Singular Performances: Reinscribing the Subject in Francophone African Writing

Francophone African writing is often concerned with questions of subjectivity and narrative agency, and it is this focus Michael Syrotinski takes as his point of departure in "Singular Performances." Using the work of V. Y. Mudimbe as a major theoretical reference, Syrotinski sets up a number of original dialogues between francophone African literature, African philosophy, literary theory, postcolonial studies, cinema, cultural studies, and history to arrive at the notion of a "performative reinscription of subjectivity."

"Singular Performances" covers a wide range of francophone African writers, each of whom is read within a broader theoretical context related to African subjectivity: Mudimbe and the philosophical subject, Aoua Keita and autobiography, Bernard Dadie and ethnographic irony, Ousmane Sembene and Tierno Monenembo and the cinematic imagination, Veronique Tadjo and Werewere Liking and the female writing subject, and Sony Labou Tansi and the "spectral" subject.

In this skillful interdisciplinary weaving together of contemporary theory and literature, the focus on the francophone African subject allows for a richer appreciation of the texture and rhetoric of the language of the texts themselves. What emerges from this study is the subject understood not as a single homogenized entity but as a plural celebration of singular francophone African subjectivities.