Problematizing the “Return” Narratives: Maryse Conde’s Heremakhonon:A Brief Reflection

By Nandini Dhar

Heremakhonon, written by the Guadeloupean writer, Maryse Conde and published in 1976, marked the beginning of an important watershed within the history of Francophone Caribbean women writers. Conde had published a couple of plays before, but Heremakhonon launched her character as a novelist who within the next three decades or so, would explore in extremely novel ways the intersections of colonialism, history, race, class and gender within her work. Heremakhonon, in lots of ways, is a conventional “return to Africa” story—a theme which has concerned writers and artists of the African Diaspora in important and interesting ways. Drawing upon her own experiences of spending time in Guinea, Conde’s novel complicates the well-known trope of locating an unproblematic homeland within the continental Africa. In several ways, her protagonist, Veronica Mercier, a Guadeloupean- Caribbean researcher-academic, who reaches an unnamed nation in West Africa via Paris, becomes an embodiment of Conde’s own admission that she was “badly prepared” to “encounter” Africa. Written in a first person narrative, Veronica’s experiences as a teacher of philosophy in a local school forms the backbone of Conde’s novelistic narrative. While working as a teacher, Veronica becomes friends with Saliou, the director of the school and shortly afterwards, becomes the lover of Ibrahim Sory, the Minister of Defense and Interior. It is through these two relationships, that Veronica begins to witness postcolonial Africa, or more specifically, the ideological-political character of the post-colonial African state.

Within her novelistic narrative, Conde engages in an interesting exploration of the politics and aesthetics of a genre which has often influenced the colonial cultural politics in important ways—the travel writing. In a way, Conde’s novel urges her readers to reflect on the relationship between travel and empire in complex ways. This is foregrounded in the very opening lines of her novel. Conde writes:

Honestly! You’d think I’m going because it is the in thing to do. Africa is very much the thing to do lately. Europeans and a good many others are writing volumes on the subject. Arts and craft centers are opening all over the Left Bank. Blondes are dying their lips with henna and running to the open market on the Mouffetard for their peppers and okra (3).

A careful analysis of this passage enables us to understand that “Africa” has often been the space which has been written about, represented and appropriated in problematic ways throughout the history of modernity. However, Conde’s protagonist Veronica, a Westernized Caribbean intellectual, refuses to identify herself with the materialities that have produced such representations of the continent. She informs us, “Purpose of visit? No, I’m not a trader. Not a missionary. Not even a tourist. Well, perhaps a tourist, but one of a new breed, searching out herself, not landscapes” (3). Thus, for Veronica, it is extremely important to foreground the fact that her trip to Africa needs to be read in completely different terms than those of the colonial traders, missionaries or the modern-day Euro-American white tourists. Rather, she represents a relatively new phenomenon—the so-called “heritage tourists”–the descendants of the enslaved Africans who come back to the continent to search for their roots.

For Veronica, then, her blackness provides her with vantage points through which to enter not only the intricacies of the West African societies, but also to construct a narrative of exceptionalism for herself. This becomes especially significant when she observes after her first confrontation with the policeman in the airport: “The thin, nervous type. Somewhat distinguished. Surely from that part of the coast that produced my father’s ancestors. He too was somewhat on edge and somewhat handsome. He reminded me of that Mandingo marabout I had seen in my history book when I was seven” (3). Veronica, here is primarily interested in constructing a narrative of identification for herself—a narrative that is pre-dominantly predicated upon certain phenotypical characteristics. Or, in other words, upon a biological understanding of race and racial features. However,Veronica’s perception of a common blackness does not prevent her from casting the African landscape and bodies in terms of categories which are extremely problematic. Let’s for example, take this passage. Veronica, in her attempt to describe the village she visited with Ibrahima Sory, writes,

We arrive at a well dug in the center of a square mud huts. Nobody. Some girls are drawing water in black, rubber water skins. How do they live in a village like this? What is life like in these surroundings? Surprise! [...] The jeep bumps along on the ruts in the road. We pass men with conical shaped hats riding donkeys. They move over in fright as the car goes by. Their hats hide their faces (55).

