Inter-tech(s): Colonialism and the Question of Technology in Francophone Literature

By Roxanna Nydia Curto

Challenging the notion that francophone literature generally valorizes a traditional, natural mode of being over a scientific, modern one, Inter-tech(s) proposes a new understanding of the relationship between France and its former colonies in Africa and the Caribbean by exploring how various postindependence authors depict technology as a mediator between them. By providing the first comprehensive study of the representation of technology in relation to colonialism and postcolonialism in francophone literature, Roxanna Curto shows the extent to which the authors promote modernization and social progress.

Curto traces this trend in the wake of decolonization, when a series of important francophone African and Caribbean writers began to portray modern technology as a liberating, democratizing force, capable of erasing the hierarchies of the old colonial order and promoting economic development. Beginning with the founders of Négritude Aimé Césaire and Léopold Sédar Senghor and continuing with Frantz Fanon, postindependence novelists such as Ousmane Sembène, and contemporary writers such as Édouard Glissant, the author shows how these francophone writers champion the transfer of technology from the metropolis to the former colonies as a means of integrating their cultures into a global community, thus paving the way for modernization and technological development.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Virginia Press
• Release date: Aug 29, 2016
• ISBN: 9780813939247

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Inter-tech(s)

Inter-tech(s)

Colonialism and the Question of Technology in Francophone Literature

Roxanna Nydia Curto

University of Virginia Press    

Charlottesville and London

this book is made possible by a collaborative grant from the andrew w. mellon foundation.

University of Virginia Press

© 2016 by the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

First published 2016

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Curto, Roxanna Nydia, 1979– author.

Title: Inter-tech(s) : colonialism and the question of technology in francophone literature / Roxanna Nydia Curto.

Description: Charlottesville : University of Virginia Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016002823 | ISBN 9780813939223 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780813939230 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780813939247 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: French literature—French-speaking countries—History and criticism. | Technology in literature. | Colonies in literature. | Postcolonialism in literature.

Classification: LCC PQ3897.C87 2016 | DDC 840.9/356—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016002823

Cover art: Amanda Burnham

For the three loves of my life: Paul, Sienna, and Sebastian

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Science, Modernization, and the Theater of Development in Aimé Césaire

2. Technics and Poetics in Léopold Sédar Senghor

3. Radios and Revolution in Frantz Fanon

4. Machines and Media in Ousmane Sembène

5. Dams and Motorboats in Olympe Bhêly-Quénum and Aké Loba

6. Globalization and the Internet in Édouard Glissant

7. Urban Space and Cyberspace in Patrick Chamoiseau

Epilogue

Notes

Works Cited

Index

Acknowledgments

This book is the culmination of many years of research conducted in multiple locations: New Haven, Connecticut; Paris, France; Bloomington-Normal, Illinois; and Iowa City, Iowa. During the course of its fruition, I experienced the joy of finding employment at the same institution as my husband and of having two wonderful children. Although these life events no doubt slowed the progress of this work, they have brought me tremendous happiness and made completion of the project all the more satisfying.

At Yale, I had the great fortune of having Christopher L. Miller as my dissertation advisor, whose guidance at the early stages was truly indispensible. I am also grateful for the teaching and mentoring that I received from other faculty in the Department of French, including Ned Duval, Jean-Jacques Poucel, Julia Prest, and the Director of Graduate Studies at the time, Maurie Samuels. I also learned a great deal from my discussions with fellow students, especially Marc Michael, Alexandra Gueydan, Rebecca Ruquist, Jeffrey Boyd, Ryan Poynter, and Alexandra Parfitt.

During my three years at Illinois State University, I had a truly wonderful cohort of colleagues who played a fundamental role in the development of my career. I greatly appreciate the guidance and friendship of my colleagues in French, Mary Trouille and Jim Reid; and in Spanish, Bruce Burningham, Julie Lynd, and Jim Pancrazio. And of course, I will never forget the dinner conversations with Elke Segelcke at the Garlic Press and evenings spent writing at the Coffee Hound.

