The Fantasy of the Body in Ben Okri's The Famished Road

Dékao Fabrice TIÉMOU

Volume 16 – Septembre 2021 : Le corps dans les productions artistiques et culturelles : entre esthétique et signification (2021) Page(s) 118 - 129 ISSN 2076-6130

The body is an essential element used by African writers in their literary productions. It is used for socio-cultural, political and aesthetic purposes. It is thus an important component of both African literary poetics and ethics. Through the corporeal substance, the constitutive elements of the text are built, the narration is produced and completed (Nshimiyimana, 2005, p. 88). However, a good analysis of it in literary productions requires an understanding of the notion itself. According to Achille Mbembe, “the body […] is an anatomical reality, a gathering of organs, each with its specific function” (Mbembe, 2013, pp. 209-210)1 . This diverse functioning of the body seems 1 « Le corps […] est une réalité anatomique, un assemblage d’organes ayant, chacun, des fonctions spécifiques ». to make it an opaque entity. In fact, by its ability to change differently according to the needs of each organ, the body appears as a fantasized organ or a substance playing a literary or narrative role. Achille Mbembe adds in the same perspective that “more than a symbolical ambivalence […], the meaning of the body is linked [to the] power of the fantasy [and that] the subject can be transformed at any circumstances” (ibid., pp. 210-211)1 . This ambivalent representation of the body as a means of contradiction is pervasive in Ben Okri’s The Famished Road. The fantasy of the body, its metamorphosis and the violence upon it, constitutes specific features of Okri’s style. To reach the aim of th

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Dékao Fabrice TIÉMOU. « The Fantasy of the Body in Ben Okri's The Famished Road ». Revue Ivoirienne de Langues Étrangères, Numéro 16, 2021, p. 118. ISSN 2076-6130.