Dialogical Subjectivity, Epistolary Gaze, and Temporalities of Becoming in Mariama Bâ’s So Long a Letter (1979)

Abstract

This article argues that So Long a Letter (1979) constructs African female subjectivity as a dialogical self forged through the confessional epistle’s denouncement of colonial and patriarchal forces that have long sought to bend African women’s heads to external and internal orderings of their society. It contends that Bâ carves temporal and narrative spaces for African women by casting a subversive gaze on the interlocking systems of oppression that repress their sense of agency. Through the enabling potential of epistolary writing, the Senegalese writer fashions her heroine into a subjectivity that is neither given nor fixed, but constructed in the shifting positions of friend, wife, mother, widow, and at times Bâ’s own mouthpiece, and through a continuing dialogue with past memories, present dilemmas, and alternative temporalities beyond dominant chrononorms. Drawing on Bakhtinian dialogism, Anzaldúa’s mestiza consciousness, Freeman’s chrononormativity, and Barrett’s affective continuum, this analysis therefore seeks to offer a transdisciplinary investigation into the ways how the novel reimagines African female subjectivity as a dialogic process of becoming emanating from the interstices of epistolary voice, affective temporalities, and the repudiation of colonial and patriarchal chrononormative imperatives. Ultimately, the paper concludes that the novel becomes a canvas onto which Bâ inscribes alternative modes of self-articulation, collective agency, and female futurity for African women.