Revue Safara numéros 9 et 10 - 2011

SAFARA

REVUE INTERNATIONALE DE
LANGUES, LITTÉRATURES ET CULTURES

N°9 & 10 janvier 2011
ISSN 0851-4119
UFR de Lettres & Sciences Humaines,
Université Gaston Berger de Saint-Louis, BP 234, Sénégal

SAFARA
REVUE INTERNATIONALE DE
LANGUES, LITTÉRATURES ET CULTURES
UFR de Lettres et Sciences Humaines, Université Gaston Berger,
BP 234 Saint Louis, Sénégal
Tel +221 33 961 23 56 Fax +221 .. 961 1884
E-Mail : safara@ugb.sn
Directeur de Publication : Omar SOUGOU
Université Gaston Berger
COMITÉ SCIENTIFIQUE
Omofolabo
Flora
Chima
Mwamba
Mamadou
Ernest
Graham
Simon
Mamadou

A-SOYINKA (Kansas, USA)
ALEXANDER (Royaume-Uni)
ANYADIKE (Nigeria)
CABAKULU (Sénégal)
CAMARA (Sénégal)
EMENYONU (N. Carol., USA)
FURNESS (Royaume-Uni)
GIKANDI (Princeton, USA)
KANDJI (Sénégal)

Baydallaye
Edris
Maweja
Mustapha
Molara
Fiona
Ndiawar
Harold
Marième

KANE (Sénégal)
MAKWARD (Wisc., USA)
MBAYA (Sénégal)
MUHAMMAD (Nigeria)
OGUNDIPE (Ghana)
MCLAUGHLIN (Kans., USA)
SARR (Sénégal)
SCHUEB (Wisc., USA)
SY (Sénégal)

COMITE DE RÉDACTION
Rédacteur en Chef Badara SALL, UGB
Co-Rédacteur en Chef Obododimma OHA, Ibadan, Nigeria
Secrétaire de Rédactions Babacar DIENG, UGB
Mamadou Ba, UGB
Assistante de rédaction Khadidiatou Diallo, UGB
Administrateur et trésorier Abdoulaye BARRY
Relations extérieures Baydallaye KANE

Membres

Oumar FALL, UGB Olusegun ADEKOYA, Nigeria
Fallou NGOM, Washington Lawan SHUAIB, Nigeria

© Université Gaston Berger de Saint Louis, 2011
ISSN 0851-4119

SOMMAIRE
Reclaiming Agency: How to Walk out of the Dark in Alex
La Guma‘s A Walk in the Night and In the Fog of the Season’s
End ………………………………………….…………….
Oumar Chérif DIOP

5

Men Trading Wives for Younger Women: Freudian Overtones
in the Representation of Male Midlife Crisis In So Long A
Letter and Jazz ……………………………………………… 21
Babacar DIENG
The Construction of Self (-Identity) in Hausa Verbal Art …..
Chaibou Elhadji OUMAROU

41

Translation and Interpretation: Twin Sisters for Cross-cultural
Communication …..… ……………………………………… 59
ELisabeth DE CAMPOS
Peace Education: A critical Examination of the Nexus
Between Fundamental Freedoms and Sustainable
Development in the Continent. ……. ………… ………….
Ousmane BA
Engagement militant et création romanesque Chez Ousmane
Sembene …………………………………………………….
Ibrahima NDIAYE

85

103

Rôle du manuel scolaire de français dans la promotion de la
littérature burkinabè écrite ………………………………….. 115
Jean-Claude BATIONO
Le modèle sénégalais du dialogue Islamo-chrétien
dans la literature sénégalaise ………………………………..
Cheikhou DIOUF

141

Ernesto Che Guevara: Huida del poder y soledad
del personaje en Los cuadernos de Praga de Abel Posse ……..
Ndioro SOW

157

Safara, UFR de Lettres & Sciences Humaines, Université
Gaston Berger de Saint-Louis, Sénégal, n°9 & 10, janvier 2011

Reclaiming Agency: How to Walk out of the Dark in Alex
La Guma‘s A Walk in the Night and In the Fog of the Season’s End.
Oumar Chérif DIOP*
Dans sa création romanesque, l’écrivain Sud-Africain Alex La
Guma révèle, d’une part, les différentes formes de violence utilisées
par le système d’Apartheid Sud- Africain pour subjuguer les Noirs
et autres personnes de couleur et, d’autre part, les stratégies de
résistance déployées par ces derniers pour mettre un terme à leur
oppression. Dans cette analyse de la lutte contre la violence raciste
en Afrique du Sud dans l’œuvre de La Guma, nous nous fondons
sur les travaux du psychologue Heinz Kohut pour mettre en
exergue les limites objectives des réactions individuelles et
impulsives contre l’odieux système discriminatoire dans A Walk in
the Night et les relents salvateurs des actions concertées au sein d’une
organisation politique dans In the Fog of the Season’s End.
In documenting the mores and experiences of black and
colored South-Africans in his literary works, Alex La Guma unveils
the structuring principles of violence in the Apartheid system, their
logic, their dynamics, and how the victims of violence strive to end
the white supremacists’ tyrannical rule. In this paper, using Heinz
Kohut’s study of the self, I will focus on Blacks’ and Coloreds’
resistance to Apartheid violence.
According to Kohut (1971 120), the healthy self emerges
from two processes of self-formation: first, the grandiose or
assertive self that strives to be independent and original; second, the
self that seeks approval and is eager to be loved. The ambitions of
the grandiose self and values of the idealized self-object are
paramount to the achievement of self-identity. Thus, the failure to
*

Oumar Chérif DIOP teaches Postcolonial African and African Diaspora
Literatures at Kennesaw State University in Georgia, USA.

6

O. C. Diop: Walking out of the Dark in La Guma’s works

fulfill our ambitions or the feeling of being ostracized may lead to a
narcissistic rage. Such anger, according to Strozier (1985), translates
into fanatism or exclusivism in the context of socio-historical crisis.
In Alex La Guma’s novels, violent attacks on the Black and
Colored grandiose selves and the absence of the idealized self leave
the Black and Colored youth psychologically fragmented and
socially disoriented. Thus, the violence that stems from the loss of
dignity and unjust economic conditions ranges from individual
impulsive outbursts to large-scale organized violence. While
exploring the counter violence that Black and Colored people
oppose to the Apartheid system, La Guma exposes the limitations
of the impulsive emotional outbursts in A Walk in the Night (1967)
and walks us through the painstaking process of the constitution of
collective, redemptive resistance in In the Fog of the Season’s End
(1972).
In April 1960, at the time of the Sharpeville massacre, La
Guma completed A Walk in the Night, a poignant portrayal of racist
repression. Michael Adonis, the main protagonist, has just lost his
job. To add to his anger and frustration, he encounters the sadistic
constable Raalt and his assistant, who humiliate him. Drunk on
cheap wine in a pub, Michael returns to his tenement, where his
drinking with Old Doughty ends in tragedy: in an impulsive
outburst, Michael vents his pent up rage on the old, decrepit
Irishman and kills him. Willieboy, one of Michael Adonis’s
acquaintances, who accidently discovers the corpse is mistaken for
the murderer of Old Doughty and shot dead by Raalt.
A walk in the Night dramatizes the recurrent vicious assaults
on Black and Colored youth that lead to their psychological
fragmentation and social disorientation. As such, the protagonists
are “doom’d to walk in the night … and for the day confined to
waste in fire” (La Guma 1967 26). This plight, which is the
substratum of the deterministic undercurrent of the novel, is
buttressed by the way the brutality of the Apartheid system and the
disintegration of District Six profoundly and irremediably affect the
life of the characters.
As a case in point, Michael Adonis’s dream for self-fulfillment
is constantly dashed. His irreversible destitution leads to his
alienation, with its corollaries of deep frustration and humiliation.

Safara, Université G. B., Saint-Louis, n° 9 & 10, Janvier 2011

7

According to Kohut (1977 18), the “nuclear self (core self)” or
“bipolar self” consists of two poles of ambitions and ideals as well
as a tension arc created by these poles.
He uses the term ‘bipolar self’ in accounting for two
opportunities that ht person has to build a healthy cohesive self.
The first opportunity is through adequate mirroring by the early
selfobject. This requires empathic mirroring of what he earlier
referred to as the grandiose self. The second prospect for a healthy
cohesive self is from appositive relationship to an idealized
selfobject. Thus, the self’s failure to seize these opportunities and to
fulfill its aspirations may translate into narcissistic rage and, in the
context of socio-historical crisis, escalate into fanatism or
exclusivism (Strozier 1985 9). Because of his disenfranchisement
and shame1, Michael Adonis is overwhelmed by a feeling of rage,
and can neither hear nor see what goes on around him.
While nursing his anger, Michael Adonis is quasi deaf to “the
buzz and hum of voices and the growl of the traffic,” (La Guma
1967 1) and is engulfed by the “pustule of rage and humiliation that
is continuing to ripen deep down within him” (La Guma 1967 1).
Michael’s introversion does not and cannot obliterate the
devastating effect of the shame he is experiencing.
But Michael’s feeling of worthlessness might have been
alleviated if he had joined the chorus of lamenting voices of misery.
Such a connection with his people might have helped him unveil
the root cause of his plight. Failing to do so, all he can hear is the
buzz, hum, growl, and mutter that epitomize a high level of
unintelligibility that derives from the lack of a meaningful
interaction with the outside world. Jeffrey Alexander (2004 2) posits
that to gain reflexivity and to move from the sense of something
commonly experienced to the sense of strangeness that allows us to
think sociologically, we need to be rooted in the social life-world.
Such rootedness, he argues, is the soil that nourishes intelligibility.
Thus, Michael’s inability to relate to his world prevents him from
According to Hohut (1966 441), shame arises when the ego is unable to
provide a proper discharge for the exhibitionistic demands of the
narcissistic ideal self. Thus shame is the result of the feeling of being a
failure.

