Motherism, African Women and Ecological Advocacy in Aminata Sow Fall’s L’Ex-père de la nation and Douceurs du bercail

The literary discourse of francophone Africa, has been indicted for ecocritical passivity. Yet many literary texts emanating from francophone Africa are replete with portraits of the environment. Even though Aminata Sow Fall, the Senegalese socio-realist falls within the category of authors who seek equilibrium in their treatment of African postcolonial issues, most of her works are laden with ecocritical concerns. Hidden within the literary portraits of postcolonial and environmental chaos of Africa lies Sow Fall’s projection of African problems and their alternative solution via her characters’ sensitization of ecological consciousness in readers. Through the theoretical framework of Catherine O. Acholonu’s environment-inclined Motherism: The Afrocentric Alternative to Feminism (1995), the present study embarks on an ecocritical focus on women characters’ roles in Sow Fall’s L’ex-père de la nation (1987) and Douceurs du bercail (1998). Against the backdrop of the main characters’ roles that threaten the environmental well-being of Africa, we contend that women characters present a symbiotic relationship with nature; they highlight the advantages Mother Earth bestows on human beings, displaying how women’s leadership roles enhance African environments. It is in this respect that the article argues that women characters’ roles suggest an advocacy for ecological Motherist ideals as a means to counter postcolonial societal ills. In conclusion, the novels showcase African women as environmental Motherists whose roles preserve an Edenic African environment that connotes benefits and hopes for human in the midst of literal and metaphorical postcolonial degradation of the environment

A linha do horizonte: uma metáfora mal-resolvida dos africanos no filme Chocolat de Claire Denis

No filme Chocolat, de Claire Denis (1989), os colonizadores fazem alusão constante a uma linha do horizonte aparentemente banal; um discurso que corrobora as complexidades do poder paralelo e a singularidade cultural entre os africanos e os colonizadores/ocidentais. Este trabalho argumenta que a inter-relação colonial de europeus e africanos se incorpora na alusão do filme à linha do horizonte, uma metáfora, com o seu fim visível mas restritivo, inacessível e inexistente. Por um lado, a linha do horizonte significa um lamento da apreciação interna de autocondenação do colonizador — uma característica raramente percebida no discurso do colonizador. Por outro, a linha do horizonte simboliza a pouca profundidade dos colonizadores, o que sugere suas limitações e sua incompetência na tentativa de sustentar o poder colonial. Pela sua insensibilidade e seu desinteresse em procurar conhecer os africanos como seres com quem se podia contar, os colonizadores/ocidentais acabaram não descobrindo, nem dominando completamente, os africanos. A nossa tese é a de que a linha do horizonte motiva uma inadequação que representa a inadequação e a incapacidade dos ocidentais para compreender a personalidade dos africanos.Palavras-chave: colonizador/ocidental - poder - conhecimento - ilusão - africanos

African Woman and Ecology: Unpacking the Complexities of Eurocentrism and Othering in Le Clezio’s Onitsha

Abstract: European writers have historically employed narratives to position foreign regions by ‘geo-graphing’ the indigenous people, their environment, and cultures from the standpoint of narrators’ fears and aspirations. The practice entails Europeans posing imaginative geographies as a strategy of power that makes constant the writers’ cultural superiority to re-present the non-European as the inferior Other, a contrast to the European - the superior Self. Such European discursive power is a tradition at the bedrock of most metropolitan French narratives that objectify Africa, disparage her ecology, and deny her history and civilization to justify French superiority through slavery and imperialism. Notwithstanding the end of colonization, the performative of Africa continues to grow beyond imperial discourses of power. In her study of postcolonial European writings, Pratt draws heavily on French writers’ impulse to condemn and lament about African ethnography and ecology (2003: 213). However, studying the late 20th century metropolitan French Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio’s depictions of colonial Anglophone (Nigerian) African woman and ecology present the complexities of the Other, leading to a literary geo-political aberration that provokes critical inquiry. This article subjects Le Clezio’s Onitsha (1991) to a critical analysis that lays bare the uncommon traits of French representations of Africa. Among others, one question of interest stands out (i) what is the innuendo of Le Clezio’s seemingly humane depictions of African woman and ecology in Onitsha’s anglophone setting? Keywords: french, african woman, ecology, eurocentrism, othe