The Grotesque and Obscene in post-Cold War Africa: Mbembe and the Child Soldier Novel

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This article applies Achille Mbembe's formulations of the grotesque and the obscene to Ivorian novelist Ahmadou Kourouma's widely-read child soldier novel Allah n'est pas obligé (2000), highlighting under-examined aspects of Kourouma's prose style and political commentary. While critics have focused on the novel as a fictionalized description of a child soldier's experience in 1990s West Africa, a close reading of the text reveals Kourouma's preoccupation with the origins and composition of post-Cold War African political organization. The article reads Kourouma's use of obscenity and grotesque imagery through a Mbembian lens, revealing a continuity between the Cold-War era power structures that Mbembe describes in his essays and the post-Cold War political landscape in which the plot of Kourouma's novel plays out. By applying Mbembe's idea of 'illicit cohabitation' to Kourouma, the article reveals the transnational applicability of Mbembe's writing on the 'postcolony', while also highlighting the previously unexamined ways in which Kourouma satirizes his Western readership. Ultimately, the ability of Mbembe's terminology to reveal previously unexamined depths of a much-discussed and celebrated novel such as Allah n'est pas obligé shows the continued relevance of his thought to our understanding of contemporary Africa and the icons which mediate its image both within the continent and beyond.