Qui est done « l'homme de Barbès » ? Le probleme du « nègre » de l'écriture migrante dans Le ventre de l'Atlantique de Fatou Diome

Authors

El Hadji Moustapha Diop, Macalester College

Abstract

This paper attempts to revisit the figure of "l'homme de Barbes" as a new form of invisible subalternity deeply inscribed within the texture of Fatou Diome's Le ventre de l'At/lntique, this landmark novel said to usher in a new era in migrant literature, at the intersection between the postcolonial and the transnational. In this respect, Diome's novel is indeed seminal, but from a geocritical perspective. Thus, I argue that the man of/from Barbès must be read as a figure greater than the sum of his narrative and discursive parts. Unlike the Parisian "black bazaar" tagged onto his persona, the "multiplicity of signifiers" entailed in his part exceeds the Manichean logic of the novel's configuration into primary and secondary layers of meaning. Consequently, I propose to reconsider the literary references and allusions embedded into his "master narrative" as symptomatic of a new poetics of transatlantic displacement. At issue is not whether the narration becomes fractured and split into a surface/depth structure, but rather how in following the drift of this enigmatic returnee with a forked tongue and a gap-toothed mouth, Fatou Diome ventured into uncharted literary territory. In so doing, she managed, not unlike the present-day shady passeurs, to open up and map out a new route, on the storied waters of the African Black Atlantic, for a "choral" mode of transmission transcending any form of rootedness in any "homeland" and that brought together, for the first time, elite and subaltern voices from post-independence francophone Africa.

Recommended Citation

Diop, El Hadji Moustapha (2019) "Qui est done « l'homme de Barbès » ? Le probleme du « nègre » de l'écriture migrante dans Le ventre de l'Atlantique de Fatou Diome," Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature: Vol. 92: No. 1, Article 9.
Available at: https://crossworks.holycross.edu/pf/vol92/iss1/9