8

O. C. Diop: Walking out of the Dark in La Guma’s works

engaging and decoding the social text. Consequently, he feels more
and more ashamed and alienated. When he looks right through the
workers and fails to see them, he is missing the opportunity to have
a reflection of himself. His feeling of shame focuses his gaze on an
image of himself constructed by the Apartheid system. Kathleen M.
Balutansky (1990 17) considers A Walk in the Night replete with
representations of the tensions black people experience when they
have to face their self-images. La Guma, Balutansky (1990) argues,
sets a literal as well as a figurative tension
between the miserable reality created by
Apartheid and the dignity and humanity that
might have existed without the oppression and
racism of the system (17).
In contrast is Joe’s selflessness and love for nature as well as
in the compassionate relationship between Michael Adonis and him
which is illustrated in the following exchange:
“You eat already?”
“Well…no…not yet,” Joe said, smiling humbly and shyly,
moving his broken shoes gently on the rough cracked
paving.
“Okay, here’s a bob. Get yourself something. Parcel of fish
and some chips.”
“Thanks, Mikey.”
“Okay. So long, Joe” (La Guma 1967 9).
These feelings of compassion and generosity spring from the
selflessness that never fails to perceive the other’s needs. The
natural and spontaneous tone of this exchange highlights some of
the human values the Apartheid system diametrically opposes. As a
case in point, the following encounter between Michael Adonis and
the police contrasts strikingly with the above scene.
[…]
Then he went up the street, trailing his
tattered raincoat behind him like a sword-slashed,
bullet-ripped banner just rescued from a battle.
Michael Adonis turned towards the pub and saw
the two policemen coming towards him. They
came down the pavement in their flat caps, khaki


9

shirts and pants, their gun harness shiny with
polish and the holstered pistols heavy at their
waists. They had hard, frozen faces as if carved
out of pink ice, and hard dispassionate eyes, hard
and bright as pieces of blue glass (La Guma 1967
10-11).
Michael’s gay and carefree appearance suddenly changes into
that of a banner rescued from a battlefield when he meets the
policemen, those agents of the Apartheid system whose sword has
indeed slashed the Blacks’ true identity and whose bullet has
constantly been aimed at their humanity. There is no doubt that
Michael is in a war-zone and has to deal with deadly ambushes
every so often. The coldness of this encounter and its chilling effect
on Michael underscores the tension the Blacks permanently live
with: to remain your true self in a viciously adverse situation. The
juxtaposition of the two scenes reveals the schizophrenic paranoia
that haunts the Apartheid victim. This technique gestures towards
the two conflicting images that inhabit the Blacks’ and Coloreds’
psyches. One image embraces the beauty of a life, and the other
must be frequently ready to confront the demons of Apartheid as
the following passage demonstrates:
Where are you walking around, man? The
voice was hard and flat as a snap of a steel spring,
and the one who spoke had hard, thin chapped
lips and a faint blond down above them (La
Guma 1967 11).
This dehumanized voice and the tone of its address are in
sharp contrast with the encounter between Joe and Michael. The
inhumanity that prevails in this interaction is captured by the voice
as a metonymy of interracial relations under Apartheid. Whether it
mutters or shouts obscenities, the voice expresses the ongoing
tension between Blacks and the white system. During this
encounter, the reason why Michael Adonis dare not look at the
constable in the eyes is not just out of fear of repression but also
out of shame. There, in the eyes of the constable, Michael can see a
reflection of his own distorted image, the Apartheid-concocted
image of the Black. The afore-mentioned tension is again

10 O. C. Diop: Walking out of the Dark in La Guma’s works

dramatized when John Abrahams’ loss of touch with the crowd
leaves him at the mercy of Raalt.
John Abrahams was now beginning to feel the
effect of the abrasive stares of those around him
and his bravado commenced to collapse, falling
from him like dislodged colored paper
decorations. He shuffled and stared at his feet
and fingered his nether lip, trying to salvage some
of the disintegrating sense of importance. ‘Listen,
man, ’Raalt told him. ‘If you don’t want to talk
now you can still be forced to appear in court and
say what you know before the magistrate (La
Guma 1967 63).
John is caught between two adversarial worlds: the people of
District Six and the police. The deep-seated fear that makes him
yield to the pressure of Raalt alienates him from the crowd. By
urging John not to break the collective silence of defiance, the
crowd is inviting him to join in the protection of the stronghold
that shields Blacks in a context where they are permanently targeted
by the system. Unfortunately John’s attitude as an expression of self
and communal disintegration undermines resistance to the system
by legitimizing its acts of random violence and thus giving Raalt
license to roam District Six and go after any “young rooker … with
a yellow shirt” (La Guma 1967 60).
Even more debilitating is the structural violence
that denies Blacks and Coloreds basic amenities
and plunges Michael, as well as Willieboy, into a
world of destitution and crime. Their hopes and
dreams are shattered by a socio-economic
determinism that casts them into the realm of
violence and criminality. Everything in the Blacks’
and Coloreds’ whereabouts is in decay:
[…] stretches of damp, battered houses
[…]
[…] cracked walls and high tenements that rose
like left-overs of a bombed area in the twilight;


11

vacant lots and weed-grown patches where
houses had once stood; and deep doorways
resembling the entrances of deserted castles[…]
row of dustbins lined on side of the entrance and
exhaled the smell of rotten fruit, stale food,
stagnant water and general decay (La Guma 1967
21).
This disintegrating physical world epitomizes Michael’s
fragmentary inner world which harbors feelings of anger and selfpity. His frustration and resentment, under the effect of the alcohol
he has been drinking, “curdled into a sour knot of violence inside
him” (La Guma 1967 26). This pent up violence is a result of the
laceration of his bipolar self, to use Kohut’s (1977) concept, for
Michael’s aspirations are dashed against walls of racism and
humiliation. Clearly then, the networks of relations formed by the
effects of the decaying world on Michael and his desperate needs
for survival and recognition have dangerously compromised the
chance for his healthy self to prevail.
When in fury Michael calls Old Doughty “a blerry ghost” and
later on shouts “You old bastard,” […] can’t a boy have a bloody
piss without getting kicked in the backside by a lot of effing law?”
One can sense how the black youth is haunted by the specter of his
white tormentor who has wrecked his world and fragmented his
self. In a flash, Old Doughty appears as the agent that shatters his
self. Whether a death threat to Michael’s self or just an apparition of
self-fragmenter, the old man becomes for the black youth the epitome
of mortal danger. Michael’s impulsive act dictated by his fear is
followed by a feeling of deep remorse: ‘Jesus’ he said and turned
quickly and vomited down the wall behind him […] “God I didn’t
mean it. I didn’t mean to kill the blerry old man.” […] “Well he
didn’t have no right living here with us colored” (La Guma 1967
29).
In reaction to the shattered self, Ragland-Sullivan (1986)
argues, “the avatar of aggressiveness arises and shows itself in
projected blame. The goal of aggressiveness is to protect the moi
from perceiving the tenuous fragility of its own formation” (38).
What has made Michael so insecure and vulnerable is his isolation


from the masses. As has been mentioned, by distancing himself
from the workers he could not hear distinctly the noises around
him. In so doing, he bears the burden of his humiliation and
frustration alone. His rage becomes corrosive and self-blinding.
Even when Greene and the taxi-driver are trying to drive him out of
his self-centered world, Michael dissociates himself from them.
Michael’s state of confusion prevents him from connecting with the
social group he belongs to.
Even when Greene and the taxi-driver are trying to drive him
out of his self-centered world, Michael dissociates himself from
them: when Greene tells him that “ ‘some whites took a negro out
in the street and hanged him up,’ ” he replies: well the negroes isn’t
like us […]
It’s the capitalis system, the taxi-driver said. […]
Whites act like that because of the capitalis
system. What the hell do you mean—capitalis
system? Michael Adonis asked (La Guma 1967
16).
Michael cannot hear any other voice than his own. That voice
is overwhelmed by anger and leads him to a state of confusion that
prevents him from connecting with the social group he belongs to.
The narrator uses the image of a knot of rage that is formed inside
Michael like the quickening of the embryo in the womb to describe
his mood. Pregnant with futile rage, Michael can deliver only the
futile random violence that claims the life of an innocent old man.
Ironically, his blind violence causes and parallels Raalt’s killing of
Michael’s alter ego, Willieboy.
Furthermore, Michael’s decaying world is comparable to the
world of predilection of the cockroach that “paused over the
stickiness and a creaking of boards somewhere startled it, sending it
scuttling off with tiny scraping sounds across the floor” (La Guma
1967 95). At this same moment, as if in echo to that lonesome
creature of decay and filth, John Abrahams “thought dully, What’s
help you, turning on your own people?” (La Guma 1967 95). To
emphasize the need to be connected with one’s community, we
might add, thinking of Michael Adonis, “What’s help you turning
your back to your people?”


