Colonial Power and the Production of Subalternity in Ferdinand Oyono’s "Houseboy"

Abstract:

Ferdinand Oyono’s Houseboy (Une vie de boy) represents colonialism through the experiences of Toundi Ondoua, an African youth whose movement from a Catholic mission into the household of a French Commandant exposes the intimate mechanisms of colonial domination. Existing criticism has examined the novel through colonial power, the colonial gaze, domestic labour, translation, multilingualism, and cultural alienation. This article extends that scholarship by examining how these mechanisms converge to produce Toundi as a subaltern subject. Drawing on Antonio Gramsci’s concept of subalternity, Michel Foucault’s account of disciplinary power, Frantz Fanon’s analysis of colonial racialisation and psychology, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s theorisation of subaltern representation, the study argues that subalternity in Houseboy is not simply the consequence of colonial oppression but an identity continuously produced through institutional, racial, domestic, disciplinary, and ideological practices. Close readings of Toundi’s movement into colonial service, his observation of the segregated church and colonial town, his changing perception of the Commandant, the racialised humiliation he encounters, and the violence of the colonial prison demonstrate how colonial power operates upon both body and consciousness. At the same time, Toundi’s diary transforms him from an object of colonial observation into an observer of colonial society. His writing therefore constitutes a limited but significant form of counter-knowledge. The article concludes that Oyono presents colonial power as pervasive but unstable: it produces subordinate identities and disciplines bodies, yet the same structures of proximity, literacy, and observation create conditions through which the colonised subject can expose the contradictions of colonial authority.