Tierno Monénembo’s “Pelourinho”: L’auteur est mort, vive l’auteur!

Abstract

Tierno Monénembo, a Guinean novelist and winner of the 2008 Prix Renaudot, starts his novel Pelourihno with the words “Maintenant que tu es mort, Escritore.” This complex story, driven by myth and linguistic virtuosity, revolves around the murder of an aspiring writer. It acquires a different immediacy, however, when read in dialogue with Roland Barthes’ “La mort de l’auteur,” as a work where the author is dead from the outset. What happens in the interregnum following the death of the Barthesian Author-God? And what does it really mean to proclaim the birth of the Reader? This paper, partially informed by personal correspondence with the author, is an attempt to analyze this “francophone” novel's intricate dialogue with French literary theory. Drawing on a fusion of African and French cultural heritage, it seeks a possibility of writing and reading even in an authorless universe. Rather than falling apart, the novel's structure is rejuvenated by a self-creating drive that responds to the methodological challenge of post-Barthesian literature and its demand for constant renegotiation of our notions of authorship and readership alike.