13

The imperative need for communal bonding in the fight
against the Apartheid system brings forth the novel’s final message,
which is wrapped in the metaphor of “…the relentless, consistent,
pounding of the creaming waves against the granite citadel rock”
(La Guma 1967 96). At the close of A Walk in the Night, it appears
that the only form of violence that can erode the granite citadel of
Apartheid is organized communal violence and not isolated random
violence. For where Michael has been nursing “the foetus of hatred
inside his belly” (La Guma 1967 21) which led to the deaths of Old
Doughty and Willieboy, Grace Lorenzo, who remains constantly in
tune with the masses, is feeling the knot of love and life within her.
In contrast to the knot of rage which has consumed Michael and led
to senseless violence, Grace’s knot of life symbolizes the imminent
birth of hope.
In the Fog of the Season’s End (1972) focuses on how to make
the imminent birth of hope happen by foregrounding the
undertakings of a secret underground movement fighting to end the
Apartheid system. The plot describes the activities of Beukes, the
“colored” operative, and is framed by the account of the torture of
Elias Tekwane, the Black organizer. Beukes sacrifices a happy
personal life to devote himself to the revolution. His political
activities, which include distributing anti-Apartheid pamphlets and
coordinating the efforts of the movement to withstand full-scale
repression, are interspersed with memories of happier times spent
with his wife and his young child. He has been separated from
them since being forced underground. The narrative is also
interlaced with the activities of Isaac, the young office clerk who
escapes arrest and eventually re-emerges as Paul, the third recruit to
be smuggled out of South Africa for guerrilla training.
While growing up, Elias and his mother “lived on anaemic
ears of corn, […], on sinewy chicken now and then, on remains of
meals begged in town, and on the kindness of the village
community” (La Guma 1972 79). Such a precarious situation made
Elias angry. However, unlike Michael Adonis in A Walk in the
Night, Elias was not consumed by rage and shame. Instead, his
anger “grew inside him like a ripening seed and the tendrils of its
burgeoning writhed along his bones, through his muscles, into his
mind” (La Guma 1972 79), and he started mulling over his


predicament, asking why the Whites have bigger land, and more
money; why his people work for the Whites instead of trying to
make a little corn grow among the stones of their own patches
(Laguma 1972 79).
On his journey from the countryside to town, his list of
questions included the living conditions of Blacks in the shanties
and the poor working conditions of workers. Through a number of
experiences ranging from police harassment to workers’ strikes,
Elias understood progressively that the disenfranchisement of
Blacks and Coloreds is inherent to the Apartheid system. Such
awareness led him to the conclusion that his people must acquire
both the techniques and the means for fighting a war against the
white supremacists (La Guma 1972 143).
After weeks of surveillance, the police capture Elias Tekwane,
torture, and beat him to death. By refusing to reveal any
information, Tekwane protects the movement and allows Beukes to
escape and help smuggle three freedom fighters into neighboring
countries.
To frame the narrative, the novel uses historical landmarks
that typify the Blacks’ conditions in South Africa: the Sharpeville
massacre of Blacks protesting against the pass, the ritual of
obtaining pass cards, the Bantu Homelands Constitution Act, the
Segregation Laws, the Pass Laws, the Bantu Education System, the
Group Area Act. In The Fog of the Season’s End articulates the
fragmentation of Blacks as a result of their victimization by the
white supremacist system. It also re-presents and deconstructs the
white supremacists’ attempts to rationalize and legitimize the
inhumane treatment of Blacks:
I do not understand the ingratitude of your
people… Look what we, our Government, have
done for you people. We have given you nice
jobs, houses, education. Education, ja. Take
education for instance. We have allowed your
people to get education, your own special
schools, but you are not satisfied. No you want
more than you get (La Guma 1972 4).


15

Ironically the Blacks are presented as ungrateful recipients of
services from white benefactors preoccupied by the Blacks’ wellbeing. The whites’ “mindfulness” has gone as far as opening special
schools to meet the needs of the Blacks. The irony also gestures
towards the fact that the relationship is primarily paternalistic and
dismissive: you do not have what is required not to refuse our
decision. Why would you be unsatisfied? The paternalism is rooted
in the racism that excludes and disqualifies Blacks for a certain
number of services.
I have heard that some of your people even want
to learn mathematics. What good is mathematics
to you? You see, you people are not the same as
we are. We can understand these things,
mathematics. We know the things which are best
for you. Yet you want to be like the Whites. It is
impossible. […] We understand that you must
have certain things, rights, so we have arranged or
you to have things you need, under our
supervision (La Guma 1972 5).
The evident social dichotomy in the use of I (we) and you
(people) shows the exclusion of the Blacks from the decisionmaking process even in matters concerning their social and
intellectual well-being. The whites’ government has the power to
decide where and how to educate Blacks and the location and type
of housing that is suitable for them. The major statement here is an
expression of what is at the core of the philosophy of Apartheid.
That philosophy is the basis of all the above-mentioned forms of
legalized acts of violence. Put against the backdrop of the Apartheid
system, the Major’s statement is a proclamation of the white
supremacists’ inhumanity and is countered by Elias’s response:
You have shot my people when they protested
against unjust treatment; you have torn people
from their homes, imprisoned them, not for
stealing or murder, but not having your
permission to live. Our children live in rags and
die of hunger. And you want me to co-operate
with you? It is impossible. (La Guma 1972 5).


Elias’ intransigent stand pitted against the major’s rhetoric of
justification heralds the tensions that rock the Apartheid system.
His statement functions as a credo of the anti-apartheid movement.
It is a manifesto that not only unveils the truth behind the lame
euphemisms of the major’s discourse but further points at the
rhetorical flaws of a deceptive statement that fails to accurately
account for reality.
The realities that the major euphemistically refers to as
education and housing are, as the prisoner points out, the apartheid
system’s inhumane programs that marginalize the Blacks. Their
names are Bantu Education System and Bantu Homelands
Constitution Act. To the Major’s rhetoric of justification which is
essentially a rhetoric of concealment and deception, Elias responds
with a rhetoric of denunciation that unmasks and exposes the
violent nature of Apartheid. As such, it is defiant, and while
opposing all that operates for, or with the system, it legitimizes all
operations whose ultimate goal is to restore the Blacks’ trampled
dignity and humanity. As Balutansky (1990) has it,
the irreconcilable impulses of the rhetorical as
well as essential tensions that underlie the style
and tone of both the prisoner’s and the Major’s
remarks introduce the overwhelming tensions
portrayed in this novel; ..., La Guma turns the
two hackneyed statements into a ritualized
performance that symbolizes the forces
Apartheid pitches against each other (82-3)
The technique of juxtaposition is thus utilized to re-present
the contradictions between two communities that are entrapped in a
deadly cycle of violence. Their ways of mapping the same reality are
diametrically at odds. However, since language and ideology are
intimately related to the socio-economic environment, the
naturalistic instances of In the Fog of the Season’s End are not just
descriptive; they are strategies that help gauge the veracity of
discourse.
In its attempt to misname the flaws of the Apartheid system,
the white supremacists’ rhetoric of justification is occasionally
debunked by the novel’s imbedded irony. Ironic pointers appear


17

whenever the narrative’s naturalistic tones foreground a level of
authenticity that unequivocally dispels the fallacy of the racists’
discourse. Realism, then allows the narrator to introduce exhibits
that give credibility and eloquence to the indictment of racism.
Thus, realism in the novel, is not just the representation of
potentiality and the effects of action; it functions rhetorically as part
of the set of strategies used to reveal the duplicity of the Apartheid
discourse of violence that, on one hand, does not say what it does
and on the other hand tries to transform the victim into a culprit.
Along with these double-edged mimetic and symptomatic
techniques, the narrative uses other strategies to reflect the violent
tensions that tear apart the South African society. A variety of signs
constantly remind the protagonists of their marginalization.
In the following passage, the use of the colon associate
portrayals of characters and their plight as down-trodden second
class citizens:
“It was a little baggy under the arms and around the chest,
but it would pass: no one noticed second-hand clothes on a
member of a second-class people.” (La Guma 1972 163).
Second-hand clothes are all these second class citizens can
afford. They live on the junk of white masters, being junk in
junkyard themselves. Their living conditions, a vivid expression of
structural violence, are an integral part of the dehumanization
process to which the Blacks are subject. The second-hand clothes
are indicative of the social devaluation of the Blacks. In actual fact
they are literally heaped up like valueless object in their dwellings.
Furthermore, they are submitted to various forms of harassment.
As a case in point:
When African people turn sixteen they are born
again or, even worse, they are accepted into the
mysteries of the Devil’s mass, confirmed into
blood rites of servitude as cruel as Caligula, as
merciless as Nero. Its bonds are the entangled
chains of infinite regulations, its rivets are driven
in with rubber stamps, and scratchy pans in the
offices of the Native Commissioners are like


branding irons which leave scars for life (La
Guma 1972 81).
The ritual of pass distribution like any other rite of passage
introduces the initiates to another symbolic realm with new social
status and attributes. For the Blacks, the reception of the pass as an
induction into a world charted with racist regulations means
anonymity, hence depersonalization. Rebirth is literally recreation of
non-persons commoditized as labor force to serve the interests of
the white establishment. A violation of the regulations means that
All permits are cancelled so that you cease to
exist. You will be nothing, nobody, in fact you
will be de-created. You will not be able to go
anywhere on the face of the earth, no man will be
able to give you work, nowhere will you be able
to be recognized…you will be as nothing (La
Guma 1972 82).
By wielding their power to re-create and to de-create, the
white supremacists delineate the social as well as the psychological
bounds where being is conceivable for and by the Blacks. The
acceptance of such conditions that set the perimeters of existence
means total subjugation and annihilation. The terms of the Blacks’
dehumanization are epitomized by people being identified with
allegorical names: the Washerwoman, the Bicycle Messenger, the
Outlaw. This symbolic death is the prelude to their physical
liquidation when they stand against the law of their re-creator.
The shooting, singing, chanting, laughter went
on. The sun was hot and the sky steely with
thunder.
[…]The sound of the shot was almost lost under the
chanting, the singing, the laughter. Silence dropped from the
gaping mouths of those who saw and heard, gaping in
sudden wonder…
The bundles of dead lay under the sun, with the abandoned
pop bottles, fluttering pass-books, umbrellas, newspapers,
all the debris of life and death. Among the dead was the
Washerwoman...Those who found the outlaw discovered
that he took some time to die… ( La Guma 1972 104-5).


19

The juxtaposition of scenes of merriment and mourning as
well as the metaphor of the thunder under the sun reaffirm the
contradiction at the heart of the society. The last paragraph points
at the co-presence of life and death: the life of the anonymous
masses, cluttered in bundles of dead. The tragedy is a wakeup call
for all these people who were unable to capture the foreshadowing
signs that have been flashing through the structural racial tensions.
This random and sudden violence is symptomatic of the breaking
point years of oppression brought. In In the Fog of the Season’s End,
fatality as the outcome of decades of Apartheid makes resistance
and sacrifices inevitable as illustrated by Elias’s death and the daily
risks associated with revolutionary clandestine operations.

