Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T08:00:31.820Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Law, labour and resistance to French colonialism in Sembene Ousmane's Les Bouts de Bois de Dieu

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Ambreena Manji*
Affiliation:
University of Keele

Abstract

This article is concerned with the portrayal of law in colonial conflict in the work of Senegalese author Sembene Ousmane, focussing in particular on the novel Les Bouts de Bois de Dieu. There Ousmane dramutises an actual strike of railway workers in 1947 in order to mount a prophetic critique of post-independence Senegal. In convening a tribunal to try strike-breakers, the workers demonstrate the constitutive, law-creating power which, Ousmane implies, still resides in newly independent peoples. This alternative legality is achieved in spite of the twin pressures of orthodox universalism, on the one hand, and passive traditionalism, on the other. As such Les Bouts de Bois de Dieu prefigures a radical, emancipatory legal pluralism in the colonial and post-colonial context.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Legal Scholars 2005

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

1. Le Docker Noir (Paris: Présence Africaine, 1973).

2. The action in the novel takes place in three cities separated by 700 miles: in the west and on the coast, Dakar; 100 miles inland from Dakar the industrial and railway centre of Thies; and eastwards along the banks of the river Niger, Bamako. See J Suret-Canale ‘The French West African Railway Workers’ Strike, 1947–48 in R Cohen, J Copans and P Gutkind (eds) African Labour History (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1978) pp 129–154; Cooper, F “Our Strike”: Equality, Anticolonial Politics and the 1947–48 Railway Strike in French West Africa (1996) 37(1) Journal of African History 81 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. J Jones ‘Fact and Fiction in “God's Bits of Wood”’ (2000) 3l(2) Research in African Literatures 117.

4. D Murphy Sembene: Imagining Alternatives in Fact and Fiction (Oxford: James Currey, 2000).

5. Aire, V Didactic Realism in Ousmane Sembene's “Les Bouts de Bois de Dieu”’ (1977) 11(2) Canadian Journal of African Studies 283 Google Scholar.

6. C Smith ‘The Stereography of Class, Race, and Nation in God's Bits of Wood’ (1993) 24 Research in African Literatures 51.

7. Jones, above n 3.

8. Case, F Workers' Movements: Revolution and Women's Consciousness in “God's Bits of Wood”’ (1981) 15 Canadian Journal of African Studies 277 Google Scholar.

9. Jones, above n 3.

10. M Bestman Sembene Ousmane ef l'Esthétique du Roman Négro-Africain (Quebec: Étionions Naaman, 1981).

11. S Ousmane God's Bits of Wood (trans F Price) Nairobi: Heinemann, 1970) p 78.

12. S Ousmane Les Bouts de Bois de Dieu (Paris: Le Livre Contemporain, 1960) p 132.

13. Ousmane, above n 11, p 78.

14. For an analysis of the wider trends in scholarship and teaching taking place in United States law schools at this time, see N Duxbury Patterns of American Jurisprudence (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995).

15. G Minda ‘Law and Literature at Century's End’ (1997) 9 Cardozo Studies in Law and Literature 245.

16. Minda, above n 15, at 245.

17. See Manji, A “like a Mask Dancing”: Law and Colonialism in Chinua Achebe's “Arrow of God”’ (2000) 27(4) Journal of Law and Society 626 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and A Manji ‘Of the Laws of Kenya and Burials and All That’ (2002) 14 Law and Literature 463; A Manji “‘The Beautyful Ones” of Law and Development’ in D Buss and A Manji (eds) International Law: Modern Feminist Perspectives (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2005).

18. I Shivji (ed) Limits of Legal Radicalism (Dar es Salaam: University of Dar es Salaam Press, 1986).

19. J Harrington and A Manji ‘The Emergence of African Law as an Academic Discipline’ (2003) 102 African Affairs 109; Harrington, J and Manji, A “Mind with Mind, Spirit with Spirit”: Lord Denning and African Legal Education (2003) 30(4) Journal of Law and Society 376 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20. See Suret-Canale, above n 2; and Jones, above n 3.

21. F Cooper Decolonization and African Society: The Labor Question in French and British Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) p 81.

22. Jones, above n 3, at 117.

23. F Cooper ‘Le Mouvement Ouvrier et le Nationalisme: La Grève Génèrale du 1946 et la Grève de Cheminots de 1947–48’ (1991) 6 Historiens et Géographes du Sénègal 32.

24. Ousmane, above n 11, p 14.

25. Ousmane, above n 11, p 15.

26. Ousmane, above n 11, p2. See also M Mbengue ‘La Grève Tragique de Cheminots de Thies (1975) 2 Ethiopiques 63.

27. Cooper, above n 2.

28. Suret-Canale, above n 2.

29. Suret-Canale, above n 2.

30. K Harrow ‘Art and Ideology in “Les Bouts de Bois de Dieu”: Realism's Artifices’ (1989) 62(3) French Review 483.

31. D Moore ‘Ousmane Sembene's “Les Bouts de Bois de Dieu” and the Question of Literary “Realism”––– African, European, or Otherwise’ (1995) 28 Genre 67.

