رسائل الماجستير
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Item An Afro-centrist Perspective of cultural affirmation and social progress in p'Bitek's Song of Lawino and Song of ocol and Ngugi's I will marry when I want(University of Algiers. Faculty of Letters and Languages, 2009) Boucherifi, Boualem; Bensemmane, M’hamed (Directeur de thèse)This dissertation studies the militant socio-cultural and political positions of Okot p'Bitek, as well as Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Ngugi wa Mirii. The focus is on Okot's long poems Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol, and on the Ngugi play I Will Marry When I Want. S L and S O truly epitomise Okot's philosophy of 'Africa's Cultural Revolution'. In S L, the poet charges his epic character, Lawino with the mission of presenting, interpreting and eventually defending the traditional aspects of her community. Equipped with a remarkable charisma, eloquent words and a lucid vision, Lawino expresses her sympathies and anxieties through describing Acoli food, dances, aesthetics, medicine, beliefs, rituals, religion and many other aspects. S L constitutes a solid argument centred on the idea of a 'search' for an African identity. As this dissertation suggests, Okot's cultural insights impress even non-Acoli readers, because of Lawino's particular use of figurative language, similes, metaphors, irony, mockery and satire. Its publication in 1966 inspired other African writers to evoke the richness and originality of their cultural heritage. In his rejoinder Song of Ocol, Okot sketches Lawino's husband like an adamant figure embracing Western values, ideals and culture. If Lawino stands for traditionalism, Ocol represents the African educated 'élite' attracted by modernity and the European lifestyle. Ocol's stand point is hyperbolically dramatised by his negation of his own culture, his own people, his wife and even himself. The caricature is carried further when Ocol takes the advantage of his Western education to become a ruthless political leader striving for power and money. Instead of promoting justice and progress, Ocol shocks his audience by his indifference to poverty, disease and ignorance. By making him a symbol of Africa's cruellest dictators, Okot criticises the hypocrisy of Africa's national leaders and points at their failure to meet social aspirations. I W M by the two Ngugis deals with the socio-economic reasons for the down fall of the Kiguunda family. In accordance with the 'people's theatre' or the 'theatre of the oppressed', the dramatists portray the life of the Kiguunda family who fail to pay back a bank loan. Their situation is complicated when their land is sold at auction, their daughter falls in prostitution and Kiguunda sinks into alcoholism. In fact, Ngugi is implicitly accusing the western capitalists and their local collaborators of impoverishing peasants and workers. Thus, the two Ngugis attempt to re-define the priorities of the national independence through their political activism in Kamiriithu theatre with peasants and workers. Adopting a socialist ideology, the dramatists describe a kind of class struggle between the Kiois and the Kiguundas, i.e., the bourgeois and the peasants. While Okot lays the stress on Uganda's need for a cultural revaluation, or indeed revolution, Ngugi is more concerned to consider culture as a basis on which to construct a just and democratic society in post independent Kenya.Item ON MOVING THE CENTRE OF NARRATION AND DISCOURSE(University of Algiers. Faculty of Arts and Letters, 2009) Chaabane Ali, Mohamed; Bensemmane, M’hamed (Directeur de thèse)This dissertation is intended chiefly to study Ngugi’s literary response to the Western culture of domination, which manifests itself in a set of hegemonic views about the non-Western communities generally, and the African in particular. While forming the ideological basis for the growth of classical European Empires overseas, this culture for him still continues to impose its standards on the global order, and thus on the post-colonial world. In his most proletarian novels, Petals of Blood, Devil on the Cross, and Matigari, Ngugi has a “literarypolitical” project of “revisiting” the cultural and political authority of the imperial powers. This project is mainly intended to restore his people’s freedom of thought and action so as to resist the power of the hegemonic interests of Western-oriented international