Calixthe Beyala Research Articles

Away from Feminist Radicalism

Calixthe Beyala’s creative works and public comments on her artistic productions and her life in general have enjoyed a remarkable attention without any doubt. However, there is a particular aspect of her literary creativity begging for attention. This study, therefore, is set to investigate Beyala’s religious disposition with a view to establishing the fact that African women do not only reject being restricted to the kitchen but also demonstrate that they should be considered when it comes to the matter of exercising their faith. The two novels selected for this study are Calixthe Beyala’s Mama a un amant and La petite fille du réverbère. They can be translated as Mama has a Lover and The little girl under the street lamp. Adopting sociological conceptual framework, data are analyzed using the French explication de texte which can be interpreted as the close reading technique or content analysis of a text, verbal or non-verbal. Findings from the study suggest that the new generation of African female writers focuses on an attempt to establish and reconnect womenfolk with their most fundamental human rights through artistic designs and their creative writings. Besides being a means of socialization, religion is a ritualistic act of worship, and it reflects a significant part of a people’s way of life. The study, however, concludes that there is a need for check and balance between the idea of masculinity and the concept of feminism to curtail the excesses there-in for the progress of human societies.

Women’s Objectification as Depicted in Beyala’s The Sun Hath Looked Upon me and in Phiri’s The Highway Queen

This article seeks to contribute to literary discourse by carrying out a comparative and contrastive analysis of the image of the rebellious woman in The sun hath looked upon me written by Calixthe Beyala and The Highway Queen written by Violet Phiri. Drawing from the depiction of the unruly woman in the African society, this article explores the expressive function of literature to define prostitution which is viewed as the most disreputable female career. The objective is to accentuate the instability caused by prostitution on the woman and her family and also on the creation of invisible masculinities. This reading is grounded on De Beauvoir’s school of thought “one is not born a woman but rather becomes. Moreover, this work determines that literature has a part to play in our communities. It is concluded that women become prostitutes when the society treats them unfairly

Une redéfinition du féminisme africain dans Femme nue, femme noire de Calixthe Beyala, romancière à contre-courant

This article examines the issues of literary impudence and homosexuality so much repudiated by African feminist theorists in Calixthe Beyala’s erotic novel, Femme nue, femme noire. It reflects on the pertinence of using African feminist ideologies in the criticism of Beyala’s fictions considering the fact her novelistic themes run contrary to the African feminist postulation where homosexuality, sex work and other transgressive tendencies constitute a strange and imported phenomenon. This article analyses the radicalization of African feminism through a close reading of Calixthe Beyala’s Femme nue, femme noire by highlighting recourse to subversion as a radical tendency in Beyala’s writings, which consists not only subverting the status quo through engaging in taboo-related discourse but also defending the sexual independence of the modern African woman as a form of emancipation. It concludes that the novel exhibits a new African feminism which is neither adapted to the collective feminist ethics nor to the African literary canon but to the individual feminine reality aimed at the total emancipation of the African woman.

“Dominating the Man’s Cock”? (Re)Imagining Femininities and Masculinities in Selected Francophone and Lusophone Literary Texts

This article focuses on selected literary texts from francophone and lusophone Africa, parts of the continent that are often dwarfed and marginalised by anglophone literary production. The article analyses the following texts: Infidels by Abdellah Taïa (Morocco), Femme nue femme noire by Calixthe Beyala (Cameroon), Niketche by Paulina Chiziane (Mozambique) and O Último Voo do Flamingo by Mia Couto (Mozambique). The article examines how female protagonists find agency in and through sex and sexuality. Female protagonists in the selected novels use their voices as well as the physical and the erotic potentialities of their bodies to destabilise, resist and challenge patriarchal notions of women’s sexuality as subservient to, and serving the pleasure of, men. These texts show that hegemonic masculinity is not as untouchable and sacrosanct as is commonly considered. Theoretically, this article draws on Kopano Ratele’s ideas on contested masculinities and Pumla Dineo Gqola’s thoughts on dismantling patriarchy. Through comparative analyses, this article imagines how women can liberate themselves from the oppressive yoke of patriarchy by undermining the perceived dominance of masculinity.

