Sex, Power, and Community in Ousmane Sembène`s Véhi

L IFONGO V ETINDE
———— 
Sex, Power, and Community
in Ousmane Sembène’s Véhi-Ciosane
ABSTRACT
Published in 1966, Véhi-Ciosane is arguably one of the key texts that powerfully participates in Ousmane Sembène’s mission of critiquing his society in his writing. Despite
its centrality to the writer’s counter-discourse for change, the short novel has been almost
wholly neglected by critics, probably owing to the extremely sensitive and shameful
nature of its central theme. This article is an examination of Sembène’s deployment of
the incest taboo to x-ray his society. I read the novel as a narrative of transgression in
which he uses the private story of a chief’s impregnation of his daughter as a pretext to
make a pointed critique of the self-destructive anthropophagic behavior of Senegal’s
ruling elite. I argue that, through this story of male libidinal desire gone awry, Sembène
depicts a dysfunctional family and a disrupted village community whose experience
could plausibly be read as a microcosm of the reality of the Senegalese national community at large.
Your own yams that you have pounded
You cannot eat them
The mothers of others
The sister of others
The yams they have pounded
You can eat them
— Arapesh aphorism.1
A
L T H O U G H I T S H A R E S T H E S A M E V O L U M E as Le Mandat,
one of Sembène Ousmane’s most popular novels, Véhi-Ciosane is
among the least studied of the author’s works. The arrangement of
1
Among the Arapesh, common wisdom dictates the consumption of only things
produced by others. The verb ‘to eat’ is a metaphor for all daily transactions in the
community. Eating from one’s own resources comes across as a form of self-destructive anthropomorphism; hence, it is discouraged.
© Spheres Public and Private: Western Genres in African Literature, ed. Gordon Collier
(Matatu 39; Amsterdam & New York: Editions Rodopi, 2011).
442
LIFONGO VETINDE 
the titles on the front cover and title page of the book seems to point to a conscious attempt by Sembène to have Véhi-Ciosane ride on the popularity of Le
Mandat. The front cover reads Le Mandat précédé de Véhi Ciosane. This
order is reversed in the inside title page to read Véhi Ciosane ou BlancheGenèse suivi du Mandat. Despite this effort, the short novel has been the subject of little or no critical attention. One could argue that the novel’s continuous obscurity is linked to its central theme: the incest taboo. In taking up the
subject, Sembène was fully aware of the fact that he was writing against the
grain, as he points out in the preface:
Over the years, I have often discussed it with you, my fellow A F R I C A N S .
Your reasoning never convinced me. However, on one point you were
agreed: “I must not write this story.” You argued that it would bring dishonour to U S , T H E B L A C K R A C E . Worse still, you insisted, the detractors
of N E G R O - A F R I C A N C I V I L I Z A T I O N would latch onto it and… and…
use it to heap us with shame.2
Homi Bhabha has drawn attention to “the attempt by nationalist discourses
persistently to produce the idea of the nation as a continuous narrative of
national progress.”3 Driven by narcissism and egocentrism, nationalists tend
to elide the unpleasant aspects of their cultures and societies. Those who unsuccessfully tried to dissuade Sembène from writing the story while not denying the existence of the problem of incest in their society ostensibly vouched
for its occultation in the interest of African pride. Sembène rejects an idealized representation of pre-modern African communities because, “in the past,
as well as in the present, there have been many anonymous heroic actions
among us” (5) [“dans le passé comme dans le présent, il y eut beaucoup
2
Ousmane Sembène, The Money Order with White Genesis, tr. Clive Wake (London: Heinemann, 1980): 5. Further page references are in the main text. “Pendant
des années, je me suis entretenu avec quelques-uns d’entre vous: A F R I C A I N S . Les
raisons, vos raisons, ne m’ont pas convaincu. Certes, vous étiez d’accord sur ce point:
“N’écris pas cette histoire.” Vous argumentiez que ce serait jetez l’oppobre sur N O U S
L A R A C E N O I R E . Mieux, ajoutiez-vous, les détracteurs de la C I V I L I S A T I O N
N É G R O - A F R I C A I N E allaient s’emparer, et… et… pour nous jeter l’oppobre.” Ousmane Sembène, Le Mandat, précédé de Véhi-Ciosane (Paris: Éditions Présence Africaine, 1966): 15.
