Performing Identity: Nations, Cultures and African Experimental Novels

General trends in post-colonial African literature and criticism are explored with a particular focus on the Congolese writer and activist, Sony Labou Tansi. The compromizes entailed in his publication of novels in Paris are discussed in terms of institutional constraints and the surreptitious nature of multi-layered texts, both symptoms and acts of resistance, which are produced in response. The aesthetic innovation of Sony's experimental novels marked by his 'tropicalities' is contextualized with reference to contemporary African philosophy and literary criticism. Reconsidering the continued effects of cultural antagonism, the article contests notions of authenticity on which the oldfashioned discourse of cultural nationalism rests.