Werewere Liking Research Articles

La mémoire amputée by Werewere Liking, or the Feminine Journey of Africa’s Struggle for the Renaissance

La mémoire amputée by Werewere Liking, or the Feminine Journey of Africa’s Struggle for the Renaissance

Werewere Liking's holistic eco-esthétique

What is "development?" and who is "developed?" asks Cameroonian-born, Ivorian resident, artist, writer, performer and activist Werewere Liking, one of the African continent's most cosmopolitan, innovative and socially engaged artists today. Through her art and activism, Liking urges us to confront these assumptions today in order to gain a clearer perspective on what and who contemporary discourse paints as the "developed." In this essay, we will follow the eco-ethical and environmental threads in Liking's work beginning with two of her early plays, La Puissance de Um (1979) and Une Nouvelle Terre: Rituel d'investiture d'un nouveau village (1980), which can be considered "Environmental Theater," extending into her 2016 marionette play Ton Pied, Mon Pied, and taking into account some of her contemporary discourse. We will also consider scientific research that analyzes the impacts of the Lagdo Dam in Cameroon and the Manantali Dam in Mali, which have greatly impacted local people and their practices. This scientific data is foregrounded so that it will help us better understand the socio-economic and socio-cultural effects of these phenomena and the implications of "development" in the Pan-African world, on which Liking regularly comments in her creative works and interviews. By provoking us to shift our perspective and our living strategies through dynamic, artful practices, Liking calls us to "recreate through consciousness" where we turn our attention to "the freedom to…": the power within ourselves and from our acts, and those from within our communities. She encourages us to see with a holistic perspective, to be creative, and to be conscious so that we can learn to live finally and beget a new earth.

Women Writers of Gabon: Literature and Herstory. By Cheryl Toman.

In this new study Cheryl Toman contextualizes the historical, socio-cultural, and political settings that have delayed the visibility of Gabonese women's writing in the field of literary criticism. Taking us three decades back in time, Toman reveals the prevalence of women in the Gabonese literary scene through the fictional works of Justine Mintsa, Honorine Ngou, Sylvie Ntsame, and Angèle Rawiri, among others. Examining their novels, youth literature, and youth activism in their communities, Toman demonstrates the feminist vein in which these Gabonese women write. This is observed through daring themes (such as tribalism, prostitution, infertility, homosexuality, and third gender) that expose female characters having to negotiate complex issues of identity, sexuality, oppressive aspects of African tradition, and Westernization. These subjects are examined through critical readings of African feminism and Western radical feminism in order to expound the ways in which these writers provoke transnational and transcultural discussions on issues of race, gender, sex, and class. A very interesting segment of Toman’s study resides in a rare exploration of the role and importance of the Fang culture in Gabonese women’s writing. This extensive examination of a non-archival system of ephemeral and indecipherable transmissions from Gabon (and surrounding areas) echoes the notable work of performance studies scholar Diana Taylor, by stressing the ways in which the traditional ‘performatic repertoire’ (The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), pp. xvii and 4) makes us move away from an imperialistic frame of reference that locates the material (tangible) at the top of the line of dominance of Western logic. The traditional repertoire is thus analysed as a valuable form of knowledge (stretching from oral tales of the Fang and myènè, Mvet (epic oral literature), Fang myth and spirituality, birth and funeral rituals); it allows Toman to contend that these authors proceed to a literary decolonization of the African francophone novel. By elucidating their feminist rewriting of the Fang traditions (conventionally dominated by men), Toman guides our appreciation of the works and critical thoughts of these Gabonese women writers. Her scholarship contributes to recent critical works in the fields of literary and cultural studies on Afro-Diasporic traditional practices, bringing to the fore what Jeannine Murray-Román termed ‘performance events as ekphrases’ (Performance and Personhood in Caribbean Literature: From Alexis to the Digital Age (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2016), p. 3). We also observe how the ‘performatic repertoire’ illustrates concerns and solidarity among various ethnic groups. Toman intersects genres and cultural and geographical boundaries by putting these Gabonese texts in rich conversation with the works of various critics and writers of the African Diaspora. For instance, the critical feminist dialogue with the works of Leopold Sedar Senghor (his poem ‘Femme noire’), Mabik-ma-Kombil (on storytelling), Werewere Liking (on the use of Bassa culture), and Berthrand Matoko (on issues of queerness) holds compelling comparative studies. While an in-depth conversation between Chantal Magalie Mbazoo-Kassa’s literary works with those of Mintsa and Rawiri would have been desirable, the book nonetheless remains a timely, much-needed, and resourceful study of Gabonese women's writing.