capitalism. Ngugi’s presently discussed novels, by bringing to the fore a set of heated issues bearing on history, culture, and the nation, reverse colonial binarisms in order to combat the hegemonic interpellations of the neo-colonial regime. In Petals of Blood, the idea of history is brought to prominence as Ngugi argues strongly for a radical reinterpretation of Kenya’s working people’s history. In fact, Karega, evidently the mouthpiece of the writer, stresses that the rewriting of Kenya’s history is an important undertaking, but by no means sufficient, to support what he foresees as the class struggle waged by the “wretched of the earth” against the neocolonial regime run by the new “bloodsuckers”. Similarly, Ngugi, through such characters as Nyakinyua and Abdulla, argues clearly for the significance of Kenya’s “oral history” and the heroic history of Kenyans’ resistance to the imperialist “marauders” for today’s struggle which, at all events, runs the risk of being overwhelmed by a false conception of Kenya’s both precolonial and colonial past that is touted by a corrupt ruling elite. In his next novel Devil on the Cross, however, much emphasis is placed upon the indigenous culture of the population, even though Ngugi is very often thought to prioritise political and economic struggles over cultural retrieval. This novel interestingly shows that we can never diminish the instrumental value of culture as a political weapon against imperialism it its neocolonialist stage. This study makes thus the claim that the indigenous culture of the masses can be used in the very definition of the downtrodden classes, to say nothing about the use of such aspects of folk culture as songs, proverbs, and traditional stories as a means of communication with the audience, of whom the “illiterate” masses form the majority. In addition, DOC displays a concern for certain forms of cultural hegemony exercised by such institutions as the school, the media, and the Church. In this novel, indeed, my contention is that the neocolonial ideology is supported in part by the imposition of the Western cultural 7 models on the African people. Consequently, Ngugi’s disapproval of the white culture is an explicit attack on the whole system of the neocolonial power. But, at the same time, nowhere in his novel is there any explicit call for the return to some pristine pre-colonial culture. In Ngugi’s opinion, this atavistic view is not founded at all. Ngugi’s first novel in exile, Matigari, solidifies Ngugi’s immense project of “de-centring” the Western hegemonic political discourse by expressing the felt need for the regeneration of the post-colonial African nation. Ngugi decries violently the currently established Kenyan nation because of its degenerate state that manifests itself clearly in the falsity of foundations upon which it is based. Matigari, the hero of the narrative, represents the daunting challenge of the establishment of an egalitarian society, and the fact that he ultimately falls back on a military action indicates strongly that the nation cannot be “regenerated” unless an armed rebellion of the masses, similar to the epic Mau Mau insurrection, breaks out once again. In general, Ngugi’s literary -and political- project of redefining the narrative discourse about Africa in the post-independence era has to be envisaged within the theoretical framework of postcolonialism and the political framework of his Marxist-based ideology. Ngugi revisits in his works a number of crucial concepts, which include history, culture, nation, with a very clear objective in mind: the political, economic, and cultural autonomy of the Africans and the non-western people at large. This objective has to be achieved, as indicated, whether explicitly or implicitly in all his “popular” novels, as they have come to be called, by the downtrodden people’s resort to armed resistance.Item WOMENS' POSITIONS AND ROLES IN CONTEMPORARY GHANA IN AMA ATA AIDOO'S NOVELS(University of Algiers. Faculty of Arts and Languages, 2009) Messaoudi, Lila; Bensemmane, M’hamed (Directeur de thèse)An examination of the existing scholarship on African women writers shows that the question of negotiating the past and the present in the contemporary period is one of the crucial discussions in African women's literature. However, this negotiation is hardly dealt with as an issue that can potentially lead to the re-evaluation of women's roles and status in contemporary