Tirailleurs Sénégalais, Savagery, and War Trauma in At Night All Blood is Black by David Diop

Abstract

This article offers an analysis of the representation of tirailleurs sénégalais in At Night All Blood is Black (Frère d’âme), a First World War novel published in 2018 to considerable critical acclaim by David Diop. I show how Diop invokes and at the same time undermines stereotypes of African ferociousness. His tirailleur protagonist becomes an unwilling witness to European barbarity, as the war causes a radical questioning of the colonial order. By focusing on the figure of the dëmm, I offer a ‘decolonized’ approach to First World War trauma and address excess and ambiguity as strategies of postcolonial transformation in Diop’s novel. Finally, I argue that although At Night All Blood is Black commemorates the French African soldiers’ contribution to the First World War, rather than simply painting a heroic portrait of the tirailleurs sénégalais, it does so by stressing their vulnerability and their traumatic transformation at the front.

KEYWORDS:

• First World War
• tirailleur sénégalais
• trauma
• savagery
• commemoration
• postcolonial excess
• ambiguity

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the National Science Centre, Poland, under grant number UMO- 2019/33/B/HS2/00019.

Notes

1 In an interview, Diop mentions as an essential source Paroles de poilus: Lettres et carnets du front (1914-1918) by Jean-Pierre Guéno (1998) (Libraire Mollat, 2019).

2 While At Night All Blood is Black is the only longer fictional work about the tirailleurs sénégalais published in the centenary years, in their graphic novel, Histoire des tirailleurs sénégalais en BD (2018), Frédéric Chabaud and Julien Monier also depict the First World War from the perspective of a young Senegalese peasant. In this context, it is worth mentioning the animated film Adama (2015), directed by Simon Rouby, which tells the story of a West African boy who searches for his older brother in war-torn Europe.

3 The heroism of the tirailleurs sénégalais became a dominant image in the interwar period and particularly after the Second World War (Fell and Wardleworth, 2016: 322). Fell and Wardleworth analyze cultural representations of French West African soldiers in terms of palimpsestic memory, stressing the superimposition of Second World War clichés on the recent cultural representations of tirailleurs in the earlier global conflict (Fell and Wardleworth, 2016: 329–30).

4 Whether West Africans were used as cannon fodder remains a contested issue (see Michel, 2003: 196; Fogarty, 2008: 86).

5 This is in accord with Frantz Fanon’s and Albert Memmi’s vision of colonization, in which the construction of the colonized as an infantile and dependent being is a prerequisite for the existence of the colonizer (Memmi, 2003: 120–25; Fanon, 1952: 80–81).

6 For a discussion of survivor guilt, see Herman, 1992: 53-54; Lifton, 1996: 132–261.

7 Subsequent references are to the 2020 Farrar, Straus and Giroux edition of At Night All Blood is Black and will be cited parenthetically by page number in the text.

8 The hidden point of reference in the novel is Blaise Cendrars’s La Main coupée from 1946 (Librairie Mollat, 2019).

9 This is in accord with the experience of real-life Senegalese soldiers, for whom participation in the 1914–1918 conflict ‘represented a fundamental departure from the mentality of the pre-war colonial order’. It became evident in the political environment of post-war Senegal (Lunn, 1999: 179).

10 While trauma studies have tended to prioritize white Europeans (Andermahr, 2016: 1; Craps, 2012: 9–19), a ‘decolonized’ approach requires a comprehensive analysis of non-Western ways of being and understanding the world (Visser, 2011: 280). The inclusion of diverse strategies of representation might help revise ‘the individualizing, psychologizing, and ultimately depoliticizing tendencies characteristic of Western models of trauma’ (Craps and Buelens, 2008: 4). Whereas Western frameworks of trauma often stress aporia, victimization, and melancholia, non-Western approaches tend to insist on resistance, forgiveness, and recovery (Visser, 2016: 11–12).

11 Due to lack of space, I cannot discuss here Alfa’s early trauma after the departure of his mother and his sense of ostracization as a half-orphan in Senegal.

12 During the French occupation of the Rhineland in the post-war years, the alleged rape of German women by African soldiers was the principal atrocity highlighted in popular culture (Fogarty, 2008: 274–82).

13 ‘I know, I understand’ and ‘God’s truth’ are among the phrases frequently repeated in the novel.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Narodowe Centrum Nauki: [Grant Number UMO-- 2019/33/B/HS2/00019].

Notes on contributors

Anna Branach-Kallas

Anna Branach-Kallas is Associate Professor at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland. Her research interests include the representation of trauma and war, postcolonialism, medical humanities and comparative studies. She is currently working on her new project “Critical Mourning, Entangled Legacies of Violence, and Postcolonial Discontent in Selected 21st Century First World War Novels in English and French”.