Kourouma's Monnè as Aesthetics of Lying

Abstract

Since the Négritude Movement the question of identity of African Literature has been asked in different ways both by writers and literary critiques. In her last book African Novels and the Question of Orality (1992), Eileen Julien gives us a sharp summary of the debate on orality and writing. After having discussed the main positions ranking from racist Eurocentric conceptions to blind and unconditional advocating of Africanity, she concludes that the question of orality and writing/literacy is actually a biased one for it makes out of an "accidental fact" an "essentialist myth." Furthermore, it confines a series of African literary productions (written or oral) in the single tight room of orality. Indeed, most of the time essentialist discourse is not based on any text, but it is part of a general anthropological consideration, or a metalanguage used by writers themselves to account for their source of inspiration. Insofar, it is no wonder that textual evidences cannot support most of the claims.