I am also grateful for the mentoring I have received from many colleagues in the Division of World Languages, Literatures and Cultures at the University of Iowa, including Russ Ganim, Roland Racevskis, Mercedes Niño-Murcia, Cinzia Blum, Geoffrey Hope, Wendelin Guentner, Deborah Contrada, Denise Filios, and Adriana Méndez, as well as the support of my fellow junior faculty member in French, Émilie Destruel Johnson, and the former Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Linda Maxson.

I would also like to acknowledge the enriching discussions with colleagues following presentations of parts of chapters in various venues throughout the years, including the University of Oxford in September 2010 and June 2011; Fort-de-France, Martinique, on the occasion of the Césaire Centennial in June 2013; London at the Society for Francophone Postcolonial Studies Annual Meeting in November 2013; Long Beach and Atlanta for the 20th- and 21st-Century French and Francophone Studies International Colloquium in March 2012 and March 2013; at the MLA Convention in Philadelphia in December 2009, Los Angeles in January 2011, and Boston in January 2013; and the University of South Carolina for the French Literature Conference in March 2009.

The research for this book was funded through fellowships and grants from a number of institutions. At Yale, a John Enders Fellowship and a Kenneth Cornell Research Grant allowed me to spend a summer conducting research in Senegal, and a Yale Dissertation Fellowship and a scholarship from the École Normale Supérieure funded a year of writing in Paris. I also benefited from a Jacob K. Javits Fellowship in the Humanities for four years. At Illinois State, a New Faculty Initiative Grant allowed me to spend a summer researching the project, and at Iowa, an Old Gold Fellowship funded another summer of writing and revising.

I was fortunate enough to have received help from research assistants at various stages of this project. I am recognizant of Natalie Benson for her valuable work revising and editing; of Stephanie Kupfer for her translations; and of Jason Hong for verifying references in the final stages.

Amanda Burnham, a most talented artist and dear friend, painted the beautiful image that appears on the cover.

At the University of Virginia Press, Cathie Brettschneider and Eric Brandt were most helpful in bringing this project to completion. I am also very grateful to the two anonymous readers for the Press, whose careful comments improved the manuscript immensely.

I acknowledge permission to reprint portions of chapters that have appeared previously. A section of chapter 1 appeared as "The Science of Illusion-Making in Aimé Césaire’s La tragédie du roi Christophe and Une tempête" in Research in African Literatures 42.1 (2011): 154–71. Part of chapter 3 appeared as Senghor and Heidegger: Negritude’s Appropriation of German Phenomenology in French Literature Series 37 (2010): 27–41. Part of chapter 4 appeared as Tech Transfer, Modernization and Independence in Bhêly-Quénum and Loba in the Journal of the African Literature Association 5.1 (2010): 144–60. And part of chapter 5 appeared as "Technology Transfer, the Railway and Independence in Ousmane Sembène’s Les bouts de bois de Dieu" in Trains, Literature and Culture: Reading/Writing the Rails, ed. Steven Spalding and Benjamin Fraser, 53–75 (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2011).

I would like to thank my family for their love and support. My parents instilled in me a passion for learning despite our different academic backgrounds and have been such wonderful grandparents to my children. My older sister, Carina, has led by example and given much helpful advice. My younger sister, Vilsa, has provided warm friendship and wisdom beyond her years. And, of course, I am grateful to my husband, Paul Dilley, for his help reading and editing the manuscript, and the endless love and support that he has shown me during our fifteen years together.

Inter-tech(s)

Introduction

Although questions of modernity are often at the forefront of debates in francophone studies, current scholarship has largely neglected the representation of technology, including its fundamental role in community formation, development, and globalization for African and Caribbean authors. Yet an examination of how postcolonial francophone literature represents technology transfer from the metropolis to the former colonies is crucial for understanding how these authors approach questions of modernity, extricate themselves from the vestiges of colonial rule, and propose a means of integrating their cultures into a global community. Technology, both the product of a culture and a means of transforming it, brings individuals into close proximity to one another, produces objects that circulate between the metropolis and the colonies, and creates images that represent the peoples and territories of distant countries.

