouabi, later becoming the university’s dean. In one of history’s curious and paradoxical turns, Dongala and his family were dislocated from Brazzaville because of civil unrest in 1997 and transplanted across the Atlantic to the United States, where Dongala was offered a teaching position at Simon’s Rock College of Bard in Great Barrington, Massachusetts .1 Dongala is primarily a novelist, although he has also written poetry and theatrical works and directed the Théâtre de l’Eclair in Brazzaville. His first novel, Un fusil dans la main, un poème dans la poche, was published in 1973 and awarded the Grand Prix Ladislas Dormandi. A collection of short stories, Jazz et vin de palme, followed in 1982; a second novel, Le feu des origines, in 1987 (for which he was awarded the Grand Prix Littéraire de l’Afrique Noire and the Prix Charles Oulmont); the novel Les petits garçons naissent aussi des étoiles in 1998; and his most recent novel, Johnny, chien méchant, in 2002.2 To varying degrees, these works will provide the central focus in this chapter, in an attempt to demonstrate their inextricable link in the process of narrating a version of colonial, post-independence, and postcolonial Congolese history that is not included in official constructs. Congo-Kongo In addition to biographical information, one should consider the influence of Kongo culture on Dongala, since it accords a certain anthropological specificity to the literary text by anchoring it in a restricted cultural context.3 Dongala has acknowledged this influence, stating: “in my novel, The Fire of Origins, I really started out from Kongo civilization.”4 To this end, the research and findings of Wyatt MacGaffey and Simon Bockie, among other specialists in the field of Kongo culture, are particularly useful to the discussion. The conflict between traditional beliefs and the modern secular world—in this case a scientific...

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