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Objets culturels et création romanesque chez Tierno Monénembo

Adama Coulibaly
The recent excitement around the restitution of twenty-six arts objects preserved at the Musée du Quai Branly in November 2022, after years of negotiations, has opened up a broader perspective for the return of a greater number of pieces, cultural and artistic objects from the heritage of African countries formerly colonized by France. Finally, the dynamics of the return of these objects, and the problems associated with them, are more widely shared with former colonial powers including England, Holland, Belgium and even Germany. These cultural objects are strongly present in Tierno Monénembo’s novel. This contribution postulates that, at the heart of these novels and perhaps also of their creation, these cultural objects circulate, irradiating the narratives and destinies of the characters, thus stimulating novelistic creation. From Un Attiéké pour Elgass to Pelourinho and even Peuls or Les coqs cubains chantent à minuit, and other texts, we can put forward a typology of material cultural objects (sassa, fetishes, statuettes, coralline hexagrams, etc.) alongside more immaterial objects (such as the figa and the song).

L’échec et ses enjeux critiques dans l’oeuvre de Tierno Monénembo

Adama Togola
At the heart of this reflection is a hypothesis: some of Tierno Monénembo’s novels seem to be characterized by the depiction of characters who fail in the face of adversity. Whether it is the absurd and bitter failure of the intellectual Diouldé upon his definitive return to his native country after his years of study in Hungary in Les Crapauds-Brousse (1979), the aborted heroic dream of Sanderval in Le Roi de Kahel (2008) or the sentimental and family failure of Juliana in Les Coqs cubains chantent à minuit (2015), Tierno Monénembo’s novels not only summon up African social, cultural and political turpitudes through characters who fail in the accomplishment of their missions, but they also offer a lucid reflection on the place of the adventurer and the intellectual in contemporary African societies. Based on this observation, this article attempts to demonstrate that the novels Les Crapauds-Brousse and Les Coqs cubains chantent à minuit can be read as novels of failure in the sense that they describe the physical and moral suffering of the characters in a situation of failure and the social and political violence of which they are often victims. It will involve, on the one hand, examining the forms and issues of this failure, and on the other hand, questioning the social and political determinants that support the dramatic invention of the novels.

La posture médiatique de Tierno Monénembo

Albien Gakengi
Tierno Monénembo is renowned for his outspoken stance against dictatorship in Africa and the perceived powerlessness of intellectuals to effect meaningful change. This position is deeply rooted in his own harrowing experiences in Guinea, a country plagued by the violent authoritarian rule of Sékou Touré. It constitutes a central element of his biography and serves as a means of maintaining a connection to his homeland and the African continent more broadly. This study explores how Monénembo establishes a digital presence, both to promote his literary works and to amplify his political engagement. His media strategy demonstrates that the book is not the only medium through which he has cultivated and sustained a meaningful relationship with his readership.

Une lecture intertextuelle de Bled de Tierno Monénembo

Mamadou Hady Bâ
Based on the notion of intertextuality developed by Riffaterre (1979) and Genette (1982), this article examines the ways in which Tierno Monénembo's novel Bled enters into dialogue with other texts. Defined as ‘the reader's perception of the relationship between a work and others that preceded or followed it’ (Riffaterre 4), intertextuality makes it easier to understand Monénembo's novel. By referring to Kateb Yacine's Nedjma, Monénembo shows that the Islamism that remains the narrative juice of Bled has already been the subject of literature. However, his invocation of Nâzim Hikmet, Jules Renard and the Koran helps to criticise religious radicalism by promoting freedom, tolerance, acceptance and respect for others despite their differences and religious beliefs.

La mémoire tourmentée dans Un rêve utile

Valeria Liljesthröm
This article examines the narrative and enunciative strategies employed in Tierno Monénembo's novel Un rêve utile to portray an ongoing traumatic memory. The study reveals that the narration presents a fractured, blocked, repetitive, and intrusive memory, highlighting the image of a narrator tormented by the memory of his father's hanging during the dictatorship of “Boubou Blanc” in a country called “Gui...”. Confronted with the challenges of truth, justice, and the “duty of memory,” Monénembo aims, through this work, to unveil the dark side of the First Republic of Guinea and symbolically render justice to the victims of the dictatorship by honoring their memory.

