Susanne Gehrmann (HU Berlin): »Grand Prix de l’Afrique noire en 1963 … mort en 1984 en Allemagne«. Eine Archivrecherche zu Jean-Ikelle Matiba

Venue: Leibniz-Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung, Eberhard-Lämmert-Saal, entrance Meierottostr. 8, 10719 Berlin / Zoom

Organized by Sandra Folie, Gianna Zocco

Research project(s): Black Narratives of Transcultural Appropriation

Opening lecture of the workshop Dualla Misipo: “Der Junge aus Duala”. Literaturwissenschaftliche Perspektiven auf ein frühes Werk der Schwarzen deutschen Literatur

Jean Ikelle-Matiba (1936–1984) is a francophone Cameroonian author of the 20th century, who is worth rediscovering. A lawyer with a doctorate in Paris, Ikelle-Matiba is best known for his 1963 novel Cette Afrique-là (German: Adler und Lilie in Kamerun), published by Présence Africaine. However, the HU Berlin archive still contains unpublished scripts of Ikelle-Matiba’s essays as well as letters to the publicist Janheinz Jahn. The correspondence of his German translator Erica de Bary with publishers reveals how much his critique of colonialism was feared in 1960s Germany. Ikelle-Matiba’s correspondence with the literary scholar Almut Seiler-Dietrich from the 1970s also reveals how he struggled for recognition as a poet and intellectual in Germany. How did it happen that Jean Ikelle-Matiba, despite his friendship with the influential Janheinz Jahn, was marginalized in the literary world? How can we read his works today and situate them within debates on processes of decolonisation? In my lecture, I will explore these and other questions that came up during the archival research that has not yet been completed.

Susanne Gehrmann is a professor of African Literatures and Cultures at the Department of African Studies and a member of the Center for Transdisciplinary Gender Studies at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. She earned her PhD in Romance Literature and Comparative Literature in 2001 at the University of Bayreuth, with a discourse-analytical study on the literature of the atrocities in the Congo around 1900. Susanne Gehrmann has conducted research and worked in Senegal, Togo, Belgium, Congo, Ghana, Canada, South Africa, and Tanzania.

Publications (selection):

Ed.: Arts et activismes afroqueer. Littératures, images, performances. Paris: Karthala 2024 (with Dorothée Boulanger)
Ed.: Crossings and Comparisons in African Literatures and Cultures. Trier: WVT 2022 (with Pepetual Mforbe Chiangong)
Autobiographik in Afrika. Literaturgeschichte und Genrevielfalt. Trier: WVT 2021
Ed.: Emerging Trends in Eastern African Literatures and Cultures. Glienicke: Galda Verlag 2020 (with Obala Fanuel Musumba, Oduor Obura, and James Ogone)
Ed.: Stichproben. Wiener Zeitschrift für kritische Afrikastudien 17 (2009): Klang, Bild, Text. Intermedialität in afrikanischen Literaturen (with Viola Prüschenk)
Kongo-Greuel. Zur literarischen Konfiguration eines kolonialkritischen Diskurses (1890–1910). Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag 2003

The admission is free. To participate via Zoom, please register at anmeldung@zfl-berlin.org.