Postcolonial Francophone Autobiographies: From Africa to the Antilles

Conclusion: Francophone African and Caribbean Autobiographies and Their Mixed Reception

159 conclusion Francophone African and Caribbean Autobiographies and Their Mixed Reception My book concentrates on autobiographies written by authors from two geographically different areas, Africa and its diaspora, with French as the common linguistic connection. This study shows that Francophone autobiographers’ adoption of a canonical genre does not necessarily result in complete imitation and can allow for a spectrum of creativity and modification. My analysis of these texts serves as a theoretical and practical reflection on the differences and similarities among Francophone African and Caribbean literary productions in the postcolonial era. The relationship between autobiographical writing and the various audiences implied by each narrative problematizes the issues of authenticity for autobiographies by postcolonial subjects, since they mainly have a Western audience in mind and publish their works through the publishing houses of the (former) colonizer. In my comparative analysis of African and Caribbean autobiographies , I have encountered recurrences of certain common themes: identity construction, colonization, race relationships, postcolonial positioning , orality, struggle with the autobiographical tradition, and the paradoxical nature of the works’ receptions by readers. For the two geographically distinct groups of authors, the use of autobiography as the site of identity creation is a shared characteristic. Bâ, Barry, and Mudimbé all deal with who they were and who they are now, and the same applies to Chamoiseau, Condé and Confiant. A concern for both groups of authors is the desire to create an iden- Postcolonial Francophone Autobiographies 160 tity that includes the collective; this specific commonality confirms the idea that autobiographies by blacks are more community-centered, as previously asserted by Mohamadou Kane, János Riesz, and James Olney . The definition of identity in both groups of autobiographies includes the community, even in the more personal autobiographies by Mudimbé and Condé, and this is done through the common notion of race. Bâ defines himself and his community against the danger of “depersonalization ,” while Barry questions her Self, divided between two continents, finally declaring that she prefers the African community. For Confiant and Chamoiseau, identity is obviously foregrounded on the theory of Créolité, which establishes a common identity through the Creole language and culture, thus including the community. Still, some divergences can be observed in these autobiographers’ shared intention of identity construction: for African autobiographers, identity is structured around a binary opposition (black/white), whereas for the Caribbean autobiographers, the attention is given to various skin tones, even within the same race. Another point where Francophone African and Caribbean autobiographies converge is the recourse to oral tradition. All of them, with the exception of Mudimbé, refer to elements of oral tradition such as storytelling (Bâ, Chamoiseau, Confiant, Barry) and the tale (Barry and Condé). In that line, a divergence appears in the narrative techniques used by both groups. Caribbean autobiographers are more inventive and more contentious in the way they write autobiography than their African counterparts. As I pointed out in my chapter on Confiant, his linguistic creolization of French and the underlining irony that sustains his writing show some originality, or an attempt to write differently; the same applies to Chamoiseau, who introduces three grammatically differentiated subjects that are all versions of his own identity. These innovations show an awareness of the art of writing autobiography with the purpose of proposing something different, something original. Condé also appears to bring some new elements to the genre by showing that she is aware that writing autobiography is not about telling the exact truth, but rather about telling stories, which she calls ironically “contes vrais” (true tales). The analysis of the reception of Caribbean autobiographies reveals both variety and contradictions. For La Créolité’s two founders, Confiant and Chamoiseau, the receptions of both their autobiographies were positive, yet those positive receptions proved to be controversial to their literary movement. In becoming more popular in France than Conclusion 161 in Martinique, these autobiographies contradicted the initial goal of La Créolité: to cater to a Martinican audience first. Their popularity in France was due to the nouveauté of their literary movement and also to the exoticism of their works for the foreign reader. The lack of Martinican critical reactions could be explained in part by the scarce number of critics in Martinique. More importantly, it is due to the fact that both Chamoiseau and Confiant managed to have control of Martinican public opinion because they collaborated in major Martinican newspapers and magazines, which were obviously biased and which...