PENSER LE MONDE CONTEMPORAIN : IMAGE ET FANTASTIQUE DANS L’ŒUVRE ROMANESQUE DE KOSSI EFOUI
Date
2019-04-04T15:39:31Z
Authors
Atakora, Bufowu Anas
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Abstract
This thesis is based on Kossi Efoui's novels: La Polka (1998), La
Fabrique de cérémonies (2001), Solo d’un revenant (2008), L’Ombre des
choses à venir (2011), Cantique de l'acacia (2017). It analyzes his fiction
with a focus on images and fantasy, and aims at questioning the sociopolitical,
historical and identity contexts in which the contemporary world
unfolds. It therefore relies on the fundamental hypothesis that Efoui’s novels
use the motifs of image to create an aesthetic of fantasy that portrays the real
or supposed interconnectivity of our time. To that end, the first two chapters
build a theoretical framework that draws on three sources. First, the
semiology and intermediality that describe image as poetic, dreamlike, and
physical. Then, the studies of fantasy that mention image as a constitutive
element of this aesthetic. Finally, the postcolonial thinking that reflects on the
challenges of dis/connection that led the novelist to a fantasy representation
of the world. This theoretical framework serves as an instrument of analysis
and interpretation for the other five chapters. The study highlights the
recurrences of image in Efoui’s work and the resulting fantasy that appears
through the doubt, the journey of his characters, the decompartmentalization
of spaces, the historical and identity questioning in context of globalization.
Efoui’s novels thus become a reinterpretation of fantasy and a lucid
description of the contemporary world with its new means of expression
(photography, television, Internet) which are crossed, sometimes subverted,
by other older means such as poetry, storytelling, drawing. His fiction is
ultimately a field of symbolizations where we can see links, correspondences,
and thresholds, signs of entanglement of images and imaginations, capable of
pushing the contemporary individual to engender a coherence of oneself and
the world.
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Keywords
Fantastique, Fantastique contemporain, Kossi Efoui, Images, Roman africain contemporain, Togo