From narrative strategies to a humanism of plurality: Polyphonic resistance to (neo)colonial discourses in African women's works (Mariama Ba, Ken Bugul, Senegal, Ntyugwetondo Angele Rawiri, Gabon, Ama Ata Aidoo, Ghana)

Through an analysis of works by Francophone and Anglophone sub-Saharan female writers (Mariama Bâ, Ken Bugul, Ntyugwetondo Angèle Rawiri and Ama Ata Aidoo), I examine the various narrative strategies elaborated by African women authors to resist binary oppositions, and to advocate a polyphonic humanism that will foster authentic communication, that is, a dialogue of many voices. (In his Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon concludes that the Negro and the White man “must turn their backs on the inhuman voices which were those of their respective ancestors in order that authentic communication be possible”). I argue that, by means of innovative literary forms and styles (strategic adaptation of African idiomatic expressions, oral rhythm, multiple narrative voices), African women writers subvert fixed representations and exclusive sexist, racist and cultural dichotomies enforced by nineteenth-century-rooted (neo)colonial ideologies (including Western scientific discourses). They develop a new therapeutic poetics against the alienating effects of such discourses. My analysis focuses especially on what subtly but steadily emerges as a new dialogic humanism in the Senegalese Ken Bugul's autobiographical novel, in the Gabon Ntyugwetondo Angèle Rawiri's fiction Fureurs et cris de femmes, in the Ghanaian Ama Ata Aidoo's poetic novel, and in the Senegalese Mariama Bâ's (semi-) epistolary novels. Indeed, their works exemplify African women writers' and/or protagonists' struggles to rethink and voice a humanism of métissage , and to pursue a space of fulfillment for all, thus countering the universalizing and “romantic” narratives of conventional Western fiction. Hence, the dissertation interrogates whether these African works, which are informed by a polyphonic ethos rather than Manichean ideologies, can be seen as being more globally humanistic than Western “models” (for instance, missionary travel narratives, Enlightenment philosophy, Victorian novels, or Western feminism), often judged as universal. Moreover, my study explores how Western culture's failures to incorporate African women's literary productions otherwise than as a sub-category (African female) of dominant (Western male) literature can be seen as symptomatic of its often centralizing and hegemonic claims.