3
Homi K. Bhabha, “Introduction: narrating the nation,” in Nation and Narration,
ed. Bhabha (London: Routledge, 1990): 1.
 Sex, Power, and Community in Véhi-Ciosane
443
d’actions héroïques anonymes. Mais tout n’a pas été héroisme chez nous”
(16)]. He understands that the concealment of any community’s vices even in
the name of national pride is a retrogressive and self-defeating gesture of
denial. As he once observed, “The day when we will have the courage, and I
know that we will, to settle our differences within the family, you will see
what will happen.”4 Constant shifting of blame for Africa’s problems onto
outsiders is counter-productive because it takes away the initiative for a genuine process of national development.
In The Elementary Structure of Kinship, Claude Lévi–Strauss compares the
universality of the incest taboo to that of language. The enforcement of its
prohibition, he observes, is an indispensable element in the structuring of civil
societies across cultures. Echoing Lévi–Strauss, Michel Foucault, in The History of Sexuality, asserts that the prohibition of incest is “one of the points
through which every society is bound to pass on the way to becoming a culture”; for Foucault, “the threshold of all culture” is “prohibited incest.”5 Due
to the centrality of the incest taboo in socio-cultural praxis in communities all
over the world, writers of creative fiction explore the subject as a metaphor of
social reality. As Constance Hill Hall puts it, incest in literature could be read
as a symbol of “the preying of the past upon the present or the tyranny of
authority […] symbolizing an element of irrationality and perverseness in
both the psyche and the universe.”6 As with other writers, Sembène’s decision
to break the silence over the subject gives him the opportunity to deal with
much more than just the breaching of the taboo in the novel.
André Cnockaert, one of the rare critics to have undertaken an in-depth
study of Véhi-Ciosane, cautions against correlating the novel with contemporary reality. In his view, the parallels between the story and ancient myths are
too compelling for such an approach to be plausible.
Vehi-Ciosane is not a realistic story. Those who do a realist reading of the
novel probably make the same mistake as those who do a fundamentalist
4
“Le jour où nous aurons le courage, et je sais que nous l’aurons, de régler nos
comptes en famille, vous verrez ce qui va se passer.” Quoted in Elizabeth Lequeret,
“Sembène Ousmane à boulets rouges,” Jeune Afrique 109 (December 1993): 59–61.
(My tr.)
5
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality (New York: Vintage, 1990): 109, 110.
6
Constance Hill Hall, Incest in Faulkner: A Metaphor for the Fall (Ann Arbor:
U M I Research Press, 1983): 8.
444
LIFONGO VETINDE 
reading of bible stories in Genesis and Exodus [. . . ]. In fact, there is in the
story the whole gamut of the themes in ancient myths, especially those of the
Theban cycle which inspired Sophocle’s finest tragedies, such as the story of
Oedipus killing his father and sharing his father’s bed.7
Cnockaert does a fine analysis of the parallels between Véhi-Ciosane and ancient myths but his suggestion that myth and reality are mutually exclusive is
untenable, since myths are the product of socio-cultural and historical reality.
Evangeline Kane cogently underscores this correlation when she argues that
myths are reflections of possible selves:
Myths enable us to see ourselves in vast archetypal structures from which we
may slowly gain some objectivity, as we seek to break away from ancient and
destructive patterns.8
Allusion to ancient myths in Véhi-Ciosane, then, is consistent with Sembène’s
commitment to relate his writing to contemporary reality.9 In this essay, I set
7
“Véhi-Ciosane n’est pas un récit réaliste. Ceux qui en font une lecture réaliste
commettent probablement la même erreur que ceux qui font une lecture ‘fondamentaliste’ des grands récits bibliques de la Génèse et de l’Exode [. . . ]. Vraiment il y a là
toute la panoplie des thèmes mythiques anciens, en particulier ceux du cycle thébain
qui inspirèrent à Sophocles ses plus belles tragédies, comme en racontant l’histoire
d’Oedype tuant son père et partageant le lit de son père.” André Cnockaert, “VéhiCiosane, récit clé dans l’oeuvre de Sembène Ousmane,” Zaïre-Afrique 28/222 (1988):
111. (My tr.)
