Politiques de la Critique : Essai sur les limites et la réinvention de la critique francophone By Kasereka Kavwahirehi

Abstract

Reviewed by: Politiques de la Critique : Essai sur les limites et la réinvention de la critique francophone by Kasereka Kavwahirehi Stephanie Diane Tsakeu Mazan Politiques de la Critique : Essai sur les limites et la réinvention de la critique francophone BY KASEREKA KAVWAHIREHI Hermann, 2021. 310 pp. ISBN 9791037008848 paper. Kasereka Kavwahirehi is a professor of Francophone literatures at the University of Ottawa. He has authored several essays on the practice of literature, philosophy, and religion in relation to politics in Africa. In his new book, Politiques de la critique : Essai sur les limites et la réinvention de la critique francophone [Politics of Criticism: Essay on the Limits and Reinvention of Francophone Criticism], he calls for the renewal of the policies of literary and cultural criticism in Francophone Africa by recommending a more political and communal practice of reading. He also deconstructs the compartmentalization of artistic productions as well as their subdivision into "high" and "low" cultures. Politiques de la critique also presents itself as the other side of What Is Literature? by Jean-Paul Sartre. In his famous essay, the father of existentialism interrogates the function of literature through the questions "What is writing?," "Why do we write?," "For whom do we write?" to reach the conclusion that the author who is socially situated cannot escape the world of meanings. Therefore, Sartre considers the writers who defend the purely poetic conception of art as accomplices of the bourgeois and racist system in place in his time. Kasereka Kavwahirehi's book, which formulates similar questions, examines the emancipatory function that Francophone criticism should play in the era of globalization. He deplores the fact that many works by Francophonists, which are still very often confined to routine practices inherited from the French school—dictated by the capitalist bourgeoisie—are intended exclusively for scholars in a continent where schooling is still for many an unaffordable privilege. Following in the footsteps of Sartre and many other thinkers who dispute the neutrality of literature, Kasereka Kavwahirehi challenges the neutrality of criticism in his new book organized around two main axes. The first section of the book, titled "Défis de la critique à l'heure de la mondialisation" 'Challenges of Criticism in the Age of Globalization,' recounts the history of criticism, which, since the 12th century, has positioned itself as a social machine of resistance. That orientation given to the practice of criticism, which has mainly challenged the political power since the Middle Ages, is unfortunately marginalized today by thinkers who find refuge behind the neutrality of literature in their analysis of texts. This first section of the essay is divided into three subsections. In the first section, "Figures de la critique moderne" 'Figures of modern criticism,' the essayist underlines how the insurrectionary and emancipatory approach to criticism developed in the works of thinkers such as Georges Lukács, Michel Foucault, Karl Marx, Walter Benjamin, Friedrich Nietzsche, Edward Saïd, etc., contrasts with the predilection for technicality and the segregation of literature from other artistic genres in the writings of Francophone thinkers. For the [End Page 197] essayist, this attitude distances them from an intellectual reflection based on the relationships that exist, on the one hand, between literature and the other arts and, on the other hand, between academics and the masses, which rarely have access to cultural products. In the second section, "Les défis de la critique à l'ère de la mondialisation" 'The Challenges of Criticism in the Age of Globalization,' Kasereka Kavwahirehi states that it is imperative to set up a reading grid that takes into account diversity, in addition to reflecting on the subjectivities of minorities and the lexicography of the French language in Africa. This new approach could promote the return to the analysis of social themes in literature and contribute to the metamorphosis of a society dehumanized by neoliberal capitalism. In the third articulation, "La philosophie, sans lieu propre" 'Philosophy, without a Proper Place,' the author returns to the origin of the weakening of African philosophy, which lies in its distancing from the masses since the fight for independence. For a revitalization of criticism, he suggests that philosophers explore in novels details that resonate with the sociopolitical...