Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-dnltx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T14:48:35.825Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Reversals of Exile: Williams Sassine’s Wirriyamu and Tierno Monénembo’s Pelourinho

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2014

Audrey Small
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

This essay examines two novels by exiled Guinean writers in which physical space functions as a central point of reference for very different, though related, considerations of traumatized memory, identity, and exile. In Williams Sassine’s Wirriyamu (1976), a violent and violated rural landscape becomes emblematic of a specific traumatic event occurring within the time frame of the novel and of contemporary political reality; while in Tierno Monénembo’s Pelourinho (1995), a present-day cityscape provides consistently uncertain territory for thinking through a trauma that transcends history, that of the transatlantic slave trade. This article seeks to examine some of the ways in which contemporary trauma theory may be useful in reading Francophone West African fiction as well as some of the limitations of this theory in its applications to this corpus.

Résumé:

Cet article examine deux romans d’écrivains guinéens exilés dans lesquels l’espace physique agit comme un point de référence central dans la discussion de thèmes très différents bien que reliés: la mémoire traumatisée, l’identité et l’exil. Dans le roman de Williams Sassine, Wirriyamu (1976), un paysage rural rempli de violence et de violations devient emblématique d’un événement traumatique spécifique qui se déroule sur la durée du roman et dans le contexte chronologique des évènements politiques contemporains; d’autre part, le roman de Tierno Monénembo, Pelourinho (1995) met en scène un paysage urbain d’aujourd’hui offrant un terrain de réflexion toujours mouvant sur un traumatisme transcendant l’histoire, celui de la traite transatlantique des esclaves. Cet article vise à examiner les manières variées dont la théorie universitaire contemporaine sur la compréhension des traumas pourrait être utile dans la lecture de la fiction francophone provenant d’Afrique de l’ouest, ainsi que les limites de son application à un tel domaine.

