This workshop discusses representations of Europe in African literature. Areas of special interest are: Gender and sexuality; Europe in the literature from the “diaspora; Europe as an Idea(l) in African literatures; The changing image of Europe in the history of African literatures; Inter-textuality in African literatures.
This workshop discusses representations of Europe in African literature written in English, French or Portuguese. A study of the idea of Europe in African literature necessarily raises questions concerning power relations in the juxtaposition of the terms “Africa” and “Europe.” Areas of special interest are: Gender and sexuality; The representation of Europe in the literature from the “diaspora; Europe as an idea/ideal and a concept in African literatures; The changing image of Europe in the history of African literatures; Inter-textuality, adaptations and re-writing in African literatures.
Looking at a range of Southern African writing - including, for instance, Charlotte Maxeke's 1920s speeches, Drum magazine writing of the 1950s and 1960s, Tsitsi Dangarembga's 1980s novel Nervous Conditions, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Report (1998-2002) and some post-apartheid writing - my paper traces representations of "woman-as-individual" in order to discuss the genealogies and adopted modes of fictional characterisation and, more generally, current ways of thinking the individual in the face of definitions of an African "ubuntu".
The focus of this paper is on the different aspects of inter-textual engagement in Wole Soyinka’s Opera Wonyosi, especially vis-à-vis John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera and Bertolt Brecht’s Threepenny Opera, the two earlier versions representing Nigerian playwright’s source of inspiration as he responds to pervasive corruption in Nigeria, his homeland. My approach will be to place the play side by side the two preceding texts as I articulate the different dimensions of a playwright’s engagement with Western canonical texts
This paper is part of a larger study, which looks at issues of masculinity in images of Europe in a variety of texts. Europe here becomes the geographic centre in a process where gendered identities are seen to be challenged and reshaped. I will place these representations within a historical context where the interconnections of a racial and gendered discourse produced a particular European subject. In this paper I will look specifically at the novels by Abdulrazak Gurnah.
The paper will trace the ideological and political uses of Shakespeare in Africa and discuss issues of imitation, parody and performative creativity inherent in the genre of re-writing canonical texts, through a reading of Shakespeare adaptations from Julius Nyerere’s Julius Cesar in KiSwahili 1969, Joe de Graft’s Hamele 1965, Mambo (Macbeth) 1978 and Julius Cesar to Lindsey Collen’s Getting Rid of It (Macbeth) and The Rape of Zita (The Rape of Lucretia) to Dev Virasawmy’s Taufunn (The Tempest) 1991.
Cette communication portera sur l’œuvre de Calixthe Beyala, notamment ses romans parisiens. A l’aide d’une étude des stratégies discursives et des techniques narratives utilisées par la romancière, nous allons montrer que les schémas traditionnels représentant les différences entre l’Europe et l’Afrique sont ici déconstruits, qu’il s’agisse de l’opposition entre la modernité et la tradition ou celle entre l’individu et la collectivité. Il est surtout intéressant de voir comment les concepts de l’universalité et de l’hybridité marquent un discours identitaire culturel, alors qu’un discours féministe portant sur l’identité de genre opère avec la notion de féminitude.
Cette communication se propose, à partir de l'analyse des oeuvres de l'écrivain sénégalais Fatou Diome, La Préférence nationale (Présence africaine 2001) et Le Ventre de l'Atlantique (2003) de sonder les perceptions de l'espace européen. Elle tentera de saisir les deux rives existentielles des narrateurs et plus spécifiquement des narratrices: pays et régions d'émigration et pays et régions d'immigration. Elle questionnera les modalités stylistiques, notamment l'usage de stéréotypes, qui permettent de restituer des situations existentielles tout à la fois figées, par des images, et mouvantes, dans leurs reflets et leurs évolutions d'un texte à l'autre. Plus largement, on se demandera quelle situation occupe l'écriture littéraire, et en particulier l'écriture littéraire féminine, sur "l'échiquier" des sciences humaines et sociales dans la construction d'une figure de la marginalité sociale, économique et politique.