Globalization, Cultural differences, Market economy, Koli Jean Bofane, Congo Inc., African societies
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Abstract
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Abstract
This analysis delves into the themes of globalization, cultural differences, and the absurdity of market economy in Koli Jean Bofane's novel Congo Inc. Published in 2014, this novel is a thought-provoking commentary on the effects of globalization on African societies. Read on to explore the complexities of this intriguing novel.
Extract
[...] Water is no longer the symbol of life but an economic issue around which fierce battles are organized. Innumerable voices rise up against the dangers of the unhappy globalization and many of them come from Africa. Bofane joins Sam Tchak in Al Capone the Malian (2011) or his Congolese compatriot Fiston Mwanza Mujila who in Tram 83 highlights the ravages of this market economy without roots. By mixing registers, without complacency or acrimony, these new novelists show an exploitation of man by man that seems endless. [...]
[...] The author gives depth to his African character by the incise that uses the sociolect of the online game « avatar and returns to the beginning of the novel. Isookanga is still trapped in his virtual world. Geography also marks another essential difference: the enumeration of city names, Dubai, Addis-Abeba, Lubumbashi, and finally Kinshasa highlights the length of the journey that led Zhang to the streets of Kinshasa. The paradox is highlighted by the lapidary balance; 'and today he found himself stuck » which gives a tragic dimension to the protagonist's fate who retraces his journey. [...]
[...] In Koli Jean Bofane, Congo Inc 'While Zhang Xia was indulging . Worst water ' In The Globalization Workshop, in 2011, Maylis de Kerangal claimed that « novel is perhaps the genre best suited to making the mechanisms of the globalized economy, its flows, fields, and their effects on the life of the planet and all that inhabits it, manifest. By its geographical and temporal amplitude, as well as the number of its characters, the narrative lends itself to all representations. [...]
[...] The last line of this passage resonates with the Chinese salesman's sales slogan in two languages that are not his own, French and the African dialect, and he mistreats them as highlighted by the paronomasia between pure and worse. Everything is polluted in this megalopolis and the adjective worse becomes a foreboding of the status of water on the African continent. The alliteration in works as a foreboding and ironic laughable in the mouth of the disillusioned vendor. « Worse water My village is crying Worse water » This triple exclamation mark alone summarizes In Koli Jean Bofane's ambition. The language has lost its roots and Anglicisms dominate in "the global village » what Marshall Macluhan denounced forty years earlier. [...]
[...] The critical scope appears in the recurring sounds and in the echo system of city names and airlines. City names create an alliteration of dentals and gutturals as if to underline the harshness of the whole world. Bofane wishes to show the absurdity of a journey that comes down to two airlines that send their passengers into a dead end. But Isookanga draws an inverse parallel with his own journey and sees a reason for hope for the Chinese man. [...]