In this book, I propose a new understanding of the relationship between the inhabitants of the metropole and the colonies, by showing how a number of major twentieth-century authors depict technology as a mediator, both productive and destructive, between them. As the inter prefix of the title suggests, this book examines how various techs (technological innovations) act as intermediaries between colonizers and colonized, urban and rural cultures, French and African or Caribbean communities, and individuals networked together into a global society. My analysis focuses on how francophone literary texts, primarily from West Africa and the Caribbean, represent the complex relationship between colonialism and technology.

Although technology is broadly defined as the application of scientific knowledge to practical use, I use the term primarily in reference to the innovations developed from the second Industrial Revolution (1870–1914) to the present (including the current information age) and commonly referred to as modern technologies:¹ systems of transportation (railways, motorboats); mechanical modes of representation (photography, film); technologies of industry (dams, machines) and transmission (radio, television, and the Internet). I examine the relationship between the representation of these innovations, and colonialism, understood as the various forms of domination that the metropole exerted upon the colonies, from the time of initial exploration and subsequent colonization to the ongoing relations of power and dependence in the age of globalization. This definition of colonialism comprises three different elements, each of crucial importance to assessing the impact of technology on the relationship between France and its colonies. The first element is colonialism as a discourse: the myth and ideology of the civilizing mission that corresponds to a series of images of itself that France presented to the world;² and the presumed technological superiority of the West that formed an integral part of these images. The second element denotes the practices described as colonization, in the sense of the political and economic domination by one country of others. Technology, as the means by which the French empire conquered its colonies, constitutes a fundamental part of this process.

The third element of my definition comprises the legacy of these forces, and their effects on the former colonies. Colonialism, as presented in the title of this book, refers to both the political and administrative authority that France exerted upon its colonies; as well as the forms of social, economic, cultural, and political domination existing in the postindependence period beginning in the 1960s, when almost all of France’s former colonies gained independence. These forms of domination, which are generally denoted by postcolonialism, neocolonialism, and imperialism (terms that evoke simultaneously the process of moving past the violent era of colonization and its persistent legacy in the former colonies), constitute the vestiges of colonialism and are thus included in my definition.

My analysis of literary texts focuses not only on the literary representation of technology in colonization but also on the way in which the diffusion of scientific and technical knowledge is either politicized as a mode of colonialism or depoliticized as an endeavor altogether separate from it. In my readings of these authors, I explore both how they represent modern technologies as mediators between cultures of the metropole and the colonies; and how the relationship between technology (as a theoretical concept) and colonialism is portrayed in literature. Ultimately, I seek to trace a literary trend emerging in the wake of decolonization, when a series of key francophone African and Caribbean authors began to portray modern technologies as a liberating, democratizing force, capable of erasing the hierarchies of the old colonial order and promoting economic development, through the mass circulation of goods and peoples.

During the colonial period, modern Western technologies were generally associated with colonialism and exploitation for francophone authors, who were reacting against the ideology of the civilizing mission. But following political independence in the 1960s and continuing into the present era of globalization, francophone literature (including Negritude) saw the emergence of much more favorable attitudes toward Western technologies. For the authors I study, Western technologies are capable of being dissociated from the culture that produced them; writers begin to equate their acquisition with liberation from an Old Order. Ultimately, the representation of technologies by francophone authors represents an opportunity to explore their own conflicting sentiments about the use of the French language to express themselves; and the problematic place of the francophone literary work, which is generally written by an African or Caribbean author, published in Europe or North America using Western technologies, and inaccessible to the vast majority of the population in the former colonies.

