TRANSNATIONAL RESEARCH ASSOCIATES




DECONSTRUCTION AND POST-COLONIAL AFRICAN NATIONALISM:
KHATIBI, KHAIR-EDDINE AND KOUROUMA, A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS.

by A. F. Madsen. M.Ed.

The complexity of post-colonial African socio-political development is such that a cursory analysis of deconstructionist thought during this period will inevitably fall short of "adequacy." Nonetheless, certain primary elements characterizing key literary resistance movements within a selected range of nations can be explored with some degree of accuracy and satisfaction.

It is our intent, therefore, to present a general overview of the status of literary revolt in North and Sub-Saharan Africa during the period subsequent to 1960, with contrastive reference to one Black Resistance Writer, Amadou Kourouma, and to two Moroccan writers, Mohammed Khair-Eddine and Adelkebir Khatibi.

Prior to doing so, however, a few comments on the nature of deconstruction would be in order, primarily to provide a workable and uniform framework within which to proceed.

Contrary to commonly misconstrued interpretations of the fundamental tenets of literary deconstruction, overt rejection of Western Metaphysics, Reason and Logic is neither at the basis of Jacques Derrida's thinking nor in alignment with Lacanian principles reflective of the post-structuralist transition pioneered at Yale in the 1960s. While a distinct movement away from close association with the metaphysical models of previous decades is apparent, the actual emphasis within mainstream deconstructionist thought builds upon the Saussurian concept of sign, signification and, hence, meaning.

Further embellishing this tool of literary analysis and interpretive endeavor, Derrida and one of his more prominent "disciples-in-arms", Abdelkebir Khatibi, a Moroccan by birth, postulated the unorthodox notion that commonly accepted signs need not be interpreted universally by the populace at large in a single, uniform sense. Indeed, meanings could differ and rarely might what one says be actually what one means. The degree to which each of these theorists contributed to the development of deconstuctionism in the formal sense varies, of course, and is open to subjective interpretation. It may be fair to state that Derrida is recognized as a theorist, while Khatibi applied the principles of this radical new perspective to his socio-political objectives. In the period immediately preceding Algeria's accession to Independence, and shortly thereafter, Khatibi was influenced by three North African writers of consequence, Kateb Yacine, Driss Chraibi, and marginally by Khair-Eddine, whose bitterness and 'literary guerilla warfare' seemed to to be mildly echoed in Khatibi's approach to denigration of former French domination of the Maghreb. In the case of Khatibi, however, deconstructionist principles, as opposed to sheer rancor and wrath, were applied with as much intelligence as venom.

Several years after Independence was granted all North, West and Equatorial African French Colonies, Khatibi's realization that a distinctly authentic post-colonial identity must be forged began to surface in works such as his doctoral dissertation, in which he launched a series of well-reasoned challenges against the types of reforms which had begun to take hold in Morocco and Algeria.

In pursuit of his ideological objectives, Khatibi excelled in the application of tropes, in that he moved from mere sign toward intentionality, or purpose, in his writing. He was able to exercise a wide range of creative skills by impactfully featuring lyrical, but savage irony, without becoming overbearing, and moved into the sociological realm, for example, with ease. In works such as La Blessure du Nom Propre (1974), he displayed the mettle and fiber of which he was made; indeed, Khatibi polished his acerbic prose, and rushed headlong into a concerted attempt at destruction of French culture, ideals and jurisprudence, applying the deconstructive rationale of Derrida, Lacan and de Man.

Not content with the destruction of the French language as it had been taught and applied in Morocco prior to Independence, Khatibi tends toward reconstruction or recreation of this very language, but in accordance with his own terms, norms and emphases.

Elsewhere in both Morocco and Francophone Africa, writers were also experimenting with the principles of deconstruction in an attempt to realign the thinking of their respective populations. Khair-Eddine, from the South of the Cherifien Kingdom, specifically from Agadir, in keeping with the boldness and aggression of many Arab writers, is known both for his admixture of Arabic terminology and his deconstructionist orientation in terms of confrontational prose form and content. In Corps Negatif (1968) and, later, Ce Maroc (1975), Khair-Eddine mirrors the explosive syntax and dynamism of Khatibi.

Post-colonial deconstructionist writers of the Maghreb are by no means superficial. Indeed, they discuss primordial themes developed by many of the most revered European thinkers of the 20th Century, among whom figure Camus, Genet, de Beauvoir and Gide. Thematic material includes, but is not limited to, identity, commitment, alienation, revolt and the absurd.

