Description

In this innovative and skillful study, Hélène Tissières investigates the "circulations" or transmigrations at work among multiple francophone African cultural forms, ranging geographically between North and sub-Saharan Africa, culturally between words and silences, verbally between spoken and written language, and aesthetically between textual and visual images. Hers is one of the first books to challenge established barriers between the two regions, showing how such a division leads to numerous problems in ignoring the various influences and intertwinements that exist between them. To supplement her theoretical argument, she then documents these "transmigrations" in the works of four writers: the Tunisian Abdelwahab Meddeb, the Cameroonian Werewere Liking, the Congolese Tchicaya U Tam'Si, and the Algerian Assia Djebar.