Thresholds: A 'Complete' Table of the Borrowings in Yambo Ouologuem's Le Devoir de Violence, and Why They Matter - by Christopher L Miller

Book Synopsis

Recent research has revealed that the borrowings in Yambo Ouologuem's epochal novel Le Devoir de violence (Bound to Violence) are far more extensive than was previously thought. Accused of plagiarism, Ouologuem quit the Parisian literary world and returned to a definitive silence in Mali. This book attempts to provide both a complete table of the borrowings in Le Devoir de Violence and a new theory of their meaning. Miller dispels the myth that the borrowings are minor, negligible, or criminal; he argues that they are artful "thresholds," openings to a profound reconsideration of African history. Ouologuem set up this system of borrowings as a way to invite readers down unexpected paths of meaning. The borrowings are not mere stunts; they are inseparable from Ouologuem's radical revision of African history and his rejection of Negritude. The table of borrowings in part three of this book will serve as a resource for readers and scholars.

Review Quotes

"Against the accusations of plagiarism that tried to bury it, no one better than Christopher Miller has revealed Yambo Ouologuem's Bound to violence, for what it is: a literary phenomenon that we have never finished probing. At a time when the work has been reissued, it remained to track down precisely all the passages in which the Malian writer demonstrated his genius for demarcation. This has now been done now, wonderfully, in Christopher Miller's Thresholds." Professor Souleymane Bashir Diagne, Columbia University

"This is a brilliant scholarly illustration of literary intersexuality and Creolization. Christopher Miller's book, "Thresholds..." goes beyond the defense of Le devoir de violence against charges of plagiarism, to draw the reader's attention to a more fruitful engagement with Ouologuem's textual cannibalism of World Literatures as the inauguration, in 1968, of the movement of anti-origin and anti-authenticity by modern African writers. This is what's new and exciting in both the works of Ouologuem and Miller." Professor Manthia Diawara, NYU

"Thresholds of Meaning explores a range of complex historical and social questions pertaining to cultural production, consecration, dissemination, reception, and retrieval. Together, these questions promise to nourish engaging conversations around contemporary debates, while also improving our capacity to evaluate how knowledge will continue to be recorded and transmitted in new and unforeseen ways along the connected pathways of twenty-first century existence." Dominic Thomas, Madeleine Letessier Professor of French, UCLA