While North African prose may prove, in the hands of Khatibi, Khair-Eddine and Yacine, virile, counter-cultural and innovative, its Sub-saharan equivalent, manifested by Amadou Kourouma or Chinua Achebe, is equally deconstructionist, but reflective of values and symbols more commonly associated with Third World ideation.

In his analysis of the socio-political impact which deconstructionism can have on all societies, whether those of industrialized nations, such as Germany, or those of less developed countries, to wit Algeria, Morocco, Guinea and Nigeria, David Hirsch builds dramatically toward universal condemnation of many of Derrida's, and by extension Khatibi's, basic principles, explaining that such a rationale as that which essentially tears down "language" (or, we read between the lines, the "Judaic Ethic") can lead to holocaust and annihilation of entire ethnic enclaves. Hirsch, however, is particularly sensitive to certain sub-themes which have affected his people historically and may be viewed as grinding, to some extent, the proverbial ax.

Free of preconceived notions and motivated to explore the possibilities of deconstruction, Khatibi, casting aside the narrowly defined cloak of Maghrebian Orientalist thinking,
moves toward a broadened attack on the vestiges of French values which he apparently abhors. This attack constitutes an integral part, in his view, of establishing a new, non-European national identity.

Yet, if Khatibi deplores the legacy of the French in socio-dynamic terms, he is willing to acknowledge that the colonizer has perhaps benevolently imposed a "state of mind" on the contemporary Maghrebin.

"Il nous faut marcher, marcher infiniment. Et en cette marche, nous sommes lies au reve bilingue."

["We must march, march infinitely. And on this march, we are tied to the bilingual dream."]

Indeed, Khatibi is obsessed with issues of unceasing progress, identity, imagination and language. Having inherited mixed messages from both his El Jadida ancestors and the European conqueror, Khatibi is preoccupied with the uprooting and the rerooting of his values. He dramatically acknowledges this phenomenon by concluding that Eastern and Western value-systems cannot be separated, and, regardless of upheavals in centuries past, the modern Maghrebin must live with the nightmare of transformed, distorted ancestral and metaphysical perspectives.

On the other hand, Khair-Eddine's prose is reflective of what amounts, through his eyes, to the savagery and virtually Conradian horror of the colonizer's occupation. Farther from the moderating influences of Rabat, Casablanca and Marrakesh, Khair-Eddine's city of Agadir witnessed the tumult of unsettled conditions existing even into the 1960s in Southern Morocco. In fact, the United States and France participated, if not entirely jointly, in the "stabilization" of this sector in response to perceived threats, just prior to independence.

The rebellion manifested in Khair-Eddine's unbalanced syntactical structures, so evident upon initial perusal of his text, Moi L'Aigre, is striking by virtue of its powerful imagery and disjointed sequences. The writer seems overwhelmed by the strictures, constraints and conventions of French grammar and rejects all notion of "proper" form and content. This departure from the harmony, grace and music of the French language is, of course, purposeful and represents an overt attack on all that was imposed upon him individually and upon Moroccan society collectively.

Khair-Eddine's ambivalence and hostility toward his own work mirrored deep-seated, gutteral hatred of the colonizer. Indeed, in his experimental text Moi L'Aigre, which nonetheless was received quite seriously, a friend's denigration of the narrator's "interminable" novel-within-a-novel reflects the severity with which Khair-Eddine views literature in the conventional French form and decries, in scatological terms, the offensive character, in his estimation, of European writing. The narrator, dipping into free, indirect style, exclaims:

"Il savait parfaitement que mon livre serait interminable, que je me consumerais a le sortir, Du fumier pour consciences seches voila ton bouquin. Tu ne quitteras pas l'etable tant que le fumier y puera."

["He knew perfectly well that my book would be interminable, that I would totally exhaust myself getting it finished. Dung for dried-out consciences, that's what your book is. You will not leave the stable as long as the dung still stinks."]

While, in this instance, Khair-Eddine conforms, at very least, to essentially acceptable syntactical principles (punctuation proving an exception), his thoughts are scarcely elevating.

This novel proceeds to excoriate both post-colonial Moroccan social trends and European rhetorical accomplishments, all the while, somewhat reminiscent of Khatibi and Kourouma, converting language into a blunt instrument of linguistic confrontation and assault. It would seem that Khair-Eddine, far from forging a new nationalism, focuses on destruction of the old, placing him at Khatibi's very point of departure.

The destructive, even vile, nature of his insulting pronouncements is indication enough of Khair-Eddine's literary orientation:

"J'avais ouvert ma braguette, passe mon penis sur les pages de ce texte, me tenant dans la pose du combattant..."

["I had opened my fly, and had placed my penis on the pages of this text, striking a combatant's pose..."]