A Walk in the Night and In the Fog of the Season’s End dramatize
how racist violence permeates, disrupts, and destroys the lives of
Blacks and Coloreds in South Africa. Furthermore, the novels
expose how the protagonists react to the violence they are victims
of. Whereas in A Walk in the Night, anger has led to shame and
senseless violence, in In the Fog of the Season’s End, it has burgeoned
into political awareness and urgency to overthrow the Apartheid
system.
Bibliography
-Alexander, Jeffrey C. et al. Cultural Trauma and collective Identity.
Berkeley: U of California P, 2004.
-Baluntansky, Kathleen . The Novels of Alex La Guma. Washington,
D.C.: Three continents Press, 1990.
Kohut, Heinz. ‘Forms and Transformations of Narcissism’. Journal
of American Psychoanalysis Association (1966): 243-272
------------. The Analysis of Self. New York: International Universities
Press, 1977.
------------. The Restoration of the Self. New York: International
Universities Press, 1977.


-La Guma, Alex. A Walk in the Night. Evanston: Northwestern
Press, 1967.
--------------. In the Fog of the Season’s End London: Heinemann, 1972.
-Ragland-Sullivan, Ellie. Jacques Lacan and the Philosophy of
Psychoanalysis. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1986.
-Strozier, Charles B. Self Psychology and the Humanities: Reflections on a
New Psychoanalytical Approach. New York: W. W. Norton, 1985.


Men Trading Wives for Younger Women:
Freudian Overtones in the Representation of
Male Midlife Crisis in So Long a Letter and Jazz
Babacar DIENG*

Abstract
This article discusses the representation of midlife crisis in the
works of two transnational women writers from Senegal, Mariama Ba’s So
Long a Letter (1979), and the US, Toni Morrison’s Jazz (1992). It shows
that both Ba and Morrison represent the instability and “irrationality” of
middle-aged men through the characters of Modou Fall and Joe Trace
who engage in extramarital affairs with girls who are barely their
daughters’ age. It argues that both critical female narrators in the
narratives of our focus satirically describe men going through their midlife
crisis as driven by the dictates of their ids and not responding to the
suggestions of their egos and superegos.

Résumé
Cette étude comparative se penche sur la représentation de la crise
masculine de milieu de vie comme motif intertextuel dans Une si longue
lettre (So Long a Letter) (1979) de la sénégalaise Mariama Ba et Jazz (1992)
de l’américaine Toni Morrison. Elle démontre que les deux auteurs
s’attèlent à peindre l’instabilité psychologique et l’irrationalité qui
caractérisent les hommes à mi-vie à travers les personnages de Modou Fall
et Joe Trace qui se lancent dans des aventures amoureuses avec des
gamines qui pourraient être leurs filles. L’auteur de cet article s’efforce de
prouver que dans les deux romans, les narratrices aux regards réprobateurs
décrivent de manière satirique les victimes de la crise de milieu de vie
comme étant assujettis aux dictats de leurs ids et sourds aux suggestions
de leurs egos et superegos.

*

Ph.D, Enseignant-Chercheur, Université Gaston Berger de Saint-Louis.

22 B. DIENG: Male Midlife Crisis in So Long a Letter and Jazz

As one makes a cursory survey of contemporary world
literatures, one can assert that the times when Virginia Woolf
deplored in “A Room of One’s Own” the marginalization and
silencing of Shakespeare’s sister and the impoverishment of
literature resulting from the doors’ being shut upon women are long
gone. Today, women are no longer exclusively discovered through
the reductive prism of male perspective in the literary field. They
have acquired great presence on the literary scenes. One can,
without exaggeration, say that they have indeed found “a room of
their own” and gained voice in world literatures to represent their
own selves and experiences and help their counterparts cope with
the challenges and hurdles in their lives while at the same time
addressing important issues in their countries and around the world.
In the process, female writers even reverse the patriarchal gaze,
sometimes not just to portray men, but to psychoanalyze them also
so as to better understand some psychological behaviors directly
affecting their relationships with their wives and the family.
The family sphere constitutes a privileged site in these
women’s representations, which lends credence to the gynocritics’
view that women’s writings center on the domestic sphere. Mariama
Ba’s So Long a Letter (1979) and Toni Morrison’s Jazz (1992)
constitute relevant examples of this empowerment through the pen
and preoccupation with the domestic sphere. Though their authors
hail from different societies, cultures, and geographical locations,
these two novels share many common concerns in their narrative
discourses. Both Morrison and Ba are preoccupied with the lives of
women in their respective societies, the fate of the family, and the
general problems affecting their societies. More particularly, both
writers interweave the motif of male midlife crisis in their textual
tapestry. Indeed, in characterizing male characters, Ba and Morrison
both emphasize the instability and turmoil middle-aged men
experience and how they affect their companions and/or families.
Their narratives even bear psychoanalytical overtones as they
attempt to depict middle-aged men and explain the unconscious
determinisms they are subjected to.
Whereas these novels have been studied from various angles,
there has not been to date a work scrutinizing the motif of midlife
crisis in them or reading them from a psychoanalytical perspective.


23

Mariama Ba’s novel has been the subject of several interesting
scholarly productions focusing on the ideological, discursive and
formalist dimensions of the novel. Barbara Klaw, among many
other critics, relevantly points out in “Mariama Ba’s Une Si Longue
Lettre and Subverting a Mythology of Sex-Based Oppression,” that
many works read the novel from a feminist perspective. Médoune
Guéye echoes Klaw’s words when he says that Dorothy Blair,
Christophe Miller, Susan Stringer, and many other critics emphasize
feminism in Ba’s work (309). This aspect of the novel continued to
draw attention in more recent studies of the narrative: Mbye Cham,
Gibreel Kamara (2001), Medoune Gueye (1998), Rizwana Habib
Latha (2001), and John Champagne have also brought contributions
to the discussion of this issue. Most of the remaining critical works
focus on the postcolonial dimension of the novel or the study of
the narrative structure (McElaney Johnson 1999; Larrier 1991).
Most critical works on Toni Morrison’s Jazz focus on its
themes, aesthetics, postmodernism, and narrative voice. For
example, Katy Ryan analyzes the problematic of self-destruction
and suicide in Jazz. Stephen Knadler explores the representation of
domestic violence in the narrative. Derek Alwes analyzes the
concept of choice in Jazz, focusing on the character of Joe Trace.
Joe Yeldho and Neeklakantan G. scrutinize the representation of
the city in the narrative. Megan Sweeney discusses the concepts of
commensurability, commodification, crime and justice in Jazz and
Morrison’s latest fiction. The novel’s narrative voice and the
techniques Morrison utilizes to create an original culturally rooted
type of narrator with postmodern tendencies have however drawn
more critical attention. Page (1995), Hardrack (1995), Lesoinne
(1997), and Treherne (2003), among other critics, have discussed
Morrison’s postmodern and African-American strategies of writing
and the characteristics of the “unreliable” narrator who invites the
reader to participate actively in the complex process of reading the
talking book. Other works moving along the same line of thought
explore the motif of music in the narrative. For instance, Alain
Munton, in “Misreading Morrison, Mishearing Jazz: A Response to
Toni Morrison's Jazz Critics,” discusses the presence of jazz music
and the various interpretation around the motif in Morrison’s text.


Though some critics have touched upon Joe’s psychology, they
have not discussed it against the backdrop of midlife crisis or
Freudian theory.
Our work departs from previous trajectories of interpretation
because it combines psychoanalysis and feminist criticism to
illustrate through a close reading of the texts how both writers
represent midlife crisis and delve, like psychiatrists or
psychoanalysts, into the psyche of male characters to try to
understand the working of this disorder. This article proposes a
reading of these two texts as psychological novels instrumentalizing
psychoanalysis in their representation of male midlife crisis.
Building on antecedent criticism and combining narratology and
psychoanalysis, it attempts to scrutinize how these transnational
writers problematize midlife crisis in their works and take the reader
into the male characters’ psyches so as to reveal the motivations
behind their acts. In a first stage, I will present the concept of
midlife life crisis as defined in popular culture and scientific
research. Then, I will present some key Freudian concepts used in
the interpretation of the narratives of our focus. Finally, I will show
how Ba and Morrison represent midlife crisis in their psychological
novels. I will also argue that through the derisive way they present
the irrationality of Modou and Joe, both narratives posit men are
victims of their pleasure principle and subjected to their ids. Their
inability to transform object-cathexes suggests a silencing of their
egos and superegos.
Midlife crisis is a very much textualized motif in American
and world popular culture and the subject of several studies that
confirm or dispute its existence. Some scholars consider middle age
as a relatively stable period in adult development and believe midlife
crisis is merely a construct. However, a considerable number of
scholarly works, literary and film representations concur that this
period of adult development can be particularly difficult and
challenging. For instance, Stanley and Farell who reviewed
extensively the issue of midlife crisis from a scientific and literary
perspective, explain in “Identity and Crisis in Middle Aged Men”
that more and more studies show that several of the signs of
personal disorganization—neurotic and psychotic disorder,
alcoholism,
marital
dissatisfaction,
psychosomatic
and