Chapters 1 and 2 consider the representation of technology transfer from Europe to the colonies in the work of the two most influential writers of the Negritude movement, Aimé Césaire and Léopold Sédar Senghor. In my readings of Césaire and Senghor, I build on the extensive corpus of literary criticism dealing with Negritude,³ but by focusing on the understudied issue of technology in their work, I argue that Negritude—too often considered outmoded and obsolete—is still highly relevant today, especially to current debates about modernization, ecology, and globalization.⁴

In chapter 1, Science, Modernization, and the ‘Theater of Development’ in Aimé Césaire, I show how Césaire’s shift from poetry to theater as the genre of choice for expressing his politics of Negritude was accompanied by a move toward an extremely favorable view of technology, as reflected in his plays, essays, interviews, and political speeches from the 1960s until his death in 2008. In particular, I situate his work within the tradition of protest and consciousness-raising of the theater of development movement, by examining speeches and interviews, identifying influences from Bertolt Brecht and the Colombian playwright Enrique Buenaventura, and showing the central role of development through the acquisition of technology in his classic plays The Tragedy of King Christophe (1963) and A Tempest (1969).

My discussion of Senghor in chapter 2, Technics and Poetics in Léopold Sédar Senghor, begins by demonstrating how his close readings of Martin Heidegger, especially The Question Concerning Technology, shaped his notion of the ideal role of technology within culture and provided him with a means of separating modern innovations from discursive reason, which he adamantly opposed. Subsequently, I show the important role of technology in Senghor’s politics (which constituted an all-out drive toward modernization, without regard to the ecological consequences hinted at by Heidegger) and the utopian vision of a Universal Civilization. Finally, I examine how his frequent comparisons of French language and literature with technological innovations reflected his conception of each as an ideal means of fostering cultural contact in his imagined Universal Civilization of the future.

Chapter 3, Radios and Revolution in Frantz Fanon, examines the questions of modernization and technology, especially the radio, in Frantz Fanon’s writings on Algeria. Fanon’s frequent emphasis on the role of the fellah (the indigent agricultural peasant class) in the Revolution, his critique of capitalist exploitation of proletariat workers in urban areas, and his adamant rejection of the colonizer’s culture have all led many scholars to assume that these ideas imply a complete rejection of technology and modernization, which, in turn, forms part of a broader critique of modernity. In reality, in his essays from Toward the African Revolution and A Dying Colonialism (many originally written for newspapers), as well as in his classic work on decolonization, The Wretched of the Earth (1961), Fanon advocates, even glorifies, modernization and technological development in colonized societies. He forcefully argues that any rejection of modern technology, science, and medicine results from the negative associations evoked by their initial introduction within the context of colonization, and that these marks of modernity are wholeheartedly embraced once this context has been removed.

Chapters 4 and 5 consider the arrival of modern Western technological innovations—the railway, motorized boats, radios, and a dam—to African communities in the works of francophone African novelists of the independence/postindependence era. My study adds to scholarly criticism on francophone African literature, which has almost entirely ignored the centrality of technology.⁵ This work breaks new ground by examining the representation of technology in several key novels and films of the postindependence era, when the enthusiasm surrounding independence led to an extremely optimistic view of the potential of technology transfer from the metropolis.

Chapter 4, Machines and Media in Ousmane Sembène, explores the literature and film of the Senegalese author and filmmaker. The first part focuses on the representation of the railroad in his novelistic masterpiece God’s Bits of Wood (1960), which recounts the strike of railway workers on the Dakar–Niger line from 1948 to 1949. This novel boldly stages the appropriation of the colonizer’s means of production, as embodied by the railway, and represents the opposing discourses in the debate about this process through several groups of characters: the white patrons; Muslim leaders; the elders; and youthful workers. Although the novel takes place in 1948, the time of writing and publication—during the era of African independences—illustrates the key role of technologies in nation building for Sembène. The second part examines the portrayal of technologies in two films, Xala (The curse) (1973) and Moolaadé (Protection) (2004), in order to argue that Sembène advocates valorizing the instrumental function and utility of innovations without fetishizing them (as markers of wealth and social status) and that he believes in the power of media such as radio and television to enact social change.

