Jouer Molière passant par l’Afrique: quelques réflexions sur la création franco-africaine

Abstract

In this paper I propose to question the way in which coloniality and Western hegemony affect Francophone theatrical creation as an example of issues which, historically constructed through the prism of a Eurocentric ideology, go beyond the artistic dimension. This focus makes it possible to frame the analysis on aspects of representation, and thus to question the political and cultural aspects of the artistic practices taking place within the dynamics of Franco-African relations. I will show these issues starting with Baâda, le malade imaginaire by the Burkinabe company Marbayassa, a cooperative adaptation with an intercultural vocation. By turning to the theatre to rethink the whole range of cultural products from the point of view of performance and forms of domination, the analysis shows the relationships between theatrical creation, cultural institutions, and economic and political logics. The analysis highlights the ways in which artistic productions convey representations that can favour the fabrication of an aestheticization of difference and the risks of ethnocentric representation, notably in the forms of exoticism of the body and of the imagination. In the conflict between hybridisation and cultural homogenisation that interculturality brings about, this allows to keep in mind the imposition of a knowledge/power that is both marginalising and phagocytising.