25

hyponchondriarchal problems—prevail among middle-aged
Americans. Although these findings are consistent and clear cut,
they remain puzzling. On the one hand they are supported by some
clinical and conceptual formulations and widespread cultural
stereotypes supporting that these problems are related to midlife
crisis. On the other hand, “more systematic attempts to confirm or
disconfirm the existence and impact of such a crisis have proved no
evidence in support of the construct.....” (134).
Whether it is a construct or a reality, midlife crisis or what
some term ‘midlife transition’ is generally presented as a period of
turmoil and life changes associated with disorder that most adults
experience at varying stages in their middle age as a result of several
factors ranging from fear of aging to dissatisfaction with the goals
achieved. “Midlife crisis,” for Wethington, “connotes personal
turmoil and sudden changes in personal goals and lifestyle, brought
about by the realization of aging, physical decline, or entrapment in
unwelcome, restrictive roles” (86). Psychoanalysts and psychologists
believe it is a universal and inevitable human developmental stage
(Stanley and Farell 134). Most of them situate its advent around the
age of forty. Freund and O. Ritter conjecture that “reviewing the
literature on middle adulthood, Staudinger and Bluck conclude that
middle adulthood is typically seen as starting at age 40 and
extending to age 60, but with vague and fuzzy boundaries regarding
beginning and end” (583).
This period is generally considered as a quite painful and
difficult interim phase characterized by substantial changes in
personality or disorder resulting from the adult’s desire to give new
directions to his life after measuring his achievements. Midlife is
indeed viewed as a period of self-introspection, for it is the time
when the adult reflects upon his past and measures his
achievements based on the standards he had set at a younger age. It
is a period of change because after having taken stock of his
achievements, the adult reinterprets his future self and makes plans
for the second half of his life (Hermans and Oles, 1405; Freund and
O. Ritter, 584). These adjustments may result in drastic changes that
may seem irrational to other people. Although men may respond
differently to it depending on their ethnicity, class, and structure of
personal defences, it is generally believed that they sometimes try to


escape by engaging in frantic activity or sexual adventures. Marylin
Mercer, in “Infidelity,” corroborates this view when she describes
middle-aged people as being especially vulnerable to extramarital
affairs. Middle-age is a time when many couples find themselves
heading in opposite directions. According to Lombardi, the most
common stereotypes associated to the crisis are the following ones:
men purchasing expensive cars like Porsches, getting hair plugs and
trading in their wives for younger girlfriends (4). In other words,
middle-aged men who undergo midlife crisis seem try to regain a
youth lost and engage in affairs with younger women.
To better illuminate the presence of psychoanalytical texts in
the narratives, it is necessary to clarify some Freudian concepts
expostulated in The Pleasure Principle and The Id and the Ego. Freud is
probably one of the theorists who dealt the most with the inner
workings of man’s psyche and sexuality. In The Pleasure Principle,
Sigmund Freud conjectures that feelings of pleasure and unpleasure
act imperatively upon human beings. Though pleasure does not
dominate over the course of mental processes, there is in our minds
a strong tendency towards the pleasure principle. Fortunately, that
“tendency is opposed by certain other forces or circumstances, so
the final outcome cannot be always in harmony with the tendency
towards pleasure” (5). Those forces are embodied by the ego and
the superego, which control the id. For Freud, the id constitutes the
“dark, inaccessible part of our personality;” It is “a chaos, a
cauldron full of seething excitations” full of energy reaching it from
the instincts. It has no organization, produces no collective will, but
only a striving to satisfy the instinctual needs “subject to the
observance of the pleasure principle.” Even if the ego’s instincts of
self-preservation replace the pleasure principle with the reality
principle, the first still does not abandon the goal of ultimately
obtaining pleasure, but rather demands and carries into effect the
delaying of satisfaction and temporarily accepts unpleasure. In
Freud’s view, the logical, rational, and orderly ego acts as a mediator
between the often antagonistic demands of the id and the superego,
opting for liberation and self-gratification sometimes and
censorship and conformity on the other. The superego, let it be
reminded, is the site reflecting societal beliefs, behaviors and
pressures. It stores social norms and mores and suggests us to


27

“make sacrifices even when sacrifices may not be in our best
interests.
Freud argued that we often repress what the id encourages us
to think and do—things the superego and ego correspondingly tell
us not to think and do—thereby forcing these “unacceptable”
wishes and desires into the unconscious. Sometimes, the ego is able
to “bring the influence of the external world to bear upon the id;
that is, the ego ideal or superego “represses, but also expresses the
most powerful impulses and most important libidinal vicissitudes.
Injunctions, prohibitions and repressions produce guilt because
conscience exercizes the moral censorhip” (Freud, The Ego and Id,
27). For example, in instances of successful negotiation of the
Oedipus complex, the ego desexualizes the object-cathexis and the
pleasure principle cedes its place to the reality principle. Freud also
warms that “if the ego has not succeeded in properly mastering the
Oedipus complex, the energy cathexis of the latter springing from
the id, will come into operation once more in the reactionformation of the ego ideal” (Ego and Id, 20-29). For Sigmund
Freud, the pleasure principle long persists as the method of working
employed by sexual instincts, which are hard to “educate”. These
instincts often succeed in overcoming the reality principle (6). Freud
also conjectures that women are more able to negotiate the dictates
of the id, because they can transform object-cathesises better than
men. We shall see further how these concepts enter into
consideration in Ba’s and Morrison’s narratives.
The representation of midlife crisis in Mariama Ba’s So
Long a Letter forms part of the narrative’s feminist discourse and
denunciation of the polygamy. Ba’s story takes the form of a long
letter the narrator, an actor in the story, addresses to her best friend
and confidante, Aissatou, who works as an interpreter at the
Senegalese embassy in the US. The epistolary form, let it be noted,
used to be a form privileged in psychological novels such as Pamela
and Clarissa of Samuel Richardson, a psychological novel being “a
type of novel in which the main interest lies in the mental and
emotional aspects of the characters” (OED). Like Ba’s novel, such
psychological novels did not emphasize the action undertaken by
main characters but rather focused on motivation and character
development. Ramatoulaye’s psychoanalysis of Modou Fall and men


in her surroundings is motivated by a quest of understanding which
begins after the “mirasse” ceremony and continues during the forty
days’ period of mourning following Modou Fall’s death. Those days
constitute a unique time of introspection for the narrator because
she has to refrain from wearing makeup, fine clothes, and attending
to her appearance in a way that is socially recognized as consistent
with situations of happiness and joy. Besides, she has to stay home
unless she has to go out for essential business. Thus, she has ample
time to take stock during this mourning period. McElaney relevantly
points out that “the ‘diary’ records a journey of self-understanding”
and a means for Ramatoulaye to examine her experience (111), but I
believe that Ramatoulaye does not simply attempt to understand
herself, but also the others, particularly Modou Fall and the other
male characters.
This quest for understanding males is triggered by her desire
to discover what motivated Modou Fall’s abandonment of his first
family after the “mirasse” ceremony, a ceremony during which the
deceased person’s wealth is shared between the members of the
family. “The mirasse” had exposed to others what was carefully
concealed” (9): it “had revealed that Modou Fall had been engulfed
into a mire of expenses; he died penniless and had left a pile of
acknowledgements of debts from “cloth and gold traders, homedelivery grocers and butchers, car purchase installments” (9).
Modou also still owed money to Sicap for the purchase of the villa
he had bought for his second wife and to the bank, for he had
borrowed four millions to send his in-laws to Mecca. These
revelations make Ramatoulaye wonder if Modou Fall was subject to
a form of disorder, and they also trigger a series of questions in her
mind. The text echoes these questions twice: “Was it madness,
weakness, irresistible love? What inner confusion led Modou Fall to
marry Binetou?” (11). Further, she asks herself: “Madness or
weakness? Heartlessness or irresistible love? What inner torment led
Modou Fall to marry Binetou?” (12). Ramatoulaye is thus like a
psychoanalyst studying events in retrospect to know the motivations
behind Modou’s irrational actions.
In the ensuing analeptical narrative characterized by several
digressions, the narrator seems to come to the conclusion that
Modou Fall was uniquely guided by his pleasure principle and his


29

ego ideal was silenced. The omniscient narrator first goes through
past events to recall Modou’s actions and motivations. She departs
from the first narrative line to recount with a happiness tainted with
nostalgia her falling in love at first sight with Modou, her wedding,
Aissatou’s union with Mawdo Ba, the crisis in Aissatou’s life
resulting from Mawdo’s taking a second wife instigated by his
mother Nabou. These digressions enable the narrator to insert
several texts psychoanalyzing men in her tale to deliver her feminist
discourse and expose at the same time Modou’s crisis. For example,
Aissatou’s letter to Mawdo Ba when he took a second wife under
the pressure of his old mother constitutes in fact an embedded
narrative showing men’s submission to the pleasure principle and
the dictates of their id. The narrator shows that though Mawdo
pretends that he married Nabou to prevent his old mother with a
declining health from dying from grief. Truth of the natter is he is
rather driven by his id, or the pleasure-seeking part of his psyche.
Aissatou infers that Mawdo Ba falls victim of his instincts and
silences his superego. The Freudian conceptualization becomes
obvious in Aissatou’s embedded narrative, as she proclaims:
“Mawdo, man is one: greatness and animal fused together. None of
his acts is pure charity. None is pure bestiality” (32). The discourse
about the prevalence of the id over the ego and superego in male
psyche is supported by the narrative discourse when Mawdo
justifies the visible outcome of his intimate relationship with his
second that he pretends not to be in love with as an instinctual act.
“You can’t resist the imperious laws that demand food and clothing
for man” he says. “These same laws compel the “male” in other
respects. I say male to emphasize the bestiality of instincts…You
understand…A wife must understand, once for all, and must
forgive; she must not worry herself about the ‘betrayals of the
flesh’” (34). The discourse about man’s instinctual behavior and
unfaithfulness is further supported by the depiction of Samba Diack
as a downright unfaithful man who made his wife Jacqueline plunge
into a profound state of depression.
Aissatou’s story constitutes the first part of the narrative’s
indictment of men’s unfaithfulness and their instinctual behaviors
which are further shown in the narrator’s recounting her own
predicament resulting from Modou Fall’s midlife crisis. She begins


with the Imam coming to announce to her that Modou took a
second wife. The narrator insists on the underhandedness of
Modou’s actions, his ridiculous and irrational behavior. Indeed, she
shows how Modou, a man in his late forties or early fifties, had
secretly and beyond all suspicion wooed and married Binetou, a
teenager and friend of her daughter barely seventeen. In describing
Modou’s “legalized” affair with young Binetou, the narrator
borrows a quite derisive and ironic tone drawing attention on the
ridiculous and pathetic sides of his behavior. She reveals how
Modou followed a strict diet to “break his stomach egg.” Further,
the compassionate but derisive narrator draws the reader’s attention
on Modou’s attempt to regain a lost youth:
And Modou would dye his hair every month. His
waistline painfully restrained by old-fashioned
trousers, Binetou would never miss a chance of
laughing wickedly at him. Modou would leave
himself winded trying to imprison youth in its
decline, which abandoned him on all sides (48).
Still, in the same vein, she reports rumors about Modou’s
going out with Binetou to night clubs where they would meet Daba
and his boyfriend. The text is quite eloquent and does not need any
comments: “It was a grotesque confrontation: on one side, an illassorted couple, on the other two well-matched people” (50). The
narrator insists that Modou was the laughing stock of young people
who named him “cradle-snatcher.” In describing, Modou’s
behavior, the narrator also relates with pain how Modou had made
new life plans that did not include his first family any more. This life
change seems irrational to the narrator. The narrative emphasizes
the irrationality of his behavior by juxtaposing it with his previous
characterization as a rational and practical trade union leader.
From the narrator’s perspective, Modou Fall thus seems to be
driven, as Freud would say, by “only a striving to bring about the
satisfaction of his “instinctual needs subject to the observance of
the pleasure principle.” The object of his pursuit is Binetou and he
sacrifices his first family at the altar of love. By wondering what
inner confusion led Modou to marry Binetou and satirizing
Modou’s pursuit of Binetou and critically presenting his


