History and Its Doubles in Alain Mabanckou's African Psycho

Bibliographic Data

ID9250722
AuthorsLibin Libin, Li-Bin Li-Bin (University of Manitoba, corresponding author)
Year2016
Volume47
Issue1
Pages39
Publication date2016-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueResearch in African Literatures (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0034-5210 • E-ISSN: 1527-2044
PublisherIndiana University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.2979/reseafrilite.47.1.39
OpenAlexW2291888615
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited4

Through a reading of the theme of doubleness in Alain Mabanckou’s African Psycho, a theme that also includes the extra-textual positioning of the novel as a literary double to Brett Easton Ellis’s American Psycho, I argue that Mabanckou’s novel gestures toward a narrative double that is almost completely obscured by the narration itself, namely the traumatic legacy of ongoing civil war and strife in the Congo region. Using Achille Mbembe’s reading of Cameroonian political cartoons as a lens through which to discuss “the thing and its doubles,” I suggest that African Psycho offers a tangible and complex representation of Mbembe’s contention that the only means of accurately representing the immediate present of Africa is not through standard realism, but through a mode that is excessive, grotesque, cartoonish, and hallucinatory

Art · Linguistics · Literature · Mode (computer interface) · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Reading (process) · Realism · Representation (politics) · Spanish Civil War · Theme (computing) · Crime, Deviance, and Social Control · Gothic Literature and Media Analysis · History · Law · Modern American Literature Studies · Philosophy · Psychology

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