Le Zéhéros N'est Pas N'importe Qui by Williams Sassine

I thank Tahar Ben Jelloun for lending me his apartment on the Boulevard Saint-Germain during the summer of 1996. My gratitude and thanks go especially to the people at the Teranga Hotel (Dakar), the Café Flore (Paris), Space Untitled (New York), and the Pamela Café and Restaurant (New York). I would like to thank all the people who tolerated my extended presence, often up to closing hours, in their spaces. Since I have always wanted to produce a work like Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis, I wrote the entire book in cafés and hotel lobbies in Senegal, Mali, Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire, France, Jamaica, Bermuda, Guadeloupe, Martinique, and the United States. Even ~nding contradictions will constitute a step in the right direction. Other readers, however, will ~nd connections between what I am saying in the Laye story and what I have tried to theorize in the Situations. I have nothing against the pleasure of the text.

They should feel free to skip these pages and continue on with the Sidimé Laye story. I know that some people will ~nd them obtrusive, or even shocking. The Situations are designed to provide distance for re_ecting on the issues in Africa with which I am concerned. The Situations deal with blackness and modernity, and my own place and role in shaping them. The chapters recount the Sidimé Laye story and my search for Africa. I have organized this book into chapters and Situations, borrowing a concept from Sartre. Africa, French-speaking West-Relations-United States. United States-Relations-Africa, French-speaking West. Diawara, Manthia, 1953– -Journeys-Africa. West Africans-United States-Ethnic identity. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATAĭiawara, Manthia, 1953– In search of Africa / Manthia Diawara. Reprinted by permission of Duke University Press. H A RVA R D U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S Cambridge, Massachusetts London, EnglandĬopyright © 1998 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Second printing, 2000 First Harvard University Press paperback edition, 2000 Situation III originally appeared as “Malcolm X and the Black Public Sphere: Conversionists versus Culturalists,” Public Culture, 7, no.

Le Zéhéros N'est Pas N'importe Qui by Williams Sassine