31

abandonment of his first family, Ba’s text clearly suggests that
Modou has lost all form of common sense and reason and that he is
subjected to his id. Modou’s ego and superego can therefore be
said to be submerged by the forces of his id. The satirical
presentation of his relationship with Binetou corroborates his lack
of common sense and impermeability to social and moral norms.
Modou Fall presents all the symptoms of the man going
through his midlife crisis. As noted above, the middle-aged man
suffering from midlife crisis often goes through a stage of
introspection or evaluation during which he measures his
achievements. This evaluation may result in drastic life changes.
Like middle-aged men undergoing their crises, Modou has traded in
his wife with a second one, a friend of her daughter. Going from
the portrayal of his infuriated then sympathetic first wife narrating
the events after his death, Modou Fall was undergoing a period of
disorder and disorganization. Indeed, Modou had given a new
direction to his life and projected a future that did not take into
account his first family that he had rejected: “His abandonment of
his first family (myself and the children) was the outcome of the
choice of a new life. He rejected us. He mapped out his existence
without taking our existence into account” (9). Although the
narrator is very critical towards Modou’s behavior, her examination
of male psyche and the conclusion that the male submits to the
dictate of his id in midlife lead her to forgive her husband. Though
Ramatoulaye is angry at the beginning of the narrative, she ends up
transcending that pain after her psychoanalytical exercise. Indeed,
Ba’s text seems to associate midlife crisis to men’s particular
predisposition to fall victim or pursue their pleasure principle.
Through Modou Fall’s characterization, Ba’s text problematizes
unfaithfulness and polygamy as a practice related to gender and
male sexuality. The narrator conjectures that whereas women
become more faithful and loving over years of marriage, men are
rather driven by their id or pleasure-seeking principles as they
become older:
Whereas a woman draws from the passing years
the force of devotion, despite the ageing of her
companion, a man, on the other hand restricts his


field of tenderness. His egoistic eye looks over his
partner’s shoulder. He compares what he had
with what he no longer has, what he has with
what he could have (41).
This interpretation of Ba parallels Freud’s opinion that
women are more able to transform object-cathexis than men.
The second narrative of our focus, Jazz (1992), shares
representations, discourses and approaches with Ba’s text as we’ll
endeavor to show even though it is postmodern. Whereas Ba’s
psychological novel, even though multi-voiced, discusses midlife in
a quite linear way, Morrison’s postmodern creative work
complicates the reader’s process of deciphering the “talking book”
that avoids stable meanings and/or constructs and deconstructs
them. Several critics have pointed out the unreliability of the
narrator because they consider that she questions her own tale. For
example, Anne-Marie Paquet-Deyris argues that “the narrative voice
eventually admits to "invent[ing] stories" (220) about the
characters” (229). I concur that Morrison’s text requires a
hermeneutic approach insofar as the reader has to gather fragments
of discourses emerging from the textual polyphony to construct
meaning. However, the narrator does not so much point at the
unreliability of her story, but rather at her inability to deliver a grand
master-narrative telling us with accuracy the lives of the characters,
especially when telling involves prediction. Her predictions fail to
circumscribe the evolving lives of the characters that develop,
change, and escape her grasp sometimes. Thus, it is not the story
which is questioned but rather some of her predictions about the
characters. Through the choice of this type of narrating instance,
Morrison replicates the complexity of language and life and lets the
reader hermeneutically unveil the meaning of the narrative.
Morrison’s Jazz lends itself to multiple readings by virtue of the
fact that many thematics are woven into the discourse. Among
these, it is noteworthy to make mention of the symbolism of the
title, Jazz, which is historically significant; for, Morrison’s story took
place in 1926, at the peak of the Harlem Renaissance. That period
was dubbed the Jazz age, an era of amazing creativity. The fact that
musical jazz is characterized by improvisation, may explain the


33

sense of confusion and absence of predetermination of characters
through the narrator’s discourse experienced by the reader. This
purposeful sense of wantonness and dynamism perhaps gives
meaning and credence to Editor Deborah McDowell’s cogent
remark about the character as process and not essence.
Morrison’s text parallels in several respect Mariama Ba’s one.
Like Ba’s text, Morrison’s narrative can be considered as a
psychological novel as it focalizes Joe’s motivations and
development throughout the different events that lead to his midlife
crisis. The talking book takes the reader into the meanders of Joe’s
mind to describe his turbulent midlife transition. The narrative
utilizes three main ways of exposing Joe’s psyche: the gossiping
narrator’s story, the characters’ speeches, and the harsh nonnarrative comments. Using a stream of consciousness-like
technique, the polyphonic narrative switches to different
perspectives. Fragments disseminated throughout this polyphony of
texts present a complex psychoanalytical portrait of Joe in his
midlife crisis. Joe Trace’s crisis parallels that of Modou Fall in
several respects. Like Modou, Joe is a middle-aged man who has
been married to his spouse for over twenty years. Like his
Senegalese counterpart, the fifty-year-old American character trades
his wife with a young girl who could have been the daughter he lost.
Dorcas is barely seventeen years old, a young girl buying candies
when Joe first catches a glimpse of her. The narrative plays on the
metaphor of the candy—Dorcas is assimilated to Joe’s candy—to
ironize on Joe’s affair which is presented like a mental regression.
Joe’s midlife crisis seems to originate from several factors
ranging from the alienating effects of the city, a resurging Oedipus
complex, marital dissatisfaction coupled with a quest for the
sensations he had lost. After twenty years in the alienating city, Joe’s
marital life had come to a dead-end: he had no kids with Violet,
which did not bother him, but his life was becoming monotonous.
Violet communicated more with the birds than with Joe who was
annoyed, puzzled, and depressed by his wife’s silence (24). This
distancing between Joe and Violet seems to be a result of the
alienating effects of their new environment. Indeed, little of the
busy and artificial city life “makes for love, but it does pump desire.
The woman who churned a man’s blood as she leaned all alone on a


fence by a country road might not even expect to catch his eye in
the City” (Jazz 34). Several factors lead to Joe’s unfaithfulness, but
the text clearly posits that he is over all driven by the pleasure
principle, and his supergo’s injunctions are completely drowned in
his quest for pleasure. As a matter of fact, Joe was unable to come
to terms with losing the sensations he felt with Violet. He could
remember the dates but had forgotten what it felt like. Whereas
Modou Fall has the possibility to take a second wife because his
culture and religion allow him to, Joe engages in an extramarital
relationship. His affair with Dorcas is an attempt to relive the
sensations he used to have in Vesper country, and Page supports
this view when he states that Joe “attempts to relive his
remembered joy (his “Victory”) in Vesper country” (56). Joe had
rented Malvonne’s room some time before he met Dorcas and
“chose” her. Joe, in fact, unlike Modou Fall is not so much driven
by passion or love, but rather by a conscious will to reenact love. He
“didn’t fall in love with Dorcas, but he rose in it” (135). In my view,
he never so much loved Dorcas, but rather what he re-felt when he
was fleshly involved with her. In reference to his feelings after
satisfaction of his carnal instincts with Dorcas, Joe reminisces: “You
would have thought I was twenty, back in Palestine satisfying my
appetite for the first time under a walnut tree” (129). This revelation
illustrates Joe’s substitution; Dorcas is an object-cathexis that filled
the void left by Violet; thus a substitute Violet. Besides, After
Dorcas’ death, he reveals that he is not stuck on Dorcas, but rather
on what he felt about her. Joe still loved Violet, but did not
remember what it felt like. The narrative reveals that love when
Felice observes, in reference to Joe: “I really believe he likes his
wife” (206). The narrator also recounts the display of public love
when Joe and Violet reconcile at the end of the novel.
Thus Joe is driven by his id and is trying to relive the fleeing
sensations he had with Violet back in Virginia when they were both
young. Alice Manfred suggests like Mariama Ba’s Ramatoulaye that
men are concupiscent beings when she says that Joe may do it
again.
Morrison’s representation of midlife crisis is however
complicated by the motif of the missing mother. Whereas, Ba’s text
assigns midlife mostly to men’s pursuit of the pleasure principle,