As a reader, I was fascinated to see how Veronica’s narrative here reproduces quite unproblematically the stereotypical colonial gaze of the imperial travel narratives. The locals have been reduced to silent subalterns, who do not know how to confront modernity, the African nature and landscapes have literally been described as “immobile.” Her blackness, obviously, is not adequate enough to prevent her from falling back upon certain dominant tropes and categories to read Africa. Conde’s novel, thus, begins to interrogate any easy understanding of blackness and racial solidarities. And what is especially interesting for me, is how that political-ideological interrogation is based upon her aesthetic interrogation of the traditional tropes of colonial travel narratives. The question, then, becomes, is Conde’s novel problematizing the aesthetic and ideological conventions of colonial travel narratives or is it reinforcing the categories of traditional travel narratives, albeit within a theoretical framework of African Diasporic transnational interactions and travels?

Review of Werewere Liking’s “Elle sera de jaspe et de corail: Journal d’une misovire… ”

 By Naminata Diabate

Liking, Werewere. Elle sera de jaspe et de corail: Journal d’une misovire…

Paris: L’ Harmattan, 1983.

156 pages

ISBN: 2-85 802-329-8

$15

 

1t Shall Be of Jasper and Corail; and, Love-across-a-Hundred-Lives: Two Novels.

Trans. Marjolijn de Jager.

Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000.

$ 21.50

Born in 1950 in Cameroon, founder of the Villa Ki-Yi M’Bock (signifying “ultimate knowledge” in Liking’s native Bassa language); Werewere Liking is a multitalented artist who combines the arts of film acting, directing, novel writing, singing, costume designing, poetry composition, jewelry making, painting, and playwrighting. Liking stands out among Francophone African writers thanks to the diverse, innovative, and challenging nature of her writings and artistic compositions. Liking mixes expressive genres of diverse origins and seems not to privilege a specific one over another: orality, stage performance, music, poetry among others.

Several aspects of the multi-dimensional artist’s chant-roman deserve attention including the defense and celebration of some African traditions and values, the prominence of orality, and the blending of different expressive genres. Liking’s chant-roman Elle sera de jaspe et corail published in 1983 and translated in English in 2003 constitutes the point of analysis in this paper.

Four characters compose the novel-song. The protagonist also known as the misovire is writing a diary, in an attempt to conceptualize the new race. Babou and Grozi represent Lunai’s (a fictional country) intellectuals. Babou symbolizes black emotion, while Grozi epitomizes white intellect. The fourth character is a prophetic voice, that of Nuit-Noire, the misovire’s initiator and spiritual guide. Throughout the narrative Nuit-Noire discusses with the misovire and encourages her to purify herself through initiation.

Structurally speaking, nine entries make up the diary ranging from the potentials of Lunai, the absence of aesthetics, the critique of women and their contribution to Lunai’s degeneration, the conditions of the new discourse and new aesthetics, the cultivation of taste, the meaning of friendship, the education of new generations, and the call for a communal initiation.

Central to the novel-song is the advent of the new race. The new race will be born out of the reconciliation of Grozi and Babou, the union between black emotion and white intellect. Throughout the chant-roman, the new race is described as the “petit nègre aux yeux bleux” (31, 146). The advent of the new race demands the sine qua non condition of an initiation. For the misovire, initiation is of prime importance and she is ready to fight for it: “Nos sociétés redeviendraient initiatiques….Pour cette Forme la/ Je prierai/ Pour cette formulation/ Je me battrai/ Pour cette Initiation/ J’écrirai” (152). Not only is initiation part of the nation-building project, but leaders should be the primary beneficiaries, “Il faut absolument que les dirigeants soient des initiés” (30). The groundbreaking aspect of the misovire, the double of Liking’s call for initiation/ healing is its incorporation in nation-building. And she defines it as the ultimate purgation, a high stage of understanding of the self and the world: “la finesse et la stabilité des émotions réduisent automatiquement l’égoïsme, la délinquance et la criminalité” (119).

There is a direct correlation between the coming of the new race, initiation, and the role women have to play in the realization of the new era. So equally central to the chant-roman are the reinstatement of women’s spiritual and creative powers.