8
Evangeline Kane, Recovering from Incest: Imagination and the Healing Process
(Boston M A : Sigo, 1989): 4.
9
In the preface to L’Harmattan, Sembène explains his writing philosophy as follows:
Je ne fais pas la théorie du roman africain. Je me souviens pourtant
que jadis, dans cette Afrique qui passe pour classique, le griot était non
seulement O¶élément dynamique de sa tribu, clan, village, mais aussi le
témoin patent de chaque événement. C’est lui qui enregistrait, déposait
devant tous, sous l’arbre du palabre, les faits et gestes de chacun. La
conception de mon travail découle de cet enseignement: rester au plus
près du réel et du peuple.
— Ousmane Sembène, L’Harmattan (Paris: Éditions Présence Africaine, 1980): 9.
 Sex, Power, and Community in Véhi-Ciosane
445
out to examine Sembène’s deployment of the incest transgression to x-ray his
society. I read the short novel as a narrative of transgression in which he uses
the very private story of a chief’s impregnation of his daughter as a pretext to
make a pointed critique of the self-destructive anthropophagic behaviour of
Senegal’s ruling class. I argue that, through this story of male libidinal desire
gone awry, Sembène depicts a dysfunctional family and a disrupted village
community whose experience could be plausibly read as a microcosm of the
reality of the larger Senegalese national community.
The myth of the external enemy who is often blamed for the misfortunes of
the community is an essential element of nationalist discourses. By setting the
novel in Santhiu Niaye, a remote village with little or no contact with the outside world, Sembène offers the reader an excellent backdrop against which to
critically examine the validity of this enduring narcissistic spirit. Véhi-Ciosane opens with a detailed description the niayei, a peculiar region with an
indeterminate flora:
It is neither savannah, nor delta, nor steppe, neither bush nor forest. It is a
very strange zone bordering the Atlantic Ocean. (7)
Il n’est ni savane, ni steppe, ni brousse, ni forêt: une zone singulière qui borde
l’océan Atlantique. (19)
The villagers live in the “immense silent loneliness of the niaye” (8) [“immense solitude muette du niaye” (21)], where there is “neither school nor
dispensary” (9) [“il n’y avait ni école, ni dispensaire” (22)]. The absence of a
school and a dispensary underscores the fact that the traditional way of life
has been hardly affected by interactions with the outside world. By drawing
attention to the pristine nature and isolation of the village, the text forecloses
the possibility of blaming the rupture caused by Guedj Diob’s act on European or any other foreign corrupting influences.
[I am not writing the theory of the African novel. However, I remember that long ago in the Africa which is considered classical, the
griot was not only the dynamic element of his tribe, clan, village, but
also the patent witness to every event. He was the one who took
note, presented before everybody, under the palaver tree, the facts
about and deeds of everyone. The conception of my work draws on
this teaching: staying close to reality and to the people. (My tr.)]
446
LIFONGO VETINDE 
Despite this precautionary measure, it is still an outsider who is scapegoated for the incestuous rape that rocks the tranquility of the niaye. When
Ngone wa Thiandum discovers that her daughter is pregnant, no one imagines
a member of the family could be responsible for the pregnancy. Suspicion is
focused on an outsider, an itinerant farmer, who is harassed and brutalized by
the girl’s brother before Khar’s devastating disclosure of her father’s culpability. The unmasking of Guibril Diob at once explodes the myth of the
demonic foreigner and challenges the inhabitants of the niaye to a critical selfexamination of their community. Guibril Diob has brought unspeakable
shame to his household and beyond. As Dètheye Law, the enlightened village
cobbler puts it,
Guibril Guedj Diob’s infamous behaviour brings shame on the whole of
Santhieu-Niaye. Wherever we go, even our children, we will be pointed at.
