Taming the Beast: Writing, Orality and Cultural Duplicity in Ahmadou Kourouma’s En attendant le vote des bêtes sauvages

Abstract

Through the analysis of En attendant le vote des bêtes sauvages by Ahmadou Kourouma, this article seeks to demonstrate how (Francophone) African writers’ literary output is far more reaching than the traditions from which these authors supposedly originate. Even while claiming a strong link between the novel and oral performances of the donsomana, the article surmises, Kourouma’s work transcends the mere transcription of oral speech. Instead, he bases his novel on a composite and heterogeneous narrative that contradicts, distorts, and camouflages his original sources—a concept defined in this article as la désécriture or the rhetoric of controlled instability—in an attempt to reconcile the complexities of postcolonial identities.