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The Unspoken Self: Feminism and Cultural Identity in African Women's

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The Unspoken Self: Feminism and Cultural Identity in African Women's THE UNSPOKEN SELF; FEMINISM AND CULTURAL IDENTITY IN AFRICAN WOMEN'S WRITING IN FRENCH Nicola Marie Hitchcott PhD University College London ProQuest Number: 10046125 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest. ProQuest 10046125 Published by ProQuest LLC(2016). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 ABSTRACT This thesis presents an analysis of a range of texts by black women from francophone Africa. Proceeding from a structuralist base, it examines the way in which the cultural identity of the African woman is located in these texts, and seeks to identify the specific nature of her cultural experience. Since feminism is recognised as the strongest theoretical expression of the specificity of gender-based oppression in the West, the thesis discusses the representation of feminism in African women's discourse, both spoken (the interviews) and written (the novels themselves). What eventually emerges is a complex relationship between the African woman and feminism which, as the thesis demonstrates, is symptomatic of the structural duality of African femininity. The body of the thesis considers the way in which the African woman's identity is expressed at different levels in the novels. Duality emerges in a lexical analysis, as well as at the fictional levels of imagery and character presentation, and ultimately at the level of the discourse itself in the shape of a central axis of modernism/tradition which it attempts to reconcile. Interviews with African women offer another view of the fictional 'mise-en- scène' of this unvoiced identity, and provide both context and commentary for the novels themselves. A bibliography of African women's writing in French also forms part of the corpus in that it demonstrates a multiplicity of voices which are rarely, if ever heard. The conclusion suggests that, although unspoken and unheard, the voice of the African woman's cultural identity is implicitly expressed through content and through form, and that the repression of the self in discourse is symptomatic of the control of feminine identity by contemporary black African society. The identity which does emerge is characterised by its diversity, thereby resisting the reduction of femininity to a single patriarchal construct. Moreover, the emphasis on plurality makes a positive link with the diversity of voices in Western feminism, and suggests an optimistic and theoretically useful model for women writers, not just in Africa but throughout the world. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A number of people have kept me sane during the writing of this thesis, especially my sister, Anna Hitchcott, and my father, Douglas Hitchcott, as well as: Rebecca Cotterill, Lyn Thomas, Mary Noonan, Stephen James, Sally Hopkins, Juliet John, Parol Ford, Anoma Siriwardena, Petra Howarth, Ohna Falby, Marian Rabbitte, Alistair Jackson, Gail Langford, Sam Haigh, Phil Leonard and Vivienne Batt. I would particularly like to thank my mother, Elizabeth Coates, for her constant encouragement during this project and througout my life. Peter Coates has provided much support, and I would like to thank him for the lap­ top computer which he generously let me borrow. Vivienne Liley and Laila Ibnlfassi are friends and fellow researchers in the field of francophone writing. I have appreciated both their friendship and the opportunity to exchange ideas with them. Tony Sayers bought me the first francophone novel I read by an African woman. He has witnessed the evolution of this project from beginning to end. I have valued his companionship and his sense of humour. Thanks are due to Michael Worton for his encouragement at various points in my academic career. I have also appreciated the support of Diana Knight, Rosemary Chapman, Denise Ganderton and Howard Davies, as well as all the members of the ASCALF committee. Peter Hawkins and Firinne Ni Chreachain were very helpful in providing contacts in Abidjan. Georges Kéita of Les Nouvelles Editions Africaines helped me set up the interviews while I was there. I would also like to thank all the women writers and editors who agreed to be interviewed, and whose ideas have contributed to the body of this thesis. My special thanks extend to Roger Middleton for his knowledge of Wordperfect 5.1 and his generosity with his time. I am equally grateful to Des McLernon for patiently sorting out my semiotic squares. Laurie Rebut's careful proof-reading was also greatly appreciated. Finally, I would like to thank my supervisor, Annette Lavers, for her enthusiasm, her openmindedness and her intellectual inspiration. