Reposant sur un corpus de huit romans -C’est le soleil qui m’a brûlée (1987), Tu t’appelleras Tanga (1988), Le petit prince de Belleville (1992), Assèze l’Africaine (1994), Les honneurs perdus (1996), La petite fille du réverbère (1998), L’homme qui m’offrait le ciel (2007) et Le roman de Pauline (2009)– la recherche doctorale montre que l’éclatement du noyau familial est une constante des fictions de Calixthe Beyala. De l’éclatement du noyau familial en jeu, les romans de Beyala disent le discours sur la collectivité. Ainsi, l’hétérogénéité discursive et textuelle étant une caractéristique capitale, la problématique de l’éclatement du noyau familial est reliée aux faits énonciatifs en tant que mise en œuvre d’un discours polyphonique. Le « je-narrateur », utilisé comme une stratégie rhétorique pour parler d’un « nous », ne serait que l’allégorie ou l’emblème d’une conscience collective. On observe que ce n’est pas seulement un « je » individuel qui s’y exprime mais un «je » préoccupé par la condition de la femme ou de l’enfant. Le désir de représenter la collectivité supplante l’intensité du discours individuel de revendication ou de dénonciation qui hante l’écriture de Beyala. La fiction intègre souvent le littéraire, se construit sur un fond des textes antérieurs, favorise le dialogue avec d’autres genres. Beyala réinvestit également les stéréotypes et clichés sociaux dans sa fiction. Les discours des protagonistes explorent les rapports sociaux, les mécanismes de défense d’attitudes ou de comportements par rapport au réel sociohistorique. Les romans de notre corpus déjouent donc les discours de la doxa pour se poser comme textes multiples. Ce sont des récits de vie qui fictionnalisent les souvenirs racontés par un « je » polyvocal. L’implicite se fonde sur une adhésion à une certaine vision du monde, à un ensemble d’opinions et de croyances. Entre locuteur et interlocuteur, scripteur et lecteur s’instaure une sorte de complicité. Dans l’ensemble, le « je-narrant » est multidimensionnel : enfant, adolescente, femme, africaine, immigrée, romancière, etc. Il s’ensuit que la plupart des textes de Beyala se modulent autour de sa propre identité psychologique, de ses expériences vécues. / Based on a eight-novels corpus –C’est le soleil qui m’a brûlée (1987), Tu t’appelleras Tanga (1988), Le petit prince de Belleville (1992), Assèze l’Africaine (1994), Les honneurs perdus (1996), La petite fille du réverbère (1998), L’homme qui m’offrait le ciel (2007) et Le roman de Pauline (2009)– this doctoral research shows that the breakdown of the family unit is a constant theme in the fictions of Calixthe Beyala. From the breakup of the family unit, Beyala’s novels tell the discourse about community. Discursive and textual heterogeneity being a capital characteristic, the dilemma (the problem) of family-unit (family-nucleus) fragmentation is connected to the enunciation facts as implementing a polyphonic discourse. The "I-narrator" used as a rhetorical strategy to talk about a "We" is a mere allegory or emblem of a collective consciousness. One observes that it is not only an individual "I" that is expressed, but an "I" concerned about the status of women or children. The desire to represent community supersedes the intensity of that claim or denunciation individual speech which haunts Beyala’s writing. Often, fiction incorporates literature, is built upon a background of previous texts, and promotes dialogue with other genres. In his fiction, Beyala also reinvests social stereotypes and clichés. The speeches of protagonists explore social relationships, namely the defense mechanisms inside attitudes or behaviors compared to the socio-historical reality. Thus, the novels of our corpus thwart the doxa discourse and stand as multiple texts. These life stories fictionalize the memories told (narrated) by a polyvocal "I". What is implicit is based on adhering to a certain worldview, to a set of opinions and beliefs. Between the speaker and the interlocutor, the writer and the reader, is self-created a kind of complicity. The "narrating I" is overall multidimensional: female child, female teenager, woman, female African, female immigrant, female novelist etc.. Consequently, most of Beyala’s texts are modulated around her own psychological identity, her own experiences.

This dissertation discusses Gayl Jones’s and Toni Morrison’s characterisation of black women’s journeying towards empowered subjectivity and agency. <p><p>Through comparative analysis of eight fictional works, I explore the writers’ idea of female freedom and emancipation, the structures of power affecting the transition from oppressed towards liberated subject positions, and the literary techniques through which the authors facilitate these seminal trajectories.<p><p>My research addresses a corpus comprised of three novels and one book-long poem by Gayl Jones, as well as four novels by Toni Morrison. These two writers emerge in the US literary scene during the 1970s, one of the decades of the second black women’s renaissance (1970s, 1980s). This period witnessed unprecedented developments in US black literature and feminist theorising. In the domain of African American letters, it witnessed the emergence of a host of black women writers such as Gayl Jones and Toni Morrison. This period also marks a turning point in the reconfiguration of African American literature, as several unknown or misplaced literary works by pioneering black women writers were discovered, shifting the chronology of African American literature. <p><p>Moreover, the second black women's renaissance marks a paradigmatic development in black feminist theorising on womanhood and subjectivity. Many black feminist scholars and activists challenged what they perceived to be the homogenising female subject conceptualised by US white middle-class feminism and the androcentricity of the subject proclaimed by the Black Aesthetic Movement. They claimed that, in focusing solely on gender and patriarchal oppression, white feminism had overlooked the salience of the race/class nexus, while focus by the Black Aesthetic Movement on racism had overlooked the salience of gender and heterosexual discrimination. <p><p>In this dissertation, I discuss the works of Gayl Jones and Toni Morrison in the context of seminal debates on the nature of the female subject and the racial and gender politics affecting the construction of empowered subjectivities in black women's fiction.<p><p>Through the metaphor of journeying towards female empowerment, I show how Gayl Jones and Toni Morrison engage in imaginative returns to the past in an attempt to relocate black women as literary subjects of primary importance. I also show how, in the works selected for discussion, a complex idea of modern female subjectivities emerges from the writers' re-examination of the oppressive material and psychological circumstances under which pioneering black women lived, the common practice of sexual exploitation with which they had to contend, and the struggle to assert the dignity of their womanhood beyond the parameters of the white-defined “ideological discourse of true womanhood” (Carby, 1987: 25).<p><p><p> / Doctorat en philosophie et lettres, Orientation langue et littérature / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished