Full Description
Colonial Legacies in Francophone African Literature: The School and the Invention of the Bourgeoisie by Mohamed Kamara examines the representation and lasting impact of the colonial school and bourgeoisie in Francophone sub-Saharan literature. Mohamed Kamara contends that the so-called indigenous colonial bourgeoisie was invented by the colonizer through the school to perpetuate the ideology of the colonizer, and he interrogates the policies and practices of the school and the ways they were informed by discourses of racial difference. While many works, like those authored by Gadjigo and Alessandri, have interrogated the impact of the colonial school on the African individual and society, they do not focus on the relationship between colonial education and the emergence of the African bourgeois and bourgeoise. Accordingly, this book analyzes the various literary strategies used in selected texts to paint a portrait of the school and the class it produced in view of showing the organic relationship between the two. This book adds a fresh perspective on the intimate connection between the school and social transformation in Francophone sub-Saharan Africa. Kamara suggests that the best solution for the continent resides in the continent's ability to take what is good in its precolonial past and combine it with what makes sense in today's reality.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Colonialism, Colonial Education, and the Invention of a Subaltern Class
Chapter 1: Pedagogy of the Colonized: Theories, Ideologies, and Policies of the Colonial School in Francophone Black Africa
Chapter 2: From Theory to Practice: The Colonial School in Francophone African Literature
Chapter 3: Making Good Wives and Good Mothers: The Education of Women in Colonial West Africa
Chapter 4: When Slaves, Bastards, and Dogs Rule: The Colonial School as Agent of Social Transformation
Chapter 5: The Colonial School and the Emergence of New African Types
Chapter 6: Reality or Invention? Literary Representation of the Bourgeoisie on Trial
Conclusion: A Literature of Failure
Bibliography
About the Author
