Africa's Ambiguous Adventure

A colloquium commemorating the 50th Anniversary of one of Africa’s most celebrated works of literature united students and scholars at BYU on March 17–18, 2011. The colloquium, organized by Professor Chantal Thompson of the Department of French and Italian, explored Africa’s Ambiguous Adventure through Senegalese author Cheikh Hamidou Kane’s novel L’Aventure ambiguë (Ambiguous Adventure) with a series of lectures and cultural events.

Published in 1961, L’Aventure ambiguë depicts the impact of Western secular culture on a deeply devout youth from Islamic Senegal. Chosen to attend colonial schools to “learn from them the art of conquering without being in the right,” Samba Diallo, the protagonist, is lured by the “light” of reason and science and starts to forget the “shadows” of intangible realities such as faith. Imploring God to “revive him to the secret tenderness,” Samba finally “hears” his father’s counsel: “Your salvation, the presence of God living in you, depends upon yourself.” Exploring the themes of faith vs. materialistic pursuits, of tradition vs. modernity, the novel won the first Grand Prix littéraire d’Afrique noire.

In the years following the publication of his semiautobiographical novel, Kane served as a minister in the Senegalese government and as a dignitary in international affairs. Visiting BYU for the third time, the eighty-two-year-old Kane traveled from Dakar to take part in the celebration. In his opening lecture, titled “The Clash of Culture and Faith in Colonial Africa,” Kane explained that L’Aventure ambiguë ’s message of finding God amidst the clamor of the modern world is a theme just as pertinent today as it was fifty years ago. “This confrontation between faith and agnostic culture is far from being resolved. It is the paradigm of the ambiguous and perilous adventure of the modern man, whatever his country, religion, and culture might be.”

Prior to an evening of African music and dance performed by Voice of Africa, a talented Utah Valley group, several BYU students paid tribute to Cheikh Hamidou Kane, thanking him for the impact his book has had on their lives—a “magnificent book that gives a new perspective on faith” and “shows in a very powerful way how we must all find balance in our lives,” in the words of one student.

In a presentation the following day, Dr. Mamadou Bâ, from Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, Senegal, emphasized how Kane’s story of a man trapped between the pulls of two starkly different worlds teaches the importance of balance. “In presenting opposing visions of the world, the novel does not propose the choice of one over the other,” Bâ said, “but rather that we situate our human condition in the very crossroad of their relation.”

Like Bâ, Dr. Lydie Moudileno, from the University of Pennsylvania, praised Kane’s work, calling it a complex yet universal text whose appeal derives from its consistent ability to inspire. Dr. Souleymane Bachir Diagne, from Columbia University, explored in the novel, and in revealed religion, the ambiguous relationship between the (spoken) Word of God and the (written) words of man. Then Abdourahman Wabéri, a master of the word in the new generation of African writers, expanded on the challenges of writing: classics such L’Aventure ambiguë are made when the author manages to connect with God as well as with others.

In his closing remarks, Cheikh Hamidou Kane spoke of his second novel, Les Gardiens du Temple (The Keepers of the Temple, published in 1998), where the ambiguities of his early writings find a few pragmatic resolutions. In the end, what really matters is that “on earth as in heaven, God and man complement one another” and that “individual destinies blend into collective purposes.”

The colloquium on Africa’s Ambiguous Adventure was funded by the BYU College of Humanities, Undergraduate Education and Honors, the Kennedy Center for International Studies, the Richard L. Evans Chair of Religious Understanding, the Center for the Study of Europe, and Campus France (the educational arm of the French Embassy).