Africa, so as to break away from the nostalgia for pre-colonial women's images and roles and to cast a critical eye on Western imported lifestyles. As social change occurs, women's position in Africa is undergoing an ever changing redefinition especially when it is considered within the larger scope of nationalism. This is what this dissertation proposes, a re-reading of Ama Ata Aidoo's novels, through the new prism of women's roles as part of the cultural negotiation in contemporary Ghana. In doing so, the dissertation goes beyond the paradigm of binary opposition that undergirds the critical field concerning writings by African women in favour of the innovative concept of negotiation. In addressing women's issues such as marriage, polygamy and love within the broader context of nationhood and nationalism, this study puts forward the argument that Ama Ata Aidoo has devised a space of creativity for herself through an innovative aesthetic vacuum, hitherto the preserve of men, and from which she poses, discusses and addresses through negotiation, those cultural issues affecting her and her female characters. Chapter One presents a theoretical basis for this study by providing a frame of discussion regarding the concepts of Feminism, Womanism, Gender, Socialization as well as Aidoo's commitment to these concepts, her commitment to the nation in order to explain how she is able to negotiate her commitment to both African women's issues and nationalism. Chapter Two deals with the dilemma posed in Our Sister Killjoy; Nationalism is discussed specifically in relation to women's issues, as well as to Gender and Identity. Through this association, we discuss the contentions as well as the negotiation of these two crucial issues in African literature, particularly in African women's literature. Chapter Three engages both the personal and the political in Changes, as it questions the notion of education and redefines the practice of polygamy to suit women's needs and identities in contemporary Ghana. Chapter Four explores Aidoo's style in handling the issues discussed in the above chapters, and her successful attempt in negotiating traditional storytelling and modernist techniques, as a vivid example of how to negotiate past and present. Aidoo thus makes a literary compact with her bold views concerning the role of an intellectual woman in Ghana, by engaging in a mode of writing combining post modernism with traditional orature.Item MORAL RESPONSIBILITY AND TRAGEDY IN JOSEPH CONRAD’S LORD JIM AND CHINUA ACHEBE’S NO LONGER AT EASE(University of Algiers. Faculty of Arts and Languages, 2009) Adjout, Asma; Bensemmane, M’hamed (Directeur de thèse)This dissertation approaches the problem of morality and social responsibility as two related elements which have been a theme treated by many writers, notably in the Western world and Africa. I set out to discuss here two novels, namely Conrad's Lord Jim (1900) and Achebe's No Longer at Ease (1961), which provide a platform for discussion of morality and its relevance in the modern context. This research work attempts to bridge cultural, social, and historical differences separating the two works, and brings to light the universality of morality, and the importance attributed to it by writers anxious to reassert traditional moral values in a degenerate present. The changes which have ushered in the modern world have had an important impact on traditional morality. The basic precept of morality, crystallized in 'The Golden Rule': 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you', is increasingly challenged by the modern conception of the individual's right to pursue his own happiness; moral behaviour does not always involve self-sacrifice for others, but when it does so, we are more able to recognize its worth and admire its beauty. Glorification of money and materialism, chaotic transformation under the impact of speed, hugeness and standardization, intellectual and scientific revolutions shaking prior conceptions of human nature, are characteristics of the modern word, in the face of which traditional morality is losing its hold on the individual. Moral failure is the main theme addressed in the two novels. The two authors investigate the reasons for this failure, without, however, bringing clear-cut conclusions. The two approaches used in this work, namely, the socio-ethical and the tragic, is an attempt to cover the possible reasons of the protagonists' moral