Representar al subalterno: análisis del discurso silenciado de Mariama Bâ y de Rosalía de Castro en dos contextos similares de dominación falocrática

Este trabajo se centra en las repercusiones sociales y literarias del discurso silenciado de dos mujeres, Rosalía de Castro, escritora emblemática del Rexurdimento literario gallego en el siglo XIX, y Mariama Bâ, una de las pioneras de la literatura femenina africana de expresión francesa, que cuestiona la poligamia en la sociedad senegalesa postcolonial. Ambas escritoras luchan en un contexto falocrático destinado a silenciar al grupo social autóctono, y en particular a las mujeres, doblemente colonizadas, esclavas domésticas y siervas de la colonización, encargadas de transmitir el discurso dominante en el núcleo familiar. Desde un punto de vista comparativo y dentro de los estudios postcoloniales, abordaremos la marginalización a la que son sometidas las otras por su doble condición de mujeres y subalternas.

Mariama Bâ et Djaïli Amadou Amal : Une si Longue Lettre des (Im)patientes

Cette contribution « Mariama Bâ et Djaïli Amadou Amal : Une si Longue Lettre des (Im)patientes » relit/relie le classique Une si longue lettre (1980) de la Sénégalaise Mariama Bâ à travers le prisme de l’inter-actualité avec Les Impatientes (2020) de la Camerounaise Djaïli Amadou Amal. Nous mettons l’accent sur les synergies 1. Philosophico-lexicale (des mots du pulaaku sur les maux de la polygamie). 2. D’itinéraire littéraire. 3. Narratologique (voix et voies des (im)patientes) et 4. Stylistique (lettre contée munyalement comme thérapie libératrice et émancipatrice). Nous insistons néanmoins sur Les Impatientes car on ne compte plus les travaux publiés sur Une Si Longue Lettre, alors qu’on ne trouve que quelques entretiens dans les médias avec Djaïli Amadou Amal. Cet article s’appuie sur une philosophie/théorie proposée par Les Impatientes pour étudier le statu quo sur le sort des femmes dans deux contextes musulmans, le Munyal (« patience »). Par ailleurs, il contribue à la constitution d’un corpus critique sur l’œuvre d’une voix littéraire féminine émergente au Cameroun.

Women’s Virtue: Engendering Shame

A focus on shame and the feminine, considering how female characters and shame are linked in order to address both explicitly female concerns as well as how those concerns can stand in for larger societal issues. The chapter revisits elements from Le vieux nègre et la médaille and Les Bouts de bois de Dieu but concentrates much more on Une si longue lettre by Mariama Bâ, A River Between by Ngugi wa Thiong’o, The Joys of Motherhood by Buchi Emecheta, Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga, short stories by Ama Ata Aidoo, and Half a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Adichie.

Mariama Ba

Mariama Ba was a renowned feminist, author, and advocate for women’s rights in her home country of Senegal, Africa, and globally. After attending and thriving at the French École Normale postsecondary school for girls, Ba became a teacher and education inspector for many years. Ba went on to write two novels: So Long a Letter, originally published in 1979, and Scarlet Song, published in 1981. Both novels are critical of polygamy in African life and examine the various ways in which women deal with similar situations, celebrate sisterhood, and demonstrate that there is no right or wrong way to be a feminist. Mariama Ba’s texts demonstrate clear criticism of the polygamous society she grew up in and the abuse of religion by some men to further their agenda. Ba’s essay, “The Political Functions of Written African Literatures,” describes her belief that a writer should be political and serve as a critic of surrounding society and misogynist practices. Mariama Ba’s personal life clearly influenced her written works, a topic that has been thoroughly examined in much of the scholarly literature that has been written about her. Ba did not try to define feminism. Rather, she understood that it is different for every woman and is a reflection of background, culture, history, and religion. Ba believed it was her mission as a writer to be a voice for the most vulnerable members of society. Ba was a leader in emerging global feminism and created written works that discussed topics that cross cultural barriers and demonstrate the unity of humanity.

The Tongue-Tied Imagination

Should a writer work in former colonial language, or in a vernacular? The language question was once one of the great, intractable problems that haunted postcolonial literatures in the twentieth century, but it has since acquired a reputation for being a dead end of narrow nationalism. Instead of asking whether language matters, The Tongue-Tied Imagination explores how the language question itself came to matter. Focusing on the case of Senegal, this book studies the intersection of French and Wolof. Drawing on extensive archival research and an under-studied corpus of novels, poetry, and films in both languages, the chapters follow the emergence of a politics of language from colonization into the early independence decades and through to the era of neoliberal development. Chapters explore the works of well-known francophone authors such as Léopold Senghor, Ousmane Sembène, Mariama Bâ, and Boubacar Boris Diop alongside the more overlooked vernacular artists with whom they are in dialogue. Pushing back against a prevailing view of postcolonial language debates as a terrain of nativism, this book argues for the language question as a struggle over the nature and limits of literature itself. Language debates tend to pull in two directions: first, they produce literary commensurability by suturing vernacular traditions into the normative patterns of world literature; but second, they create space to imagine how literary culture might be configured otherwise. Drawing on these insights, this book models both a new understanding of translation and a different approach to literary comparison.