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 'Unheard Voices' 5 CHAPTER ONE African Oedipus? 24 CHAPTER TWO Locating the Voice: Calixthe Beyala's Novel as a Blueprint for an Analysis of Identity 39 CHAPTER THREE Cautionary Affairs: African Women (Re)write the Popular Romance 66 CHAPTER FOUR African 'Herstory': the Feminist Reader and the African Autobiographical Voice 84 CHAPTE FIVE 'Confidently Feminine'? Sexual Role-Play in the Novels of Mariama Bâ 116 CHAPTER SIX Aminata Sow Fall: a 'Masculinist' W oman Writer? 137 CHAPTER SEVEN Talking in Tongues: Werewere Liking and the Diary of a M anhater 167 CONCLUSION Unspoken Selves 187 INTERVIEWS 1. Tanella Boni 199 2. Anne-Marie Adiaffi 207 3. Marie-Agathe Amoikon 215 4. Aminata Traouré 221 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF AFRICAN WOMEN'S WRITING IN FRENCH 228 BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Critical Books and Articles on African Women's Writing in French 237 2. Bibliographical Sources 242 3. Select Bibliography of Other Works Consulted 243 'Women have no mouth' Beti proverb, Cameroon INTRODUCTION 'UNHEARD VOICES' African literature has to be understood as a literature by African men, for interest in African literature has, with very rare exceptions, excluded women writers. The women writers of Africa are the other voices, the unheard voices.^ Within the very recent tradition of written literature from black Africa,^ writing by African women is very much in the margins of an art which is only just beginning to move out of the margins itself. Since Wole Soyinka won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986, African literature by men has gradually been incorporated by the European canon and a small number of 'great writers' have emerged. Significantly, none of them are women. In 1984, the eminent French critic of francophone African literature, Jacques ^Lloyd W. Brown, Women Writers in Black Africa (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1981), p.3. See also Mineke Schipper, Unheard Words (London: Allison and Busby, 1985), p.l4. ^The first francophone black African written text is generally acknowledged to be René Maran's Batouala which won the Prix Concourt in 1921 (although Maran was in fact born in Martinique). For classic studies of the birth of African literature in French, see the following: Dorothy S. Blair, African Literature in French (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976); Jacques Chevrier, Littérature nègre (Paris: Armand Colin, 1984); Robert Comevin, Littératures d'Afrique noire d'expression française (Paris: PUF, 1976); and Lilyan Kesteloot, Les Ecrivains noirs de langue française (Brussels: Editions de l'Université de Bruxelles, 1963; repr. 1983). Chevrier, commented on the lack of women writers, claiming that: Si Ton a beaucoup parlé des femmes dans la littérature africaine - on ne compte plus ni les mémoires de maîtrise ni les thèses qui abordent ce suject - il faut bien reconnaître que les principales a: intéressées sont, une fois de plus, singulièrement absentes au rendez-vous.^ He continues: Si Ton rend un juste hommage à la littérature écrite par des femmes-écrivains, peut-être est-il encore trop tôt pour parler d'écriture féminine...'* Although it is certainly true that a greater number of texts by African women have appeared over the last decade than during the 1970s, my own research has identified around fifty titles of poetry and prose published in or before 1984.^ This is by no means an insignificant number, particularly when one considers that in Ivory Coast, for example, three quarters of the adult population were illiterate in 1978.^ Thus, the Bibliography of African women's writing in French which I have compiled forms part of the corpus of this thesis, demonstrating that women in francophone Africa have indeed been producing literature, in spite of the claims of Western critics. By refusing to acknowledge the contribution of women's writing to literary evolution in ^Chevrier, Littérature nègre, p.l52. '*ibid., p.l53. The term 'écriture féminine' is, of course, polysémie and will be discussed in Chapter 7. ^See Bibliography of African Women's Writing in French, pp.228-36. ^Figure taken from Sigfred Taubert and Peter Weidhaas, eds.. The Book Trade of the World, volA: Africa (Munich: K.G. Saur, 1984), p. 144. 7 francophone Africa, critics such as Chevrier simply demonstrate the extent to which African women's voices have been silenced by the literary world/ The most commonly cited reason for the suppression of women's literary activity in Africa is the 'inferior quality' of their art. Arlette Chemain
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