From Ethnography to the African Novel: The Example ofDoguicimi(1938) by Paul Hazoum� (Dahomey)

Abstract

? Q ? ^ rom Ethnography to the Novel? this title could be understood in several rH possible ways. 1) On the individual level, it could mean that the author Jhad taken ethnographic material and built it into his fictional work or con? ducted ethnographic studies that then served as a basis for his literary work. 2) On the collective level?ofthe literary system or field {champ litteraire)?the title could be understood in the sense that ethnographic research (as a necessary first step) suggests certain subjects and content to fictional literature, which the latter then appropriates for its own use. 3) Finally, ethnographic research as a whole is the very prerequisite for the production of the fictional writing of a given historical period, which gives rise to such literature and indeed makes it possible in the first place. It is the third perspective that forms the basis of our investigation. During the period between the two world wars, when African literature written in the French language came into being, African authors undoubtedly were compelled to produce a considerable number of scholarly texts (historical, anthropological, ethnological) before they were admitted into the field of fictional writing. Both on the collective and individual level, it was necessary for the French-educated African intelligentsia to legitimize their entry into the world of fictional writing by first publishing a respectable number of non-fictional works. The literary and journalistic of the public space by the Africans, explored by Hans-Jiirgen Lusebrink in Conquete de Vespace public colonial (2003), whereby they gradually won back the power to describe their own historic and contemporary world?a right confiscated from them by the colonial overlords (see Moura)?succeeded only bit by bit and encountered the greatest resistance when Africans laid claim to the right to define themselves through fictional writing. This situation, which seems so surprising at first,1 will be discussed and clarified using the example of the ethnographic novel by Paul Hazoume. Paul Hazoume was born in 1890 in Porto Novo, which at that time was already under a French protectorate (Garcia, 1988). In the same year the French began their war of conquest against King Behanzin, which ended in 1894 with the pacification of the country and the creation of the Colonie du Dahomey et Dependances. Thus,