Commonplaces: The Poetics of African Atlantic Postromantics

Commonplaces: The Poetics of African Atlantic Postromantics

Mythoform and the Misovire Consciousness: A Gender Conceptual Renewal Strategy in Werewere Liking’s It Shall Be of Jasper and Coral

This paper underscores the need for new plausible myths that redefine gender relations in an attempt to revalue female assertion, ethical values, and human development. This creative process presents a different perspective from the views of some feminist theorists who have seen myth as a regressive and oppressive structure. The focus, in this paper, is to illustrate how in her chant-novel It Shall Be of Jasper and Coral Liking appropriates the productive force of myths through the misovire consciousness and ritual structure for her gender politics and for promoting ethical values and the culture of human development. In this regard, she decodes existing negative myths and reconstructs new gender myths that redefine gender relations, celebrate what she calls women’s “cosmic force” and through ritual cleansing, reinvents a new language of beauty and a new race of Jasper and Coral. Thus, guided by the tenets of deconstruction and the gender relations frameworks, this paper defends the thesis that Liking’s chant-novel through myth invention and revision combines and fuses traditional and modern aesthetics, thematic and structural elements that she uses to deconstruct social and gender relations. The contention is that in negotiating plausible gender relations for men and women in Africa, Liking’s story and structure incorporate the cleansing, cathartic effect of Bassa ritual performance into the narrative.

Werewere Liking's Village Ki-Yi

Abstract In 1978, Cameroonian author and playwright Werewere Liking moved to Abidjan, Côte-d'lvoire where she was able to find an artistic freedom and energy that was not possible at the time in her native Cameroon. In Abidjan, she created the artistic center and residence known as Villa Ki-Yi, a haven for both well-established and budding artists in need of a place to refine their art within a supportive community. Over the years, goals for the center evolved as Liking sought to fight social injustice through combining activism and the arts. The Village Ki-yi, as it is known today, is influenced by African matriarchal traditions, although it is surrounded by the realities of a patriarchal world, and these traditions come into play in its organization and mission. Liking is not only the mother of ideas at the Village, but also of the poor, marginalized, and sometimes abandoned or orphaned children whom she literally gathers in the streets of Abidjan, giving them a home and a future. This essay analyzes Liking's creative accomplishments using feminist theories pertaining to performance, literature, and activism, demonstrating how Liking is an agent for social justice and change on the African continent.

The Impact of African Feminisms and Performance in Conflict Zones: Werewere Liking in Côte-d'Ivoire and Mali

One of the most recognized playwrights and stage directors on the African continent today, Werewere Liking is the Cameroonian founder of the Village et Fondation Panafricaine Ki-yi Mbock in Abidjan. A 2000 Prince Claus Award laureate for her contributions to culture and development, Liking has also produced impressive works of literature and art. From the beginning of her career in the late 1970s, Liking has always promoted and expanded her project of elite theater for development, with her productions of the last decade bringing to the masses theater and performance as a form of resistance to the surrounding conflict and chaos in the West African nations of Cote-d'Ivoire and, most recently, Mali. The ability of Liking and the Village to carry out their projects to fruition both in times of relative prosperity as well as in periods of conflict is a testament to Liking's successful matriarchal style of African feminist leadership and shared governance made possible by the espousing of traditional African values necessary for tackling problems of a contemporary world.