35

Morrison’s narrative links Joe’s midlife crisis to a more complex
psychological process. Indeed, Joe is no doubt seeking pleasure, but
he also seems to be affected by a resurfacing Oedipus complex.
Freud had explained that the mother constitutes an object-cathexis
in the boy’s early developmental stage, and as he grows up, the
mother’s figure is transformed into an alteration of the ego through
moral censorship and identification. He warns that “if the ego has
not succeeded in properly mastering the Oedipus complex, the
energy cathexis of the latter springing from the id, will come into
operation once more in the reaction-formation of the ego ideal”
(The Ego and the Id, 29). The narrative suggests that Joe’s affair with
Dorcas constitutes an attempt to come to term with his Oedipus
complex. He did not have a chance to come to terms with his
Oedipus complex because not only did his mother—Wild-- who
was crazy not nurse him, but also she had abandoned him at a very
young age. Joe only saw traces and signs of his mother in the woods
where she lived like an animal. He longed for a sign that would
confirm that he was Wild’s son and felt ashamed for being her son
at the same time. In Jazz, Dorcas constitutes a reaction-formation
of his superego. Joe recreates his mother or as Page says so
eloquently, “reconstructs her in Dorcas” (56). Dorcas, in Page’s
view is thus a reiteration of Joe’s never acknowledged mother, Wild
and Joe’s doubling of Dorcas and Wild becomes explicit in Joe’s
metaphor of tracking: “I tracked my mother in Virginia and it led
me right to her, and I tracked her Dorcas from borough to
borough” (130)” (Jazz 57).
Several textual clues support the view that Joe’s midlife crisis
and instability result from the effects of a resurging Oedipal
complex, which makes his superego inoperative. Joe and Dorcas
bond because they are both suffering from the loss of their
mothers. Because he does not know his mother, Joe carried a void
inside of him, an “inside nothing that traveled with him from then
on, except for the fall of 1925 when he had somebody to tell it”
(37). Like Joe, Dorcas had a “nothing” because she had lost her
mother as well. Another association between Dorcas and Wild,
which illustrates a conflict between the id and the superego, lies in
the ambivalent feelings Joe has towards the lover and the mother. I


had explained earlier that Joe dreaded the confirmation that he was
Wild’s son and he felt pleasure and shame at seeing her. He has the
same ambivalence towards Dorcas: On the one hand, the “young
good God girl” was a blessing to his life. On the other hand, she
“makes him wish he had never been born” because he felt shame.
This association between the young girl and the missing mother is
further signified through the murder of Dorcas. When he was
younger, Joe used to track Wild like a hunter and was reminded that
Wild was not an animal but somebody’s mother. In a state of
mental confusion resulting from Dorcas’ abandonment, Joe tracks
her like he used to track Wild and shoots her. Besides, Joe is
depicted as a child in the narrative. Joe’s predilection for candy is
quite illustrative of his regression or mental stage. Dorcas, for
instance is “Joe’s personal sweet—like candy.”
Like Ramatoulaye in Ba’s text, the gossiping female narrator
presents Joe’s midlife crisis as a transgression of social and moral
norms, a period of change, instability, and confusion. She presents
Joe’s behavior as something ridiculous and shocking, which suggests
that Joe’s superego is not operational. The gossiping female narrator
insists on the difference of age, when the narrative enquires if
Dorcas was the daughter who took the man or the daughter who
had fled the womb. In addition, the narrator derides Joe’s
immaturity or mental regression. She and Alice describe Joe as a kid.
The narrator explains that even though he wears “button-up-thefront and round-toed shoes,” Joe is a “kid, a strapling, and candy
could still make smile” (121). Joe’s mental regression and lack of
maturity and common sense are further illustrated in these lines,
when she says in reference to Dorcas:
She was Joe’s personal sweet—like candy. It was
the best thing, if you were young and had just got
to the City. That and the clarinets and even they
were licorice sticks. But Joe has been in the city
for twenty years and is not young any more. I
imagine him as one of those men who stop
somewhere around sixteen inside…..he’s a kid
(121).


37

Thus Joe is portrayed as a man who blindly pursues pleasure
and behaves like a kid. Like Modou Fall he seems to have lost all
common sense, which suggests that his superego and ego fail to
contain the instincts surging from his id. Looking back on his life,
Joe, himself acknowledges that his involvement with Dorcas was
ridiculous. He even suggests that he was experiencing a period of
confusion and lack of discernment when he compares himself to a
snake that had gone blind before shedding skin for the last time
(Jazz 129).
Thus, Both Ba and Morrison represent male midlife crisis in
their narratives through the characterization of Modou Fall and Joe
Trace. In So Long a Letter, Ramatoulaye’s husband, Modou Fall,
trades her first wife for a beautiful young girl who has not even
graduated from high school. To add to Ramatoulaye’s pain, this girl
is the very friend of her daughter who used to study in her house. In
addition to that, Modou Fall completely deserts her first family
because her young wife would get angry as soon as he talked about
the first family. Modou Fall does even respect the usual shifts
between the two families. He no longer comes home and leaves his
first wife alone to face the heavy burden of bringing up her
numerous children and satisfying the financial and emotional needs
of her large family. Modou Fall’s behavior is symptomatic of the
middle-aged man going through midlife crisis. His behavior
becomes irrational, and he seems to have mentally regressed and
gone back to a stage of youth. The irrational behaviour of
Morrison’s middle-aged Joe in Jazz parallels that of Modou Fall in
several respects. Like Modou Fall, Joe is a middle-aged man in his
fifties who had been married to her youth sweetheart for over
twenty five years. He also trades his wife for a girl who could have
been his own daughter. Indeed, the young girl he secretly meets at
Malvonne’s place and goes on trips with, Dorcas, is a young girl
barely seventeen. Like Binetou, she has not even graduated from
high school. Both men seem to be subjected to the dictates of their
ids and experience a period of instability and confusion. They are
portrayed as lacking common sense. Jazz and So Long a Letter can
also be termed psychological novels because their critical and
ideologically-oriented female narrators do not simply show and tell


the behaviors of Joe Trace and Modou Fall, but they also try to
depict the motivations and forces behind their “irrational” actions.
They posit that men are mainly driven by the pleasure principles
and the id. Joe Trace’s midlife crisis seems to be more complex
because a resurging oedipal complex complicates his crisis. Both
narratives bear Freudian overtones in their characterization of the
main male characters.

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Hermans, J M, and Piotr K Oles. “Midlife Crisis in Men: Affective
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Kamara, Gibreel. “The Feminist Struggle in the Senegalese Novel:
Mariama Ba and Sembene Ousmane.” Journal of Black Studies 32.2
(Nov. 2001): 212-228.
Klaw, Barbara. “Mariama Ba's Une si longue lettre and Subverting a
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440-69.
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W. W. Norton & Company, 2001. 1021-1025.


The Construction of Self (-Identity) in Hausa Verbal Art
Chaibou Elhadji OUMAROU*

Résumé:
La construction de l’identité personnelle dans l’art verbal
haoussa
Les premières études sur les traditions et littératures orales africaines ont
été largement axées sur la façon dont l'environnement influence l'artiste
traditionnel et son travail. S'inspirant de l'anthropologie et de la litterature
médiévale, ces études étaient plus intéressées à étudier les modes de vie
des peuples dits primitifs que d’analyser leurs récits oraux comme des
œuvres de création littéraire individuelle. L'intérêt dans l'artiste traditionnel
comme créateur d’œuvres artistiques est un développement récent dans la
recherche et critique littéraire contemporaines. Conformément à ce nouvel
intérêt, des chercheurs comme Isidore Okpewho (1992) ont appelé leurs
collègues à travailler pour l’identification des techniques pouvant
contribuer à singulariser des artistes traditionnels en accordant une
attention particulière à la façon dont ces artistes créent leurs identités
individuelles parfois contre les pressions des traditions locales. C’est dans
cet esprit que cet article explore la construction de l’identité personnelle et
artistique de certains artistes haoussa à travers l'auto-identification dans
leurs chansons. En d'autres termes, l’article va examiner la création de
l’identité personnelle et artistique, c’est-à-dire comment un artiste
traditionnel exprime ses préoccupations privées ou individuelles distinctes
des préoccupations collectives dans le contexte de la culture populaire. En
utilisant des approches théoriques sur les cultures et littératures orales ou
populaires, l’article va donc examiner des chansons des artistes populaires
haoussa en focalisant sur les tensions entre leurs horizons d'attente sous la
forme de leurs aspirations à la liberté, la réussite personnelle et le bonheur
*

Enseignant-chercheur à l’Université Abou Moumouni, Niger.

42

C. E. OUMAROU : Construction of Self in Hausa Verbal Art

d'une part et sur les contraintes sociales et culturelles inhérentes à leurs
communautés d'autre part, témoignant ainsi d'un vrai travail de création
littéraire.

Mots clés
auto-identification ; identite ; art verbal ; Haoussa ; Yan Kama ;
médiéval ; anthropologie ; philologie; Niger ; Nigeria.

Introduction
Does literary creation exist in oral civilizations? What is
literary creativity in oral literature? In other words, does self exist in
oral literature? Or does the oral artist exist as an individual
expressing or narrating his self or her self in a popular, oral culture?
Many scholars asked these same questions before, but their
answers have been different or even contradictory. On my part I
first intend to explore the causes of the scholars’ divergence in their
interpretations of literary creativity in oral civilizations in general
and in oral literature in particular as well as the influence those
interpretations have had on the early studies on African oral
traditions and literatures. This exploration will also stand as a review
of the literature in the study and criticism of oral civilization and
literature in general and of African oral literatures in particular.
Then in the second part I will focus on the artists Zabia Hussei and
Dogon Loma, a burlesque comedian, both from Niger and others
from Nigeria such as Maman Shata Katsina.
My interest in these artists lies in how they construct their
identities as artists through self-identification as authorial signature
in their oral songs or performances. In other words, the paper will
investigate notions of self as a mark of literary creativity and identity
through the creative endeavour of these oral artists in their attempt
to express either their private or individual concerns as distinct from
the collective ones in their traditional, community-oriented context
of popular culture or to single out some individuals as major
achievers or heroes. But what is literary creativity in oral literature,
to begin with?


