Discours nationaliste et identite ethnique a travers le roman senegalais (review)

Samba Diop of Harvard University—not to be confused with his eminent and prolific Senegalese compatriot, Papa Samba Diop of the University of Bayreuth—is a distinguished literary critic who has recently added four works to his list of publications, of which one, Discours nationaliste et identité ethnique à travers le roman sénégalais is the focus of this review. This second book, which is based upon a detailed analysis of such complex concepts as nation, nation-state, ethnicity, and métissage, aims to illustrate the distinctive traits upon which the Senegalese novel establishes its identity. At a time when the problematic of national literatures is at the center of the debate on African literary criticism, Samba Diop's sophisticated theoretical reflections in this work, an ideal 'benchmark, deserve particular attention. They help above all to reinforce the framework of the new criticism on the francophone African novel that has been constructed by architects such as Madior Diouf, Bassirou Lô, Locha Mateso, and Mwatha Musanji Ngalasso, among others.

In the four parts making up this work, Samba Diop attempts to offer an in-depth study of the theoretical formulas that are very well articulated in his introduction, by focusing upon a selective group of Senegalese novels, including Karim by Ousmane Socé Diop, Le dernier de l'empire and O pays, mon beau people! by Ousmane Sembène, and Le jujubier du patriarche by Aminata Sow Fall. In the first part, Samba Diop demonstrates, on the one hand, how the elites of colonial and postcolonial Africa were able to test the idea of nation that they had inherited from the Western model, and dissects, on the other, the manifestations of nationalism and ethnicity at the heart of the African novel in general, and in the Senegalese novel in particular. To emphasize the pertinence of the novels' cultural specificity, and to point out their originality as well, he has chosen to delve into the reservoir of modalities of narration related to oral tradition—tales, epics, and myths.

In the book's second part, the Senegalese critic elucidates, with the help of a panoply of examples, the techniques of transposition underlying the national and ethnic character of Ousmane Sembène's political novel Le dernier de l'empire. In the third part, Samba Diop brings to bear the influence of the mythical tale and the traditional epic upon Le jujubier du patriarche before turning his attention to Les gardiens du temple by Cheikh Hamidou Kane and Karim by Ousmane Socé Diop.

Among the procedures he applies to his reading of these novels, the author places special emphasis upon grafting ethnic oral discourse, informed by proverbs as well as gnomic and popular expressions, onto a writing of French expression. From this linguistic transtextuality, Samba Diop is able to resituate the texts of his study in their appropriate sociocultural context and at the center of a very particular geographic zone: the Senegambian space. Nevertheless, by introducing the problematic of cultural métissage within African communities in the process of transformation, Samba Diop opens the way for the definition of new conceptions of identity in the African novel. In so doing, he invites us to bring new life to a debate whose particularities are among the great and major preoccupations of African literary criticism.

In conclusion, it would be useful if Samba Diop perfected the style of his exposition which, in certain areas, lacks rigor in logical construction. Even if the analysis of phrases reveals, on the whole, a perfection in terms of expression, Samba Diop's imprudence must be deplored, if not his lack of attention to punctuation and orthography. Nevertheless, it should be said that he does not take the trouble to translate into French the English citations that are quite numerous in the book. A curious thing, finding rather haphazardly...