Les manifestes et les programmes littéraires en Afrique francophone subsaharienne : à propos de ‘l’invisibilité’ du corpus dans la critique littéraire

Abstract

Manifestos and literary programs in French-Speaking sub-Saharian of Africa: About ‘invisibility’ of the corpus in literary criticism. Despite an abundant production, the corpus of literary manifestos and programmes from sub-Saharan Francophone Africa is relatively invisible in literary criticism. With the exception of a few studies, critical works devoted to the programmatic works of writers are rare. This article proposes some hypotheses that can explain why the body of literature of authors’ ideas in this space is generally ‘invisible’. The approach of the literary field, applied to the sociology of scientific production, makes it possible to highlight three main causes for this invisibility: the importance of identity and cultural discourse, which makes it impossible to delimit the geographical space of writers from sub-Saharan Francophone Africa, whose production and reception are dominated by that of their colleagues from the West Indies and the Caribbean; the omnipresence of political and social discourse which takes precedence over poetic reflection; the metalanguage of the manifesto due to the fact that writers are also generally literary critics.

Keywords

• literary manifesto
• literary programme
• invisibility
• literary criticism
• reception