Chapter 1

1Driss Ablali highlights the genre of the chronicle, in connection with the question of the auctorial posture. The construction of an enemy figure is a decisive element in Kamel Daoud’s figthing rhetoric. The semiotic, enunciative and argumentative analysis of the corpus of Mes indépendances traces the outlines of a humanist vision that is both Arab-Muslim and universalist.

2Keywords: chronicle, collection, genericity, enunciation, argumentation, Kamel Daoud

Chapter 2

3Fatima Khelef recalls the dramatic political context of the 90s, the limitations of the possibilities of expression in the written press and, in this context, the role of the chronicle and its relation to the daily life of the readers. She shows the double stylistic anchoring of the journalist and writer Kamel Daoud, focusing above all on the collection of 2005, which takes up part of the Raïna Raïkoum chronicles that initially appeared in the press, notably in Le Quotidien d’Oran.

4Keywords: Algerian written press, chronicle, literary, style, intertextuality, Kamel Daoud

Chapter 3

5Alain Rabatel studies Mes indépendances (chronicles 2010-2016) to reflect on the question of individual and collective identities in Kamel Daoud’s “critical and progressive” counter-discourse, who affirms, for both the East and the West, an ethos of truth and freedom against denials and contradictions of sclerosing ideologies.

6Keywords: construction of identities, ideology, chronicle, ethos, counter-discourse, Kamel Daoud

Chapter 4

7Yamna Chadli Abdelkader returns to the almost “hot” vision of the so-called “Arab Spring” events that three Maghreb writers have developed in essays and/or fictions published between 2011 and 2015. She highlights the division between journalistic or literary orientation, the choices of narrative focus, and the self-valuation of the ethos of the authors.

8Keywords: Arab revolutions, ethos, enunciative scenography, auctorial posture, genre, essay

Chapter 5

9Jean-Norbert Vignondé studies the radio media about a press review in the Beninese language (fon) hosted by a talented character. He highlights the specificities, showing how much linguistic, cultural, and literary issues go hand in hand with a certain ethics of commitment.

10Keywords: Beninese language (fon), press review, radio, media landscape, plurilingualism, commitment

Chapter 6

11Mamadou Bailo Binta Diallo is as much on the ground of the philosophical writing as of the political project by mentioning the proposals of Achille Mbembe and Felwine Sarr. These authors criticize the dominant interpretive discourse on Africa and invite the re-founding of endogenous paradigms to articulate knowledge, relations to the world and to “all living things”.

12Keywords: philosophy, dominant interpretive discourse, deconstruction, epistemology, cosmopolitan, postcolonial

Chapter 7

13Lydia Bauer offers a comparison between two women writers, Aminata Sow Fall (20th-21st centuries) and Marguerite de Navarre (16th century). She brings out the intertextuality assumed by the Senegalese novelist and the common confidence of the two authors in the “power of speech”, in times of disaster, to reintroduce humanist values into society.

14Keywords: women’s rights, novel, manifesto, intertextuality, humanism, social criticism

Chapter 8

15Fallou Mbow goes back to the sources of the subversive novel, which appeared after independence and whose model of denunciation by fiction of “established disorder”, abuses of power and exploitation of the people is still effective, through narrative frames and varied scenographies.

16Keywords: subversive novel, scenography, exemplum, fiction, narration, political power

Chapter 9

17Léa Nyingone examines a recent novel by the Congolese writer Alain Mabanckou from the perspective of political sociology and history. She thus questions the degraded forms of democracy, which, in Africa, has become an alibi regime that the literary work stages and calls into question (violence, authoritarianism, corruption, neo-colonial domination).

18Keywords: democracy, violence, novel, domination, political sociology, Congo

Chapter 10

19Martine Fandio Ndawouo adopts the enunciative perspective of “shown heterogeneity”, according to Jacqueline Authier-Revuz, to study two Cameroonian novels published in 2014. She highlights the stylistic work of satirical representation of actors and manipulative speeches, which, as prophetically, provide a scenario of “the end of the dictatorship”.

