The tender critique: Africa of the Congolese migrant writers in French-speaking Belgium

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the portrayal of Africa in the writings of the French-speaking Belgian writers of Congolese origins. We analyse subjective representations of Africa, both critical and idealized ones, from which emerges a vision of the continent brimming with contradictions. On the one hand, it is an alluring, vast and fertile land with abundant flora and fauna, as well as clime and landscape dearly missed by migrant writers—the land embodying the concept of “paradise lost” or the notion of a nursing mother identified in the migrant writers’ texts with the idea of homeland. On the other hand, although abundant in natural resources, Africa appears to be the continent of extreme poverty, hunger, violence, racism, persecution and ethnic cleansing—the territory still exploited by global powers on which colonialism unveiled its new face defined by a seemingly neutral term, globalization. This dichotomous representation—a far cry from the simplified, impoverished visions of Africa offered by the European media—is conditioned by the specific existential situation of the migrant writers: remaining physically away from Africa, but still having a deep emotional, mental and cultural connection with their land, they are capable of perceiving it in a different light—thus, from a perspective which sharpens critical thinking and with tenderness resulting from the longing for their homeland. Hence, the circumstances of the migrant writers allow them to take an idiosyncratic, ambivalent, and intellectually-affective stance—a specific critical tenderness, or: tender critique—through the prism of which the writers depict African realities and which can perhaps change the perception of these realities in the consciousness of the European readers.