African Counter-utopias: From Counter-narratives to thePresentification of Alternative Worlds

Summary

Yambo Ouologuem received the Prix Renaudot in 1968, while he wasworking as a high school teacher in France. In 1969, crownedwith his new prestige, he wrote a ‘letter’ to the French andAfricans in France. Using enthusiastic but often excessivelanguage, the Malian author – who died in 2017 – cast a gloomy,if not pessimistic, and redundant look on Africa. Redundant, inthe sense that it took up a certain number of colonial clichés,and that repetition was reflected in its sense of humour, asunderscored in the following extract:

Le Blanc seul a un nom, le Noir n’a quedes surnoms : Nègre, Abibi, Bibine, Boudouboudou, Alibi,etc. C’est pourquoi le tchandathrope, découvertrécemment au Tchad, en Afrique, était ainsi nommé parceque, lorsqu’on le déterra, il fit atchoum ! Il avaitainsi craché toute la noirceur de son âme, ce qui permitde conclure que c’était, non point un Blanc, mais bienun vieux Nègre. (Ouologuem, Lettre à la France nègre: 46)

[Whites alone have a name, Blacks only have nicknames: Negro,Abibi, Bibine, Boudouboudou, Alibi, etc. Therefore, theTchandathrope, recently discovered in Chad, Africa, was sonamed because, when unearthed, he sounded like a shock! Hehad thus spat out all the darkness of his soul, which led tothe conclusion that he was not a White, but an oldNegro.]

In his A Black Ghostwriter's Letter toFrance, the author of the controversial Le devoir de violence (‘The Duty ofViolence’) thought he was being humorous to the detriment ofAfricans (or some of them), notably Léopold Sédar Senghor, whowas full of praise for the German ethnologist Léo Frobenius(1873–1938). According to Senghor (‘Les leçons de LéoFrobenius’) it was Frobenius, more than any other, whoilluminated for us, words like ‘emotion’, ‘art’, ‘myth’,‘Eurafrica’. In the fourth and fifth chapters of the sectionentitled ‘La nuit des géants’, we meet the character of FritzShrobenius, a learned buffoon who resembles Léo Frobenius.

Ouologuem criticizes the work of Frobenius and the essentialismof the writers of negritude, thus mocking Senghor at length.Likewise, in Ouologuem's ‘letter’, which was advertised as apamphlet, he repeats outdated perceptions and clichés, whichappear humiliating and racist.