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Title:Patrice Nganang's 'L'invention du beau regard' and 'Dog days': three phases of capitalism with two dogs and one devouring pig
Author:Harrow, Kenneth W.ISNI
Year:2010
Periodical:Research in African Literatures (ISSN 0034-5210)
Volume:41
Issue:2
Pages:55-73
Language:English
Geographic term:Cameroon
Subjects:literary criticism
novels
About persons:Alain Patrice Nganang (1970-)ISNI
Ferdinand Oyono (1929-2010)ISNI
External link:http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/research_in_african_literatures/v041/41.2.harrow.pdf
Abstract:From the late 1970s on, the Afropessimistic paradigm has been on the ascendancy in the West, with Africa to be saved through enlightened interventions from the outside. The dominant Western paradigm depends upon some variant of realism, even if noir. In contrast, African authored texts often train their sights on the conditions that make difficult the passage of protagonists through everyday life. African texts have pushed the boundaries of representative models, with realism bending toward some new form of magical realism. This paper examines the shift in the paradigms of patriarchy from F. Oyono's 'Une vie de boy' (1956) to Patrice Nganang's 'L'invention du beau regard' (2005) and 'Temps de chien' (2001, translated as ' Dog Days'). The model employed in evaluating the decline in patriarchy is taken from Slavoj Žižek's work in which he proposes a three-part structure of social and economic changes that follow the changes in the forms of international capitalism as it moved from liberal capitalism in the 1950s through imperialist State capitalism in the 1960s and 1970s, to the current neoliberal, global capitalism. With this economic development there has come a paradigm shift in dominant forms of subjectivity in literature. The setting of the discussion is mainly Cameroonian. Bibliogr., notes, sum. [Journal abstract, edited]
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