O CORPO: A CONCEPÇÃO DOS GRUPOS ETNOLINGUÍSTICOS YORÙBÁ E ALGUMAS CONTRIBUIÇÕES DOS DIÁLOGOS EPISTEMOLÓGICOS EM FRANÇOIS DAGOGNET

No presente artigo nos propomos a analisar a concepção de corpo para os Yorùbá a partir das contribuições de Fábio Leite, Muniz Sodré, Amadou Hampâté Bâ entre outros pensadores e, não menos importante, as algumas contribuições do filósofo francês de François Dagognet. Não estamos propondo uma análise comparativa, que cairia nos binarismos existentes, mas a compreensão do corpo para a cultura ocidental e entre os povos yorubanos. Compreendemos o corpo em seus multicorpos, inserido em sua espacialidade e na transversalidade do conhecimento. Entender o corpo em sua fenomenologia inserida nessa historicidade do corpo humano, conforme Dagognet. Da mesma forma, analisar o corpo como representação visível do homem em seu complexo interno e externo, ou seja, a distinção entre a cabeça e o restante do corpo. Filosofar desde o corpo, pois no corpo existe uma filosofia.

Amkoullel, the Fula Boy

Born in 1900 in French West Africa, Malian writer Amadou Hampâté Bâ was one of the towering figures in the literature of twentieth-century Francophone Africa. In Amkoullel, the Fula Boy, Bâ tells in striking detail the story of his youth, which was set against the aftermath of war between the Fula and Toucouleur peoples and the installation of French colonialism. A master storyteller, Bâ recounts pivotal moments of his life, and the lives of his powerful and large family, from his first encounter with the white commandant through the torturous imprisonment of his stepfather and to his forced attendance at French school. He also charts a larger story of life prior to and at the height of French colonialism: interethnic conflicts, the clash between colonial schools and Islamic education, and the central role indigenous African intermediaries and interpreters played in the functioning of the colonial administration. Engrossing and novelistic, Amkoullel, the Fula Boy is an unparalleled rendering of an individual and society under transition as they face the upheavals of colonialism.

Reflection

The concept of power in Fulani and Bamana metaphysics, derived from indigenous traditions according to the Fulani traditionalist Amadou Hampaté Bâ, stems from the archetype represented by the word. This archetype originates from the Supreme Force, which is an aspect of the Supreme Being, who creates through the power of the verb. Power, in this sense, multiple in its omnipresence and one in terms of its source, is at the same time spiritual energy and its physical manifestations in the world. To access this power, the human being has to reach a state of internal equilibrium through diverse initiations. These initiations facilitate the human being’s perception and expression of the sacred forces through speech, helping to recognize their sacred polyvalence and encourage human reflection of divine speech. The appropriate management of invisible forces leads the human being to become at once the guarantor of harmony and the interlocutor of God.

Histoire politique des relations franco-africaines d’après les romans d’Henri Lopes

Kusum Aggarwal, professeur au Department of Germanic and Romance Studies de l’Université de Delhi a publié : Amadou Hampâté Bâ et l’africanisme (1999) ; réédité avec une introduction deux ouvrages du baron Roger, Kelédor, Histoire africaine (1828) et Fables sénégalaises (1828) parus respectivement en 2007 et 2008 dans la collection Autrement mêmes chez l’Harmattan ; et édité tout récemment l’ouvrage collectif, Francophonie et Postcolonialisme : Textes et Contextes (2016) publié par Langers International, Delhi. Cet article étudie une sélection de romans d’Henri Lopes, de Sans tam-tam (1977) au Méridional (2015), en passant par Le chercheur d’Afriques (1990), Le lys et le flamboyant (1997), Dossier classé (2002), qui font voir à travers la circulation interminable des acteurs, un monde mobile et ouvert, édifié sous l’influence réciproque de l’Afrique et de la France. Par là ainsi le discours qu’ils tiennent sur l’histoire franco-africaine s’avère fondatrice : elle perturbe invariablement, une conception dominante des rapports franco-africains lus suivant « une logique de la disjonction » (Mouralis: 1999, 17). L’approche de l’histoire franco-africaine procède ici suivant deux principales modalités. Une première est axée sur la Grande Histoire qui s’est déroulée entre l’Afrique et la France, à travers la colonisation, et dont les conséquences se manifestent dans les questions relatives au métissage des êtres, des cultures, des langues. La seconde modalité relève de la Petite Histoire qui se déroule à travers les tribulations des Africains en Europe et particulièrement en France et qui, dans le cas de Lopes, le mène dans l’ouest de la France, avec une référence récurrente à la Bretagne. On constatera à terme que l’histoire coloniale, si inhumaine et violente par ailleurs, débouche sur la familiarité et le plaisir d'être « différents et ensemble », comme le disait Léopold Sédar Senghor (Vaillant : 2006, 163).

