An examination of the satiric vision of Ahmadou Kourouma in 'Waiting for the wild beasts to vote'

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis examines Ahmadou Kourouma's Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote, anovel that mainly satirizes post-colonial African dictatorships. Kourouma entrusts hisnarrative to a satirical griot-narrator, and the novel adopts a mock-epic mode. Thiscomplicates the novel's narrative, and allows the reader to compare the satiric andgriotic forms in the examination of Kourouma's overall satiric vision. In hissatirization of post-colonial African forms of governance, Kourouma puts tomaximum use oral literary techniques such as proverbs, repetition, and song, as satirictools for mocking, criticising and attacking human folly and wickedness. Both satireand the mock-epic modes' affinity with parody, fantasy, and myth are extensivelyexplored in this thesis. This thesis argues that the combination of griotic and satiricmethods that characterizes Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote make it a questioning,demystifying, and subversive novel, giving it a magical realist and post-modernistflavour. In examining Kourouma's literary methods, this thesis uses Thomas Hale'sextensive work on the griotic roles in West Africa. This, it is hoped, will furtherilluminate Kourouma's satiric vision. Hale calls griots masters of the spoken word.This is an important observation since this thesis argues that Kourouma' s use oflanguage in the construction and deconstruction of social power relations elevates himto a position of a literary griot in the modern post-colonial setting. The othersimilarity between the griotic and satiric methods that is explored at length in thisthesis is the satirist and griot's predilection for historical and moral issues.Kourouma's mythicization of Africa's recent history is examined through what PaulRicoeur calls the hermeneutics of suspicion and the hermeneutics of affirmation'',which refer to the unmasking of myth with the intention of extracting its positivevalue as a symbolic tool for the exploration of human future possibilities. Bakhtin'stheory of the carnivalesque is also utilized in illuminating Kourouma's use of thedonsomana, or purificatory tale, which this thesis argues is comparable to theEuropean medieval carnivals. Both the donsomana and the carnivals are not justoccasions for harmless fun, but they can be seen as opportunities for the inversion ofsocial hierarchical roles with the aim of bringing about social change, if not a totalrevolution in social and political systems. Bakhtin also claims that 'the bodilygrotesque' can be used ambivalently as an image of permanent degradation, or as animage of debasement with regeneration in view. This notion is used in this thesis inexamining the appropriation of the images of the bodily life by both the griot -narrator and the post-colonial dictators. This thesis argues that the griot uses theseimages for their positive symbolic effect, while the dictators use the same images forthe sinister purpose of degrading victims of their cruel rule. This thesis also looks atthe way Kourouma contrasts nationalist anti-colonial struggle with the so-calleddemocratic anti-dictatorship struggle, as a way of showing that ideal solutions toAfrica's leadership crisis do not work. Finally, this thesis suggests that Kourouma'spessimistic satire, although specifically targeting post-colonial African governance, isultimately about the cruel and ineffective leadership that has characterized politicalaffairs since the dawn of human history.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University