Concordance des temps: De la scénographie dans Demain j’aurai vingt ans d’Alain Mabanckou

Abstract

This article demonstrates that in Demain j’aurai vingt ans (“Tomorrow I will be Twenty”) Alain Mabanckou, while talking about his childhood in Pointe Noire in Congo, also talks about justifying his adhesion to the littérature-monde movement. In the main, fictional works of Alain Mabanckou portray his vision of African literature, Verre Cassé being a perfect example of this. While this earlier novel only highlights this vision, Demain j’aurai vingt ans tries to prove that this vision is the only pertinent one. In this regard, Mabanckou attempts to deconstruct the argument that the upholders of littérature-monde, to which he belongs, are westernized and too remote from African realities. The article further examines and analyses the strategies of the author based on the notions of paratopy and scenography as developed by Dominique Maingueneau in Le discours littéraire. Paratopie et scène d’énonciation (“Literary Discourse. Paratopy and enunciation scene”).