Ethnic Minority Women’s Writing in France: Publishing Practices and Identity Formation, 1998–2005. By Claire Mouflard

In this book Claire Mouflard analyses the interplay between texts, paratexts, and epitexts to investigate how minority women’s identity construction was negotiated alongside the ‘utopic notion of French multiculturalism’ (p. 17). The book’s tightly focused chronological scope and narrow consideration of autobiographical and autofictional works enables Mouflard’s comparative approach, which draws together works published in France by female authors of North African, sub-Saharan African, and Vietnamese descent. Pairing original research into publishers’ archival materials with more traditional literary and (para)textual analyses, the book illustrates how many of the authors it considers ‘were fashioned according to gendered and colonial marketing practices’ (p. 8). Above all, Mouflard’s female-centric comparative focus on both those positionalities explicitly cognized under the banner of French multiculturalism (especially the ‘Black-Blanc-Beur’ refrain) and those who sat ‘outside of the millennium’s reductive multicultural utopia’ (notably, Franco-Vietnamese authors; p. 17), adds much to French cultural studies, race and ethnicity studies, and discussions around twentieth- and twenty-first-century French publishing politics. After an Introduction and contextualizing first chapter, each chapter then focuses on works by several female authors belonging to — or categorized as — one minority positionality. In Chapter 2, Mouflard shows how the paratexts of works by three authors officially branded as ‘Beur’ (Samira Bellil, Nina Bouraoui, and Nora Hamdi) also implicitly think of the authors along a secondary axis: banlieue or intégrée. In Chapter 3, Mouflard focuses on the paratextual construction of ‘Black’ and ‘Afro-French’ identities through works by Calixthe Beyala, Bessora, and Fatou Diome. As in Chapter 2, Mouflard traces a range of identity constructions: from Beyala’s ‘tokenization’ to Bessora’s ‘global and multifaceted black identity’ and Diome’s strategic use of the ‘epitext’ (p. 9). Finally, in Chapter 4, the focus turns to a group conspicuously absent from the ‘Black-Blanc-Beur’ formulation: Franco-Vietnamese authors. Here, Mouflard shows how publishers’ paratextual strategies branded Anna Moï and Linda Lê as ‘near-French’ literature though not without Orientalist echoes (p. 117; my emphasis). Beyond analysing how (para)texts construct gendered minority identities, Mouflard also adds depth to existing studies of the politics of metropolitan publishers and their lists, such as Gallimard’s ‘Collection blanche’ or Éditions de l’Aube’s ‘Regards croisés’. Mouflard’s original research into publishing houses’ archival records, notably those of Albin Michel (publisher of Beyala) and Christian Bourgois (publisher for Lê) in Chapter 1, unquestionably furthers existing conversations about some of the better-known authors she studies and her close readings of individual paratexts — especially those examining works’ multiple editions — are engaging and persuasive. While more time might have been spent discussing whether and how this period marks a radical break from prior or later publishing trends and unpacking whether the conclusions drawn in each case are most attributable to individual publishers, editors, or to broader, even universal publishing practices, Mouflard’s book nevertheless constitutes an important contribution to contemporary French cultural and literary studies. Above all, readers curious about the literary construction and the packaging of female minority positionalities in France will discover much to interest them.

Langage obscène et injurieux dans La Voyeuse interdite de N. Bouraoui et C’est le soleil qui m’a brûlée de C. Beyala

Sexuality is a very popular theme in African literature in general. Strongly linked to other themes like patriarchy, female emancipation, male domination, etc., sexuality translates the gender conflict in women and men and betrays male ideology in African societies. Sexuality in the corpus chosen for our study: C’est le soleil qui m’a brûlée by Calixthe Beyala and La Voyeuse interdite by Nina Bouraoui, is intimately linked to the writing project of these authors who chose to opt for obscene language and insults in order to show to what extent man reduces woman to a simple sexual object and in order to adopt a position of counterattack in the concern to reduce man to his sexual organ. Obscene language then becomes a means of proclaiming the freedom of women. The authors also use this shocking language to awaken readers’ awareness of the urgent need to establish a balance in the relationship between women and men. Reading the obscene and offensive language throughout the two African novels submitted for study will allow us to see how the authors portray sexual scenes without retouching and constantly put them back into their ideological and social framework.

