French Literature Reviews - 2026
A. Coulibaly, Literary Postmodernism and Its Practice in Francophone Novels of Black Africa
Francophone and Oral Literatures
COULIBALY ADAMA, Le postmodernisme littéraire et sa pratique chez les romanciers francophones en Afrique noire, HARMATTAN, collection "Critiques Littéraires", 2017. EAN13: 9782343120508.
Literary Postmodernism and Its Practice in Francophone Novels…
Drawing on a corpus of fourteen novels from Sub-Saharan Africa published between 1979 and 2004, this essay posits the existence of postmodern features, practices, and moments running through African texts. The analytical framework is built around postmodern discourses as outlined by Jean-François Lyotard (incredulity toward metanarratives), Jean Baudrillard (the simulacrum), Guy Scarpetta (impurity, the return of the Baroque), and Josias Semujanga's transcultural approach to literary genres.
Beyond an extravagant exuberance of forms and an extreme self-representation that aligns it with peripheral movements and schools (such as the avant-garde, the Nouveau Roman, and surrealism), literary postmodernism operates as a form of hyperrealism. It reflects the simulacrum of contemporary societies and the de-ontologization of values through the desemanticization of the sign, without pursuing a metaphysical essence. Herein lies the point of contact between this eccentric writing and the postcolonial African novel.
Much like the postmodern novel, the African novel no longer builds: it deconstructs, de-spatializes, de-temporalizes, and de-chronologizes at will, against the backdrop of a joyful or apocalyptic end of historicity (Gianni Vattimo, Fredric Jameson). The characters and society born from this discourse on the death of innocence are frequently fragmented and… devoid of memory, shaped by games of mobility, transfer, and recycling that anchor this fiction within a transnational, transcultural dynamic and within international postmodern macro-semiotics.
A Doctor of State (Docteur d'État), Adama COULIBALY is a University Professor. As the Director of GRATHEL (Research and Analysis Group in Literary Theories), he teaches Francophone African fiction in the Department of Modern Literature at Félix Houphouët-Boigny University (Côte d'Ivoire). A specialist in literary postmodernism and in cultural and literary transfers, his research interests extend to literary theory and the renewal of novelistic writing in Francophone Sub-Saharan Africa. In addition to some forty articles, he has published Des techniques aux stratégies d’écriture dans la création romanesque de Tierno Monénembo (2011) and co-edited Intertextualité et Transculturalité, En-Quête journal no. 17, EDUCI (2007); Le postmodernisme dans le roman africain : Formes, enjeux et perspectives (2011); Je(ux) narratifs dans le roman africain (2013); Médias et Littérature : formes, pratiques et postures (2014); and Écritures migrantes. De l’exil à la migrance littéraire dans le roman francophone (2015).
This critical study situates itself within the broader currents of contemporary literary theory and postcolonial criticism, engaging directly with foundational European philosophical paradigms. Adama Coulibaly applies concepts such as Jean-François Lyotard s incredulity toward metanarratives and Jean Baudrillard s theories of the simulacrum to the specific landscape of Francophone African literature. By examining formal exuberance, irony, and the deconstruction of narrative structures, the author links the formal innovations of Sub-Saharan novelists to international postmodern macro-semiotics and transnational literary dynamics of the late twentieth century.
Researchers, graduate students, and scholars of African literature will find this book a valuable resource for rethinking the evolution of the postcolonial novel. It offers essential analytical tools for understanding how contemporary writers move beyond traditional realism toward a hyperrealist aesthetic of fragmentation and self-reflexivity. The volume will particularly benefit those exploring literary transfers, genre theory, and the complex intersections between Western postmodern discourse and the unique socio-historical realities of Francophone Africa.