Chapter 5, Dams and Motorboats in Olympe Bhêly-Quénum and Aké Loba, identifies and analyzes a set of West African novels and plays from the early 1960s that have been unfairly neglected, probably due to their thematic focus: not primarily on cultural identity formation but rather on issues of modernization, ecology, and economic development. The works exemplifying this ideology are Le chant du lac (The song of the lake) by Olympe Bhêly-Quénum, from Benin; and Les fils de Kouretcha (The sons of Kouretcha) by Aké Loba, from Côte d’Ivoire. These texts notably reverse the previous associations between race and technology by equating colonialism with backwardness and lack of development, and independence with technological progress. The traditional opposition between colonizer and colonized is supplanted by a conflict staged between two groups, both black African: the educated, youthful students and the national authorities, who seek to induce development through the use of motorized boats and the construction of dams and highways; and the older generation, who oppose bringing in technologies that may disrupt the spirits of nature, and whose defense of animism constitutes an ecological discourse avant la lettre. The glorified victories of the progressive youth at the end of the novels reflect their ideologies about the need for technology transfer for development in the years following independence.

Chapters 6 and 7 focus on the contemporary French Caribbean, exploring the proliferation of new technologies in the twenty-first century, as the question of colonialism and its ongoing influence assumes an integral part of the dialogue and debate about ecology and globalization. In contrast to the unrestrained enthusiasm of their West African counterparts, Édouard Glissant and Patrick Chamoiseau are cautiously optimistic about the revolutionary power of new technologies.⁶

In chapter 6, Globalization and the Internet in Édouard Glissant, I argue that the shift between the two stages of Glissant’s thinking, from the local to the global, corresponds to the emergence of a coherent theory in his works about the role of modern technologies and ecologies in Caribbean globalizations. Each of the major concepts about globalization that Glissant develops in Poetics of Relation, and his subsequent writings from the 1990s to the present, including the Relation, rhizome-identity, and "tout-monde" (everything-world), relate to his views about modern technologies, including television, film, and the Internet, and ecology as both mysticism and politics. In particular, I consider his discussion of ecology in Poetics of Relation (1990); the role of the Internet in his totalizing figures of the tout-monde and the "chaos-monde" in Traité du tout-monde (Treaty of the everything-world) (1997); and the place of technology transfer in his opposing conceptions of globalization (an imperialist imposition of ideas) and globality (a liberating exchange of ideas between equals), which he develops in La Cohée du Lamentin (The Lamentin hill) (2005).

Chapter 7, Urban Space and Cyberspace in Patrick Chamoiseau, examines the portrayal of modernization and technology in Chamoiseau’s writings from the 1980s to the present. In his early novels Chronicle of the Seven Sorrows, Solibo Magnificent, and Texaco, Chamoiseau critiques the technology transfer resulting from departmentalization and champions the Creole culture of orality as the means of combating the forces of standardization. Later on, in Écrire en pays dominé (Writing in a dominated land) and Biblique des derniers gestes (Bible of the last gestures), he develops the figure of the Warrior of the Imaginary in order to assert that communications technologies not only constitute the means of imposing ideas through furtive and silent domination but also provide the instruments for liberation, due to their role in the preservation of orality.

In the epilogue, I reflect upon the field of francophone literature in the age of the Internet, especially how cyberspace opens up domains for the emergence of new forms of literary and artistic expression.

Historical Context

The trajectory I trace in my readings of francophone authors is closely linked to the history of technology transfer from Europe to the colonies during the process of colonization.

According to Paul Bairoch, a leading economic historian of the second half of the twentieth century, key differences in the kinds of technologies produced in the first and second Industrial Revolutions caused them to be disseminated in very different ways. During the first Industrial Revolution, which took place from the mid-eighteenth to late nineteenth centuries, emerging technologies remained at a basic level, such that pre-industrial craftsmen could understand their functionality, as well as make reproductions and modifications. Consequently, these techniques spread relatively quickly throughout Europe and sometimes the colonies, by means of migrants who mastered the use of instruments and shared them with others.

This changed, however, during the second Industrial Revolution (sometimes described as a second phase of the Industrial Revolution), which took place roughly between 1870 and 1914, when extensive training in science and engineering became necessary for mastering technology. Ironically, although new inventions such as the steamboat and railway facilitated transportation, the process of exporting the techniques and practices became much more difficult. The French educational system in the colonies focused on teaching the French language and history and did not provide the knowledge of science and technology necessary to import and use technological innovations. Modern technology was also very expensive compared to previous technical instruments and required a great deal more capital to acquire. These factors together contributed to making the acquisition of modern technologies largely dependent on the actions of the colonizer during this period.