A Linguistic-Stylistic Representation of Women Oppression in Selected Calixthe Beyala’s Novels

Calixthe Beyala is a notable French writer whose works have attracted readership across the globe. Previous studies have examined Calixthe Beyala’s novels from feminist, psychological, and systemic function linguistic points of view with insufficient attention paid to the linguistic stylistic features in Calixthe Beyala’s novels. This study, therefore, examines linguistic-stylistic representation of women oppression in Calixth Beyala’s novels. Four novels of Calixthe Beyala are purposively selected and form the data for this study. The study reveals that linguistic-stylistic features-culture words, contraction of words, neologism, pidgin French, direct transfer of African expressions characterize Beyalian novels. These linguistic-stylistic features depict women oppressions in a male-dominated African society, negritude experience outside the shores of Africa and are a representation of the socio-cultural, political, and economic realities and experiences in Cameroon in particular and Africa in general. Keywords: women oppression, Calixthe Beyala, linguistic-stylistics, and women representation DOI: 10.7176/JLLL/75-07 Publication date: January 31 st 2021

Réactions des femmes face au conflit de genre dans C’est le soleil qui m’a brûlée et Tu t’appelleras Tanga de Calixthe Beyala

This paper examines the reactions of women to gender conflict in Calixthe Beyala‟s C’est le soleil qui m’a brulée and Tu t’appelleras Tanga. Driven by the impulse of feminism, Beyala brings to the fore the age-old conflict between man and woman as fuelled by traditional values which serve as ideological grounding for manipulation and oppressive exploitation of women by their male counterparts. This antithetical situation resulting from biological differences between the two sexes is the source of perpetual conflict which serves as raw material for these two Beyala‟s narrative texts. The study seeks to critically reflect on the various ways women in Beyala‟s C’est le soleil qui m’a brulée and Tu t’appelleras Tanga react to oppression and exploitation resulting from patriarchal domination. It therefore examines the sources, nature of this conflict, and how women react to it in the two novels. Besides, it critically examines the extent to which these reactions are justified. The study points to the fact that, much as conflict emanating from patriarchal oppression and male‟s domination in human societies is inimical to the rights of women, the methods used by the latter to free themselves from this state of being remain questionable, in that, these methods defy rational thinking and are also a kind of reversal oppression and domination which are equally unacceptable. The paper is posited within Carolyn Allen‟s (1978) feminist conceptual framework. It is based on critical literary analysis of textual data collected from the aforementioned narrative texts of Beyala.

La chair linguistique des femmes Quand le texte se fait corps et sexe

At length stripped of any free and independent voice by male writers, Haitian and African novelists shattered the taboos surrounding sex and a liberated sexual expression during the second half of the 20th century. By exploring sexuality and sensuality in their work, these writers courageously managed to break free from the outskirts of society and reshape the inferior identity unjustly attributed to them by the literary canons. As there is a gap in in-depth research on this subject, our study aims to explore the different ways in which female sexuality is constructed on paper. The novels by Calixthe Beyala, Frieda Ekotto, Ken Bugul, Margaret Papillon, Yanick Lahens and Kettly Mars will allow us to focus on three themes often recurring in the female universe: violence, madness and prostitution. Particularly, the research will take into consideration the enunciative and discursive modalities, as well as the stylistic techniques that enabled these authors to enhance a strong female subjectivity through their bodies.

Le Scandale comme stratégie d'exotisme chez Calixthe Beyala et Léonora Miano: Le Rôle de l'institution littéraire face aux auteurs post/coloniaux

ABSTRACTThis article examines the role literary scandal has played in the national and international recognition of two Franco-Cameroonian authors, Calixthe Beyala, accused of plagiarism with her novel Les Honneurs perdus (1996), and Léonora Miano, openly criticizing the content of preface to the American edition of L'Intérieur de la nuit (2010) which introduced her to an American audience. Drawing from scholars such as Brouillette and Huggan, Brezault ponders if scandal can be seen as an exotic strategy used by the writers themselves to defend their postcolonial specificities, therefore questioning their artistic autonomy in the literary field. How does the market value marginality? Is it used as a means of resistance or as a means of reinvigorating the mainstream culture? This article reflects on scandal used as a commercial industry to promote alterity.

