The Spoils of War: Money and Humanism in Emmanuel Dongala's Johnny Chien Méchant

Abstract

Emmanuel Dongala's 2002 novel Johnny Chien Méchant (adapted into a 2008 film of the same name) shows how the history of colonial and post colonial Africa can be reduced to the story of money and its destructive power. One of Francophone Africa's major living novelists with a career spanning 40 years, Dongala takes a humanist perspective on questions of black identity and economic inequality. Emblematic of a recent shift in Francophone African literature, Johnny Chien Méchant combines the carnivalesque descriptions of violence of Congolese writer Sony Labou Tansi's La Vie et Demie (1979) with the compassion and humanism evident in later texts such as Senegalese author Boubacar Boris Diop's Murambi (2006). Multiple characters in Dongala's novel—child soldiers, corrupt customs officials, profiteering refugees—become prisoners to greed, suggesting the continuation, in a different form, of the exploitative practices of colonialism. In this article, I show the way in which Dongala's humanism shapes his discussion of money and its role in contemporary conflicts (whether in the African or global context). I argue that Dongala both engages with and subverts afro-pessimist discourses through a nuanced representation of money's role in fomenting violence.

Keywords:

• Postcolonial literature
• Francophone African literature
• child soldier literature
• Johnny Chien Méchant
• Dongala
• money

Notes

1. For further discussion of the evolution from Laye's novel and the child soldier narrative see John Walsh (2008).

2. Dongala discusses his choice of a child narrator in a 2003 interview with the website “Mots Pluriels.” http://motspluriels.arts.uwa.edu.au/MP2403ed3.html.

3. Dongala's work includes Un fusil dans la main, un poème dans la poche (Albin Michel, 1974), Le feu des origines (Albin Michel, 1987), Jazz et vin de palme (Le Serpent à Plumes, 1996), Les petits garçons naissent aussi des étoiles (Le Serpent à Plumes, 2000), Johnny Chien Méchant (Le Serpent à Plumes, 2002), and Photo du groupe au bord du fleuve (Actes Sud, 2010). He has received the Prix Virilo (2010), the Prix Ahmadou Kourouma (2011), and the Prix Mokanda (2013).

4. For more detailed discussion of Dongala's work and legacy see Dominic Thomas (2002).

5. Perhaps the most written about of Africa's recent tragedies, the 1994 genocide in Rwanda has been the subject of considerable literary and scholarly attention, notably through the works of the Rwanda: Écrire par devoir de mémoire project. For an analysis of this project see Niki Hitchcott (2009).

6. For some notable examples, see Koffi Anyinefa (2006), Corinne Blanchaud (2011), and Stephan Grey (2013).

7. This is the reading which Florence Paravy suggests in her article (2011).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

George MacLeod

George MacLeod has an M.A. in French Literature from the University of Pennsylvania, where he is currently a fifth year doctoral candidate working on sub-Saharan Francophone African literature and film. His scholarship uses trauma studies and narratological analysis to explore the complex ways in which Francophone Africa's violent histories are mediated within a global network of cultural production and consumption.