failure as advanced by the two authors. While Conrad and Achebe present a universal view of morality, i.e., the need to assert such notions as social responsibility and self-sacrifice, the socio-cultural factors play a crucial role in shaping the protagonists' destinies within their respective communities. While the two authors 'agree' on the basic tenet of morality, they are aware of the changes in the societies they live in. Western society as portrayed by Conrad is characterized by moral anarchy and skepticism. Conrad is aware of the difficulty of keeping to traditional moral values in view of the new modern realities, and deplores the Western society's loss of fortitude and spirituality. On the other hand, African society as portrayed by Achebe is losing its traditional cohesion due to its encounter with Europe, and is in search of a more tenable modernity. Achebe is aware that the path towards change is inevitable, but warns against a blind adoption of modern Western cultural precepts, and points out the importance of maintaining in some degree traditional identity and moral values. In view of the similarities highlighted, and despite the differences noted, Conrad and Achebe transcend the disillusionment imposed by a chaotic present, and attain the stature of moral teachers.Item POWER AND DISSIDENCE IN CHINUA ACHEBE’S A MAN OF THE PEOPLE AND ANTHILLS OF THE SAVANNAH(University of Algiers. Faculty of Arts and Languages, 2007) Chenane, Hizia; Bensemmane, M’hamed (Directeur de thèse)السلطة والمعارضة في روايتي A Man of the people و Anthills of the Savannah ليشنوا أشيبي. في هذه الرسالة ننقاش موضوع أزمة الحكم ومفاهيمه للسلطة والقوة في افريقيا في فترة ما بعد الاستقلال من خلال روايتين للروائي النيجيري شينوا أشيبي. الروايتان هما على التوالي Man of the people و Anthills of the Savannah. القضية المركزية التي تطرحها الروايتين هي أن نمو الدول الإفريقية بعد الاستقلال كان مرهونا بأشكال وتناقضات معقدة قد خلقت معنى من المعضلات الشخصية والاجتماعية للمفاهيم والهويات. توسعت الروايتان في قضايا اجتماعية وسياسية عولجت سابقا في رواية No longer at Ease، ولكنها واصلت لتعمّق التساؤلات الماضية بشأن التصادم الثقافي بين القيم المعرفية الإفريقية والثقافة الغربية المستوردة ونتائجها السلبية على الدول الفتية. أكثر نقدا في هذه الروايتين هو التركيز على قضية الحكم وتأثيرها المدمّر على رجال السياسة الجدد والمسمّاة بالطبقة المثقفة التي وجدت نفسها بعد الاستقلال الوريث الشرعي للمستعمر القامع. ظهر أشيبي مؤكدا لمفاهيم فرانس فانون وادوارد سعيد، مفاهيم تاريخية واجتماعية عميقة الدراسة تبيّن العجز الكبير للمثقفين الأفارقة في رسم هيكل واضح المعالم للتواصل بين الماضي العقائدي والحاضر العصري من جهة، وكذا عجزهم أيضا لوضع صورة مترابطة لأنفسهم كممثلي للناس الضعفاء من جهة أخرى. رواية أشيبي A man of people قدمت أسباب ونتائج أزمة السلطة. سمحت الوضعية لأشيبي إبراز فشل المثقفين في تأسيس رؤية نظام مناسبة تستطيع أن تضم فهم واضح للوجود الاجتماعي. في إتباع نفس الأفكار، رواية Anthills of the Savannah جاءت كتصور لحل متكامل للقضية المطروحة سابقا. انتقلت الرواية بتحدي لتعد بشيء جديد ومختلف من حيث البديل لتستنطق وتعّوض في نفس الوقت الحوار الفاسد للنظام السائد. مشروع أشيبي يتمحور في خلق من فوضى الفترة معتقد الأمة الدولة الذي سوف يكافح لاسترجاع مقل الأعراف الشعبية الماضية الضائعة، وليؤسّس من هذه الرواية الأخيرة مرجعا أخلاقيا عاما للأمة. هذا النموذج في عمومه يتطلب مبدأ قرامشي للاندماج الاجتماعي الذي يدعو إلى نطاق واسع لفلسفة المشاركة الوطنية، والتي تصاغ عبر إدراك عميق ومحسوس للوضعية الاجتماعية للجماهير. لإكمال مشروعه الكلي بناء الأمة، قدّم أشيبي ضرورة إمكانية تأكيد السند الأخلاقي والكمال الثقافي للمرأة الإفريقية. موقف بياتريس ككاهنة لإلاهة الأرض في أساطير ايبوا، وكمرأة مثقفة عصرية لخّص سعي أشيبي إلى وضع نظام لتفكير راديكالي جديد قائم لتشكيل قوة اجتماعية أكثر إتحادا، أين تقف المرأة كجزء أساسي في المجال الكلي للسلطة. إتقان مشروعه، قدّم أشيبي تضمنا بأن الحل لأزمة الحكم لفترة ما بعد الاستقلال في إفريقيا يمكن تحقيقه ليس عبر استيراد نظريات صراع ومقاومة غربية. لكن عبر إصلاح مبنى على انسجام مع وقائع وتاريخ الارض. إن محاولته لتقدم مخططا إفريقيا نموذجيا في Anthills عبر مثال أسطورة الحكم العقائدي لشعب ايبوا هي إشارة للأهمية المستمرة للإسهامات المعرفية للمجال الاجتماعي والسياسي للحكم السائد. من خلال كل هذا، حاولنا برهان أن إسهامات أشيبي لقصص ما بعد الاستقلال للتاريخ الإفريقي قد اتخذت مجالا جديدا من أجل بداية تاريخية حقيقية. وجدنا أنّ وسائله للوعي والتحليل الذاتي في اقتفاء قصته لمجتمع ايبوا، ظهرت فعالة ونقدية بقوة. في هذا الصدد اقترح نظام أشيبي لبناء الأمة بأن الشريعة الجديدة عليها أن تعتمد ليس فقط على إعادة التفكير راديكالي للعقيدة ولكن أيضا على إعادة تخطيط للأشكال التي