Bodies that Matter: Calixthe Beyala’s Female Bodies and Strategies of Hegemonic Subversion

Without challenging hegemony, liberal Francophone African feminists unearth aspects of patriarchal African cultural practices that objectify women. In contrast, radical Francophone African feminists call for drastic change to these practices through reappropriating the female body as a way to liberate African women from patriarchal oppression. They challenge the patriarchal order by opposing gender roles and stereotypes and by taking a decisive stand for total female liberation. They call for a radical reordering of patriarchal societies through the annulment of binary oppositions that classify women as “other.” In this article, I follow Judith Butler’s lead in Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex1 and explore Calixthe Beyala’s commitment to African women’s liberation from oppression. Beyala’s approach presents auto-eroticism, homicide, infanticide, refusal of marriage, bodily and psychical dis-eroticization, and physical transformation of female bodies as strategies to secure women’s freedom.

L’exil et la négociation du manque dans trois romans de Calixthe Beyala

This article takes as its theme the literature of sub-Saharan Africa, and in particular the prolific work of the Cameroonian author Calixthe Beyala, who, since 1987, has published numerous novels in exile. Calixthe Beyala is among those expatriate writers for whom exile, far from being synonymous with banishment, on the contrary represents true salvation. The article examines how Calixthe Beyala speaks of expatriation in three of her novels: Tu t’appelleras Tanga (Your name shall be Tanga) (1988), Les honneurs perdus (1996) and Comment cuisiner son mari à l’africaine (2000). Belonging to three successive decades, these works relate specifically to the theme of exile and plunge to the heart of Cameroon and to the Cameroonian diaspora in Paris, shedding light on the grieving process linked to the loss of one’s own geographic space, and to the loss of self.

Dwelling in Hyphenation: Calixthe Beyala, Tu t’appelleras Tanga, and Readers

Dwelling in Hyphenation: Calixthe Beyala, Tu t’appelleras Tanga, and Readers

Between the Subversive Pen and the Blasphemous Microphone

Iconoclasm is a term that has been used to characterize any subversive, transgressive, and blasphemous adventure. There is abundant evidence that the African female creative impulse is geared towards subverting the existing social order as dominated and controlled by men. The two African female artists whose works are analysed in this study employ vivid sexual imagery to challenge the hegemony of male-oriented discourse. This essay examines the iconoclastic tendencies to be found in the Cameroonian Calixthe Beyala’s Amours sauvages and the Nigerian Saint Janet’s Faaji Plus. It concludes that although the two writers belong to different linguistic and geographical regions, and indeed to different generations, their works provide clear evidence of subversive art and depict a radical reaction to phallocentric norms and values in the African context.

Mythes et erotismes dans les litteratures et les cultures francophones de l'extreme contemporain

The aims and claims of this collection are ambitious. It sets out to shed new light on the field of the erotic in contemporary French and francophone literature and culture through a critical approach that conjoins eroticism and myth. In so doing it purports to renew women's studies, and, more broadly, gender studies, within the French and francophone worlds. Over its fourteen chapters it aims to map new tendencies in current erotic writing by both women and men. The volume's foundational apparatus (an Introduction and a lengthy first chapter on ‘La Crise de l'éternel féminin’ in contemporary francophone erotic texts by women) covers some of the key works, authors, and developments that have become closely associated over the last twenty years with a new era of frank and experimental sexual writing. While interesting, these introductory essays rehearse much that is already known and do not offer new critical paradigms. For the main part, subsequent chapters focus on female creators (only one chapter, on Michel Houellebecq, is devoted to a male writer). Some fairly familiar arguments are made in chapters on Catherine Breillat, Annie Ernaux, Calixthe Beyala, and Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi. Also covered are the erotic writings of Gabriel Osmonde (Andreï Makine's alter ego); the intermingling of erotic and political registers in Milan Kundera and Nancy Huston; the influence of the father in the unfolding of desire in Houellebecq and Nina Bouaroui; and the self-destructive and toxic eroticism of protagonists in the work of québécoise writer Marie-Sissi Labrèche. There are chapters, too, that have a broader scope, setting out to examine, for example, the expression of sexuality in Moroccan women's writing; the body and sensuality in Algerian women's writing; sexuality as it emerges from, and remains tainted by, slavery in Antillean literature. All chapters offer coherent readings, but several remain somewhat underdeveloped in terms of critical apparatus. Many of the arguments made in this volume are already very well covered in the wealth of secondary literature that has been published to date, in French and in English, on the core corpus. Most surprisingly, relatively little of this material is referenced or engaged with. Finally, the idea of myth does not emerge from the essays as systematically as one might expect. It is taken up via a general interest in how selected authors and texts deconstruct certain myths about gender and unpick normative views — thus Ernaux evokes and works against myths of feminine passivity; Houellebecq explodes myths of love; Despentes, of heteronormative culture; Breillat, of the obscenity that accretes to woman's body — yet these gestures scarcely feel new. Ultimately, while the volume captures a sense of the recent proliferation of sexually explicit works and the ways in which these have destabilized preconceptions, it does not quite live up to the claims it makes for itself.