Rising above this level of rather frank effrontery, the deconstructionist utterances of Kourouma, while deriding Western metaphysical convention, seem to offer a tangible solution, partially based on a "retour a l'authenticite"[i.e. a return to authenticity], which, in Zaire, Togo and, to a lesser degree, in Ivory Coast, during the 1980s, was the manifestation of Kourouma's embryonic thoughts expressed quite dramatically in "The Suns of Independence", specifically in the scenes relating to the protagonist Fama's death, signalling the knell of ancestral values.

Deconstruction, as an analytical tool, is far removed from the dogmatic principles of the empiricism of Hume, Locke and Berkeley, or of the ideological tenets of Marxism. In fact, as Kourouma seems to indicate in his masterwork, qualifying him for a major Canadian literary award, socialism in post-colonial Guinea, a country which broke more sharply with French commercial and political ties than other former colonies, was opposed by a significant segment of society, even though it ultimately triumphed during the quasi-entirety of Sekou Toure's presidency. We see evidence of the de facto primacy of socialism, and Kourouma's opposition to it, in these revealing phrases drawn from The Suns of Independence:

"Konate missed his country, he loved it and felt that socialism would be a good thing later on; but as with all big babies, the birth and first steps were hard, too hard: famine, shortages, forced labor, prison... It was in order to temper the harshness of socialism that he hung about the borders, dealing illegally in black-market currency and smuggled goods."

If Kourouma, in a multitude of passages, casts aspersions on the underlying components of Western thought, and manipulates language as a weapon of opposition to pre-existing colonial values, he, unlike Khair-Eddine, has been thought to posit certain positive notions, devoid of bitterness, which may have assisted developing nations to emerge with many traditional values intact. Yet, his seeming obsession with the baseness of certain aspects of West African society (mass rape, pillaging, graft, disease and murder) has detracted from the impact his novels may have otherwise had.

While it is constructive to criticize societal shortcomings, the invasive and graphic portrayal of human suffering in a widely disseminated publication may prove counter-productive. Unfortunately, one is reminded, within this context, of Grove Press' printing of Selby's Last Exit to Brooklyn, which created a sensation, but was ultimately found lacking in redeeming social merit. Whether Selby subscribed to deconstruction, however, is surely the "stuff" of another analysis.

With Khair-Eddine and Kourouma differing in emphasis, yet still perceived as largely "negative" in their overall production, Khatibi's more legitimate embracing of deconstruction may surface as the dominant harbinger of hope and promise for post-colonial African societies. Nonetheless, even he has acknowledged the pluralistic nature of Maghreb culture and is struggling, as are perhaps 60% of North Africans, with issues related to the historical French, Spanish and Italian presence. In Sub-Saharan Africa, as well, single-party regimes -- perhaps in tacit defiance of writings such as those of Khatibi -- are by far dominant, with electoral politics, upon close examination, in a shambles. While the rapid introduction of electoral reforms and participation seems commendable, many newly elected regimes, as described in Kourouma and implied in Khatibi, fell from power or were fraught with problems of military usurpation of authority.

What this means for African nationalism and cultural identity is open to interpretation. Those with personal insight into African affairs, in the 1970s and 1980s, at the highest levels of government, but whose fingers were or are, nevertheless, on the pulse of the common people, would be tempted to discount the impact of Derrida's deconstructionism as irrelevant and entirely too abstract, by virtue alone of low levels of literacy and access to published materials in lands where children scrounge for one nutritionally imbalanced meal per day, the current plight of, for example, Zairians, Chadians and Burkina Fasoans.

The true influence of Derrida's, Khatibi's and Khair-Eddine's thought will be centered on the ruling classes of these nations and, in this analyst's opinion, may spell disaster and further human misery in the decades ahead. The dismantling of language, of meaning, of commonality simply cannot lead to the "reconstruction" of ancestrally-based societies, artistically, creatively or politically.


REFERENCES


Bloom, H. Deconstruction and Criticism, Seabury Press, New York, N.Y., 1979.

Collier, R. B. Regimes in Tropical Africa, University of California Press, Berkeley, California, 1982.

Hirsch, D.H. The Deconstruction of Literature: Criticism after Auschwitz, University of New England Press, Hanover, N.H. 1991.

Khair-Eddine, M. Moi L'Aigre, Editions du Seuil, Paris VI, 1970.

Khatibi, A. Maghreb Pluriel, Denoel, Paris VII, 1983.

Kourouma, A. The Suns of Independence, Reprographics, Las Cruces, N.M., 1995.

Wolf, M.E. "Rethinking the Radical West: Khatibi and Deconstruction", L'Esprit Createur,
Vol. XXXIV, No. 2, Summer 1994.