Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: FW: [apela-infos] Disparition de Yambo Ouologuem

By the way, ouologuem's book on plagiarism is title Lettre a la France Negre

An attack on the French establishment, and bourgeois ownership of property

 

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

Michigan State University

619 Red Cedar Rd

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-803-8839

harrow@msu.edu

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

 

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelberg@gmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Saturday, 21 October 2017 at 15:18
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: FW: [apela-infos] Disparition de Yambo Ouologuem

 

"zillions of pirated movies going around" was preceded by b-zillions of pirated music tapes being bartered and sold at enormous profit at Port Harcourt's Mile One Market and none to the artists.

 

In the music world  (the music industry) in this advanced age of "sampling", goodness knows how many notes in any particular sequence qualify as plagiarism and there have been quite a few court cases ( Music too has its language and languages by which I can imagine some eclectic kind of fellow that  some could even diagnose as musically schizophrenic - embracing anything from  B. B: King, through Kwame Ampadu or Koo Nimo, via Carlos Santana to Caen Madoka ( it's all rooted in the Blues)   -  spontaneously erupting into somethings like any of their riffs , with his eyes closed) but perhaps not in the recording studio.

 

In terms of the available definitions of plagiarism // literary plagiarism ( with regard to the written or spoken word  and all you have said so recently about this subject in this forum)  and in his own famous words

 

" steal a little and they throw you in jail - steal a lot and they make you king"

 

It is  nevertheless, distressing, but the breaker of barriers  Bob Dylan's Nobel Lecture has been roundly accused of plagiarism

On Tuesday, 17 October 2017 09:40:34 UTC+2, Kenneth Harrow wrote:

Ouologuem plagiarized openly, so to speak. He didn't so much try to hide it—as I would argue beyala did—as transform it, "reterritorialize" it, we would say. if you google it you can see how his famous opening is taken directly and then adapted to le dernier des justes, and I don't remember where else. He setsup the saifs as the villains, and skewers them, famously. Then he is attacked for it; and wrote a really powerful defense of using all published words, regardless of copyright, challenging the notions of private property, copyright. Remember, it was 1968.

Then 20 some odd years later, beyala gets caught plagiarizing. I wrote at length about it, devoting a lot of a chapter onher stealing from dangarembga, but also others. Anyone really interested can find it in my book Less Than One and Double.

She also stole from ben okri, whose published sued her and basically won (her publisher settled), and okri saying it felt as is a bus was running over his legs.

The description you give, Cornelius, is something like the really weak defense she gave—something to the effect that all of us Africans are oral, etc etc. not worth repeating, it was so mealy mouthed.

Both of them are very talented authors. I felt ouologuem was honourable and revolutionary, and that beyala was being dishonest.

As to your question, how can you tell, well it is a matter of judgment. There may be precise laws, but this is another case where reasonable judgment should be applied.

 

I suppose it is ironic to evoke this in our day and age with zillions of pirated movies going around. But that didn't exist in those days.

ken

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

Michigan State University

619 Red Cedar Rd

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-803-8839

harrow@msu.edu

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

 

From: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Monday, 16 October 2017 at 18:01
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: FW: [apela-infos] Disparition de Yambo Ouologuem

 

It's so sad that some of our greats such as Dick Gregory lately passing us by, quietly on, almost surreptitiously...

 

Many thanks, Professor Kenneth Harrow for bringing the passing of the tragic Yambo Ouologuem  to our attention.

 

Bound to Violence

 

Pdf

A little question to you professor: What happens with what could pass off as quotations from the vast reservoir of the Western -  Eastern Parnassus / heritage when absorbed consciously /unconsciously say in a written stream of consciousness / internal dialogue - such as some of the stuff  from popular song, from Plotinus, Heraclitus or Jesus, a little less common than " love your neighbour as your self" , " I am the resurrection and the life" etc how is the distinction made between what is common and belongs to all of us and  what may be disembowelled and laid out as " plagiarism" ?

 

On Sunday, 15 October 2017 22:40:18 UTC+2, Kenneth Harrow wrote:

One of africa's most famous early authors has died. Yambo ouologuem, author of Devoir de violence (Bound to Violence). As important a novelist, in the history of african literature, as I know. Devoir came out in 1968, and it was astonishing. The critics did not want to believe an African could write with such style, as so discredited him as a plagiarist. His defense of the plagiarisms was almost as powerful as the novel. His work was part of the revolutionary spirit of the times, not only in his attacks on power—what we'd call colonial, neo-colonial, and postcolonial—but on sexual taboos, and on negritude. Attacks on the veneration of historical figures who were depicted as virtual slave owners. Attacks on a world of privilege, of domination, of corruption—as seen from below, as seen from the perspective of what he termed "la negraille." He was a true man of trash, in the sense of disruption, disturbance, and daring.

 

And then he quit writing. Returned to northern mali, became as religious advocate, and disappeared from view. We need to salute him as one of the signposts of African literature, and remember what he accomplished with the few writings he provided.

Maybe he could be compared with Rimbaud.

If irele were alive, he could tell you all what he meant. I hope others will step into irele's footsteps, and provide their testimonies about him, so that his passing does not occur in silence.

ken

 

Kenneth Harrow

Dept of English and Film Studies

Michigan State University

619 Red Cedar Rd

East Lansing, MI 48824

517-803-8839

harrow@msu.edu

http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/

 

From: <apela-inf...@asso.univ-lorraine.fr> on behalf of Bani Diallo <cnlpd...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: Bani Diallo <cnlpd...@gmail.com>
Date: Sunday, 15 October 2017 at 12:29
To: <apela...@asso.univ-lorraine.fr>
Subject: [apela-infos] Disparition de Yambo Ouologuem

 

Chers membres de l'APELA,

J'ai une triste nouvelle à vous communiquer : Yambo Ouologuem, le premier lauréat africain du Prix Renaudot, s'est éteint dans la nuit du samedi 14 octobre 2017 à Sévaré. 

Que son âme repose en paix !

 

Bien que déinscrit de la liste APELA, pour des raisons d'ordre technique, j'ai tenu à diffuser cette  information, au moment où les obsèques officielles du défunt sont en cours de préparation.   

 

Mamadou Bani Diallo 

Tél. : (223) 76 48 31 29

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