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Reading a literary text in the light of the simplistic operation of discovering a meaning, the one invested by the author. We need to move on from a phenotext to a genotext. The former is reduced to the printed text characterized by a situated meaning: the formula. The latter, on the other hand, is a space open to an infinite number of meanings. Clearly, read as a genotext, Kourouma's latest novel opens the way to infinite meaning. Our reading has opened up two possibilities: first, an act of language with assertive illocutionary value, with a direction of adjustment from world to language. As a result, the conceptual project was to describe the execrable relations between the novel's communities, leading inexorably to a relentless war. Another possibility is that the text is an act of language with a directive illocutionary value. The message would be to lead human beings to open up viable intercultural spaces devoid of stereotypes and prejudice... To eradicate war from society is first to extirpate it from the hearts of members of all communities.
About the author
Bondo Mulunda was born in Lubudi in 1953. With a doctorate in French language and literature, he is currently a professor at Unikam and Managing Director of Istm in the same town.
