An article by Professor of French Joseph Mwantuali was recently published as a chapter in L’Esthétique de la violence dans l’oeuvre de Pius de Pius Ngandu Nkashama (The Esthetics of Violence in Pius Ngandu Nkashama’s Work). The collection of essays was edited by Ngozi Tchomba Ikanga and published by L’Harmattan, Paris.
The chapter is titled “Pius Ngandu Nkashama: Un matin pour Loubène ou exorcisme par marcottage” (“Pius Ngandu Nkashama: A Morning for Loubène or exorcism by way of layering”). Mwantuali describes A Morning for Loubène as a novel for young adults “about teenager Loubène’s irresistible love for young Tchelamina.” He applies his literary theory of “exorcism in literature” to demonstrate that the novel is “an allegory for recreating a new society, a way out [of] a system of violence and contamination of the youth, put in place by incurably corrupt, mentally colonized adults.”
According to Mwantuali, “author and ‘exorcist’ Ngandu creates this ‘new society’ as a strictly protected tree/children nursery where new values are propagated in order to, subsequently, generate action against the aforementioned corrupt system.” He said that his own “concept of ‘exorcism’ advocates putting in the center the child and the woman.”
Mwantuali said “teenager and co-protagonist Tchelamina is, in Ngandu’s novel, an allegory for the ‘eternal feminine’ who is, as philosopher Amadou Hampâté Bâ put it so eloquently, ‘the secret weapon for the future of Africa.’”