43

According to M. a M. Ngal (1977:336), in every work in oral
tradition “…there occurs a true labor of creativity that is not the
work of an anonymous community or of associations due to pure
chance but is rather the product of the active dynamism of the
individual genius.” The question that arises, pursues Ngal, is
whether the presence of the creative act is passive or active. Passive
if the artist undergoes the act from society without any resistance
and active if the act is personal and original. Since tradition is a
communal reservoir from which everybody can draw something,
creativity is the active reaction of the artist who re-expresses that
given in his/her own fashion. For it is that fashion or style, argues
Ngal, “that truly constitutes literary creation.”(p.343) In the same
line of thought, Rosalind Thomas (1992) sees the signs of self
through the expression of individual feelings, the mention of one’s
own personal affairs and personality.
But scholars on medieval Europe who are influenced by the
nineteenth century schools of thought like Evolutionism and
Romanticism argued that the self or individual did not exist in the
Middle Ages in general and before the Renaissance in particular. In
a discussion on epic poetry in Finland, for example, Lauri Honko
(1990:3) relates the prevailing idea that epic poetry is the creation of
the collectivity to the influence of the romantic period. As a result,
Honko concludes, “The moment a single author could be singled
out, the product ceased to be folklore, because collectivity was the
dividing line between folk poetry and art poetry.” It follows from
Honko’s argument that the birth of art poetry is concomitant with
the birth of the individual author, which in turn implies a break with
the ancient notion of collective authorship mostly symbolized by
the Troubadour in Europe.
This break is also the argument of Gregory B. Stone in the
book entitled The Death of the Troubadours: the Late Medieval Resistance
to the Renaissance (1994). As a matter of fact, Stone supports the
notion of collective authorship by describing medieval Europe as a
period in which “the singular, individual subject is in fact plural, or I
is essentially identical to the they. The medieval I can only think what
they think, can only say what they have already said. (Stone: 2-3;
emphasis in the original) In other words, the concept of the
individual or self as an independent entity and identity did not exist

44


in the pre-renaissance or medieval world (see also Peter Haidu
1974:7).
Both Honko and Stone equate individualism or selfhood with
Renaissance, which means a break between the medieval and
modern worlds. While Honko speaks of the moment a single author
could be identified as the birth of art poetry, Stone speaks of
Renaissance as the beginning of the subjective self. This is why for
Stone, the Renaissance or modern world is characterized by an
“unprecedented birth of the concept and possibility of the
individual, subjective self, the private, self-determining, unique,
autonomous ego.” (Stone1994: 1)
Lee Patterson (1990:92) also sees the Renaissance as the
beginning of the modern world along with its humanism,
nationalism, the proliferation of competing value systems, the
secure grasp of a historical consciousness, aesthetic production as
an end in itself, and the emergence of the idea of the individual. But
what were the real obstacles, if there was any, to the emergence of
self before the late medieval period?
For scholars like A. J. Minnis (1984) the most important
obstacle to the emergence of self in that period was the influence of
the Christian religion. This is because in the eyes of the medieval
Christians, the Bible was the most authoritative text par excellence
and God was its Supreme author. Next to God as the primary
author came the ancient pagan “author” whose experience and style
were needed for the interpretation of certain biblical texts.
Moreover, because the pagan “author” was not Christian, he could
claim the authorship of his texts, which is the reason why he was
considered arrogant at the time in contrast to the humble “author”,
the one reluctant to claim the authority of his ideas and style. It was
therefore the existence of humble authors in a greater number that
led to the emergence of the medieval notion of a collective
authorship as described by Gregory B Stone (1994) and others
above. For that reason, comments Minnis, the twelfth century
exegetes (and also early literary critics) were mostly interested in
human authors as vessels of God’s authority and as such important
only to the extent that they uncovered the Biblical truth. It was
therefore this pattern that the exegetes strove to describe, not the
specific quality or creativity of any human author.


45

As for Stephen G. Nichols (1977:88), the influence of
philology on medieval studies is responsible for the neglect of the
human author’s creativity and stylistic originality. In fact, Nichols
has noted that philology limited the role of the artist, the poet in
particular, to that of “a discoverer, an unveiler.” (idem.) It comes as
no surprise that for Nichols, modern theories like formalism and
structuralism that have attempted to kill the author found their
origin in this medieval practice.
Other obstacles came from theories based on limited areas of
study and consciously avoiding the creative effort of the oral artist.
In Troubadours and Eloquence (1975), Linda M. Paterson disputes one
example of those theories that attribute the lack of individuality to
the troubadour artist on the ground that the theory in question is
mainly concerned with the lyric poetry of the trouvères oral artists
in northern France. Paterson concludes that such a theory,
“consciously avoiding individuality” (2), is inadequate to account for
every literary production from different contexts through space and
time.
The efficient cause or creative individual artist, notes A. J.
Minnis (1981), started to emerge in the thirteenth century with John
Spencer who was one of the first artists to accept personal
authorship or responsibility of their texts. As a matter of fact,
Spencer refused to follow the convention of his time by accepting
“full responsibility for the sinful material that he wrote, and hopes
that Christ in his mercy will forgive his sins.” (Minnis 1981:379)
Like the authors mentioned before, Minnis (1977) also
considers the late Medieval period as the moment when the human
author started to receive critical attention and interest. In the light
of this change in attitude in the late Medieval period, scriptural
exegetes started to be more interested in the adornments of
language or style of the works under their consideration. Thus they
stressed the fact that the human authors could manipulate “their
styles with full awareness of the power of rhetorical figures.”
(Minnis 1977:56) What is more, the thirteenth century
commentators went even further as they started to used style as
“the basis of an argument about another literary point, for example,
about the authorship of a text.” (Minnis: idem.)

46


But if the change in attitude in favour of the adornment of
language or style of the artist started in the thirteenth century, why
did it take long to be accounted for in the study of African literature
in general, and of oral literature in particular? One important reason
has been the influence of movements like Romanticism and
Evolutionism on the early studies on African oral traditions and
literatures (see also Emilio Jorge Rodriguez (1994). Drawing from
anthropological and medieval written discourses, these studies were
in fact more interested in seeing oral narratives as records of a
people’s way of life than as works of individual literary creation,
making the interest in the oral performer as an individual artist a
recent development.
No wonder that while analyzing the new trends in oral
tradition research in Africa, Ruth Finnegan (1991:111) notes “more
interest in questions of artistry and individual expression than
before when the stereotypes of ‘communal’ culture and lack of
change within cultures or contexts defined as ‘traditional’ often
precluded the apparent relevance of such questions.” Finnegan also
notices a second interest developing in the oral-written interaction
and the process of change in general. Change is now granted to all
cultures, not just to western ones. For all cultures do change and
not necessarily in the evolutionist or linear way as thought by some
western-centred intellectuals. In line with this new interest, scholars
like Isidore Okpewho (1992) called on their colleagues to look for
the particular techniques and references in the African oral
performances that could point to a particular composer in a
community, paying attention to ways in which the personality of the
oral artist emerges and is sometimes forcefully asserted against the
pressure of local tradition. An important objective of this article is
to take up that call by examining the processes by which Hausa
popular artists construct their artistic identities. As a result, the
article is an attempt to explore how the Hausa oral artists below
struggle to construct their artistic and personal identities through
techniques of their own.


47

Some Hausa Oral Artists and their Struggle to Construct
Artistic and personal Identities
Zabia Hussei
As I attempted to show elsewhere (Elhadji Oumarou 2010),
Hussei’s songs are influenced by her personal experience. Married
off by her father to one of her cousins she does not love, the young
singer promised to comply with her father’s decision as a way to
show her respect for both her father and tradition. Happy and
honored to see his daughter comply with his wishes and demands,
Zabia's father gave her his blessings and authorized her to resume
her singing, free to go anywhere to perform.
To avoid conflicts with her father, Zabia uses a style of
disguise to veil the tensions between her ambition of selfexpression,
self-reliance,
self-confidence
and
economic
independence on the one hand and her community’s cultural norms
and family restrictions or pressures on the other hand. Examples of
those tensions and conflicts are expressed through the young
singer’s regrets concerning her promise to her father that she will
never leave her unloved husband. She voices the regrets by not
encouraging other girls to follow her steps in making that kind of
promise. Instead, she advises them to marry the boys they love
because 'the promise of a young girl is to love the boy who loves
her’, (alƙawalin gomma ta so mai son ta).
Likewise, in the following excerpt that sounds like a synopsis
of her bitter experience in marriage, the mature singer encourages
the young girls to love the boys who love them rather than accept a
forced marriage:
Domin na ƙaya ta huje salka,
in don ni gomma ki so mai son ki
I don’t mind a thorn piercing a waterskin
I don’t mind a girl loving the man who loves her.
The expression is allusive: a waterskin is a very handy
domestic utensil in the Sahel region where water is a rare
commodity and where carrying a waterskin is a marker of identity.
Here a thorn piercing a waterskin can be interpreted as an attack on

48


tradition, a call for destruction of the old system, a call for change,
particularly where marriage is concerned. The maturing singer
signals her engagement to the cause of female liberation and her
opposition to abusive paternal authority.
Hussei extends her rebellious message to the male audience,
especially young men on whom she calls to resist forced marriage by
securing the means to pay the dowry for the young women they
love: ‘young men, he who loves a girl should marry at his own
expense’, [Samari ma duk mai son gomma shi armi ta kai nai] (Elhadji
Oumarou 1996:80-81; revised 2010). This call for independence
derives in part from the singer’s dissatisfaction with “zumunta” or
blood relations, often strengthened by the added bonds of marriages,
regardless of the partners’ willingness or unwillingness. Hussei’s anger
with this situation leads her to virulent attacks on “zumunta”. She
laments in one song that "Family isn’t worth a thing nowadays,” [yohi
sakare zumuntar yanzu] (Elhadji Oumarou 1996: 82-83; revised in 2010).
The theme of regret of unnatural submission to paternal
authority surfaces constantly in metaphorical terms in the songs of
maturity:
Zamman alwashi cikkar rabo shika sawa:
alwashin kara a sha shi da ɗanye.
Living by a pledge is risky;
the pledge of sugar-cane is to give juice when it is fresh.
(Elhadji Oumarou 1996:58-59; revised in 2010)
Another risk is to become pregnant by the husband she does
not love. After the experience of motherhood, the female persona
in one of Zabia Hussei’s later songs, who as we now understand is
clearly an autobiographical voice, compares herself to dry sugarcane which can no longer produce juice. Added to the notion of
regret is a sense of lost opportunity, deeply felt with the increase in
years and the waning of beauty:
Alwashin kara a sha shi da ɗanye,
in ya kekashe ku damre darni
The pledge of a fresh stalk of sugar-cane is to give up its juice;
when old and dry, it is only good for fencing.

Revue Safara numéros 9 et 10 - 2011

Revue Safara numéros 9 et 10 - 2011

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Revue Safara numéros 9 et 10 - 2011