Abstract

ARCOS GUERRERO, Oscar Iván. Between immutability and change: a reading of Sony Labou Tansi’s L’anté-peuple. Comunicación [online]. 2021, vol.30, n.1, pp.33-48. ISSN 1659-3820.

This article begins by exposing the plot of Sony Labou Tansi’s novel L’anté-peuple, published in 1983. In this study, the authorcontends that the analyzed work accounts for the immutability of the politico-social conditions experienced both in Zaireand in the People’s Republic of Congo and also reveals the transformation experienced by its characters. L’anté-peuple isunique among the rest of Labou Tansi’s novels, as it is a fiction of a more personal nature and, at the same time, it is alsonarrated in a more distant tone of the dominant aesthetic paradigms of its time. The first section of this article lays out generalaspects of the historical events of both countries, delving into the way in which the author reworks them in his fiction;the second one shows how the fictional characters change as events unfold. Both sections lead to the conclusions at theend of the text. In the final part of this article, its autor asserts that the analysis of the interacting aspects of fiction in L’antépeupleshows it is as a literary production of complex aesthetics.

Keywords : Literature; Sub-Saharan Africa; Zaire; Congo; oppression; cultural change.

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