Sameness and Ipseity Play in African Tales: Case of the Kéra in Cameroon

Abstract

This article aims at making it easier to understand the functioning of tradi-orality in African civilizations through the study of the relationship between « Sameness » and « Ipseity » as perceived within the Kéra community of Cameroon, in the light of a sample of 56 tales. We seek to analyse, beyond the ethnic and cultural diversity that characterizes this country, the perception of the world according to the Kéra and the axiological strategic choices of which this corpus avails itself in their design of construction of the policies of living together. Only, are the stakes of such an interaction, between identity and alterity, able to draw, effectively, the contours of salutary actions in terms of living together, a guarantee of sustainable development of people? The epistemological approach is carried out alternately through the prism of historical, formalist then symbological or even axiological-ideological determinations, and engages in a metatheoretical corridor comprising mainly, as a tool of literary analyses, the oral literary aesthetics of Samuel-Martin ENO-BELINGA. The work is subdivided into three parts: “General presentation of the Kéra cultural domain”; “Textualization of the identity and otherness play”; “Symbological, axiological and ideological assessments”.