(43)
La conduite, le comportement infâme de Guibril Guedj Diob éclaboussent tout
Santhieu Niaye. N’importe où nous irons mêmes nos enfants, on nous
montrera du doigt. (68)
Due to his public status, Guibril Guedj Diob’s act takes a broader socio-political significance. His sexual transgression raises interesting questions about
the use of power and the legitimacy of authority in the community. In Totem
and Taboo, Freud compares nations to families and points out that rulers are
representations of the father. As village chief, Guibril Diob betrays not only
the trust of his family but also that of the entire village community.
Indeed, there are compelling parallels between Guibril Diob behaviour and
that of contemporary African rulers, almost all of whom have posed as the
‘fathers’ of their young nations. Like Guibril Diob, they have not lived up to
the responsibility of paternal protection and are guilty of dereliction of duty
and betrayal of trust. Prior to independence, African leaders accused the erstwhile colonial masters of raping and plundering the continent and its people
and posed as paternal figures to whom the masses, like children, could look
up for protection and leadership once independence was regained. But the
post-independence era has been a veritable nightmare of brutal dictatorships
characterized by violations of human rights amidst political and social injustices. They have subjected their compatriots to perverse psychological and
physical violence. Khar and Djibril Diob are symbolic characters, the former
symbolizing the continent (and its masses) and the latter the symbol of its
 Sex, Power, and Community in Véhi-Ciosane
447
abusive leaders. Véhi-Ciosane questions the appropriateness of the ‘founding
father’ metaphor used by post-independence African leaders.
Many psychoanalysts (notably Freud and Lacan) and social scientists have
drawn attention to the nexus between masculinity and power. Pierre Bourdieu, for instance, posits that “being a man automatically implies being in a
position of power.”10 Véhi-Ciosane raises important questions about the relationship between the administration of justice and an individual’s position in
the traditional patriarchal power structure. In the small remote Islamic community of Santhiu Niaye, the women are victimized by a legal system that is
run exclusively by men. The village elders are unanimous in their condemnation of the chief’s act but lack the courage to take any decisive punitive action
against him. Their unwillingness to punish their peer according to traditional
law or Qur’anic law is clearly an indictment of the system of justice practised
in the village. Medoune Diob, one of the elders, has no doubt about the provisions of Islamic law in dealing with incest:
According to Koranic law, Guibril Guedj Diob deserves to die. That is what
the scriptures say. But have the penalties demanded by the scriptures for
infringement of the law been applied here? (42)
Selon la loi coranique, Guibril Guedj Diob mérite la mort. Cela est dans les
Ecritures. Mais a-t-on appliqué ces peines demandées par l’Ecriture parce
qu’on les enfreignait? (67)
In traditional law, the breach of the incest taboo is punished with comparable
severity:
The adda has always been the first rule in the lives of our fathers. If that rule
is broken, it deserves either death or expulsion from the community. (42)
Tout manquement à cette règle mérite ou la mort ou l’exclusion de la
communauté. (68)
Yet he attenuates the penalty the chief deserves by suggesting that, even
though the Qur’an recommends the death penalty, the law has hardly been enforced to the letter. The council of elders opts for the more lenient sanction of
quarantine for the chief and exile for the violated daughter. Khar is doubly a
10
“être un homme, c’est être installé d’emblée dans une position impliquant des
pouvoirs”; Pierre Bourdieu, La Domination Masculine (Paris: Seuil, 1998): 21. (My
tr.)
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LIFONGO VETINDE 
victim: the young mother is not only denied paternal protection but is, along
with her baby, expeditiously expelled from the village. Protesting against the
double standards that place Guibril Diob above the law his son takes the law
into his own hands and kills him for staining the family’s nobility.