The Impact of African Feminisms and Performance in Conflict Zones: Werewere Liking in Côte-d'Ivoire and Mali

The Impact of African Feminisms and Performance in Conflict Zones: Werewere Liking in Côte-d'Ivoire and Mali

Dire le social dans le roman francophone contemporain ed. by Justin K. Bisanswa, Kasereka Kavwahirehi

The essays are divided into three groups. The first group, titled “La bombe Dada,” contains six essays, which consider well-known and some lesser-known aspects of Dadaism. The movement is seen within the avant-garde’s historical continuity—its connection with Futurism is discussed in the first essay, “Tristan Tzara, fourrier du futurisme”—and within the cultural context of its time—by raising the issue of the ambivalent relationship between Dadaism and psychoanalysis in “Dada est un microbe vierge.” The political and the international dimensions of the movement, both modeled on anarchism, have a central position in Béhar’s consideration of Dadaism. In the second section, “Lames de fonds spectaculaires,” Béhar examines specific instances of the avant-garde spectacle, paying particular attention to the theater of and around surrealism. Essays on the Théâtre Alfred Jarry, Antonin Artaud, director and actor Sylvain Itkine, and the films of Roger Vitrac are framed by two more general discussions of surrealist and Dada theater, its influences and goals. The last and probably most interesting section of the book showcases Béhar’s full command of Surrealism’s history, encounters, and behind-the-scenes exchanges . With the exception of two essays—one devoted to Jean Paulhan and his friendship with André Breton, the other addressing Dali’s scatological imagery and obsessions—this section approaches Surrealism’s various implications and endeavors as a movement. The limits of the movement are explored, either as the sometimes porous demarcation lines between Surrealism and groups like “Le Grand Jeu,” or with respect to its geographical frontiers, as in a fascinating discussion of Surrealism in the Canary Islands. Again, the politics of the avant-garde come to the foreground, both in general considerations of what it means for an artistic movement to be political, and through an assessment of Surrealism’s attitude during the Algerian War and the preparation of the “Déclaration sur le droit à l’insoumission dans la guerre d’Algérie.” Finally, the literary credentials and preoccupations of Surrealism are pieced together in a discussion of the literary criticism in surrealist publications, and through consideration of Surrealism’s representational strategies with regard to the literary topos of the landscape. Avoiding wide theoretical claims and relying almost exclusively on French critical studies, this book reads as a fragmented fresco of the French avant-garde, mimicking by its structure the avant-garde itself, and reminding us thereby how a discontinuous project managed nonetheless to be “d’un seul tenant.” Princeton University (NJ) Effie Rentzou BISANSWA, JUSTIN K., et KASEREKA KAVWAHIREHI, éd. Dire le social dans le roman francophone contemporain. Paris: Champion, 2011. ISBN 978-2-74532031 -5. Pp. 601. 115 a. A weighty volume in all senses, Dire le social offers a preface by Jean Bessière, co-editors’ introduction, and index, in addition to thirty-two substantive essays often to thirty pages each by authors from three continents, many of them wellknown to Francophone scholars. A special bonus is the postface by Bernard Mouralis, who retraces his own intellectual trajectory as he documents the often difficult evolution of Francophone studies in France. While it does not cut a wide swath through Francophone studies (two-thirds of the essays are devoted to sub-Saharan African literature, whereas five treat the Maghreb and two the Reviews 563 Caribbean, with one each for Tahiti and Egypt), the volume promises a rare treat for Africanists especially insofar as many essays examine authors emerging in the past decade (Alain Mabanckou, Leonora Miano, and Fatou Diome), along with lesser-studied writers in the African canon (Georges Ngal, Alioum Fantouré, Werewere Liking, Aminata Sow Fall, and Ken Bugul), and more standard fare (Ahmadou Kourouma, Mongo Beti, Henri Lopes, and V.I. Mudimbe). In mapping out in their introduction the parameters of what “saying the social” means and what creative forms it can take, Bisanswa and Kavwahirehi seek to extricate the Francophone novel from its imprisonment in imitative models of classic realism and to distance their project from equally reductive forms of sociological criticism that are derived from, and limited by, sociological methodologies. They exhort readers to conceptualize a new realism that responds to the urgent need for a parole publique to...

"The Original Explosion That Created Worlds": Essays on Werewere Liking's Art and Writings (review)

"The Original Explosion That Created Worlds": Essays on Werewere Liking's Art and Writings (review)

Cheryl Toman. Contemporary Matriarchies in Cameroonian Francophone Literature: “On est ensemble.” Birmingham, Ala.: Summa Publications, 2008. vii + 185 pp. Bibliography. Index. $45.95. Cloth.