20Keywords: social actors, novel, shown heterogeneity, mixed governance, rhetoric, denunciation

Chapter 11

21Pierre Fandio, by observing the otherness represented with hostility in the Cameroonian English-speaking literature (narrative and poetic) of the years 1990-2000, through the intermediary of the French language and onomastics, brings to light worrying antagonisms fueled by a certain elite, while the dynamics of popular culture would go in the direction of the dialogue of languages and communities.

22Keywords: Cameroon, English speaking literature, code alternation, alterity, ethos, ideological positions

Chapter 12

23Christine Douxami traces the exceptional artistic and political experience of the 2014 edition of the biennial Récréâtrales festival in Ouagadougou, which coincides that year with the citizen revolution. She thus shows the essential part that culture, and in particular a certain conception and practice of theater, plays in popular emancipation.

24Keywords: citizen movement, revolution, festival, theater, panafrican commitment, Burkina Faso

Chapter 13

25Dédjinnaki Romain Hounzandji combines theatrical creation and political commitment through the posture (in the sense of Jérôme Meizoz) of the academic, “opinion leader” and Togolese playwright Ayayi Togoata Apédo-Amah. This posture is called “tractography”, taking up the qualification of tracts attributed by the power to writings suspected of being subversive. It means a critical artistic position against authoritarian regimes.

26Keywords: theater, subversion, author’s posture, literary field, commitment, Togo

Chapter 14

27Nadia Grine and Rachida Grine take stadiums as a field of observation, to see to what extent the sports song of groups of supporters constitutes a form of political expression for young Algiers. The article combines sociology, which takes account of the ritual dimension of such a performance, and the textual analysis of the protest corpus.

28Keywords: football, supporterism, song, ritual, political expression, Algiers

Chapter 15

29Dorgelès Houessou, from a double semiotic and argumentative angle, is carrying out a stylistic investigation of government communication in Ivory Coast as part of a campaign entitled “The State Works for You”. He highlights the alliance of an enunciative advertising pact that mobilizes a plurisemiotic poeticity and the play of political masks.

30Keywords: publicity speech, posters, public communication, argumentation, rhetoric, Ivory Coast

Chapter 16

31Stéphane Peleu Djoya and François Guebou Tadjuidje are interested in the controversial messages of Cameroonian Facebook groups, during the election period of 2018-2020. They bring out the neological processes and the often satirical or even hateful pragmatic aims of these forms of expression often marred by ethnic stigmatization.

32Keywords: neologism, digital social networks, electoral campaign, controversy, verbal violence, Cameroon

Chapter 17

33Abdelkader Sayad compares the iconotexts of the official electoral campaign for the 2017 legislative elections in Algeria and the parody hijacking operated by Internet users, in a subversive counter-campaign calling for a boycott. The case study illustrates the role played by the RSNs in civic expression.

34Keywords: digital social networks, electoral campaign, citizen mobilization, iconotexts, humor, Algeria

Chapter 18

35Kheira Yahiaoui is interessed in the demonstrations against a fifth presidential term of Abdelaziz Bouteflika (from February 2019). In the public space of Algerian cities, the Hirak unfolds and the networks relay the movement. The author analyzes, from documentation collected in the street and on the web, the slogans that testify to a dynamic and plural collective language competence.

36Keywords: Hirak, degagism, slogans, public space, humor, language creativity

Chapter 19

37Alpha Barry reviews the history of the notion of civil society (that has become an alternative to state failures), in order to provide an understanding, in the broad context of contemporary sub-Saharan Africa, of both the unity and the specificities of the emergence of citizen social movements. Based on the close links between these movements and urban life, he offers a multidimensional socio-discursive analysis that mobilizes sociolinguistics, semiotics, rhetoric, and discourse analysis.

38Keywords: civil society, citizen movement, public space, rhetoric, urban sociolinguistics, protesting youth