Ecriture romanesque et cultures regionales au Senegal: Des origines a 1992 (review)

Abstract

This study by Papa Samba Diop is without a doubt the most serious work to date devoted to Senegalese literature. Diop proposes nothing less than an archeology (in the Foucaultian sense) of that country's novelistic [End Page 234] production since 1920. He begins, of course, with a solid description of the cultural context in which the national identity is elaborated; he then reviews the various castes and the resultant endogamy, the social imaginary concerning the beautiful, the mythical imaginary linking principal Wolof clans to a common ancestor, Ndiadiane Ndiaye, and finally the framework giving rise to the religious brotherhoods that make up Senegalese society: Mourides, Tidjanes, Khadres, Niassènes, and Layènes, all good Muslims in Allah's eyes.