LANGUAGES, LITERATURE, AND THE ARTS Cheryl Toman. Contemporary Matriarchies in Cameroonian Francophone Literature: On est ensemble. Birmingham, Ala.: Summa Publications, 2008. vii + 185 pp. Bibliography. Index. $45.95. Cloth. Cheryl Toman's Contemporary Matriarchies in Cameroonian Francophone Literature: On est ensemble is a comprehensive history of Cameroonian feminist writings, which according to Therese Kuoh-Moukoury, includes ignored and marginalized Cameroonian women. It seeks to rewrite feminist theories pertaining to Africa and explores the representation of matriarchy in Cameroonian literature, a most appropriate national literature for the study of matriarchy because Cameroon, with its two hundred and fifty diverse ethnic groups and cultures and its Christian and Islamic religions, is a microcosm of Africa. Moreover, it is the birth site of African female writings, for, contrary to general assumptions, Marie Claire Matip published the novella Ngonda in 1958, before the Ghanaian Ama Ata Aidoo and the Nigerian Mabel Segun produced their pioneering works. Toman's study includes a forward by Therese Kuoh-Moukary; an introduction (Defining 'Matriarchy' in Cameroonian Women's Writing of French Expression [1954-2007]); five chapters analyzing, respectively, Marie-Claire Matip 's Therese Kuoh-Moukoury 's idea of a matriarcat nouveau, Werewere Liking's conception of matriarchy (which she calls ReineMere) , Calixthe Beyala on feminitude and nouveau mevengu, and Philomene Basssek's consideration of the ritual of anlu and the theme of matriarchy in La Tache de sang; and a conclusion. The introductory chapter presents a survey of a myriad theories on matriarchy, although all of them consider it a social whereby African women, claiming an invisible and nonlocalized power, assert themselves differently from Western women as fully complementary to men. This matriarchal arrangement, dismissed by Western scholars before the rise of comparative ethnographical approaches, existed historically alongside patriarchy and was, according to Cheik Anta Diop, an economic of dualism within the African matrilineal family based on solidarity and accepted by both men and women. Other observers have seen it differently, however. According to Kamen Okonji, it is a dual-sex that allows men and women to manage their affairs separately. Ifi Amadiume sees it as a checks and balances system within a matrilineal that grants women political power, although they willingly delegate it to men with the hope of reappropriating it if they are abused. Toman concludes the summary of literature on matriarchy with a discussion of the importance of ethnology in literary interpretation, a survey of contemporary Cameroonian female writings, and a consideration of the diverging ideological representations of women by male writers (who foreground their own superiority) and women writers (who seek a unified voice through complementary female and male voices). The first chapter, A Village Voice and a Nation's Women Coming of Age: Marie-Claire Matip's Ngonda, focuses on Matip's novel Rencontres essentielles (1958), an imaginative literary work that is also political in that Matip wrote at a time when African male novelists focused on the reemasculinization of African men and ignored questions of matriarchy and female empowerment. Because men and women occupied different sociopolitical spaces, men were excluded from such ritual spaces as the Koo , the anlu, and mevengu. Toman examines the autobiographical nature of Matip's preindependence literary work and the place of her narrative in male-dominated Cameroonian literary history. Her discussion highlights the oral basis of the autobiographical narrative, the Bassa matriarchal characteristics of the novella, the nature of the heroine's hybrid subjectivity, the nature of traditional female power (which is complementary to that of males and not easily defined in Western terms), and women's resistance to male domination. …

"The Original explosion that created worlds": essays on Werewere Liking's art and writings

"The Original explosion that created worlds": essays on Werewere Liking's art and writings

L'Afrique entre passé et futur. L'urgence d'un choix de l'intelligence, by Kasereka Kavwahirehi