Keywords

SassineWirriyamuMonénemboPelourinhoexiletrauma
Type
ARTICLES
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 57 , Issue 3 , December 2014 , pp. 41 - 54
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anderson, Benedict. 2006. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Revised edition. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Brookshaw, David. 2007. “Race Relations in Brazil from the Perspective of a Brazilian African and an African Brazilian: José Eduardo Agualusa’s O Ano em que Zumbi Tomou o Rio and Francisco Maciel’s O Primeiro Dia do Ano da Peste.” Research in African Literatures 38 (1):163–71.Google Scholar
Caruth, Cathy. 1995. “Trauma and Experience: Introduction.” In Trauma: Explorations in Memory, edited by Caruth, Cathy, 3–12. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Caruth, Cathy. 1996. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Célérier, Patricia. 1996. “Autour de Pelourinho, Entretien avec Tierno Monénembo.” Notre Librairie 126:111–15.Google Scholar
Césaire, Aimé. 1947. Cahier d’un retour au pays natal. Paris: Bordas.Google Scholar
Chevrier, Jacques. 1987. “Williams Sassine: Des mathématiques à la littérature.” Notre Librairie 88/89: 110–19.Google Scholar
Chevrier, Jacques. 2003. La littérature nègre. Paris: Armand Colin.Google Scholar
Conrad, Robert Edgar. 1986. World of Sorrow: The African Slave Trade to Brazil. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.Google Scholar
Craps, Stef, and Buelens, Gert. 2008. “Introduction: Postcolonial Trauma Novels.” Studies in the Novel 40 (1 & 2): 1–12.Google Scholar
d’Aguiar, Fred. 1994. The Longest Memory. London: Chatto & Windus.Google Scholar
Eaglestone, Robert. 2008. ““You Would Not Add to My Suffering If You Knew What I Have Seen”: Holocaust Testimony and Contemporary African Literature.” Studies in the Novel 40 (1 & 2): 72–85.Google Scholar
Fanon, Frantz. 1961. Les Damnés de la terre. Paris: Maspero.Google Scholar
Fanon, Frantz. 2004. The Wretched of the Earth. Translated by Philcox, Richard. New York: Grove Press.Google Scholar
Felman, Shoshana. 1992a. “Camus’ The Plague, or A Monument to Witnessing.” In Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History, edited by Felman, Shoshana and Laub, Dori, 93–119. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Felman, Shoshana. 1992b. “Camus’ The Fall, or the Betrayal of the Witness.” In Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History, edited by Felman, Shoshana and Laub, Dori, 165–203. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Felman, Shoshana, and Laub, Dori. 1992c. Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hastings, Adrian. 1974. Wiriyamu. London: Search Press.Google Scholar
Irele, Abiola. 1981. The African Experience in Literature and Ideology. London: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Julien, Eileen. 2006. “The Extroverted African Novel.” In The Novel, Volume 1: History, Geograpy, and Culture, edited by Moretti, Franco, 667–700. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Kane, Cheikh Hamidou. 1961. L’Aventure ambiguë. Paris: Julliard.Google Scholar
Kaplan, E. Ann. 2005. Trauma Culture: The Politics of Terror and Loss in Media and Literature. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Keïta, Mohamed Salifou. 2005. La littérature guinéenne. Paris: Tabala.Google Scholar
Kesteloot, Lilyan. 2001. Histoire de la littérature négro-africaine. Paris: Karthala/AUF.Google Scholar
Melic, Katarina. 2001. “L’exil et/ou la recherche d’une langue littéraire: Assia Djebar ou le blanc de l’écriture.” MotsPluriels 17.Google Scholar
Miller, Christopher L. 1990. Theories of Africans: Francophone Literature and Anthropology in Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Monénembo, Tierno. 1995. Pelourinho. Paris: Seuil.Google Scholar
Monénembo, Tierno. 2001. “Le Festin brésilien.” In Rio de Janeiro: la ville métisse, edited by Straumann, Patrick, 105–30. Paris: Chandeigne.Google Scholar
Mortimer, Mildred. 1990. Journeys through the French African Novel. Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Nesbitt, Malyn. 1995. A History of Mozambique. London: Hurst.Google Scholar
Rothberg, Michael. 2008. “Decolonizing Trauma Studies: A Response.” Studies in the Novel 40 (1 & 2): 224–34.Google Scholar
Sassine, Williams. 1976. Wirriyamu. Paris: Présence Africaine.Google Scholar
Sassine, Williams. 1980. Wirriyamu. Translated by Reed, John and Wake, Clive. London: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Straumann, Patrick. 2001. Rio de Janeiro: la ville métisse. Paris: Chandeigne.Google Scholar
Trinh, T. Minh-ha. 1997. “Not You/Like You: Postcolonial Women and the Interlocking Questions of Identity and Difference.” In Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation and Postcolonial Perspectives, edited by McClintock, Anne, Mufti, Aamir, and Shohat, Ella, 415–19. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press.Google Scholar
Verger, Pierre. 1954. Dieux d’Afrique: Culte des Orishas et Vodouns à l’ancienne Côte des Esclaves en Afrique et à Bahia, la Baie de tous les saints au Brésil. Paris: Paul Hartmann.Google Scholar
Verger, Pierre. 1957. “Notes sur le culte des Oriṣa et Vodun, à Bahia, la Baie de tous les Saints, au Brésil et à l’ancienne Côte des Esclaves en Afrique.” Dakar: IFAN. Mémoires de l’Institut français d’Afrique noire.Google Scholar
Vickroy, Laurie. 2002. Trauma and Survival in Contemporary Fiction. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.Google Scholar
Watts, Richard. 2005. Packaging Post/Coloniality: The Manufacture of Literary Identity in the Francophone World. Oxford: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Whitehead, Anne. 2004. Trauma Fiction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Woods, Tim. 2007. African Pasts: Memory and History in African Literatures. Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar