ABSTRACTS

From la langue d'un pays virtuel to « La République invisible » : Reading the Manifesto in light of Patrice Nganang's political engagement

Amy Reid
(New College of Florida)

The announcement for this conference asserts that the Manifesto Pour une littérature-monde en français raises new and challenging questions about the status and direction of literature written in French. In this paper I will examine the implications of one of the rhetorical questions posed by the Manifesto: Comment le monde pourrait-il se sentir concerné par la langue d'un pays virtuel? While this question reflects the signatories' desire to problematize the relationship between language and nation-state, by framing its project in the broadest of terms, the Manifesto side-steps the thorny issue of audience, of readership, of for whom an author writes. In order to unpack the politics of this question, I will read the Manifesto in light of La République invisible, an essay published in 2005 by the Cameroonian author Patrice Nganang. La République invisible tackles head on what is at stake for authors, readers, and critics, when one asks for whom an African author writes. While Nganang's answer that he writes for an invisible republic echoes the metaphor employed ironically in the Manifesto, the specificity of his response, which is both grounded in an explicit political engagement in his country of origin and open to the world beyond, fleshes out in useful ways the ideals left implicit in the Manifesto.



In La République invisible as in his fiction, Nganang sets into action the recentering of the literary constellation evoked in the Manifesto. Nganang's strategy is consonant with that of the 44 signatories of the Manifesto, in that he refuses to define his readership in national terms, but Nganang also articulates a clear sense of community, defined by political engagement as well as personal affinity, which moves beyond both nation-state and language and into another dimension: that of an invisible republic. Because he is interested in exploring the paradox produced when specificity and virtuality collide, Nganang's essay provides a more substantive elaboration of the urgency expressed in the Manifesto, of what motivates us as readers and writers and, perhaps, what brings us together for this conference.