Gboungboun: Commentary

Chris Dunton: Return to Sender, Do Not Repeat Order: Nicolas Sarkozy’s Speech at the University of Dakar
Nicolas Sarkozy has always been a gift to cartoonists: his head has that lop-sided set to it, his gaze at times a touch of the mad axe man. Whether he will come to be considered a gift to Africa is most unlikely ...
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Chantal Zabus: ‘Out’ in Africa!
Daniel Vignal and Chris Dunton have provided pioneering studies of male and female intimacies in African literature but, writing in the 1980s, they could not have had the vantage point that we now have ...
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Kenneth W. Harrow: Letter to the Defunct Cineaste
This is the truth of our politics today: we are no longer able to sustain the binary logic that drove our politics in the past. The absolute impoverishment of Africa seems a thousand times worse: the wealthy are so much wealthier, the poor increasingly disempowered and often despairing, while the new visage of global despotisms has rendered increasingly remote the memories of those old-time dictators. We need a new way to think of our culture ...
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Obed Nkunzimana: Postcolonial Theory: The French (dis)Connection
... It was ten years ago while struggling with my PhD thesis at the Université de Sherbrooke. I submitted an article to Presénce Francophone on francophone literature and postcolonial theory. One of the anonymous reviewers’ comments was thought provoking: “Your article is well written”, he said, “but I’m not sure the theoretical approach is suitable to francophone literature” ...
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Alexie Tcheuyap: Pius Ngandu Nkashama: Sixty Years Of Existence And Dissidence
In the historiography of francophone African writings, there are very few figures, if any that would be comparable to the Congolese poet, novelist, playwright, scholar, and social critic, Pius Ngandu Nkashama. His more than fifty literary productions and scholarly publications, which include literary criticism, political science, linguistics, and religious studies, have also significantly contributed to the understanding and development of African studies ...
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