Le nécromonde de Monénembo : les femmes et les roues dans Bled (2016) et Saharienne Indigo (2022)

Hannah Grayson
In his two latest novels, Bled (2016) and Saharienne indigo (2022), Monénembo tells the story of marginalised women on the run. Freedom and mobility are at the centre of these two texts, which highlight the threat of thwarted (i.e. continually compromised and limited) mobility for these women. The necroworld described by Achille Mbembe (2016), where people live under the threat of death, is home to a particular type of thwarted movement. According to Janet Wolff (1993) all movement begins with a position, and it is the position of these women in the necroworld created by Monénembo, and their presence there as women, that conditions their freedom. Monénembo's aesthetic emerges in his use of rhythm and form, especially in his depictions of flight and the wheel. Through an analysis of short extracts on escape and feeling, and an examination of the significance of the trope of the wheel in these novels, this article will answer two questions: how can the representation of travel help us to understand the entanglement of mobility and freedom? And in a context of uneven gendered power, what form does débrouillardise take?

Le voyage aux sites de catastrophe : Marguerite Duras et les conséquences de la guerre

Patti Germann
World War II features in the background of a number works by Marguerite Duras that represent grief and mourning related to death brought about by war. Her scenario for Alain Resnais’s film Hiroshima mon amour (1959) exemplifies this concern for the emotional consequences of war. Several decades later, La Mort du jeune aviateur anglais reflects a similar theme of war-related grief and violence. In each of these works, the protagonists travel to a location where tragic war events have occurred and where social forms of memorialization exist. Here they come to terms with both general and personal loss. This article explores Marguerite Duras’s depiction of the rapport between travel and grieving, how memorial sites facilitate mourning and how these historical sites become established. Paul Ricoeur’s treatise La Mémoire, l’histoire, l’oubli provides us with a definition of grief and guides our comparison of these two works that echo each other. Hiroshima mon amour and La Mort du jeune aviateur anglais together illustrate how a journey to a site of former tragedy can be personally restorative.

Le procès par Camus d’une justice inique dans L’Étranger

Vincent Grégoire
A legal columnist for Alger Républicain in 1939, Camus was well acquainted with the world of pre-war justice. The Stranger, written in early 1940, gave him the opportunity to put on trial a justice system whose failings he had criticized. The following study focuses on the representation of Meursault's trial perceived as realistic by some critics, a parody of justice by others, and as a parody of injustice by still others. To what extent did Camus achieve his goal of putting on trial an unjust justice system? If he refused to adhere to the philosophy of the end justifying the means and asserted himself before the war as a defender of Arab rights, how could he in good conscience put on trial colonial justice at the cost of an Arab who was twice a victim, first killed (Part 1), then whose death was “forgotten” (Part 2)?

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Fink, Béatrice. Les Liaisons savoureuses. Réflexions et pratiques culinaires au XVIIIe siècle

Michel Carle

Clermidy-Patard, Geneviève. Madame de Murat et la défense des dames

Nancy Arenberg

Dumas, Alexandre. Correspondance Générale. Tome VI. 1er janvier 1850 – 10 novembre 1853. Édition de Claude Schopp

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Eyma, Xavier. Le Gaoulé. Un soulèvement à la Martinique en 1717

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Lécroart, Alexandre. Les écrivains décadents et l’anarchisme. Une tentation fin de siècle

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Linton, Anne E. Unmaking Sex: The Gender Outlaws of Nineteenth-Century France

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Ionescu, Mariana. (S’)Écrire dans l’entre-deux – Récits de femmes d’ici et d’ailleurs

Marie Pascal

Riendeau, Pascal. Regards sur le monde – Conflits éthiques et pensées romanesques dans la littérature française contemporaine

Marie Pascal

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Ghosh, Amitav. La malédiction de la muscade. Une contre-histoire de la modernité

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Finck, Michèle. La voix du large

Michaël Bishop

Rainaldi, Linda. Outsider Art of Canada

Michaël Bishop