In order to account for the power that women enjoy, Liking includes the myth of creation in which the Creator empowers women to the point of conflating her desires with his: “Désormais tes désirs seront les miens ta volonté mienne” (81), or “Dieu le veut ainsi, les femmes de Lunai l’ont ainsi voulu” (89). In addition, women’s endowment with a certain level of spirituality reflects their superiority over men. The superiority plays out in the domain of creation and birth. Liking sets an opposition between the weakness of the phallus and the energy of the womb: “les phallus s’écroulent comme des champignons pourris a force de cogner violemment contre l’idiotie et l’inertie” (67) and “La Matrice-Mère ou sont en gestation et les Idées et les Formes et le Souffle de Vie” (93).

Yet, Liking’s celebration of women’s power does not prevent her from addressing harsh critiques to their contribution in the destruction of Lunai. Liking’s reading of women’s destructive contribution is refreshing and innovative, for the author does not designate men as the sole responsible for the poor state of affairs of the unnamed African country.

There is a rampant alienating factor in the chant-roman. The first alienating aspect of Liking’s novel-song is the choice of an aggressive language and the shocking criticisms addressed to all segments of society: children, the youth, old age, men and women.

The concept of misovire “against men” indisputable reflects the boldness and audacity of the artist. Yet, it can also be alienating. Not only can the concept alienate men from women, it can also alienate the misovire from other women through her harsh criticisms as for example “Quand l’homme ne jouera pas au porc/ Quand la femme ne sera plus chienne en chaleur/ Quand je ne serai plus misovire et qu’il n’y aura plus de misogynes” (153). Again, the semantic of animalization could be insulting to a certain audience.

The repetitiveness of masturbation scenes and the images of a phallus can be disturbing to an audience, unfamiliar to that choice of language: “Grozi et le voici a nouveau la queue-devant basse molle..” (27) or “Alors Grozi se masturbe par lassitude et par habitude mécaniquement” (120).

Besides the alienating aspect of Liking’s choice of words and scenes, the author seems to be caught into an ambivalence about, or lack of control over the concept of misovire. There is a tension between the definition of the term as laid out in the fiction, Elle sera de jaspe et de corail and the author’s definition as offered in an interview. In the fictional text, the term of misovire, combination of Greek and Latin, signifies “man-hater” and the misovire conveys a sense of radicalism. But in an interview with Bernard Maugnier, Liking offers a definition that I deem less radical:

Ce qui peut arriver de pire a une femme: ne pas trouver un homme qu’elle puisse admirer. Elle se sent entourée par des ‘larves’ uniquement préoccupés par leurs panses et leurs bas-ventres et incapables d’une aspiration plus haute que leur tête, incapables de lui inspirer ces grands sentiments qui agrandissent. Alors elle devient misovire (18).

So, from man hatred to the disappointment caused by the inability to find a man she admires, Liking seems to lose control over her concept. Or should we infer that the tension reflects the fact that a literary or artistic expression should be more audacious than a social reality?

I find Liking’s and the misovire’s critique of and distance from the concept of feminism unconvincing. The misovire’s comment about feminism as an empty concept in “à l’heure oŭ elle se laisse entretenir en se gargarisant de mots creux: égalité émancipation féminisme” (93) reflects a wholesale rejection and distrust of the movement based on stereotypes and generalizations. Liking’s interview with Peter Hawkins in 1991 resonates with the misovire’s rejection of feminism:

I’m a relatively tolerant person, and I realize there are women who have great problems arising from their womanhood, and I understand that feminism has to exist so that certain women could feel relatively liberated. So I have nothing against feminism, but I don’t feel personally involved. I don’t think women need feminism to survive. It’s a bit like Negritude, you know, one doesn’t need to sing about Negritude to be a negro, you’re just born that way (220, my emphasis).

Liking in featuring a misovire and the political and ideological intervention she made with the concept resonates with the ideology of feminism: the empowerment of women. Also, “third world”, and non-white women’s critiques of feminism and its universalist applicability have almost destabilized the term “feminist” which no longer exclusively designates a man-hater, an anti-mother, or a middle-class, college- educated, white woman. There is therefore the possibility of particularizing the term to reflect the emancipatory ventures of women across the globe. Liking’s contextualization, instead of the wholesale rejection of the term feminism might have proved more conciliatory and integrating as her new race.

Works Cited

 

Hawkins, Peter. “Werewere Liking at the Villa Ki-Yi.” African Affairs 90, 359. (1991): 207-222.