“La bibliothèque coloniale”, la propriété intellectuelle et la romance du développement en Afrique

One asks oneself vigorously about the conditions of the construction of knowledge relative to the African continent as well as to its way of thinking. The influence of V.Y. Mudimbe in this regard is immense. The major categories of anthropology are examined, even called into question, and most notably the ethnic groups. As pertinent as they may be, these analyses return to the library and to the system of representation that the continent invents and raise it to a paradigm of difference par excellence. It is important, beyond the scholarly discourse, to take a look at the relationship of ordinary people with libraries. Broadcasters, for example, comment candidly on the work of one artist-musician or another. Appropriation implies the related right: “droit d'auteur(e)”, copyright or “Urheberrecht”. Anyone who fails to comply becomes a pirate. What, therefore, is the meaning of to modernise the author, the work, the copyright or the pirate not in language inherited from Western law but in that of the citizen or the average villager?     

Sémiotique et rhétorique de la duplicité dans la peinture de Bernard Baïfang

The Art of Bernard Baifang finds its strength in the subtlety with which this contemporary painter represents abstractions. Using figures of speech, he translates duplicity into images, a moral perversion that has become endemic in many African countries. A semiotic and rhetorical study of the figurations of duplicity in Feymania and La cité rouge reveals that the achievement of these paintings inspired by the experience of daily life in Cameroon is part of a subversive approach based on a cathartic conception of art.     

Le phénomène “Krouman” à Sassandra: la marque d’une institution séculaire

A recurrent anxiety in contemporary Botswana is the perception of an immediate threat from external forces: strangers, livestock, and disease. How do the state and its citizens react under these conditions? The following article explores this question in the context of globalization, discourses of autochthony, and the blood-based politics of population management in Botswana. In recent years, Batswana increasingly see themselves as a nation under siege from foreigners, and in particular, newly arrived migrants from Zimbabwe. Under pressure from outside, Botswana citizens fear the loss of their physical homeland and the denigration of their collective identity and sense of morality. Through a reading of publications in the print media, I examine the articulation of the rhetoric of invasion and national paranoia that has taken root in Botswana. Although the presumption of assault by outsiders is said to threaten the existence of the Batswana nation through the erosion of the supposedly distinct boundaries between citizen and stranger, these apprehensions also carry a potent creative potential. I argue that, in an environment of economic uncertainty and ethnic instability, the specter of the stranger/Zimbabwean is used to reconfigure the content and emphasis of citizenship in Botswana.