Transgressions postcoloniales: Frontieres du roman africain

My dissertation examines the concept of transgression in the postcolonial African novel. My approach strides several sub-fields in that I study African literature in a transnational and a transhistorical perspective. I use the concept of transgression, firstly, to read contemporary African fiction with an emphasis on transnational and transhistorical perspectives. Secondly, I link the idea of transgression to that of ideological refusal. From this perspective, I consider the transgressive dimensions of writing in the case of authors who set themselves against practices such as racial apartheid, intolerance and exclusion. Thirdly, my dissertation concerns itself with how contemporary African fiction crosses the limits of the realistic novel. In African literary history, whether in the colonial novel, the family romance, or the novel of the solitary revolt, the African novel has generally been considered realistic. In my work, I use criticism by Giorgio Agamben on sovereign power, Michel de Certeau on historiography, Achille Mbembe on the postcolony, Jean Luc Nancy on globalization and Jacques Ranciere on the distribution of the sensible to examine the mechanisms of control and resistance at work in the African postcolonial novel. In my work, I use criticism by Giorgio Agamben on sovereign power, Michel de Certeau on historiography, Achille Mbembe on the postcolony, Jean Luc Nancy on globalization and Jacques Ranciere on the distribution of the sensible to examine the mechanisms of control and resistance at work in the African postcolonial novel. My conclusion is that the "theory of whatever singularity" is potentially able to provide new tools for interpreting issues of identity and transgression both in specific texts and in the field at large.