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Narrating the (post)nation? : Aspects of the local and the global in Francophone Congolese writing

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Date
01/04/2018
Author
Arens, Sarah
Keywords
Colonialism
African literature
Postcolonial literature
Solitude
Nationalism
Death
Sovereignty
Nation states
Novels
P Language and Literature
I-PW
BDC
R2C
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Abstract
This article investigates postnational(ist) dimensions of late twentieth-century Congolese writing based on Sony Labou Tansi’s novel Les sept solitudes de Lorsa Lopez [The Seven Solitudes of Lorsa Lopez] (1985) and Pie Tshibanda’s Un fou noir au pays des blancs [A Black Fool in the Country of the White] (1999). Adopting Achille Mbembe’s concept of “necropolitics” and the grotesque, it explores the different approaches used to construct localities and globalities through their depictions of the dead and the dying body in these two novels. Widening the focus, this article argues that the ways in which the two novels narrate geographical space are fundamental to the visions of the postcolonial nation they express: their ongoing preoccupation with spatial politics of the former colonizer and the failed nationalist projects after the formal end of European colonialism testify to their call for a more complex perception of postnationalism than often assumed in existing scholarship.
Citation
Arens , S 2018 , ' Narrating the (post)nation? Aspects of the local and the global in Francophone Congolese writing ' , Research in African Literatures , vol. 49 , no. 1 , pp. 22-41 . https://doi.org/10.2979/reseafrilite.49.1.03
Publication
Research in African Literatures
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.2979/reseafrilite.49.1.03
ISSN
0034-5210
Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © 2018 The Trustees of Indiana University. This work has been made available online in accordance with publisher policies or with permission. Permission for further reuse of this content should be sought from the publisher or the rights holder. This is the final published version of the work, which was originally published at https://doi.org/10.2979/reseafrilite.49.1.03
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  • University of St Andrews Research
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/18586

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