Reviewed by: L’Afrique entre passé et futur. L’urgence d’un choix de l’intelligence Dominic Thomas L’Afrique entre passé et futur. L’urgence d’un choix de l’intelligence By Kasereka Kavwahirehi Brussels, Belgium: Peter Lang, 2009. 330 pp. ISBN 978-90-5201-566-8 paper. For the most part, anniversary celebrations serve a symbolic purpose. Nevertheless, the opportunity to reflect on the past, assess progress, and determine future action can be a productive exercise. To this end, 2010 has been no exception, as seventeen sub-Saharan African countries who achieved independence from European colonial powers in 1960 have initiated various ceremonies and events to mark the fiftieth anniversary. However, a cursory overview of the “African condition” (23) raises numerous questions: Is there cause for celebration? How can one begin to explain the African crisis? and “[W]hat exactly is in crisis” (23; emphasis added)? What is Africa’s place in the new world order and what impact has globalization had on this continent? What kinds of educational reforms are necessary? Kasereka Kavwahirehi adopts a multidisciplinary framework, bringing into dialogue history, literature, and philosophy, in order to “better understand the full complexity of the African crisis” (29), its human dimension, and the role of critical thinking in answering some of these complex questions. Individual chapters are devoted to novelists, historians, political scientists, and philosophers. To this end, insightful readings are provided of Ahmadou Kourouma’s treatment of “the collapse of the metaphysico-religious foundations of society” (68) and of how during the 1970s and 1980 “the African world was transformed by colonial modernity” (73). The role of fiction in apprehending the collective experience and in the analysis of postcolonial practices informs the analysis of V. Y. Mudimbe’s work, and the focus on traditional initiation and healing rituals in Werewere Liking’s texts suggest “[h]ow a community can turn to its heritage as a way of remaking itself, restoring a creative culture” (114), essentials steps in identity formation. In turn, Pius Ngandu Nksahama’s writings propose a “holistic treatment of symbolic languages” and of the ways in which they are “produced,” “codified,” and “objectified” (131) given that the incorporation of the religious, of fiction, and of music makes it possible to grasp the mutations that have taken place at “every stage of social formation” (132). Throughout L’Afrique entre passé et futur. L’urgence d’un choix de l’intelligence, Kasereka Kavwahirehi privileges multiple forms of intellectual exchanges, mechanisms that contain the promise of “establishing, for citizens, genuine spaces for training, information and discussion” (55). [End Page 179] A new generation of thinkers have emerged since the 1980s and endeavored to explain the inability of “African societies to resolutely inscribe themselves in modernity” (295). Rather than attributing the causes of the African crisis to external factors (such as imperialism), they have instead questioned the effectiveness of existing responses to political and social problems (development policies, structural adjustment measures, political reform, etc.), “the limitations of “humanitarian and charitable” measures (23), and overreliance on infrastructural changes (transparent elections, democratic principles, economic models). Kasereka Kavwahirehi advocates instead for a reframing of critical and analytical approaches to the African continent given that educational structures have not sufficiently thought about the ways in which they reproduce or duplicate power structures (230). At times readers may find an overreliance on quotations and external sources in L’Afrique entre passé et futur. L’urgence d’un choix de l’intelligence–obfuscating or unnecessarily complicating the central argument–but for the most part one can disentangle oneself, extricate valuable perspectives on more recent theoretical paradigms, while also gaining invaluable exposure to a diverse range of thinkers whose work stands to influence all kinds of intellectual inquiries. For Kasereka Kavwahirehi, “major intellectual investment” (306) is essential in order to achieve the “decolonization and modernization of modernity . . . with the ultimate aim of lending a voice to those people who have been oppressed and suffocated by the implementation of a world system in which globalization is merely a stage” (306). At many levels, the writings under investigation share these objectives: Kä Mana (DRC) delineates a revolutionary praxis, Joseph Ki-Zerbo (Burkina Faso) foregrounds education and highlights the...

Packaging Post/Coloniality: The Manufacture of Literary Identity in the Francophone World