According to Freud, parricide, “the principal primal crime of humanity as
well as of any individual,”11 is based on fear of the father’s power. Historically, the assassination of real or metaphorical fathers is a reaction to their
tyranny and oppression. Since almost all African dictators pose as fathers of
their nations, they unwittingly suggest parricide as a strategy of liberation of
the people. Medoun commits parricide because he believes that it is the only
means of ending his father’s domination. Although it could be argued that
Medoun’s outrage is primarily driven by questions of nobility and honour, his
crime is ultimately a revolt against his father’s abuse of power. Nonetheless, it
is not clear that killing his father is the solution to the problem. The chief is
only a representative of a ruling class that will do anything to maintain its grip
on power. If the situation in contemporary African nations is any indication,
toppling or assassinating a despotic ruler does not automatically usher in
change. Social and political change also requires a fundamental transformation of the people’s mentality, since many corrupt leaders owe their perenniality in power to the complicity of their subjects, who egoistically perpetuate
the networks of corruption.
Sembène’s handling of the question of culpability for the crime is quite
ambiguous, which is out of character with the feminist overtones discernible
in his writing. It is not clear whether Khar was forced, lured, or whether she
seduced her father. This ambiguity is central to the novel’s complex examination of the role of the women in their own disempowerment. The obfuscation
of the dynamics of the incest in the text presents a real interpretative challenge
in the assessment of the blame for Khar’s mother’s suicide after she discovers
her husband has impregnated their daughter. Like the reader, all the women
can do is conjecture. They are divided on the degree of guilt of daughter and
father. The exchange between Yaye Khurida and Gnagna Guissé gives us a
sense of the women’s views:
11
Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo, tr. James Strachey (Totem und Tabu, 1913;
New York: W.W. Norton, 1960): 184.
 Sex, Power, and Community in Véhi-Ciosane
449
It’s a moral murder. Khar Madiangua Diob has killed her mother. No one
here will marry her. Even if there were only old men left. Can you see my
daughter as her co-wife? Never.
It’s Guibril Guedj Diobs’s fault. Khar Mandiagua Diob has done nothing.
How do you mean, she has done nothing? How often did she sleep with
her father?
Perhaps her father forced her?
Forced her? Rubbish! How can you force a young girl? She could have
shouted. I maintain she consented. Like a satan she tempted her father. (57–
58)
—C’est un homicide moral. Khar Madiagua a tué sa mère. Personne ici ne
prendra pour femme. Même s’il ne restait que deux hommes. Tu vois ma fille
sa co-épouse? Jamais.
—C’est la faute de Guibril Guibril Diob. Khar Mandiagua Diob n’a rien fait.
—Comment elle n’a rien fait? Combien de fois a-t-elle couché avec son père?
—Peut-être le père l’a obligée?
—Obligée! Tu radotes. . . Comment peut-on forcer une jeune fille? Elle
pouvait crier. Moi, je maintiens qu’elle était consentante. Comme une saytané,
elle a tenté son père. (89) (my emphases)
Many women, like Yaye Khurédia, interpret Khar’s silence as indicative of
her complicity with her father. If she did not enjoy it, “she could have shouted”
(58) [“elle pouvait crier” (89)]. But there is no evidence in the text suggesting
that she derived any pleasure from the act. By calling Khar a satayne (devil),
these women simply reproduce the traditional patriarchal myths of the female
seductress and apparently trivialize Guibril’s indefensible act of child abuse,
sexual aggression, and exploitation. The women have been socialized not to
question the rationale of patriarchal institutions. Yaye, for instance, is very
comfortable with the institution of polygamy that Sembène is highly critical
of. However, it is important to point out that by criticizing Khar for keeping
quiet, these women implicitly call on other women to transform their silence
into language and action so as to wrest agency from the ruling patriarchy that
has arrogated it.
Sembène further problematizes Khar’s silence by placing it in the context
of a traditional code of conduct which demands absolute silence in sexual
matters such as incest. The text poses an interesting dilemma between truth
and silence as a choice between order and chaos. Foucault has drawn attention
to the locational nature of truth by arguing that what may be considered ‘true’
in one society may not necessarily be so in another: “Each society has its
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LIFONGO VETINDE 
regime of truth, its ‘general politics’ of truth: that is the types of discourses
which it accepts and makes to function as true.”12 Gnagna Guissé, drawing on
the traditional wisdom of the elders, warns Ngoné wa Thiandum about problematic truths:
Any truth that divides and brings discord among the members of the family
is false. The falsehood that weaves and cements people together is truth.
