international journal of francophone studies volume 10 issue 3

International Journal of

Francophone Studies

International Journal of Francophone Studies | Volume Ten N

umber Three

ISSN 1368-2679

10.3

www.intellectbooks.com

intellect

Volume Ten N

umber Three

intellect Journals | M

edia & Culture


Francophone Studies Volume 10 Number 3 – 2007

Editorial introduction

307–311 Extending the boundaries of francophone postcolonial studies Alec G. Hargreaves and Jean-Marc Moura

Articles

313–328 Francophone postcolonialism from Eastern Europe Alison Rice

329–344 Before Malcolm X, Dessalines: a ‘French’ tradition of black Atlantic radicalism Deborah Jenson

345–358 Don du français et parole (post) coloniale Laurent Dubreuil

359–376 Between nostalgia and desire: l’Ecole d’Alger’s transnational identifications and the case for a Mediterranean relation Edwige Tamalet Talbayev

377–391 A descent into crime: explaining Mongo Beti’s last two novels Pim Higginson

393–405 Listening to Caribbean history: music and rhythm in Daniel Maximin’s L’Isolé soleil Martin Munro

407–424 Féminisme et postcolonialisme: Beauvoir, Fanon et la guerre d’Algérie Annabelle Golay

Forum

425–432 When French-Canadian literature freed itself from the tutelage of Paris David Parris

433–438 Post ou péricolonialisme: l’ étrange modèle québécois (notes) Lise Gauvin

439–476 Book Reviews

477 Index

9 771368 267008

ISSN 1368-26791 0

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International Journal ofFrancophone Studies Volume 10 Number 3

A member of the Council of Editors of Learned Journals

The International Journal of Francophone Studies (IJFS) is an acade-mic, refereed publication for scholars, teachers and studentswhose focus is on French-speaking areas of the world. TheJournal covers language, literature, society, politics, history, film,arts, theatre, cultural and media studies with emphasis oncontemporary aspects of Francophone post-colonial studies. IJFSoffers a wide range of research expertise in these disciplines fromthe colonial period to the present day. The Journal is bilingual,having a majority of its articles published in English and aselection in French with abstracts in English.

Editorial BoardSuzanne Crosta – McMaster University, CanadaAzzedine Haddour – University College London, UKMargaret Majumdar – University of Portsmouth, UKValérie Orlando – University of Maryland, USA

International Advisory Board Bernard Aresu – Rice University, USA Reda Bensmaia – Brown University, USA Alec G. Hargreaves – State University of Florida, USA Peter Hawkins – University of Bristol, UK Prosper Kampoare – University of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso Pádraig Ó Gormaile – National University of Ireland Zahia Smail Salhi – University of Leeds, UK T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting – Vanderbilt University, USA Bernard Mouralis – University of Cergy-PontoiseInmaculada Díaz Carbona – University of CádizPapa Samba Diop – Université Paris XIIAnthony Chafer – University of Portsmouth

Honorary Advisory BoardAnne Judge – Former Professor of the University of Surrey

Eric Sellin – Former Professor of the University of Tulane

Liz Gauvin – Former Professor of the University of Montreal

Founder and EditorKamal SalhiSchool of Modern Languages & Cultures

University of Leeds

Leeds

LS2 9JT, UK

Tel: (44) (0)113 343 3501

Fax: (44) (0)113 343 3477

e-mail: [email protected]

Deputy Editor(North America Editorial)Raija KoskiDepartment of Modern Languages

King’s College

University of W. Ontario

266 Epworth Avenue

London,

Ontario N6A 2M3, Canada

Tel: (1) 519 433 3491 (ext. 4378)

Fax: (1) 519 433 0353

Toll Free: 1 800 265 4406


Book Reviews EditorDawn MarleyDepartment of Linguistic, Cultural and

International Studies

University of Surrey

Guildford

GU2 7XH

Tel: 44 (0) 1483 682823

Fax: 44 (0) 1483 686201


Conference Reviews EditorPeter BrownSchool of Languages

Australian National University

Canberra

ACT 0200 Australia

Tel: 61 (0) 2 6249 2728

Fax: 61 (0) 2 6249 3252


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ISSN 1368-2679

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Historical Abstracts.The International Journal of Francophone Studies is published three times per year

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Any matters concerning the format and presentation of articles not covered by the above notes should be addressed to the Editor.The guidance on this page is by no means comprehensive: it must be read in conjunction with Intellect Notes for Contributors.These notes can be referred to by contributors to any of Intellect’s journals, and so are, in turn, not sufficient; contributors will alsoneed to refer to the guidance such as this given for each specific journal. Intellect Notes for Contributors is obtainable fromwww.intellectbooks.com/journals, or on request from the Editor of this journal.