Though arresting, the title of this incisive and well-written book does not immediately convey the richness of its content. While the back cover suggests that Watts ‘reads Francophone books by their covers’, the book is less about covers than about the paratextual mediation of texts by prefacing. It is only in his final section about the material ‘packaging’ of canonical ‘francophone’ texts that he really dwells on the actual covers of translations of these works into American English. It is important to note that Watts has opted not to contest the problematic if persistent use of the expression ‘francophone’ to refer less to all work in French, or even to all work from outside metropolitan France, than exclusively to work in French from France's ex-colonies. The book's principal aim is to study ‘how the paratext to francophone literature enacts the mediation and translation of the text's foreignness for its largely metropolitan French readership’ (p. 9). This application of reception theory is extremely productive not just because Watts chooses very interesting case studies, but also because his readings are insightful and persuasive. His book has a lot to offer even to specialist readers of Henri Lopes, Édouard Glissant, Aimé Césaire's Cahier, Werewere Liking, or Assia Djebar, for example. It also illuminates the relationships between certain postcolonial authors and their ‘literary mediators’ (Senghor and Sartre, Glissant and Chamoiseau, and so on). Watts presents his work as breaking with Gérard Genette's concern with identifying ‘generic truths about the paratext’ in order to concentrate on the ‘more sociologically and historically inclined field of the history of the book’ (p. 15). Studying how paratexts mediate the book's ‘passage from the cultural domain of its production to the dominant cultural field of consumption’ (p. 12), he views them not just as markers of the book's ‘commodity status’, but also as ‘palimpsest[s] of cultural conflict’ (p. 12). The first of three sections studies the ‘Colonial Paratext and its Imperial Desires’ and is divided into two very substantial chapters. In ‘Black Text, White Masks’ Watts reads the strategies of prefatory patronage in Diagne's Les Trois Volontés de Malic (1920), Hazoumé's Doguicimi (1938), and Bakary Diallo's Force-Bonté (1926). In ‘The Felicitous Graft’ he examines the anxiety informing colonial theories of the cultural hybridity in Indochina and North Africa. The second section examines the ‘Textual Itineraries of Decolonization’ (in relation to Senghor and Césaire), and the final section studies ‘Postcolonial Transfigurations of the Book’ through two rather compact studies: firstly on the influence of gender on the postcolonial paratext, and secondly on teaching ‘Francophone Literatures’ in (American English) translation. It is not only Watts's interest in the ‘worldly concerns regarding the exercise of power, both real and symbolic’ (p. 15), but also the very wide cultural reach of his critical inquiry that make this study so stimulating and so engaging. His book thus fully merits its own enthusiastic (back cover) endorsements from Christopher Miller, J. Michael Dash, and F. Abiola Irele.

From foremothers’ voices to Sylvie Vartan : words and songs by women in contemporary Africa, in Werewere Liking’s La mémoire amputée

La connivence entre la femme et la parole a toujours été reconnue, et l’écriture féminine paraît également marquée par une grande présence de l’oralité. Dans le roman, le discours prime souvent sur le récit, et l’abondance des dialogues instaure également une interaction avec le lecteur, finalisée à un changement des mentalités. Werewere Liking, artiste polyvalente, enrichit ces mécanismes, et les acquis du féminisme, en les inscrivant dans une tradition multiséculaire. Elle crée des chants-romans, où ritualisme et modernité, abondance de dialogues et discours poétisé viennent redonner voix aux lignées de femmes dont le silence engendre l’Afrique contemporaine. L’analyse de La Mémoire amputée, chant-roman publié en 2004, illustre comment la réception plurielle des modalités africaines et occidentales permet l’exploitation d’une oralité riche et originale, entre lyrisme et péroraison, tradition et transformation des codes tant esthétiques que sociaux.

Nouvelles dramaturgies d'Afrique noire francophone (review)

