Amatoritsero Ede

This special issue of Gboungboun on Francophone African literature, especially the phase of writing that has now come under the contested term “migritude”, highlights the creative energy from that part of the continent which is, all too often, shielded from Anglophonic contemplation and engagement by a quasi-impregnable language curtain on the one hand, and the underlying ideologies that have divided the African literary process into two major camps - Anglophone and Francophone – on the other. For sure, the impediment that the language curtain constitutes to a holistic engagement of the African literary process is not new. One recalls that in the early phase of modern African literary production in English, when all roads largely led to Ibadan, Nigeria, the coterie of writers, artists, and scholars that animated the literary scene –Wole Soyinka, Christopher Okigbo, JP Clark and others – were hardly aware of what their Francophone precursors and contemporaries were up to. This situation remained unchanged until actors like Ulli Beier and Abiola Irele began to make Francophone works available in English translation in Black Orpheus.

There is, however, an historical explanation for this state of affairs, which goes back to the colonial scene, where the taking of territories and their administration was fraught with a “scramble” mentality. The “scramble for Africa” resulted in the English and the French viciously protecting their national interests, through contesting military, economic, political, and, of course, linguistic strategies; the last of which defines the life-worlds of either Anglophone or Francophone Africans to such an extent that it becomes an alienating instrument between two African “worlds”. This worldview, which is more unconscious than anything else, is prevalent anywhere the English and the French have had to flex colonial muscles – not just in Africa. A good example is to be found in Canadian linguistic nationalism, more conscious and heavy on the French-speaking side of the union.

Although each side of the divide comes to the literary table with its own baggage of linguistic chauvinism – and the attendant discursive practices that have bifurcated African literature into such constructs as Anglophone African literary tradition and Francophone African tradition – the point must be made that the assimilationist ideology of French imperialism, with its belief in the superiority of Gallic civilization to all other civilizations, has not helped matters. To speak French is to be human. This arrogant ideology did not stop at trying to manufacture Black French men and women in Francophone Africa; it had to convince them that they had Gallic ancestors – nos ancetres les Gaulois!  What are some of the consequences of this psychic conditioning which makes African literary actors place their Anglophone-ness or their Franchophone-ness ahead of their African-ness?  We glean from Afam Akeh’s contribution to the Invisible Contexts section of this issue that the Francophone literary community in Cameroon either ‘refused’ or did not think it was necessary to pay their last respects to the recently deceased Bate Besong, a major Cameroonian writer. His crime? He spoke and wrote in English! This is an un-African, and ironic a response to a death in the ‘family’, especially considering the never-ending spiteful official French treatment of the African in the metropolis, an attitude taken to new heights by French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, as we see in Chris Dunton’s commentary in this issue.

But there are more literary consequences to this situation. In the last two decades, African literary production has been dominated on both sides by writers born mostly after 1960. In Anglophone Africa, especially Nigeria, they are referred to as the “third generation”, a term globalized in the numerous collaborative efforts of Pius Adesanmi and Chris Dunton. In Francophone Africa, they are known as migritude writers or, “children of the postcolony” in the more famous formulation of Abdourahman Waberi, who features prominently in this issue. In essence, the new phase of African literature springs from the writings of Yvonne Vera, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Moses Isegawa, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Chris Abani, Sefi Atta, Helon Habila, Jude Dibia, Remi Raji, Uche Nduka, and Ogaga Ifowodo on the Anglophone side. The Francophone side responds with Abdourahman Waberi, Bessora, Alain Mabanckou, Kossi Effoui, Calixthe Beyala, Fatou Diome, Jean-Roger Essomba and so many others. Yet, each generation, resolutely on its side of the curtain, demonstrates no serious awareness of the other. I moderate krazitivity, an internet discussion group which comprises most actors – writers, artists, critics – in the Nigerian third generation literary process. I am often amazed at how easily we make sweeping statements about African literature, valid, of course only for Anglophone Africa, and assume, naturally, that we are speaking for the whole of African literature. Pius Adesanmi, who labels commentators who have no awareness of the other side, “one-legged commentators on African literature”, has informed me of a similar attitude on the part of the Francophones.  By taking three of the Francophone “children of the postcolony” to our Anglophone readers, this special issue of Gboungboun will hopefully serve as a bridge-building effort. Our Commentary section assembles some of the most formidable thinkers in the business – Ken Harrow, Chantal Zabus, Chris Dunton, Obed Nkunzimana and Alexie Tcheuyap. Their essays offer a window into topical issues in Francophone African literatures to our Anglophone audience. We thank Ramonu Abiodun Sanusi for guest-editing the issue and Pius Adesanmi for sourcing materials from key specialists of French and Francophone literatures and cultures.
 

From the Guest Editor

 
Guest Editor


 
Dr. Ramonu Abiodun Sanusi teaches French and Francophone Literatures at George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia. Apart from scholarly publications, he has published three novels and a poetry collection.
 

Francophone African literature, right from its inception in the Black Atlanticist/Black Internationalist ambience of Parisian Négritude, has been marked by an engagé fervor. It took its provenance from Guyanese novelist and poet René Maran’s protest novel, Batouala (1921). French colonial power, having planted seeds of discontentment in its diverse former colonies, machinated a rapport de force, a kind of eternal danse macabre, between colonizers and colonized. Francophone African literature of urgency and agency was born in this context. Having won independence from the former colonial overlord, many territories initially ruled through French diktat and iron fist, took their destinies in their own hands. Alas, new puppet – comprador leaders, created and ‘assimilated’ by the same French colonial system emerged to turn their fellow countrymen into victims. As such, Francophone African literature has had to redefine its terms of thematic and aesthetic engagement in a postcolonial, post-Négritude frame. This special issue of Gboungboun accounts for these transformations in a way designed mostly for an Anglophone audience. Various topics/themes are embedded in “Writers in the News”, “Commentary” “Hidden Texts”, “Invisible Contexts”, and “Conference Note”. Topics ranging from the treatment of homosexuality in Francophone literature, Francophone studies and postcolonial theory, and ‘migritude’, to female writing, and Africa in the era of ‘Sarkozism’ are discussed by an impressive cast of contributors. Hidden Texts, as usual, highlights work by emergent writers, who might not be regular fare on academic curricula, or who do not yet enjoy as wide enough a readership as they probably deserve. In the same vein, “Invisible Contexts” highlights Benin Republic and Anglophone Cameroon in conformity with Gboungboun’s tradition of shedding light on hardly-discussed, fringe contexts of literary production in Africa. Francophone African literatures is so dominated by texts from Cameroon, Senegal, Cote D’Ivoire and the Congos that one hardly hears of works, especially recent works, from places like Benin, Niger, Tchad, and Burkina Faso. We have included Anglophone Cameroon as a special case: a hidden context of production drowned by it’s larger Francophone environment.