(49)
Toute vérité qui divise, qui jette la discorde entre les gens d’une famille est
mensonge. Le mensonge qui tisse, unit, soude les êtres, est la vérité. (77)
Young Khar is so terrified by the spectre of the social disintegration and chaos
that her revelation would engender that she chooses to conceal her father’s
crime in the interest of family cohesion and communal stability. Indeed, the
narrative justifies her fears, since Khar’s mother never recovers from the
trauma of the revelation: she succumbs to a physical and mental degradation
that culminates in her suicide.
Djibril Diob’s violation of his daughter is an infringement of two interlocking codes of social praxis. It infringes the rule of parental protection and
undermines the idea of exchange around which social relations are organized.
In his discussion of incest, Lévi–Strauss emphasizes the idea of exchange. He
notes that “the prohibition of incest is a rule of reciprocity,” and as such incest
is not only morally reprehensible but “socially absurd.”13 Since the law
against incest is predicated on the promotion and creation of the indispensable
“supra-familial bonds” for the functioning of society at various levels, any
breach of the taboo is a rejection of the foundation of society.14 In her study
Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies, Margaret Mead tells how
this idea of exchange is inscribed in the Arapesh vision of marriage. The following comment about marriage by one of her Arapesh informants is very instructive:
What, you would like to marry your sister! What is the matter anyway?
Don’t you want a brother-in-law? Don’t you realize that if you marry another
man’s sister and another man marries your own, you will have at least two
12
Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 131.
Freud, Totem and Taboo, 9.
14
Talcott Parsons, “The Incest Taboo in Relation to Social Structure,” in The
Family and its Structures, ed. Rose Laub Coser (New York: St Martin’s, 1974): 19.
13
 Sex, Power, and Community in Véhi-Ciosane
451
brothers-in-law, while if you marry you own sister you will have none? With
whom will you hunt, with whom will you garden, whom will you visit?15
Intermarriage is a means through which a man expands his horizons of "solidarities" to enhance his chances of survival. In the absence of such interaction
there is little or no exchange and the concept of society and inexistent.
In the same vein, Talcott Parsons has argued thus:
it is not so much the prohibition of incest in its negative aspect which is important as the positive obligation to perform functions for the sub-unit and the
larger society by marrying out. Incest is a withdrawal from this obligation to
contribute towards the formation and maintenance of supra-familial bonds on
which major economic, political and religious functions of the society are
dependent.16
Guibril Diob’s act is not just a stain on the nobility of his family, but also a
refusal to engage in the kind of societal obligation Lévi–Strauss and Parson
describe. His violation of this social code of conduct is especially threatening
to a remote community like Santhiu-Niaye which needs to open up to the outside world.
In L’Homme est culture, Sembène regrets that “African culture is poor in
new forms,”17 and blames this deficiency on the reluctance of traditional societies to open up. Through the chief’s deviant act, Sembène obliquely addresses the question of exogamy, which “represents a continuous pull towards a
greater cohesion, a more efficacious solidarity.”18 In other words, Sembène,
like Lévi–Strauss, sees exogamy as the means by which a group sustains its
social and communal bonds without recoiling into autarchy. Detheye Law
aptly reads Guibril’s act as a manifestation of close-mindedness:
Yalla does not like narrow minds. They are like water that doesn’t flow.
Everyone knows that if water doesn’t flow it becomes stagnant. It becomes
15
Margaret Mead, Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (New York:
William Morrow, 1939): 84.
16
Parsons, “The Incest Taboo in Relation to Social Structure,” 19.
17
Ousmane Sembène, L’homme est culture (Man is Culture) (Bloomington: African Studies Program, Indiana University, 1979): 21.
18
Claude Lévi–Strauss, The Elementary Structures of Kinship (Boston M A : Beacon, 1969): 480.
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LIFONGO VETINDE 
poisonous. Despite its apparent cleanness, it eats away the earth that holds it.
