Initiation and the construction of the masculine ethos in the negro-African novel: a comparative, psycho-sociological and anthropological study

Abstract

So marked is it by its roots in orality and ancestral traditions, Negro-African literature highlights acts of initiation, understanding them as vectors for the transmission of a socio-cultural heritage confronted with colonial and post-colonial realities and upheavals. Using a transdisciplinary approach combining the sociology of the text, anthropology, sociocriticism and postcolonial studies, this work examines how these rites - whether social (circumcision), religious (Koranic teaching) or educational (modern school) - shape a collective ethos while reflecting the existential and cultural tensions between traditionalism and modernity.                                                                                      By analysing two works from this literature: Camara Laye's L'Enfant noir and Cheikh Hamidou Kane's L'Aventure ambiguë, we show how initiation, far from being a simple rite of passage, embodies an identity, existential and political issue. In Laye's case, the practices (circumcision, palavers) celebrate a cultural continuity that is transmissible and harmonious, nourished by both folk lyricism and residual orality. Kane, on the other hand, highlights the fractures of an initiation divided between mystical African spirituality and philosophical Western rationality. This initiation, embodied in the colonial school and the traditional school, a space for uprooting and identity metamorphosis, is intended as cultural resistance to post-colonial demands.The mechanisms governing this initiation reveal a dialectic between preservation and rupture: while Laye's circumcision maintains the masculinity so deeply rooted in the Malinké community, Kane's Samba Diallo dilemma demonstrates the alienation engendered by the oppositional hybridity between foreign educational models. Space emerges as a key initiatory actor, structuring power relations, post-colonial existential issues and gendered representations.