Toward the Decolonization of the Europhone African Novel , livre ebook

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228 pages

English

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Toward the Decolonization of the Europhone African Novel is a treatise on the problematics of language choice in Europhone African literature. Vakunta’s research is rooted in the notion that the postcolonial African fiction writer is at a crossroads of languages, groping for linguistic re-orientation. Using the prose of fiction of Patrice Nganang, Ahmadou Kourouma, Mercedes Fouda, Nazi Boni, and Gabriel K. Fonkou as corpus, he contends that postcolonial African fiction is an offshoot of a linguistic tinkering process that enables writers to tinker with the language of the ex-colonizer in a deliberate attempt to divest indigenous writing of its hegemonic vestiges.

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Literary Criticism

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Publié par	Langaa RPCIG
Date de parution	30 septembre 2023
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9789956553310
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	2 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,4500€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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“Peter Wuteh Vakunta’s book is a prized addition to the ﬁeld of African literary studies.The ﬁeld of anti-colonial studies has found a new impetus in the academe, and this study is a welcome addition to an unfolding arena of debate.Vakunta’s book would open a new chapter that has so far been underexplored; namely the contribution of literary studies toward the de facto decolonization of Africa, particularly the role of African imagination in this mammoth task.This work addresses the problematics of language choice in African literature. It adumbrates language as a cultural battleﬁeld that colonizers have often utilized as the prime locus of aggression. Students and Professors of postcolonial African literature would ﬁnd this book a welcome addition to their arsenal.”

Toward the Decolonization of the Europhone African Novel

research is rooted in the notion that the postcolonial African ﬁction writer

prose of ﬁction of Patrice Nganang, Ahmadou Kourouma, Mercedes Fouda, Nazi Boni, and Gabriel K. Fonkou as corpus, he contends that postcolonial African ﬁction is an offshoot of a linguistic tinkering process that enables

DR. PETER WUTEH VAKUNTA

Institute (DLIFLC) in Monterey-California, currently on Detachment to Fort

DECOLONIZATION

EUROPHONE AFRICAN NOVEL

Peter Wuteh Vakunta

Toward the Decolonization of the Europhone African Novel Peter Wuteh VakuntaL a ng a a R esea rch & P u blishing CIG Mankon, Bamenda

Publisher:LangaaRPCIG Langaa Research & Publishing Common Initiative Group P.O. Box 902 Mankon Bamenda North West Region Cameroon Langaagrp@gmail.com www.langaa-rpcig.net Distributed in and outside N. America by African Books Collective orders@africanbookscollective.com www.africanbookscollective.com

ISBN-10: 9956-553-75-1

ISBN-13: 978-9956-553-75-4 ©Peter Wuteh Vakunta 2023All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying and recording, or be stored in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher

About the Author Dr. Peter Wuteh Vakunta is Professor of French Literature and Francophone Studies at the United States Department of Defense Language Institute (DLIFLC) in Monterey-California, currently on Detachment to Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina. His research focuses on canonical questions relating to the teaching of postcolonial literatures. Vakunta’s work makes explicit the working of the creative impulse in the interface between original writing and its translation into Europhone languages. The bull’s eye of his scholarly work englobes postcoloniality, literary palimpsests, translation theory and practice as well as the pragmatics of interlingual communication. Vakunta has had scholarly articles published in the following peer-reviewed journals:Meta53.4 (2009), Translation Review 73 (2007),Journal of the Midwest ModernLanguage Association (2009),Chimères (2010),Journal of African Literature Association (2009, 2010),Miniatures 58(2011),African Literature Today29 (2011) andEnglish Today 34.1(2017). Professor Vakunta is author of several fictional and nonfictional books in English, French, Cameroonian Pidgin English and Camfranglais. He is fluent in English, French, Spanish, Hausa, Cameroonian Creole, Njiemeukohkeuh, and Camfranglais. During his leisure time, Dr. Vakunta loves to play soccer and dance makossa.

Dedication To my spiritual and academic mentors— Reverend Brother Dennis Ngo and Pa Albert Bongjoh, both of blessed memory.

