Cameroon, Zimbabwe, Angola: Writing the revolution
This presentation seeks to initiate a larger conversation between lusophone, francophone and anglophone Africa through fiction, comparing Zimbabwean, Cameroonian and Angolan novels. Although Lusophone Africa is often singled out for the specific nature of its violent decolonisation against a dictatorial regime, several other African countries have taken up arms to achieve decolonisation or to end white minority rule; among the most famous are Algeria, Zimbabwe and Cameroon (Kenya being a more disputed case). Violent anti-colonial struggles have been theorized by Frantz Fanon as necessary to destroy the inferiority complex of the colonized man and therefore to achieve a new social order to longer based on the distinction between the human and the infra-human. Anti-colonial conflicts have also been erected by the post-independent states as founding myths for the newly created Nation, the beginning of a new history, finally putting Africa and African resistance at its moving force.
How did the experience and memory of these struggles shape the various literatures of the aforementioned countries? Exploring novels by Pepetela,Bet Mongo and Charles Mungoshi, this presentation will highlight some promising areas of comparative study, focusing more specifically on gender and masculinity, childhood and the revolution. Combining the historical and the anthropological with the literary will allow to identify points of convergence and divergence in these countries’ historico-cultural trajectories.