تقدم فيها الثقافات الإفريقية. جوهريا، العقيدة لم تخاطب من أجل الرجوع لوجود أسطوري ولكن أساس بهدف استنطاق فجواتها الثقافية والتاريخية وإيجاد تصورا مناسبا للتجاوب بين الماضي العقائدي والتحديات المعاصرة التي تواجه القارة السمراء. في النهاية نحاول قراءة مشروع أشيبي الروائي كقالب ثقافي متكامل لرصد الحياة الاجتماعية والسياسية في إفريقيا ما بعد الاستقلال. طبعا لا يستطيع الأحد منا نقد وسائله في معالجة مثل هذه القضايا الواقعية المعزولة بسهولة. ربما لم يمنح أي مخططات سياسية كاملة أو وصفات نظرية من أجل بناء اجتماعي وإتحاد سياسي، ولكن كشف التأثيرات السلبية للسلطة الفاسدة على الجماعات الضعيفة. كروائي، أشيبي متلهف أساسا إلى إلهام وعي شامل يمكن من تحقيق الأحلام الإفريقية في الوحدة والكرامة الاجتماعية.Item The Search for an Ideal Society in the African Novel(University of Algiers. Faculty of Arts and Languages, 2007) Babkar, Abdelkader; Bensemmane, M’hamed (Directeur de thèse)The subject treated in this dissertation is about Ayi Kwei Armpah and Ngugi wa Thiong‘o as novelists writing in order to raiuse the consciousness of their respective societies or nations in relation to what went wrong and has generated the present anomy as far as the socio-political and economic conditions are concerned. The latter is characterised by oppression at the political level and the disintegration of the tradtional African societal organisation which used to emphasise the common good. This social organisation has been shaped now after the modern trend of individualism and the Western commodity culture. Armah and Ngugi begin first by depicting the status quo in Ghana and Kenya respectively ; in their respective endeavours, they express their dissociation from this very status quo to project a vision, stemming from their ideologies, of an ideal society whereby the mode of conduct would be to contribute to the common well-being. Thier ideologies are a synthesis of their traditional thought (the Akan in the case of Armah and the Gikuyu in the case of Ngugi) and the Western world view, though Armah quite singularly, tends to deny any Western value that would influence positively his society. Armah’s ideology of the ‘way,’or reciprocity, could be considered as the oppositional voice to Western hegemony. He claims it to be superior to the Western view or the ‘gleam’ as he calls it in The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born. Ngugi’s ideology for its part combines traditional culture that clings to land and the Western philosophy of Marxism which, contrary to Armah’s belief, can share a common ground with the African communalistic spirit. At the narrative level, Armah and Ngugi’s narratives, because of their version of the novel genre that straddles the oral as well as the print tradition of storytelling, are meant to seek, following Fredric Jameson’s demonstration in his The Political Unconscious, resolutions of a contradiction of the social organisation in Africa. Thier narratives resist, yet at the same time benefit from the Western form of storytelling. This also reflects the writers’ resistance of the nation-state political form and yet, because of its Janus-face, accepting it and defining their nations in accordance with. Also, following Karl Mannheim’s Ideology and Utopia, the writers ideologies are, like utopias, incongruent with the status quo. Thus they constitute an ideal that is meant to be approximated because they embody the form of society wished for. Although Armah’s depiction of the status quo in his first three novels The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, Fragments and Why Are We So Blest ? give the impression of disillusionment, they incorporate an attempt at explaining and analysing the African situation and the African psyche. Both at the narrative and the ideological levels, in Two Thousand Seasons and The Healers, Armah seems to be engaged in the rendition of the primal wisdom in his society and the creation of new values, a new perspective incorporated in his ideology of the ‘way.’ Ngugi adopts a similar approach in his later novels Petals of Blood and Devil on the Cross, by depicting the unsatisfying situation in Kenya and analysing at the same time the underlying causes that led to it. Meanwhile adopting his society’s traditional culture (shedding light especially on the resistance movement) and Marxism as an ideology, he sketches characters who are involved in raising the consciousness of their fellow citizens about the ideals of a communalistic self-contained Kenyan nation.