L’impressionnisme littéraire par Virginie Pouzet-Duzer

Reviews 265 pornographique”(47). Cette première contribution se penche sur les traits communs, malgré la diversité des textes, qui forment ce que le critique appelle “l’érographie féminine”. En mettant l’accent sur l’importance du dire érotique féminin, Brulotte annonce un aspect étudié dans de nombreux chapitres: la subversion des écrits de femmes. Que cette subversion s’exprime à travers le désir amoureux, l’obscénité, les déviations sexuelles, la vengeance (comme dans le film Baise-moi), la “cruauté” et “la dépravation” d’un “érotisme africain” (289) (comme dans Femme nue, femme noire de Calixthe Beyala) ou à travers la contestation des sociétés patriarcales, en particulier chez des auteures maghrébines,elle a pour but de montrer que la sexualité,l’appropriation du corps et le regard sur l’autre ne relèvent plus exclusivement du dire masculin. Dans l’ensemble, l’étude de l’œuvre de divers auteurs ou cinéastes (d’Annie Ernaux à Catherine Breillat en passant par Assia Djebar, Milan Kundera, Marie-Sissi Labrèche et autres) met en lumière que l’Éros, qu’il soit porté à l’écran ou mis en récit, qu’il soit lié au pathos ou au thanatos, est complexe et toujours multiple. University of Vermont Ching Selao Pouzet-Duzer,Virginie. L’impressionnisme littéraire. Saint-Denis: PU de Vincennes, 2013. ISBN 978-2-84292-365-5. Pp. 349. 24 a. Declaring that, for her, what makes literary impressionism a compelling area of investigation is its existence as a paradigm that contradicts all notions of category, Pouzet-Duzer uses a combination of rhetorical,cultural, sociological,and phenomenological approaches to elucidate the complex interactions among the theories and creations of late nineteenth-century writers (journalists, critics, novelists, poets) and painters whose work exists within the fluid boundaries of this artistic current. Close readings of paintings and texts are juxtaposed with broad overviews, and this continual change in focus, in tandem with the variety of critical approaches, puts the reader in a position to experience the hesitations and fluctuations of what Pouzet-Duzer calls “le morcellement esthétique de toute une époque” (315). The first part of the study examines portraits by Manet and Degas of various writers of their acquaintance.While many critics place these two painters at the margins of impressionism, Pouzet-Duzer justifies her choice on two grounds: 1) the oft-claimed independence of the painters now identified as impressionists, which created a movement with no clearly defined or recognized center, and 2) the historical and theoretical import of Duranty’s 1876 study of “the new painting,” which represented Degas as the ideal impressionist, followed by Mallarmé’s focus on Manet in his study of impressionism later the same year. Much has been written about the friendships among writers and painters of this era and the portraits that ensued, but Pouzet-Duzer’s focus on Manet and Degas brings to the fore the oft-overlooked importance of writers such as Duranty and Astruc. Her analyses of the canvases she calls“portraits des artistes en écrivains”(15) are nuanced and insightful, enhanced by the number, quality, and placement of the reproductions that accompany them. One of the most original and intriguing aspects of these analyses is her contention that the representation of the various writers’hands reflects not just their common métier, but the stylistic differences among them. The second part of the book,“Capturer l’insaisissable: la main et l’œil,” looks at the presence and development of impressionism in literature by focusing on texts by writers as diverse as Zola and Mallarmé. It begins by examining early critical judgments by Brunetière and Lanson, thematic similarities between paintings and texts of the same era, and, via close readings of passages from the Goncourts and Daudet, stylistic similarities and differences between l’écriture artiste and l’impressionnisme littéraire. Pouzet-Duzer also considers the aptness of different genres—novel, interior monologue, poetry, affiches— to impressionist treatment and applies twentieth-century critical notions such as reader response to a variety of late nineteenth-century texts. She concludes that while literary impressionism shares common points with all of the nineteenth-century -ismes, and that...

