Genealogies of a Miner’s Literature : The Political in Sinzo Aanza’s Généalogie d’une banalité

Details

Supervisors

Bragard, Véronique

Faculty

Faculté de philosophie, arts et lettres

Degree label

Master [120] en langues et lettres modernes, orientation générale

Abstract

enLiterature is too frequently reduced to entertainment when it has an amazing potential for political analysis. The present dissertation examines Généalogie d’une banalité, the first novel of Sinzo Aanza, a Congolese author gives a voice to the people that are forgotten by globalisation. The dissertation focusses on the political dimension of the book. Indeed, Aanza uses lexis, style, structure and content to convey political statements. Généalogie d’une banalité is set in the Bronx, a slum of a Congolese mining city called Lubumbashi. The Bronx is situated in a region that has a soil full of valuable minerals, yet its population is very poor. One day, the inhabitants of the Bronx decide to dig under their houses in the hope of finding minerals and becoming rich. But their project does not go as planned and the neighbourhood collapses inside the tunnels of the mine. The story of the Bronx’s mining project is told by four narrators whose voices form a polyphonic maze. Their narration is read on the national radio during a one-day radio show that functions as a frame narrative. The present dissertation discussed how Aanza’s novel is the product of the Congo’s political situation. Chapter 1 explains how the Bronx mining project is a consequence of Lubumbashi’s history and to that of a company, the Gécamines. Chapter 2 reveals how exploitation is pervasive in the text, both in Aanza’s metaphor and as a mimicry of colonial times and of the current Congolese State. Chapter 3 discusses how Aanza brings to light the invisible violence that plagues the Bronx. The inhabitants of the Bronx suffer from the long lasting consequences of colonialism and of Mobutu’s dictatorship. Chapter 4 is interested in Aanza’s use of the grotesque and its political implications. The grotesque can be read as a response to Congo’s situation that is full of absurdities, horrors and exaggerations. It also vehiculates a certain vision of the body as not clearly separated from the world, which is very present in the Bronx. Chapter 5 analyses the radio show as a means to bring orality in the novel, giving it an very African aesthetic, and as a grotesque parody of the Congolese official speech. Chapter 6 looks at Généalogie d’une banalité as an example of minor literature, as defined by Deleuze and Guattari. But also as the literature of miners, of people that are neglected by globalisation and yet, pay its price.