The Ambiguity of the In-Between: Perceptions of Assimilation in Early Francophone African Literature

The ambiguity of the in-between: Perceptions of assimilation in early francophone African literature Brandon L. Guernsey Greenville, Michigan Master of Arts in French, University of Virginia, 2009 Bachelor of Arts in French and International Studies, Hope College, 2003 A Dissertation presented to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Virginia in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of French University of Virginia December 2015 1 Abstract With its promise of liberté, égalité and fraternité, France has long welcomed immigrants within its borders. However, as immigrant communities have become more established throughout the country, questions have arisen in regard to what constitutes French national identity. Should the nation adopt a spirit of tolerance, allowing new arrivals to integrate into French society while retaining their own cultural identity, or in an effort to preserve and perpetuate French language and culture, should immigrants instead be required to assimilate and adopt the customs of their new homeland? While integration versus assimilation of immigrants is of particular importance today as French society continues to evolve, it is not the first time that the country has had to consider the implications of welcoming foreigners on its soil. Dating back a century ago to when France’s Third Republic set about building an empire under the guise of the mission civilisatrice, assimilation has long been used to promulgate French culture around the globe. However, despite the lofty goals of France’s civilizing mission, assimilation complicated matters for colonizer and colonized alike as it ironically threatened the foundation on which colonialism was based. In order to maintain a notion of superiority and to justify their presence in the colonies, the colonizers could not allow the colonized to fully assimilate lest they become their equals, eliminating the need for a colonial presence altogether. Consequently, colonized subjects who attempted to assimilate were relegated to the ambiguous realm of the “in-between” – a transitory space between the native culture they left behind and the French identity that they would never be permitted 2 to have. Testifying to the ambiguous status of the assimilés, colonized African writers of the interwar years turned to literature to express their views on the colonial experience. Such writers include Ahmadou Mapaté Diagne, Bakary Diallo, Lamine Senghor, Chukri Khodja, and Ousmane Socé Diop. As pioneers of francophone African literature, these men had much to say regarding the benefits and challenges that cultural assimilation posed to the colonized individual. Published more than 75 years ago, their works established an enduring legacy that continues to provide insight on the effects of the colonial past and speaks to the ambiguous position in which many assimilés find themselves today. Thus, taking into account the influence of historical events during the interwar years that would prove decisive to the future of French colonial Africa, this study ultimately seeks to examine the evolution of ambiguous sentiment toward assimilation as demonstrated by the lives and works of these francophone African authors. 3 Table of Contents Introduction……………………………………………………………………………....4 Chapter 1, Ahmadou Mapaté Diagne: Promoting the colonial vision through l’enseignement adapté………………………………………………………………...…29 Chapter 2, Bakary Diallo and Lamine Senghor: Debating Assimilation in Tales of Former Tirailleurs………………………………………………………………………..69 Chapter 3, Chukri Khodja: Challenging the colonial status quo in francophone Algerian literature………………………………………………………………………...………117 Chapter 4, Ousmane Socé Diop: Coming to terms with the limits of colonial assimilation……………………………………………………………………………..149 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………..196 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………...206 4 Introduction Assimilation. A gradual process by which members of one society seek to adopt the norms and values of another so as to be accepted by the members of the new society and recognized as their equals. For those considering such a transition, it is important to understand the implicit loss and gain of self that is at stake when undergoing this process. French-Tunisian writer Albert Memmi highlights this very concern when he mindfully observes, “Le refus de soi et l’amour de l’autre sont communs à tout candidat à l’assimilation.”1 As if describing the symptoms of a disease or the potential consequences of a risky decision, Memmi’s statement also suggests a degree of ambiguity that inherently accompanies the process of assimilation, as it begs the question of who the soi, or “self,” really is as individuals attempt to remake themselves within the socio-cultural framework of another culture. A fundamental feature of French colonialism under the Third Republic, this notion of rejecting one’s identity to take on that of another proved to be a point of contention between colonizer and colonized throughout the colonial period, but especially during the height of French imperialism between the World Wars. Republican France’s imperial approach to colonialism and how it justified its actions were truly brought to the test during this critical moment of colonial history, with the years between the wars characterized by a general sentiment of ambiguity in regard to where the empire was headed, as well as for colonial subjects who, well acquainted with France’s civilizing mission and its promise of a better (i.e. “French”) future, began to demand rights equal to 1 Albert Memmi, Portrait du colonisé, Précédé du Portrait du colonisateur [1957] (Paris: Gallimard, 1985) 138. 5 those enjoyed by French citizens of the metropole. For the first time, France had to justify its approach to colonialism and practice of assimilation as it was challenged to follow through on its promises by those people it had colonized. Examining colonial history and addressing the importance of assimilation to French colonialism, Alice Conklin’s book A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa,2 traces the evolution of the Third Republic’s mission civilisatrice from its origins in 1895 until the midpoint of the interwar years around 1930. Focusing specifically on the implementation of the civilizing mission by the Governors General in West Africa during these few decades of what might be considered the “golden age” of French imperialism, Conklin demonstrates how republican France was able to justify its seemingly contradictory status of also being an empire. In an effort to comprehend what inspired France to establish a colonial doctrine and pursue a colonial agenda, Conklin describes how among European imperial powers at the time, France felt a special sense of duty to spread its civilization to all corners of the globe. Establishing this distinction in the first lines of her introduction, Conklin states, “Of course all European powers at the end of the nineteenth century claimed to be carrying out the work of civilization in their overseas territories; but only in republican France was this claim elevated to the realm of official imperial doctrine.”3 According to Conklin, this high regard for French civilization implies three things about the colonial ideology of the Third Republic.4 First, it infers that French colonial 2 Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895-1930 (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1997). 3 Conklin 1. 4 The explanation of the following points is paraphrased from pages 1 and 2 of Conklin’s introduction. 6 subjects, or colonized individuals, were thought to be too primitive to rule themselves, but that there was nevertheless potential for them to rise from their primitive state and become civilized. Secondly, due to the universal values it inherited from its revolutionary past, and because of its industrial strength, France saw itself as ideally suited to help the populations of the world it deemed primitive to attain this higher level of civilization. Lastly, and stemming directly from the two previous suppositions, the Third Republic believed that it had the right to remake what it determined to be primitive cultures according to its own – French – image, essentially assimilating them all uniformly to French culture. Thus, a dichotomy between civilized and primitive was founded and cited frequently to maintain the supposed superiority of French civilization vis-à-vis the colonized “other”, all the while upholding the promise of assimilation as the keystone of colonial progress. However, despite the key objective of civilizing the world à la française, in order to maintain an imperial republic to perpetuity, it became imperative that the Third Republic and its colonial administration not allow colonial subjects to become their intellectual and cultural equals. This phenomenon plays directly into what Albert Memmi terms “the colonial system” in his Portrait du colonisé. In this foundational text of colonial and post-colonial theory, Memmi explains that the colonizer and colonized were born out of the specificities of the colonial situation, the existence of the colonizer depending upon that of the colonized and vice versa. According to Memmi, despite the fact that assimilation was said to be a central feature of colonization, the two notions were in fact rather contradictory, with the concept of assimilation being counterintuitive 7 to that of colonization. Summarizing this notion, Memmi states, “…voici l’essentiel: l’assimilation

Load more