Déconstruction du traumatisme et reconstruction dans le pluriel des particuliers dans La Maison des épices (2014) de Nafissatou Dia Diouf

Abstract

Nafissatou Dia Diouf situates her novel, La Maison des épices (2014), in a former slave and spice counter of the same name, located in Mbour, Senegal, which has been transformed into a modern mental health center. Séga, the twenty-year-old son of Docteur Yérim Tall, was brought to the Maison des épices by his father, a psychoanalyst in charge of his own son’s treatment. Séga suffers from amnesia and is unbalanced and decentered following the death of his French mother Pauline in a plane crash which he survived. This paper examines Séga’s journey as he navigates and negotiates plural identities (Serge T… Louis… Séga) in search of his true lost identity. The mix of modern and traditional therapies at the Maison des épices triggers Séga’s re-centering and rebalancing. His plural identities take on a much bigger scope, becoming the sign of an enlarged and plural “Sénégalité,” because in addition to his re-rooting in the Serer hinterland of central Senegal (thanks in part to the use of a traditional psychic Wolof healing ceremony, the ndëpp), he is re-anchored by extension in mother-earth (Africa). The epigraphs prefacing each of the novel’s chapters anticipate the rehabilitation and return of the African part of Séga.

Keywords:

• Plural identities
• trauma
• amnesia
• healing
• ndëpp
• Senegal

Notes

1 Nous apprenons vers la fin du roman le traumatisme refoulé qui marque le passé du colonel: il est recherché par la cour pénale internationale pour crimes de guerre dans le conflit au Libéria entre 1989 et 1997, trouvé à la page 252 de La Maison des épices. Le choc de sa mort: accident ou suicide? C’est un des éléments qui provoque le retour du refoulé chez Séga et sa guérison.

2 Voici le texte original de Montaigne : “Nous sommes tous des lopins, et d’une contexture si informe et diverse, que chaque pièce, chaque moment, fait son jeu. Et se trouve autant de différence de nous à nous même que de nous à autrui.” [Michel de Montaigne, Trois Essais de Montaigne (I-39, II-1, III-2), Paris, Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1951, p. 56.]

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ousmane Lecoq Diop

Ousmane Lecoq Diop is a third year Ph.D. candidate in French and Francophone Studies at the University of Kansas. He has experience as a high school teacher of French and holds an MA in French from the University of North Texas. He is interested in exploring the status and future of French language and culture in Africa, particularly in West Africa, and its correlations with identity, immigration, and economic Issues. His dissertation, “Multidimensional Cultural Navigation and Translation: The Language(s) Issue between “Sénégalité” and Cosmopolitanism,” will address the language(s) question in Senegal.

Van Kelly

Van Kelly is Professor of French and Francophone studies at the University of Kansas. He has published on writers René Char, Jude Stéfan, Jorge Semprún, J. M. G. Le Clézio, Patrick Modiano, Laurent Binet, and filmmakers Abel Gance, Bertrand Tavernier, and Agnès Varda. His current book project is Cityscapes and Mindscapes: Mapping Interactive Social, Political, and Spiritual Spaces of Dakar, of which his article “Numinous Thirdspace: Recrafting the African City in Ken Bugul’s Rue Félix-Faure” (South Central Review, 2020), is a reflection.