Le (néo)colonialisme littéraire: quatre romans africains face à l’institution littéraire parisienne (1950-1970) par Vivan Steemers

Abstract

Huysmans’s “Carnet vert” taken during his walks in le Jardin de Ligugé become incorporated into his literary texts and the ways in which the abbey garden is exploited “pour le faire évoluer pleinement vers l’expression d’un naturalisme spiritualiste” (148). In “Huysmans et les Christs décadents,” Seillan traces the abundance of “les Christs aux ordures”in Huysmans’s works to the author’s“angoisse de la profanation” and his preoccupation with“la thématique obsédante [...] des hosties souillées et jetées dans les latrines”(186). The final cluster of articles,“Catholiques,”assesses Huysmans’s expressions of spirituality in terms of those of his fellow contemporaries of the faith, namely Barbey,Villiers,Verlaine, and Claudel. Contrasting Huysmans’s conversion to Barbey’s, Georges-Métral explains that whereas Barbey returns to his Catholic faith after a long spell of atheism,“la conversion spirituelle de Huysmans relève de la procrastination ” (201).Viegnes also adopts a comparative approach in arguing that while Verlaine’s Sagesse, inspired by nature and “une vision bucolique” became rhetorically transfigured into a spiritual tableau (250), Huysmans’s religious sentiment feeds on “une ambiance saturée de l’art et de littérature sacrés”(253). This anthology provides a thought-provoking read for Huysmans enthusiasts. Edgewood College (WI) Sayeeda H. Mamoon Steemers,Vivan. Le (néo)colonialisme littéraire: quatre romans africains face à l’institution littéraire parisienne (1950–1970). Paris: Karthala, 2012. ISBN 978-2-81110764 -2. Pp. 234. 24 a. Readers expecting in-depth textual analysis will be disappointed by this book, for the author’s objective is not the texts themselves, but everything that precedes, surrounds, and follows them. Taking her cue from Gérard Genette’s Seuils (1987), Steemers undertakes a paratextual study of four canonical African novels, representing two defining moments in Francophone African literature, its modern ‘emergence’ in the 1950s (Camara Laye’s L’enfant noir and Mongo Beti’s Le pauvre Christ de Bomba in part 1) and postcolonial literature’s first wave in the 1960s (Ahmadou Kourouma’s Les soleils des indépendances and Yambo Ouologuem’s Le devoir de violence in part 2). Her project will, however, engage readers interested in the role the Metropolitan publishing industry has played in African textual production, both through the editorial process and in the anticipation and even construction of reader reception through marketing strategies and,at times,collusion with popular press book reviewers. Never far from Steemers’s concerns is the discrepancy between the ideological perspectives of African authors and those of a French readership avid for the exotic and reticent to confront the ill effects of colonialism. The introduction situates Steemers’s study at the confluence of three theoretical vectors: Orientalism (Said) and Africanism (Miller); the culture industry economy (Bourdieu); reception theory (Jauss). If the 238 FRENCH REVIEW 88.2 Reviews 239 introduction is undertheorized, subsequent chapters build on Bourdieu’s claim that cultural products emerge, and derive their symbolic value, from particular sociohistorical contexts.Producers of literature include not only authors but also ghostwriters, editors, publishers, book reviewers, and/or literary prize panels—for the impact that the latter have had on reader perception and the novel’s success. In each of the two parts of Steemers’s study, a brief introduction defining the prevailing Zeitgeist is followed by two chapters contrasting a bestseller playing to the reading public’s desire for the exotic and authentic—L’enfant noir for its content and Les soleils des indépendances for its style—with an iconoclastic novel whose anti-colonial rhetoric (Le pauvre Christ de Bomba) or suspect authorship (Le devoir de violence) discomforted readers and discouraged promotion. Authors’ trajectories are seemingly secondary (ample references to Adèle King’s Rereading Camara Laye and Christopher Wise’s biography of Yambo Ouologuem, for example, fill this gap) to the analysis of the publishers’history, ideological leaning and financial objectives. Steemers gives insights into the politics of publishing, revealing for instance that Plon, with its history of supporting the Catholic right and publishing for short-term gains, underwrote L’enfant noir because it promoted the universal values of France’s civilizing mission, while Mongo Beti’s corrosive critique...