In his landmark study The Tentacles of Progress: Technology Transfer in the Age of Imperialism, 1850–1940, Daniel Headrick makes a key distinction between the geographic relocation of technology and its cultural diffusion, which proves useful for explaining the differences between modern technologies and previous technical instruments. According to Headrick, the transfer of technology is not one process but two. First, there is the relocation, from one area to another of the technical instruments. Second, it entails the diffusion from one society to another of the knowledge, skills (9). The geographic relocation of technology, according to Headrick, entails the transportation of machines across borders and continents, without any dissemination in the new place of the knowledge and skills that were used to make them; while cultural diffusion involves a spread of the knowledge and skills needed to produce technologies—not just the physical machines.

Headrick distinguishes between four basic categories of technology transfer: the geographic relocation of technology by Western experts; its relocation by non-Western importers; its cultural diffusion by Western experts; and its diffusion by non-Western importers (10). Modern technology permitted the geographic relocation of Western experts to occur relatively easily; nevertheless, the high price of machines made the relocation of non-Western importers difficult, and the need for specific scientific and technical knowledge made diffusion by both Western and non-Western agents almost impossible during the colonial era and very difficult thereafter.

The history of technology transfer from the metropolis to the colonies can be divided into three periods, the last two being the focus of this study. The first, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century and extending roughly to the 1930s, is characterized by the penetration of Asia and Africa by Europeans and the conquest of colonial empires (5). During this time, crucial innovations allowed Europe to explore and invade other continents; technology transfer involved the geographic relocation of innovations without any mode of cultural diffusion. Headrick argues that both the motives for imperialist expansion and the means by which it occurred fundamentally changed in the late nineteenth century. According to him, what distinguishes the new imperialism from its many predecessors is that it was so swift, thorough, and cheap (5) as a result of a few inventions (iron-hulled steamships, machine guns, railways, and telegraphs), which not only allowed European nations to conquer lands on other continents but provided them with the means of controlling those lands from afar.⁷

The second period Headrick identifies is characterized as the massive transfer of technology from the West to Africa and Asia (6), with the goal of creating an economy of extraction that would send goods back to Europe. As in the first period, technology transfer in the second consisted primarily of geographic relocation, without any real cultural diffusion. The machines were made in Europe and exported abroad. The agents were Western, and the goal of the transfer was to promote the development of European economies. The negative view of technology held by the African elders in many francophone literary texts such as Ousmane Sembène’s God’s Bits of Wood and related works should be interpreted in the context of this second period.

The third period begins in the postindependence era of the 1960s and is characterized by the desire on the part of the formerly colonized peoples for a cultural diffusion of technology, not just its geographic relocation. The leaders of the newly independent nations sought to use technologies to create an economy that was productive for the needs of the nation, not for the extraction of resources, exploitation of labor, and exportation of goods to Europe. A need arose to appropriate the technologies that Europeans had brought, while at the same time dissociating them from the colonizers who provided them. The desire for cultural diffusion also involved African students going abroad to study in Paris to receive technical and scientific training; there was a demand for knowledge, in addition to machines. Most of the authors examined in my study focus on this postcolonial moment, immediately following independence, or, in the case of Césaire and Glissant, the era of departmentalization, when the French overseas colonies of Guadeloupe, Martinique, and French Guyana became departments of France.