Table of Contents Foreword ........................................................................................... ix Chapter 1: The Empire Writes Back in Europhone African Literature ........................................................... I Chapter 2: Appropriation of Language in Postcolonial African Fiction.............................................................. 7 Chapter 3: African Prose and the Question of Orality ...................... 25 Theoretical Underpinnings of Orality in Postcolonial African Fiction......................................................................... 39 Interface between Orality and Literacy in African Europhone Literature...................................................................... 46 Chapter 4: Theoretical Foundations of the Novelistic Genre in Africa................................................................. 69 Orality Metamorphosed into Literacy in Contemporaneous African Prose ................................................................ 76 Audible Palimpsests in the African Novel Today..................................... 103 Chapter 5: Toward the Decolonization of the Europhone African Novel-................................................................ 129 Bwamufication of French in Nazi Boni’s Crépuscules des temps anciens ..............................................................................130 Relexification of French Language Lexes .................................................. 130 Onomastics as a Creative Writing Trope ................................................... 140 Recourse to Proverbs, Idiophones and Other Rhetorical Devices ......................................................................................... 141 Oralization of Written Discourse in Crépuscules des temps anciens ..............................................................................146 Malinkelization of the Written Word in Kourouma’sLes soleils des indépendances....................................................148 Proverbialization and Other Stylistics in Kourouma’s Fiction .................................................................................. 155 Translation of Orality into Literacy in Kourouma’s Narrative .............................................................................. 161 Linguistic Miscegenation as a Discursive Trope in Nganang’sTemps de chien ...............................................................167 Camfranglais as a Subversive Tool of Decolonization inTemps de chien...................................................................168 Pidginizing the Europhone African Novel ................................................ 169 Indigenization of the Francophone African Novel .................................. 171 Calibanic Recourse to Indigenous Language

vii

Narrative in Fouda’s Fiction......................................................................... 177 Intercultural Translation as a Stylistic Device inJe Parle Camerounais .....................................................................................179 Unpacking Code Switching as a Narrative Device inJe parle camerounais .......................................................................................182 Orature as Paradigmatic Narration inJe parle camerounais .......................................................................................184 Domestication of French in Fonkou’sMoi taximan..................................187 Conclusion ........................................................................................ 191 Works Cited....................................................................................... 193 Index ................................................................................................. 211

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Foreword Decolonizling the Europhone African Noveldiscusses the quest for linguistic identity in postcolonial African fiction. Critics of African literature contend that contemporary African fiction written in European languages are, in the most part, palimpsests or pastiches of oral traditions of the past (Irele, 1990; Julien, 1992; Koné, 1993). In other words, African prose writers tend to transpose the imprint of their cultural backgrounds into novelistic writing. Interestingly, African literature is written almost entirely in languages imposed by ex-colonial masters on the continent of Africa. The use of European languages in African literature poses problems of its own. Though these languages are intended to express and reflect European worldviews, imagination and cultural specificities, they are often twisted and tinkered with willfully by African writers in their struggle to convey indigenous worldviews and cultural idiosyncrasies that seem to be at variance with Western traditions. Thus, African writers find themselves writing in a language they want to deconstruct in order to express their indigenous worldviews effectively. This accounts for writers’ frequent recourse to the device of linguistic indigenization as a mode of self-expression and auto-representation. Here then is a literature whose initiators depend heavily on narrative translation as a creative writing paradigm. By having recourse to the prose narratives of seminal novels written by Francophone and Anglophone African novelists, we contend that postcolonial African literature written in Europhone languages is primarily a creative translation process or pastiche. Recourse to the European languages as media for the expression African thought patterns and imagination in prose writing poses enormous problems of intelligibility. On this count, these writers find themselves writing in languages they wish to subvert through the techniques of code-switching and semantic shifts.The first chapter of this book delves into the study of postcolonial literature written in Cameroon, a country that is a microcosm of Africa’s linguistic hybridity given its unique colonial history of having been colonized by Germany, France and Great Britain prior gaining independence. Cameroonian writers tend to transpose the imprint of their cultural backgrounds into written literature with the intent of conveying Cameroonian lived experiences, imagination and sensibilities into creative writing by subverting colonial literary canons. In the second chapter, we