Reviewed by: Nouvelles dramaturgies d'Afrique noire francophone Alain Ricard Nouvelles dramaturgies d'Afrique noire francophone Ed. Sylvie ChalayePlurial 12. Rennes: Presses de l'Université de Rennes, 2004. 188 pp. Sylvie Chalaye has written many essays and books on francophone African theater. Nouvelles dramaturgies d'Afrique noire francophone presents the proceedings of a symposium organized by the Théâtre de Bretagne in 2002. In this volume, Chalaye has collected several contributions treating the symposium's theme of innovation in the last decade and highlighting its partial dedication to the work of Koffi Kwahule, one of the most innovative of new dramatists. The volume is divided into three parts: The "Entre deux" (In between African and Europe); Violence and Subversion; and Orality. The collection also draws attention to the repertory of the Limoges Festival, which continues to be a major event in francophone theater. New names in the field, such as Koulsy Lamko, Jose Pliya, Mercedes Fouda, Kangni Alem, Kossi Efoui, and Florent Couao Zotti, are presented, with papers by Chalaye on Kossi Efoui and by Natasa Raschi on violence and modernity setting the tone for the volume. In addition, the work of true avant-garde artists such as Werewere Liking is given its due. There is indeed a theater movement, and this book is a good example of a commonality of purpose and interests found in Limoges and those French cultural institutions that subsidize and support this new theater, and it would certainly be interesting to get a picture of the institutional context in which it is produced. What is new in this theater seems to be the extent to which it has now penetrated contemporary French theater, for some of the best dramatists writing at present in French come from Africa. What about Africa, then? Why no references here to the works of Wole Soyinka? He is indeed still quite active in theater, having recently adapted a very pertinent [End Page 145] "francophone" play, Ubu (2002), and toured Africa. He was even invited to the Limoges Festival the year he received the Nobel Prize (1986). It would surely be intellectually and artistically good to open new windows onto the rest of the continent. A very useful Who's Who is included in this volume (177-86) but I was surprised, given the importance attached to Togolese writers such as Kossi Efoui and Kangni Alem, not to see the name of Senouvo Agbota Zinsou, a major dramatist who is continuing his career in Bayreuth, Germany—removed, for his own good, from the circles of Parisian hommes-de-lettres and francophonist cultural notability. Zinsou's work centers on what is precisely given prominence in this collection of essays: orality. He is a true innovator, and for him, the Bible and Ewe tales are all part of orality. Furthermore, I would also like to see more analysis of the meaning of this catchphrase term, "orality": what exactly is it? Oral French, Parisian argot, Abidjanais, an African language? This little book maps a new territory and invites further study. It deserves to be read and discussed. Alain Ricard Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, INALCO/Paris 7 Copyright © 2005 The Indiana University Press

Utopias of Change

The theatre of Werewere Liking, a writer and artist from Cameroon, is a very interesting case of synthesis between her theoretical reflections on gender in postcolonial Africa and the aesthetic and social experimentation of a Pan-African ideal by the artists’ community she founded in 1985 in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. For almost 20 years Liking’s theatre has been a tool of cultural intervention on African societies, aimed to resist the hegemony of a masculine, nationalist colonial discourse.

Quand le tronc se fait caiman: Drammaturgie di Costa d'Avorio (review)

This book is part of a very interesting series, dedicated mostly to francophone Africa and edited out of Turin's Center for the Study of emerging literatures. It is a monograph, and apart from J. P .Guinganne's pioneering work on Burkina Faso, we have very few complete monographs on the theater of an African country. Ivory Coast is indeed a very good case to study because of the continuity of its production for over seventy years—several Ponty students in the 1930s were from Ivory Coast—and also because of the importance of Dadie's continuing work. Last but not least, Ivory Coast is still producing innovative drama. The Cameroonian WereWere Liking as well as the Guinean Souleymane Kolly have made Abidjan a metropolis of African theater, housing the first African market for scenic arts, the MASA. Natasa Raschi writes well: the book is divided into four chapters, titled "teatro sotto tutela" ( under colonial supervision), "di leggere" ( to be read), "di ricerca" (of research), "recente" (new). These divisions make a lot of sense and the author is very much aware of the Ivoirian "point of view"; for instance, she perceives the undercurrents that inform the Ivoirian moral feeling in the first years of production, in fifties (p. 56): a sense of bitterness, of "amarezza," a theater of disillusionment, which gives its moral tone to the literature of the era . She has read everything and discusses important although forgotten authors, such as Charles Nokan, who has recently made a surprising comeback.

The Aesthetics of Necessity: An Interview with Werewere Liking

The Aesthetics of Necessity: An Interview with Werewere Liking

Extending Generic Boundaries: Werewere Liking'sL'amour-cent-vies

African literature to renew and regenerate its forms as much as the to content expressed by those forms. Indeed, in an interview conducted in 1983, Liking states that it is the forme qui decide de l'efficacite du fond 'the form that determines the efficacy of the content.'1 Her novel Vamour-cent-vies (1988) is a hybrid text that includes numerous genres and stylistic features present in oral traditions: praise-naming, lullaby, allegorical and etiological tales, proverbs, legends, myth, and some of the formal and thematic components of both the epic and the initiation story. In this novel, it is not only the recontextualizaton, adaptation, and reworking of traditional oral materials through the written word that modify these forms, but it is also the relationship that develops between genres that ultimately compels the reader to reexamine his or her preconceptions about the ideological limitations of certain genres in written literature. An author's decision to enlist the services of oral tradition is aestheti?