De la colonisation à la globalisation
From Colonisation to Globalisation

On the Ecocentric Perspective in "Congo Inc. Le testament de Bismarck" by In Koli Jean Bofane

Author(s): Renata Bizek-Tatara
Subject(s): Studies of Literature, French Literature, Theory of Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: In Koli Jean Bofane; Africa; ecology; protection of the equatorial forest; neocolonialism
Summary/Abstract: The article focuses on the novel "Congo Inc. Le testament de Bismarck" (2014) by In Koli Jean Bofane (born in 1954), where the issue of protecting the natural environment and its fusional link to man takes centre stage. I study the environmental ills that the Congo (DRC) has suffered, as well as various misdeeds of globalisation, carried out, in most cases, through violence. I also reflect on the committed posture of the novelist who openly denounces the bad governance and global imperialism of the financial institutions and the UN whose globalisation of Congo is massacring its ecosystems. For him, this is just another, more modern, form of colonisation of the native country, leading to its ecological degradation, which in turn leads to a demographic, economic and identity-based degradation. According to this proponent of ecocentrism, man is a part of nature, one species among others, a component of a mixed community. This is why protecting nature means, in this Congolese fiction, protecting man, his present and future.

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