The question of whether colonization helped the spread of technology or impeded it underlies much of francophone literature, in both famous and overlooked works. In Césaire’s Discourse on Colonialism, for instance, he argues that contrary to the discourse of the civilizing mission, colonization actually thwarted the progress and development already occurring in the colonies, hindering the kind of positive cultural contact that leads to fruitful technological transfer. Two novels I examine in the third chapter, Le chant du lac (The song of the lake) by Olympe Bhêly-Quénum (from Benin) and Les fils de Kouretcha (The sons of Kouretcha) by Aké Loba (from Côte d’Ivoire), notably reverse the previous associations between race and technology by equating colonialism with backwardness and lack of development, and independence with technological progress. Another salient example of this debate can be found in Ousmane Sembène’s classic novel God’s Bits of Wood (1960), which recounts the strike of workers along the Dakar–Niger railway line. While the elders in the story associate the railway with the colonizers, including the slavery and exploitation that was used in its construction, the younger generation views the railway much more positively, as a means of stimulating progress and economic development. Similarly, Fanon, a contemporary of Sembène, argues for the merits of viewing all aspects of modernity (including technologies such as the radio) as universal instruments that colonized peoples have the right to acquire. Glissant, a member of the next generation of writers, considers the Internet to be a communications technology belonging to a globalized community, but he expresses some reservations about it, due to its potential use as a hegemonic instrument.

Although modern Western technologies were generally associated with colonialism and exploitation by francophone authors during the colonial era, following political independence in the 1960s and continuing into the present era of globalization, much more favorable attitudes emerged vis-à-vis Western technologies, which are often presented as part of a universal patrimony that all peoples should have the opportunity to acquire. Moreover, the choice of whether to associate a technology with a particular culture or to consider it part of a universal patrimony is often highly strategic and reflects each author’s political ideology.

What Is Technology?

An important question to be addressed is how to define the term technology. A broad definition of technology, which can be found in most dictionaries, describes it as the application of scientific knowledge to practical use. For the purposes of this study, I define the term primarily in reference to the innovations developed from the second Industrial Revolution to the present: railways, motorboats, dams, radios, televisions, and the Internet. Although I choose to define technology primarily as Western technologies developed during this period, it is easy enough to envision a broader definition that would comprise all applications of scientific knowledge to practical use, including the ones developed in ancient Egypt that writers such as Senghor view as part of their cultural heritage, or the innovations that Césaire says were developing in the Caribbean in precolonial times.

In fact, the term technology, even in English, has undergone many transformations throughout the centuries, since its origins in the ancient Greek word techne. As Andrew Murphie and John Potts write in Culture and Technology, ‘technology’ was used sparingly in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, referring to a study of the arts; its meaning at this stage remained closed related to its Greek roots. . . . But by the 1860s its meaning began to shift to its modern usage; the word had come to mean the system of mechanical and industrial arts (3). Thus the modern use of the word technology corresponds, not coincidentally, with the advent of the Industrial Revolution. From the late nineteenth century onward, ‘technology’ has come to describe the overall system of machines and processes (while ‘technique’ refers to a specific method or skill) (3).

The use of multiple words and articles in French that refer to the meanings we attribute to technology in English provides a further complication. First, la technique (that is, the word with a definite article) signifies technology in general, in the sense of the overall practice of using technologies. The word technique is also used to refer more precisely to technological innovations, that is, particular objects; for instance, une technique is a technology such as the radio. In French, however, the term technologie (much like other words carrying the -ologie suffix) has traditionally been used to denote only the science and study of technology, not physical objects or inventions. More recently, primarily due to the influence of other languages, many speakers of French have begun to use the word technologie to refer to innovations, but this is often considered an anglicisme (nonidiomatic use of the word, influenced by its English cognate) and is not the norm in literary texts. Some major francophone authors, notably Senghor, play with the double meaning in French of the word technique, which can signify at once a technique (in the sense of technique in English, such as a skill) or a technology. The occasional ambiguity in discerning between a technique and a technologie points to the difficulty in separating the scientific knowledge of how to construct an instrument from its concrete physical manifestation as a machine.

For the authors of my study, the appropriation of modern technologies also implies the assumption of a worldview to be adopted or rejected. An important question with which they must grapple is the notion that modern technologies not only are a set of instruments to be used in a practical sense but often present a particular way of seeing the world. Technological innovation has existed since ancient times, but it was not until the beginning of the twentieth century that the machine began to take on a life of its own and to acquire a meaning that transcended its practical utility. Modern technology differs fundamentally from previously existing technologies, according to philosophers of technology such as Martin Heidegger and Jacques Ellul, in that it transforms a society’s mode of experiencing reality and has the potential to control those who created