Ethics of intertextuality in Calixthe Beyala’s fiction

Abstract This study analyses some of the ethical stakes surrounding the extreme intertextual practices that characterize the literary aesthetics of Franco-Cameroonian writer Calixthe Beyala. Such practices famously caused a French court to convict Beyala of ‘partial plagiarism’ on one occasion in the 1990s – for her novel Le petit prince de Belleville (1992). In another case analysed here, French literary critic Pierre Assouline claimed to have found evidence that Beyala’s novel Assèze l’Africaine (1994) contained passages plagiarized from Paule Constant’s novel White Spirit (1989). Constant did not press charges, choosing instead to write her own vitriolic novel about a Franco-African professor-plagiarist titled Confidence pour confidence (1998). This article analyses Beyala’s Assèze l’Africaine (1994), as well as her literary response to Constant, Amours sauvages (1999), in order to nuance the negative reception that Constant, Assouline and other rushed readers have reserved for Beyala’s extreme intertextual practices. This article argues that iterary imitation in Beyala’s two aforementioned novels can be read as an ethical gesture through which the writer highlights the interconnectedness of, and commonalities between, ex-colonized and ex-colonizers. Cette étude analyse les enjeux éthiques des pratiques intertextuelles décelables dans l’oeuvre de la romancière franco-camerounaise Calixthe Beyala. Ces pratiques furent l’objet de la condamnation de Beyala pour ‘contrefaçon partielle’ pour son roman intitulé Le petit prince de Belleville (1992) dans les années 1990. Dans un autre cas de supposé plagiat qui fait l’objet de cet article, le critique littéraire Pierre Assouline informa l’écrivaine française Paule Constant qu’il détenait la preuve que Beyala avait plagié un roman de celle-ci, White Spirit (1989), dans le roman intitulé Assèze l’Africaine (1994). Au lieu de porter l’affaire devant le tribunal, Constant répondit à Beyala par roman interposé (Confidence pour confidence (1998)). A travers l’analyse de deux romans de Beyala, Assèze l’Africaine (1994) et Amours sauvages (1999), ce dernier constituant la propre réponse de Beyala au roman-réponse de Constant déjà mentionné, cet article se propose de nuancer la réception négative que Constant, Assouline et autres lecteurs pressés réservèrent aux pratiques intertextuelles extrêmes de Beyala dans les romans en question. En fait, cet article défend l’idée que l’imitation littéraire dans ces oeuvres peut se lire comme un geste éthique par lequel la romancière souligne les liens partagés par les anciens colonisateurs et colonisés, et leurs descendants respectifs.

Performing the Immigrant: The Works of Calixthe Beyala and Fatou Diome

This paper proposes a study of the fictional works of two African women authors in French, Calixthe Beyala and Fatou Diome, and the various ways in which they explore constructions of identity in the transnational individual. Identifying forms are explored in their works in the manipulations of personal appearance, in more “official” representations such as documents and identification papers, and in other individual performances of a certain vision of the “authentic” African immigrant. Special attention will be paid to the figure of the author as a character within each text, and the relation of this particular authorial performance to the writers themselves. This paper seeks to explore several questions, based on three axes of analysis. First, I investigate the performative nature of identity as demonstrated by characters in these works. What aspects of the performance are particular to the migrant or transnational individual? Second, I examine the intersections of migrant identity and gender. How are performativity and gender related? How is the migrant experience embodied in a gendered individual? Finally, I analyze the image of the writer within each work. Who are the author figures in these texts? How do these characters perform an authorial identity? How do these characters perform an authorial identity, and can these two authors be said to represent authors differently? Using selections of their recent work, this paper will demonstrate how performativity intersects with the contemporary migrant fiction in the texts of Beyala and Diome.

Toward a Victim-Survivor Narrative: Rape and Form in Yvonne Vera's <em>Under the Tongue</em> and Calixthe Beyala's <em>Tu t'appelleras Tanga</em>

This essay examines the representation of rape in Yvonne Vera’s Under the Tongue and Calixthe Beyala’s Tu t’appelleras Tanga, arguing for the term “victim-survivor” as a conceptual frame for analyzing the experience of violated protagonists. By positing the “victim-survivor narrative” as a form that grapples with the multiple responses to and experiences with rape, as well as the different ways they figure on cultural production, this essay moves beyond the extant analyses in rape cultural criticism and trauma studies. My discussion critiques the ways in which models from trauma studies and rape crisis intervention fall short in accounting for the complexity of African experiences with sexual violence. To do so, I challenge the dominance of the rape survivor model, offer victim-survivor in its stead, and subsequently demonstrate its efficacy as a way to analyze rape that accounts for the female protagonists’ multiple locations and subjectivities in Beyala’s and Vera’s novels.