ContributionsOpinionThe views expressed in the InternationalJournal of Francophone Studies are those of the authors, and do not necessarilycoincide with those of the Editor or theEditorial Advisory Board.

RefereesThe International Journal of FrancophoneStudies is a refereed journal. Strictanonymity is accorded to both authors and referees. There are normally tworeferees, chosen for expertise within the subject area, and they are asked also to comment on comprehensibility and the significance of the article to other disciplines and professions.

Other submissionsThe Editor wishes to encourage articleswhich are of a more speculative nature,and especially those from practitioners in the field, often precluded fromproducing detailed research articles.Photographic and illustrative material is also most welcome. Such articles should be clearly different from refereedresearch articles in tone of language. They do not normally contain an abstract nor a list of references.

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Language and style The Journal uses standard British English, and the Editor reserves the right to alter usage to that end. Because of the interdisciplinary nature of the readership, jargon is to be avoided. Simple sentence structures are of great benefit to readers for whomEnglish is a second language. The journal also uses standard metropoli-tan French, with English punctuation and English quotation marks.

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NotesNotes appear at the side of appropriatepages, but the numerical sequence runs throughout the article. These should be kept to a minimum, and beidentified by a superscript numeral. These can be supplied as footnotes on submission. References need not be made formally within the notes as a full list of references must be supplied at the end of each article.

References and BibliographyReferences should not be supplied within a full list that must be supplied at the end of the article. They should adhere to the following models:

Books: author’s full name, title (italics), place of publication, pub-lisher, year, and page reference.

Articles: author’s full name, title (within single quotation marks), name of journal (italics), volume and issuenumbers, date, and page reference.

A bibliography may be included ifthis is deemed to be a necessary addition to the sidenotes.

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Patrons of the journal include…Assia Djebar (Académie Royale de Belgique 1999/

Académie Française 2005)

Prix de la Critique Internationale Biennale de Venise

1979, Prix du Meilleur Film historique Berlin Festival

1983, Jury Membre of the International Literary

Neustadt Prize 1991, Prix Maurice-Maeterlinck Brusells

1995, Doctorat honoris causa Vienna University 1995,

Prix Marguerite Yourcenar 1997, Prix du Meilleur

Essai Germany 1998, Prix International de Palmi Italy

1998, Prix de la Paix à Francfort-sur-le-Main 2000,

Doctorat honoris causa Concordia University 2002,

Silver Chair Professor New York University 2002, Prix

Littéraire Dedica Italy 2004, Doctorat honoris causaOsnabrück University 2005, Prix Pablo Neruda Naples

2005, Prix Grinzane Cavour Turin 2006. Books: LaSoif, Les impatients, Les enfants du Nouveau Monde, Lesalouettes naïves, Femmes d'Alger dans leur appartement,L'amour la fantasia, Ombre sultane, Vaste est la prison, Lesnuits de Strasbourg, Oran, langue morte, La femme sanssépulture, La disparition de la langue française. Films: LaNouba des femmes du Mont-Chenoua, La Zerda ou leschants de l'oubli.

Henri Lopès (Grand Prix Littéraire de l'Afrique Noire

1972)

Former Ambassador to the UK, former Prime Minister

and Foreign Minister of Congo, Candidate in 2001

for the post of Secrétaire Général de l’Organisation dela Francophonie. Books: Le Lys et le Flamboyant, Surl'Autre Rive, Le Chercheur d'Afriques, Sans Tam Tam,

Tribaliques, Dossier Classé, La Nouvelle Romance, LePleurer-Rire.

Azouz Begag (French Légion d'Honneur 1994)

Currently French Minister for Equal Opportunities,

Sociologist at France’s Conseil National de la Rech-erche Scientifique (CNRS), former member of France's

Conseil Economique et Social, Visiting Professor in the

Winthrop-King Institute for Contemporary French

and Francophone Studies at Florida State University

since 2002. Prix des Sorcières 1987; Prix de la Ville de

Bobigny 1987, Prix Radio Beur 1989, Prix Falep du

Département du Gers 1990, Prix du livre Hebdo 1998,

Prix France Télévision 1998. Novels: Le Gone duChaâba, Béni ou le paradis privé, Quand on est mort, c'estpour toute la vie, L'Ilet aux vents, Les Chiens aussi, Zenzela,