Hence the sterility of the earth and the human spirit. (54)
Yallah n’aime pas les esprits recroquevillés. C’est comme l’eau qui ne coule
pas. Tout le monde sait que l’eau qui ne coule pas, croupit. Elle devient
infecte. Malgré son apparence de propreté, ronge la terre qui la loge. D’où la
stérilité de la terre et de l’esprit de l’homme. (83–84)
The stagnant water symbolizes the flow of blood in consanguineous marriages and the debilitating effects on offspring. In fact, Senegalese believe that
incestuous marriages have negative biological consequences on couples and
their offspring, which explains why laws against incest are so stringently observed in Senegal. Among the Wolof, for instance, marriage between children
from different parents who have shared the same breast milk is prohibited because it is believed that breast milk creates consanguinity.19 Since the Wolof
also believe that incest causes sterility, infertile couples are generally suspected of being engaged in consanguineous marriages. As can be deduced from
the foregoing, the central idea that underlies the incest prohibition is the need
for exchange. The cobbler’s statement is a call to engage in a more progressive and open approach to African nationhood through the development of
strong internal communal ties and an open exchange between societies and
the outside world.
There is no sense of closure in the narrative as a result of Guibril Diob’s
crime, thus belying Constance Hall’s claim that “almost invariably [...] incest
in literature denotes disaster; catastrophe follows in its wake.”20 Despite the
suicide and the parricide, there is no suggestion of imminent doom or irrevocable degradation. The narrative does not move to a dead end but, rather,
opens up possibilities for renewal and progress. The ugly is rehabilitated to
give birth to a better future, as the incest becomes invested with a powerful
force of renewal. Véhi-Ciosane (White Genesis), the offspring of an incestuous relationship, symbolizes a new beginning for Khar and the rest of the
community.
The exile of both mother and child is symbolic on two levels. Khar is the
sacrificial lamb that the village uses to cleanse itself from the incest transgression. At the same time, exile is an opening to the outside world, as Santhiu Niaye sends an emissary of sorts to the city to start a new life. Khar’s
19
20
Bara Abdoulaye–Diop, La famille wolof (Paris: Karthala, 1985): 15.
Hall, Incest in Faulkner, 8.
 Sex, Power, and Community in Véhi-Ciosane
453
exile to the city of Dakar hints at hope for the future, as the narrator underscores the metaphoric resonance of the girl’s name “Blanche Génèse” at the
end of the novel:
This story had no other ending: it was a page in their life. A new one starts,
which depends on them. (73)
Cette histoire n’eut pas d’autre fin: c’était une page dans leur vie. Une nouvelle
commence, qui dépend d’eux. (109)
The inhabitants of Santhieu Niaye can begin their lives anew, untainted and
unencumbered by the sins of the past.
In his article “Third World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism,” Fredric Jameson asserts:
Third-World texts, even those which are seemingly private and invested with a
properly libidinal dynamic, necessarily project a political dimension in the
form of national allegory: the story of the private individual destiny is always
an allegory of the embattled situation of the public third world culture and
society.21
Although the evident over-generalization underpinning Jameson’s view of
‘Third World’ literatures has been frequently pointed out by critics (especially
Aijaz Ahmed),22 I concur with its fundamental idea of the correlation between
African fiction and quotidian national realities. In conflating the very private
story of incest with power and social praxis in Véhi-Ciosane, Sembène effectively exposes the dynamics of community in a remote village of Senegal and
the country as a whole.
WORKS CITED
Ahmad, Aijaz. In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures (London: Verso, 1994).
Bhabha, Homi K., ed. Nation and Narration (London: Routledge, 1990).
Bourdieu, Pierre. La Domination Masculine (Paris: Seuil, 1998).
Cnockaert, André. “Véhi-Ciosane, récit clé dans l’oeuvre de Sembène Ousmane,”
Zaïre-Afrique 28/222 (1988): 109–121.
21
Fredric Jameson, “Third World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism,” Social Text 15 (Fall 1985): 69.
22
See Aijaz Ahmad, “Jameson’s Rhetoric of Otherness and ‘National Allegory’,” in
Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures (London: Verso, 1994): 95–122.
454
LIFONGO VETINDE 
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Indiana University, 1979).
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