Popular insurrection and demystification of an alternative sociopolitical order in two fictions

Abstract

A study of Nathalie Etoke’s Je vois du soleil dans tes yeux and Francis Bebey’s La Poupée Ashanti reveals that beyond the status of anecdotal novels that defines them, it is, in depth, the postulation of a political change that mobilizes the two novelists in the depiction of a corrupt society. But what is the genesis of these popular movements? How and why are they literally represented? How, in fine, are political tensions managed by the local power and what aspirations then feed the actors in "order of battle" in the deciphered novels? To answer this questioning, we use the sociocritical framework as implemented by Pierre Barbéris and Henri Mitterand. On that basis, we read the novels throughout a triadic work plan. We first question the nature of the social illness to show that the novel does not limit itself to expressing a meaning already there. Then, we prove that through the work of writing, it modifies the previous equilibrium of meaning so as finally refracting and transforming all at once, the social discourse in order to promote the living together policy.