Prophetie et structure de l’intrigue dans le Roman Africain d’expression Française: Le cas de l’etrange destin de Wangrin d’Amadou Hampate ba

Amadou Hampâté Bâ est né en 1901, et pour cela, il s’est surnommé « fils ainé du XXe siècle ». De son vivant, il a fait la collecte des traditions orales africaines en voie de disparition. En collaboration avec les ethnologues tels Géneviève Calame-Griaule, Germaine Dieterlen, Marcel Griaule, etc., Amadou Hampâté Bâ laisse à la postérité un corps important du patrimoine africain sous formes de contes, d’essais autobiographiques, et d’un roman. C’est bien ce souci de préservation du patrimoine oral qu’il a prononcé une phrase qui est devenue un proverbe : En Afrique lorsqu’un vieillard meurt, c’est toute une bibliothèque qui brule. II est décédé en 1991 à l‘âge de 90 ans. L’Etrange destin de Wangrin, son seul roman, est devenu, dès sa parution en 1973, un des classiques de la littérature négro -africaine d’expression française. Ce roman est une peinture saisissante du colonialisme français en Afrique, surtout à la conjoncture historique de la première grande guerre. Il témoigne aussi du choc entre les traditions millénaires des Africains et les valeurs culturelles du Blanc véhiculées par la colonisation. L’Etrange destin de Wangrin suit la trame narrative du théâtre tragique grec en ce sens que le personnage héros est soumis à la volonté d’un destin capricieux. Ses gestes sont prédéterminés par les forces occultes qui l’entrainent dès sa naissance, en passant par des péripéties, jusqu’au geste fatal qui annonce une mort inéluctable Notre visée dans la présente étude porte sur le rôle que joue la prophétie tant dans la programmation du destin de Wangrin, le personnage éponyme du roman, que dans la structure dynamique du récit. Mots-clés : prophétie, dynamique, structurant, divination, Amadou Hampâté Bâ

Narrativas de vários sertões

Resumo: O objetivo deste artigo é estudar as narrativas de Guimarães Rosa como construção de uma linguagem poética que abre novas perspectivas ao pensamento, distanciando-se dos parâmetros da racionalidade ocidental. Como estratégia analítica, desenvolve-se um paralelo entre a estória rosiana do menino Miguilim e o relato autobiográfico do africanista Amadou Hampâté Bâ, com atenção para os capítulos referentes a seus tempos de criança. Nas duas narrativas, observa-se a conjugação de aspectos sobreviventes de culturas orais arcaicas com a peculiaridade do ponto de vista infantil para o delineamento de modos alternativos de conhecer o mundo. Destaca-se a proximidade entre tais modos de conhecimento e a cunhagem peculiar de conceitos empregados por antropólogos e filósofos contemporâneos que se desviam da epistemologia hegemônica. Para ampliar o campo de debate, consideram-se, ainda, brevemente, os diários e memórias de Carolina Maria de Jesus, escritora descendente de africanos, semialfabetizada mas prolífica e potente. Nesse percurso, procura-se destacar a dimensão investigativo-crítica da forma narrativa.Palavras-chave: narrativa; modos de existência; perspectivas de conhecimento; linguagem verbal; marcas não verbais de enunciação.Abstract: We aim to study Guimarães Rosa’s narratives as a construction of a poetic language that opens new perspectives to thinking, placing itself away from the parameters of Western rationality. As an analytical strategy, a parallel is traced between the boy Miguilim Rosian story and the Africanist Amadou Hampâté Bâ autobiographical account, with attention to the chapters that refer to his childhood. In both narratives, it is possible to observe the combination of archaic oral cultures surviving aspects with the infantile point of view peculiarity o for the designing of alternative ways of knowing the world. We emphasize the proximity between such ways of knowledge and the peculiar concepts coinage employed by contemporary anthropologists and philosophers that deviate from hegemonic epistemology. To broaden the field of debate, we also consider briefly the diaries and memoirs of Carolina Maria de Jesus, an African-descendant writer, semi-literate but prolific and powerful. Consequently, the research-critical dimension of the narrative form is highlighted.Keywords: narrative; modes of existence; knowledge perspectives; verbal language; non-verbal marks of enunciation.

Archiving Collective Memories and (Dis)Owning

This paper investigates the question of ownership of collective memories in the age of digitized archiving. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (henceforth Unesco) philosophy of preserving the world cultural heritage has boosted research on African oral literatures. The emphasis on the documentation of endangered cultures of Africa is salutary but also raises some critical questions. The central question this contribution addresses is that of the authorship-ownership of cultural heritage that is being archived in the framework of digital humanities. In essence, the notion of “collective memories” entails that of collective authorship and collective belonging as these memories are passed on from one generation to the other without the claim of singular ownership. A significant example in this line of thought has been the observation by the cultural giant Amadou Hampâté Bâ who ironically pointed out that the real author of The Fortunes of Wangrin (1973), which is attributed to him, is actually the storyteller Wangrin – the cunning interpreter – and members of the whole literary tradition that Wangrin embodied. In the preface of a recently published volume on La question de l’auteur en littératures africaines (Jérôme Roger 2015: 16) the author asks the following pertinent question: how can African literature, both oral and others, invite scholars to rethink the relationship between the anonymity of sources, versions and variants of stories and the constraint for an author’s name imposed by editors? The question has more weight in view of the massive digitization of African oral literatures that mostly takes place in institutions with more economic prestige and which are located outside the African continent. Therefore, the interrogation centres on the role of power with regard to the form in which these (hi)stories are published, where, how and to whom they are accessible, and to the habit of researchers to name people from whom they receive the bulk of knowledge which they transcribe and translate into the academic jargon “informants” instead of giving them more credit by referring to them as research partners or even by recognising them as co-authors. In this vein, the paper rounds up by exploring the possibility of reversing the customary auctorial perspective by bringing into the discussion the idea of “researchers as griots” suggested by (Merolla, Ameka & Dorvlo 2013).