Le discours de la violence et du chaos politique dans la littérature Africaine

Violence and political chaos are constant themes in African Francophone literature. The present dissertation attempts to demonstrate that many African writers describe violence and political chaos as rooted in the ways Africa was colonized. Selected works follow a chronological view of violence. In the first chapter, I analyze colonial violence in two novels, Ferdinand Oyono\u27s Une Vie de boy (1956) and Mongo Beti\u27s Ville Cruelle (1954). In both novels, violence is orchestrated by colonial agents toward natives, which is both physical and psychological. Oyono and Beti describe it as a tool used to force the colonized into submission. While Toundi, in Une Vie de boy, chose to record most situations in his diary, the two major characters in Ville Cruelle utilize other methods—resistance for Banda and counter-violence for Koumé. The second chapter is a study of Raoul Peck\u27s 2000 film Lumumba. Peck portrays Congolese decolonization figure Patrice Lumumba\u27s assassination as an illustration of continuing violence during the process of decolonization. Peck depicts the historical figure as an indomitable man who wants his fellow Africans to realize that independence does not equate real decolonization. In chapter three, I examine Ahmadou Kourouma\u27s first novel Les soleils des indépendances (1970) and Aminata Sow Fall\u27s L\u27ex-père de la nation (1987) to show examples of how African writers represent postcolonial feeling of disillusionment. Kourouma\u27s character Fama is shown to be a victim of badly executed independence where African leaders begin to mimic colonial powers and perpetrate violence against their own people. This is also true in L\u27ex-père de la nation. He is an idealistic man who, once in power, gradually turns into a dictator. Kourouma\u27s novel Allah n\u27est pas obligé (2000) is the subject of the last and fourth chapter where I analyze the manifestation of postcolonial chaos. In addition to exposing political violence through themes of dictatorship, Kourouma\u27s novel exposes new language of violence such as war lords, child soldiers and unspeakable forms of violence amid chaos