To Paris and Back: Seeking a Balance

Abstract

Although the author's evocation of the city's dynamic energy is, as we shall see, eulogistic in tone, it is natural, given the shock of first contact, that the question of coping in such a vastly different environment should also arise. The suggested adaptation to a new culture appears normal enough but it has its price in the kinds of changes in it demands. Such adjustments, irreversible in nature, will be the focus of our attention: changes that will engender not only a feeling of distance from his own culture, after what is to be a seven-year absence, but also criticism of many of the forces and values of European society that are inherently alien and abhorrent to the native-born African. By challenging the primacy of the European value system, which poses as a model for all cultures, Camara Laye addresses the dilemma of the postcolonial subject whose lack of a safe cultural reference point causes that person to float between two or more worlds. Analysis of this model and of the author's response will lead to a dialectic on the ques? tion of cultural synthesis, and will include reference to current thinking on marginality and to what Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari have called nomad thought. When Camara Laye left Guinea in 1947, he was only seventeen. Brief references in his autobiographical work, L'enfant noir, clearly reveal his inexperience and ignorance of life in France (220-21). When presented with a metro map as he sets out, he is totally baffled not only by the infor? mation on the map, but also by the whole concept of underground travel. Furthermore, he journeys in light clothing suitable to his homeland but woefully inadequate for the exigencies of the European winter. The article, in which he discloses the impact on him of his arrival, portrays a similar naivete, and typifies the feelings of a young and impressionable African boy at the prospect of adventure in the big city. Written not only as a homage to itself, but also as an encouragement to those who are to follow in his footsteps, Premiers contacts avec Paris comments predictably on the city's perspective majestueuse