Claude Simon: situations éd. par Paul Dirkx, Pascal Mougin

postnationalism with critics who dispute its representation of the postcolonial subject as “an uprooted, deterritorialized, unfettered, and free-floating migrant” (xiii). Interestingly, gender is the paradigm that underscores the novelty of her analysis, which dwells on Francophone African migrant literatures. The book breaks new ground by deconstructing previous readings of nationalism that ignore the gender paradigm, and by correlating this oversight to their celebration of postnationalism. Engaging three migrant women writers, Coly notes the continuity between“the gender politics of anticolonial nationalism” and those of male/female postcolonial postnationalist narratives (xxv). Her subsequent analysis of postindependent home and belonging as elusive, exclusivist, inviting, and too heteropatriarchal for migrant African women is refreshing. The critic reveals the connected experiences of Calixthe Beyala, Ken Bugul, and Fatou Diome in Africa and Europe. Dealing with Bugul’s novels, the first and second chapters address the female migrant’s experience of the nation and Europe as a non-place and question the reintegration of home and the impact of homesickness on the narrative of homecoming respectively. The relevancy of the nation for women depicted by Beyala is the focus of chapter 3 where Coly correlates the dissident and culturally violent space-clearing gesture of the lesbian desire and their exclusion by the postcolonial/heteropatriarchal nation. If affiliation is positively read as women’s alternative means to attain home, Beyala’s transnationalism is less so, given her obsessive French tropism. In fact, chapter 4 echoes Coly’s critique of Beyala’s Belleville novels as “colonialist narratives of Africa” (71) and addresses the politics of interracial marriage and prostitution as pathways into the French house. Coly also notes how women create contact and appropriate space in France (ch. 5). The final chapters unveil the negative effects of colonial globalization on Senegal and the relevance of the nation, which appear through Diome’s demystification of France and reinstatement of her homeland.Coly ultimately relates identification with the hostland, homeland, and homecoming to gender politics and social status. It features Diome and Beyala’s contrasted depictions of the African woman and the treatment of her body in France. In articulating a bold challenge of the preeminence of the migrant through a concise reading that significantly correlates African women, migration, and nation, Coly refers repeatedly to the ‘nervous condition,’ which informs the trio’s oftentimes ambiguous narrative of home. However, discussing this trope separately would have added valuable substance to this theoretically sound work. Colby College (ME) Mouhamedoul A. Niang Dirkx, Paul, et Pascal Mougin, éd. Claude Simon: situations. Lyon: ENS, 2011. ISBN 978-2-84788-302-2. Pp. 203. 23 a. Awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1985; added to the required reading for the agrégation in 1997–98; since 2000 Simon has attracted more critical interest than 220 FRENCH REVIEW 88.1 Reviews 221 any French novelist except Proust. In this volume, eleven scholars discuss how Simon’s fictions enfold the personal—autobiography, dwellings, family, and history—without being dominated or shaped by it. He is neither dependent on real-world referents, nor scornful of them like his contemporaries the New Novelists. Simon’s configurations of referents are systemic but not systematic; and he may eliminate toponymics. His Nobel acceptance speech explains that for him the work of writing produces meaning. The newness created by this work is the adventure of writing. Musical metaphors explain his art. His novels resemble the compositions by those classical and jazz musicians who combine citation with transformation.As a writer,he feels an affinity with artisans and their ethos of craftsmanship. Alternatively, he supports or denies the ideal that living with literature can improve humans. He consistently resists the tyranny of aesthetic norms (preached by the New Novelists, particularly Jean Ricardou), as well as the moralistic imperatives of the Existentialists’ littérature engagée. In this volume, the most informative starting point for non-specialists would be Pascal Mougin’s “La mésalliance parentale” (41–52). Simon’s father was a navy captain, a son of peasants, who proved himself and earned advancement through the discipline of enduring harsh climates and facing dangers, deferring the gratification of rewards. His mother came from an aristocratic family of wealthy landowners that...