| This dissertation analyzes Francophone novels in which scientific, historical, and administrative investigations provide the narrative framework. The authors, who come from or live in sub-Saharan Africa, France, and Belgium, are united by their focus on knowledge acquisition and knowledge construction, and the narrating of investigation allows them to describe a broad spectrum of epistemological stances. In my examination of novels written since the 1950s, I use the term "post/colonial," coined by Chris Bongie to describe the "epistemic complicity" and the "(dis)continuity" between two eras, as a way to highlight the amalgam of colonial or neo-colonial beliefs (the knowledge systems being subverted) and the subversive new approaches to knowledge contained in the texts. Using the theme of the fact-based investigation to illuminate subjective experience in the post/colonial world, these novels open up new textual spaces in which the concepts of race, origin, identity, authority, and investigation itself can be questioned.;Analyzing the complicated reality of "objective" investigation in its historical context, I follow the traces of nineteenth-century colonial authorities, scientists, and anthropologists who used Africa as a testing ground for their hypotheses. This work was often notable for its violation of objective procedure; the investigations were shaped by political goals, skewed by scientific inaccuracies, and distorted by European cultural biases. Since then, scholars from once-colonized lands have developed new models of investigation, often in direct response to Occidental models. To examine these various approaches to knowledge, I draw upon theories from social epistemology, the philosophy of science, and discourse analysis, exploring what the term "knowledge" actually represents in different social and cultural contexts. My analysis is also informed by narrative theory and its treatment of the detective novel---the narrative of investigation par excellence. Critical work has been done on important topics such as the subversion of narrative convention in the Francophone African crime novel, but my analysis is broader in scope than the single-genre study. I view crime fiction as one element of the richly varied collection of work in which investigation plays a role.;In Chapter 1, I discuss this epistemological and literary theory in detail and show how it will provide a framework for my own analysis of knowledge and investigation in post/colonial fiction. In Chapter 2, I examine Les animaux denatures (1952) by Vercors and Gros-Câlin (1974) by Romain Gary, two works that incorporate scientific and quasi-scientific investigations into their plots in order to parody and critique the attitudes of post/colonial French society. Vercors and Gary rely on humor to discuss "primitive" peoples and racial stereotypes; at the same time, through allusions to France's role in colonialism and World War II, the novels foreground important moments in French history. Chapter 3 illustrates the intersection between investigations of personal histories or genealogies and inquiries into violent events of the past and present---events that threaten the very progress of the investigations. In Pelourinho (1995) by Guinean author Tierno Monenembo and Murambi: le livre des ossements (2001) by Senegalese author Boubacar Boris Diop, the protagonists rely upon memory, testimony, official discourse, and personal observations in their trans-cultural explorations of the past. Chapter 4 discusses the theme of the bureaucratic investigation and the resulting conflicts between government authorities and the communities they attempt to monitor and control. I include here an analysis of Les sept solitudes de Lorsa Lopez (1985) by Congolese author Sony Labou Tansi, and Matins de couvre-feu (2005) by Tanella Boni (Cote d'Ivoire)---tales that examine the functions and failures of the police---as well as Belgian-born author Bessora's 53 cm (1999), a semi-autobiographical novel in which the protagonist sets out to procure a carte de sejour in Paris. Labou Tansi and Boni look at the ways in which African communities have preserved memory and truth in spite of administrative investigations, while Bessora offers a parodic critique of the ways in which race and color are perceived in French society.;The theme of investigation in these novels, which is more than a mere pretext for discussing other topics, allows the authors to explore knowledge itself and how it is obtained, revealed, or concealed. By subverting narrative conventions and epistemological assumptions, the writers use scientific, historical, and bureaucratic investigations to question the past and disrupt the present, exposing truths that many would rather keep buried, and forcing individuals and communities to look more critically at their world. |
