Pouvoir disciplinaire et normalisation

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‘Anthropological mutilation’ and the reordering of Cameroonian literature

I argue in this article that the postcolonial existential wound, otherwise referred to by Eboussi Boulaga as the anthropological mutilation, represents the intertextual nexus that bridges the generational gap in Francophone Cameroonian literature. The tragic malaise, rooted in absurdity and the dire state of the postcolonial condition, echoes anxieties expressed by earlier generations of Cameroonian writers in the 1950s about engaged literature. The article is therefore an exercise in detecting commonalities and discontinuities that weave a shared national literary tradition. Among the commonalities, the presence of jazz, the writing of the anticolonial struggle stand out while innovations are to be found in the epidemic manifestation of madness and the disintegration of the basic social fabric visible in the form of incest

Généalogies de l\u27errance

The city narrative is Chamoiseau’s most original contribution to the west Indian worldview. Such writing is based on the poetics of creolity and on the memory of housing, visible in the ancestral hatred of dogs by municipal workers. It also builds up intertextual links which question both Cesairian Negritude and Glissant’s poetics. The historical memory of Chamoiseau’s characters and the intertextual links in his works transform his writings on townlife into a form of consolidation of a literary tradition which renews the genealogy of wandering life