Les rapports entre la Pologne et l’Afrique sont abordés dans cette étude d’un angle historique et comparatiste, en vue de contribuer aux recherches sur l’image de l’Afrique dans les littératures européennes. En liaison étroite avec la situation géopolitique de la Pologne la problématique s’articule autour du regard posé sur un espace colonisé qui se constitue dans la littérature d’un pays n’ayant pas participé à la colonisation. Trois ordres de faits sont approfondis : les voyages des Polonais en Afrique, les récits issus de ces voyages et les images littéraires forgées dans l’imaginaire polonais avec leurs usages littéraires, idéologiques ou politiques. Les relations nouées entre les écrivains polonais et l’Afrique sont étudiées à travers un corpus étendu, qui se réfère aux grands écrivains de l’époque coloniale comme Joseph Conrad ou Henryk Sienkiewicz mais se focalise plus sur l’époque de la décolonisation des années 1950-1980, où les écrits de Ryszard Kapuściński sont mis en perspective par un grand nombre d’auteurs mineurs, reporters, médecins, missionnaires ou diplomates. L’altérité africaine est aussi approchée dans sa dimension spéculaire, comme un miroir à travers lequel s’observe et se définit l’identité polonaise. L’image polonaise de l’Afrique surgit ainsi dans son côté paradoxal en ce qu’elle va à l’encontre des images occidentales tout en les reproduisant. Lieu d’enracinement littéraire, l’Afrique devient dans la littérature polonaise un lieu de réflexion où – plus que des arrière-pensées politiques ou des culpabilités enfouies propres aux pays colonisateurs – se manifeste la communauté des destins. / The relations between Poland and Africa are considered in this thesis in a historical and comparative approach in order to contribute to the studies of the image of Africa in European literatures. As a link to the geopolitical situation of Poland the questioning is articulated about the image of a colonised space created in the literature of a country not implicated in colonisation. Three kinds of facts are analysed. First, travels by the Polish in Africa, then, stories created as a result of these travels, and finally the images that exist in Polish imagery with their literary, ideological or political uses. The relations between Polish writers and Africa are studied in an extended corpus which refers to writers of the colonial period (Joseph Conrad and Henryk Sienkiewicz) but is more focused on the decolonisation period from 1950 to 1980, where Ryszard Kapuściński’s writings are put in perspective by a number of secondary writers, reporters, physicians, missionaries or diplomats. The African alterity is also approached in its specular dimension as a mirror through which the Polish identity is observed and defined. The Polish image of Africa comes into view as a paradox since it simultaneously is contrary to Western images and a reproduction of them. A place of deep literary roots, Africa becomes in Polish literature also a place of reflection which – more than some politic ulterior motives or hidden culpabilities characteristic of imperial powers – reveals the union of destinies.

This doctoral thesis explores the literarity of reportage, with a focus on the 20th century and modern reportage. The aim is to describe the literary strategies used in modern text-based reportage and how these strategies relate to journalistic standards of credibility and ethics. A primary focus is the question of what the reportage is looking for in the literary, what happens to this literarity when it is used for journalistic purposes, and, in turn, how the literary establishes ethics in the text.        By suggesting that a piece of reportage is a journalistic text that simultaneously tells the story about the reporter’s encounter with the event, this dissertation sheds light on possible approaches to the concept of literarity: Subjectivity, narrativity, meta-narrative aspects, the poetic function of language and the performative movements in the text. The ethics of reportage is also to be derived from the encounter, and this thesis implements a concept of ethics in conversations with Emmanuel Levinas and dialogical philosophy. It provides an opportunity to separate ethics from moral, ideological and political dimensions of responsibility in the encounter. This aspect of ethics, where literarity and counter-movement operate beyond the direct intention, is what is needed to understand the reportage genre.      The dissertation also includes six longer reportage analyses embodying its results: Djuna Barnes’s, Vagaries Malicieux, Ryszard Kapuściński’s Another Day of Life, Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, Hanna Krall’s A Tale for Hollywood, Sven Lindqvist’s Kina nu: Vad skulle Mao ha sagt? and Joan Didion’s, Slouching towards Bethlehem.