•  
  •  
 

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Abstract

While it had somewhat disappeared as a central preoccupation in recent African fiction, the issue of "race" comes up in a striking way in Daniel Biyaoula's first novel, L 'impasse. Published in 1996, L'impasse sets out to expose through the eye of a rather cynical first-person narrator the neurotic nature of postcolonial subjects' relation to his/her racialized origin. Focusing on the body as a site of authenticity or alienation, the novel can be read as a contemporary and creative version of the "Black experience" as Franz Fanon theorized it almost half a century before in Black Skin White Masks. This essay shows, however, that Biyaoula's discourse on alienation not only relies on but also deconstructs archetypal literary representations of the "African in Paris", while revising them in a 1990's context.

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.