Postcolonial Theory: The French (dis)Connection
Obed Nkunzimana
There is a lot of critical material where real politic and contemporary African culture is concerned. For example there is a new South Africa or Rwanda worth exploring. In the case of Rwanda, now officially trilingual in French, English and Kinyarwanda, and with a new type of governance, a different mode of relating to the West and to the world, it is a country psychologically marked by a recent tragic history rooted in explosive local ideological intoxication, and international manipulative influences. Rwanda is not only inhabited by citizens who were never exposed to the external world and who speak only the mother tongue (Spivak would perhaps call them “indigenous subalterns”) but also by returnee exiles and the younger generation, who speak little or no Kinyarwanda. These changes and other social complexes make Rwanda an interesting laboratory for critical postcolonial research. Significant also is Rwanda's tumultuous relationship with France, which led to the abrupt break of diplomatic ties in 2006, and the still uncertain efforts at reconciliation. This needs observation and commentary. The revival of Rwandese traditions – including a non-western justice system and attempts to recall a pre-colonial spirit of community, in a move away from ethnic and linguistic divisions towards socio-economic development and societal cohesion – raises questions of utmost interest for postcolonial analysis.
Another country outside the francophone zone but tied to it through multilateral cooperation that should attract the attention of postcolonial theorists and critics is Post-Apartheid South Africa, which has gradually become a new attractive centre for many Africans either for the purpose of studies, business or health care. In other words, it is playing the role that European capital cities (especially Paris and London) used to play in the past (and are still playing of course, but to a lesser extent) as the intellectual Meccas for former colonies. “Moving the Centre”, Ngugi’s expression, is what immediately strikes me when I think of this new development, which deserves further exploration in terms of the need for the redefinition of a North-South relationship, or of international power distribution. .
Afrocentric discourse is growing and is useful for unearthing new perspectives. The Centre for African Renaissance Studies (in Pretoria), which is affiliated to the University of South Africa, has a graduate program which emphasises the production of Afrocentric discourse. It also has a mandate to tighten the links between African scholars on the continent and those in the Diasporas. The program seeks to understand how and where things went wrong historically and determine the right paths to an African Renaissance and Africa’s self-repositioning on the global stage. One may see here an extraordinarily rich food for postcolonial thought and a valued opportunity for its renewal.
As a conclusion, an active French and Francophone postcolonial criticism can be very resourceful for comparative francographic literary studies. I’m convinced – and some influential critics confirm this insight – that the future of postcolonial theory depends on the will to find the right balance between the inflationary debate on the prefix ‘post’ and the channelling of these predominant conceptual discussions to the literary and cultural creations from former colonies in Africa, Asia or the Caribbean. So, Francophone comparative literature has a lot of interesting material for postcolonial approaches. If titles are alluring windows to the comparative postcolonial possibilities in francographic fictional works, then La fille de Christophe Colomb by Quebecois Réjean Ducharme and Les Petits Fils-Nègres de Vercingétorix by Congolese Alain Mabanckou, Le pays sans chapeau and Le pays sans ombre by Haitian D. Laferriere and the Djiboutian A. Waberi respectively and Mauritian Ananda Devi’s Indian Tango and Guadeloupean Ernest Pepin’s Le tango de la haine certainly have themes rich for postcolonial disquisition. The rising star from Djibouti also authored the acclaimed Les États-Unis d’Afrique, whose comic reversals shatter ready-made binary thinking and suits postcolonial Center-Margin reinterpretations.
No doubt, our colleague, Pius Adesanmi’s excellent Project on New African Literatures will enormously contribute to the enrichment and renewal of the postcolonial debate. As Amatoritsero Ede asserts in his introduction to the first issue of Gboungboun, this initiative spotlights “emergent and relatively unknown but equally engaging writers of the third generation from the entire continent (both Francophone and Anglophone)”, thus generating ideas and discussions covering the entire continent, irrespective if linguistic, geographic, disciplinary, and other artificial barriers. In this way, the French and Francophone establishment’s customary neglect of postcolonial theory will be remedied.