Political Allegory: Bakhtin, Jameson and Birago Diop’s Les Contes D’amadou Koumba

Abstract

The marginalization of oral literature by Fredric Jameson and other Marxist literary critics is a surprising phenomena. Oral literature is given minimal attention, and it almost always plays the role of the underdog, the marginalized voice suppressed by the hegemonic powers of writing. The privileged position of the written word and of the traditional definitions of genre have historically excluded oral literature from the canon. This might be an indication of a general level of traditionalism and conservancy in Jameson’s and other Marxists’ critical approach. A look at the question of the validity of the appropriation of certain of Mikhail Bakhtin’s critical concepts by Jameson brings attention to some of the polemics that are centered on the dialectic, language, history, and genre and are relevant to the discussion of oral literature and to Marxist criticism in general. Birago Diop’s Les Contes d’Amadou Koumba (Paris: Présence Afraicaine, 1961) is a compilation of oral tales that provides a decent sampling of the linguistic, allegorical, and generic diversity that one can find in oral literature; with it we can see more clearly how Jameson fails to deal with this diversity.