Deconstructing the figure of the dictator in Ramón Esono Ebalé’s La pesadilla de Obi

Abstract

As a country which, since gaining independence from Spain in 1968, has only known two autocratic regimes and is currently headed by Africa’s longest-serving dictator, the question of freedom weighs heavily on the literature of Equatorial Guinea. Although the Hispanophone tradition is little explored within African literary criticism, writers from the Hispanophone literary tradition of Equatorial Guinea, much like their Anglophone and Francophone counterparts, address the question of dictatorship and its repercussions in varied ways. Joaquim Mbomio Bacheng’s description of Hispanophone literature as “a song of freedom in its eternal quest for a new world” is very telling of Equatoguinean writers’ response to the stranglehold that dictatorship has over the country. One contemporary Hispanophone author whose life and works exemplify Bacheng’s observation, and arguably confront the subject of dictatorship most forcefully, is Ramón Esono Ebalé, renowned for his activism and visually arresting texts. This paper undertakes a close reading of Ebalé’s graphic novel La pesadilla de Obi [Obi’s nightmare], which employs the power of both visual and written texts to fashion a new status for Obi, its dictator-turned-ordinary-citizen protagonist. I argue that the deconstruction of the image of the dictator serves as a solid basis for compelling its target audience to formulate a counter-discourse to destabilize established notions about Obiang.

Keywords:

• Hispanophone literature
• graphic novel
• dictatorship
• freedom
• deconstruction

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions. Sincere gratitude to the editors for their dedication and support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joanna Boampong

Joanna Boampong is Senior Lecturer of Spanish and Director of the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Ghana. Her research covers literary and cultural analyses of works from the Hispanic traditions of Africa, Europe, and Latin America. Additionally, it seeks to introduce Hispanophone perspectives into debates on African literatures and engage Anglophone and Francophone counterparts. She is a 2013 fellow of the African Humanities Project and 2014 Presidential Fellow of the African Studies Association. Her publications have appeared in Research in African Literatures, Kairos, and Matatu.