32. S Ousmane L'Harmattan (Paris: Présence Africaine, 1964).

33. Ousmane, above n 11, p i.

34. Smith, above n 6, at 51.

35. Smith, above n 6, at 51.

36. Cooper, above n 2, at 83.

37. Smith, above n 6, at 52.

38. Moore, above n 31, at 86.

39. N Lazarus ‘Great Expectations and After: The Politics of Postcolonialism in African Fiction’(1986) 13/14 Social Text 1986 49 at 56.

40. Aire, above n 5.

41. Cooper, above n 2; Smith, above n 6; Moore, above n 31.

42. Cooper, above n 2.

43. Cooper, above n 2.

44. Jones, above n 3.

45. Snyder, F Colonialism and Legal Form: the Creation of “Customary Law” in Senegal’ (1981) 19 Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law 49 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; E Hobsbawm and T Ranger (eds) The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); M Mamdani Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Lute Colonialism (London: James Currey, 1996); M Chanock Law, Custom and Social Order: The Colonial Experience in Malawi and Zambia (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1998).

46. R West ‘Invisible Victims: A Comparison of Susan Glaspell's “Jury of her Peers”, and Herman Melville's “Bartleby the Scrivener”’ (1996) 8 Cardozo Studies in Law and Literature 203.

47. Ousmane, above n 11, p 81.

48. R Abrahams Vigilant Citizens: Vigilantism and the State (London: Polity Press, 1998).

49. Ousmane, above n 11, p 81.

50. Jones, above n 3.

51. Suret-Canale, above n 2, p 141.

52. Suret-Canale, above n 2; P Morlet ‘Une Étape de la Lutte Anticolonialiste: La Grève des Cheminots Africains d'AOF’ (1948) 37 Servir La France 36.

53. Murphy, above n 4.

54. Cooper, above n 2; Smith, above n 6.

55. Ousmane, above n 11, p 84.

56. Ousmane, above n 11, p 87. ‘Toubab’ here refers to the French.

57. Ousmane, above n 11, p 94.

58. Ousmane, above n 11, pp 94–95.

59. Aire, above n 5, at 97.

60. Ousmane, above n 1.

61. Mamdani, above n 45.

62. Ousmane, above n 11, p 89.

63. Galanter, M Justice in Many Rooms: Courts, Private Ordering, and Indigenous Law’ (1981) 19 Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law 30 Google Scholar.

64. S E Merry ‘Law and Colonialism: Review Essay’ (1991) 22 Law and Society Review 890 at 870.

65. H Arthurs Without the Law: Administrative Justice and Legal Pluralism in Nineteenth Century England (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1985) p 3.

66. A Allott and G Woodman ‘Introduction’ in A Allott and G Woodman (eds) People's Law and State Law: The Bellagio Papers (Dordrecht: Foris Publications, 1985).

67. Griffiths, J What is Legal Pluralism?’ (1986) 24 Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law 1 at 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

68. M Melissaris ‘The More the Merrier? A New Take on Legal Pluralism’ (2004) 13 Social and Legal Studies 57.

69. Ousmane, above n 11, p 111.

70. Ousmane, above n 11, p 111.

71. Ousmane, above n 11, p 111.

72. Ousmane, above n 11, p 58.

73. Ousmane, above n 11, p 112.

74. Aire, above n 5, at 293.

75. Aire, above n 5, at 293.

76. Ousmane, above n 11, p 94.

77. Ousmane, above n 11, p 94.

78. Ousmane, above n 11, p 94.

79. Ousmane, above n 11, p 87.

80. Ousmane, above n 11, p 95.

81. Ousmane, above n 11, p 95.

82. Ousmane, above n 11, p 79.

83. Ousmane, above n 11, p 79.

84. Ousmane, above n 11, p 85.

85. Ousmane, above n 11, p 21.

86. Ousmane, above n 11, p 21.

87. Moore, above n 31, at 79.

88. Suret-Canale, above n 2, p 141.

89. Ousmane, above n 11, p 20.

90. Jones, above n 3.

91. Jones, above n 3, at 118.

92. Jones, above n 3.

93. M Crowder Colonial West Africa (London: Frank Cass, 1978).

94. M Echenberg ‘Tragedy at Thiaroye: The Senegalese Soldiers Uprising of 1944’ in R Cohen, J Copans and P Gutkind (eds) African Labour History (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1978) p 109; F O Shaka ‘Vichy Dakar and the Other Story of French Colonial Stewardship in Africa: A Critical Reading of Ousmane Sembene and Thiemo Faty Sow's “Camp de Thiaroye”’ (1995) 26(3) Research in African Literatures 67.

95. R Schachter-Morgenthau Political Parties in French Speaking West Africa (Oxford: Clarendon, 1964).

96. D Prochaska Making Algeria French (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).

97. Jones, above n 3.

98. Aire, above n 5, at 293.

99. W Mansell, B Meteyard, and A Thomson A Critical Introduction to Law (London: Cavendish, 1995) p 136.

100. K Kaunda ‘Address to the Law Society of Zambia’, 24 April 1970, quoted in P Thomas ‘Legal Education in Africa: With Special Reference to Zambia’ (1971) 22 Northern Ireland Quarterly 3; and Nkrumah, K Legal Education in Africa (1962) 6 Journal of African Law 103 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

101. Ghai, Y P Law, Development and African Scholarship’ (1987) 50(6) Modern Law Review 750 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

102. Harrington and Manji, above n 19.