This dissertation investigates the notion of bourgeoisification, the bourgeois, and the bourgeoisie in African Francophone literature of the colonial and post-colonial periods. The origins of the African bourgeoisie can be traced to the Western colonialist project. Three institutions have been especially implicated in its creation: the Western colonial educational system, commercial activities, and the modern town and the trend toward urbanization. These three came together to engender new forms of human relationships in Africa. Such relationships destabilized and tended to displace, the traditional family and communal structures, as well as the caste system. In this new society which would be marked by extreme alienation, new human types were born: the 'haves' and the 'have-nots.' The 'haves,' who constitute the center bolt of the present study, we can characterize as the African bourgeoisie My project is not intended as a critique of the bourgeoisie and its discursive practices. Rather, it is a critical analysis of the representation of the bourgeois(ie). Therefore, any less-than-positive picture of the class and/or its members that may seem to emanate from my analysis should be understood as a reflexion of a generally negative pattern of representation in the texts under consideration. My real goal is to examine the strategies used by certain novelists and playwrights in their efforts to paint a portrayal of the class and its members. Furthermore, my analysis of such strategies will help to reveal each writer's attitudes toward the class, for it is my view that representation of any universe of discourse is never an entirely innocent activity. My study will also provide a historiographical perspective not only on the origin and development of the bourgeoisie in Francophone sub-Saharan Africa, but also on the evolution of its figurations in literary texts My dissertation is divided into four chapters. In Chapter I, I examine the issue of the literary invention of the African bourgeoisie and its relationship to the reality that it draws upon as well as points to. I focus mainly on the use by African writers of such devices as metaphor as a privileged instrument of representation. Chapter II considers another side of invention, that is historical invention. It focuses on the French colonial school as the birthplace of what later came to be known as the Sub-Saharan bourgeoisie. Chapter IV studies the elaboration in certain novels of what I call an African discourse of transgression. It puts into deeper perspective the bourgeoisification of lower castes in the colonial school and the impact this has on contemporary African political reality. Chapter III presents a case study of a specific bourgeois type: the arriviste. This is the type most encountered in African anti-bourgeois literature, and widely considered to be a negative presence on the African sociopolitical and economic scene. An important aspect of this chapter is the making of the bourgeois arriviste in Africa / acase@tulane.edu
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TULANE/oai:http://digitallibrary.tulane.edu/:tulane_23205 |
| Date | January 2001 |
| Contributors | Kamara, Mohamed (Author), Sellin, Eric (Thesis advisor) |
| Publisher | Tulane University |
| Source Sets | Tulane University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | Access requires a license to the Dissertations and Theses (ProQuest) database., Copyright is in accordance with U.S. Copyright law |
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