Dis oualla! Tranches de vie, Les Voleurs d'écriture, LePasseport, La Force du berger, Jordi et le rayon perdu:énergie, Les Tireurs d'étoiles, Le Temps des villages, Une

semaine de vacances à Cap maudit, Mona ou le bateau-livre,

Ma maman est devenue une étoile. Critical bookss: LesDérouilleurs, L'intégration. L'Immigré et sa ville. Minitel etinformation dans les transports collectifs urbains., Ecartsd'identité. La Ville des autres: la famille immigrée et l'espaceurbain. Les Lumières de Lyon. Quartiers sensibles. Espaceet exclusion. Mobilités dans les quartiers périphériquesd'Avignon. Place du Pont ou la Médina de Lyon.

Werewere-Liking Gnepo (Officier de l’Ordre Culturel

Ivoirien 1991, Chevalier des Arts et Lettres Françaises

1992, Chevalier de l’Ordre National de Cote d’Ivoire

2000, Noma Award 2005)

Prix Arletty 1991, Prix de la Fondation René Praille

1992, Prix Fonlon-Nichols de l’Excellence Littéraire

Université de l’Alberta 1993, Member of the Haut

Conseil de la Francophonie 1997, Prix du meilleur

téléfilm de ‘Vues d'Afrique’ Montréal 1988

Lauréate Fondation Prince Claus pour la Culture et le

Développement 2000. Plays: La Queue du diable, LaPuissance de Um, Du Sommeil d’injuste, Une nouvelleterre, Les mains veulent dire, La Rougeole arc en ciel,

Singue Mura, Un Touareg s'est marié à une Pygmée, La

Veuve Dylemme, Le Parler-Chanter - Parlare Cantando,

Sunjata l’épopée mandingue, Héros d’eau, Quelque choseAfrique, L’Enfant Mbene. Novels: A la rencontre de…,

Orphée dafric, Elle sera de jaspe et de corail, L'Amour-cent-vies, La Mémoire amputée. Poem: On ne raisonne

pas avec le venin. Tales: Liboy Li Nkundung, Contesd'initiations féminines. Essays: Du rituel à la scène chez leBassa du Cameroun, Une vision du Kaïdara, Statuescolons, Marinnettes du Mali. Films: Regard de fous,

Mother Land.

Raphaël Confiant (Prix des Amériques Insulaires et

de la Guyane 2004)

Prix Antigone 1988, Prix Novembre 1991, Prix

Carbet de la Caraïbe 1994, Prix Casa de las Americas

1995, Prix RFO 1998. Works in Creole: Jik dèyè doBondyé, Grif An Tè, Jou Baré, Grif An Tè, Bitako-a, KôdYanm, Marisosé, Ora lavi: nyouz. Creative works in

French: Le Nègre et l’Amiral, Eau de café, Ravines dudevant jour, L’Allée des soupirs, Commandeur du sucre,La Vierge du grand retour, Le Meurtre du Samedi-Gloria,

L’Archet du Colonel, Régisseur de rhum, Le Cahier deromances, Brin d’amour, Morne-Pichevin, Nuée ardente,

Le Barbare enchanté, La Lessive du diable, La Panse duchacal, Adèle et la pacotilleuse. Short Stories: Mémoiresd’un fossoyeur, La Trilogie Tropicale, Bassin des oura-gans, La Savane des Pétrifications, La Baignoire de

Premiere bilingual journal in Francophone postcolonial studies

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Joséphine, La dernière java de Mama Josépha, La chute deLouis Augustin, commandeur de plantation de canne àsucre en l’île de la Martinique, Paradis Brisé. Critical

essays: Eloge de la créolité Lettres créoles, Tracées antil-laises et continentales de la littérature: 1635–1975,

Aimé Césaire - une traversée paradoxale du siècle, Ecrire «la parole de nuit » La nouvelle littérature antillaise, nou-velles, poèmes, réflexions poétiques, Dictionnaire desTitim et Sirandanes, Devinettes et jeux de mots du mondecréole, ethnolinguistique, KREYOL PALE, KREYOLMATJE… Analyse des significations attachées aux aspectslittéraires, linguistiques et socio-historiques de l’écritcréolophone de 1750 à 1995 aux Petites Antilles, enGuyane et en Haïti.

Slimane Benaissa (Lauréat du Prix Société des

Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques SACD1993)

Docteur Honoris causa Université de la Sorbonne

2005, member of the Haut-Conseil de la

Francophonie 2000-present. Plays: Au-delà du voile,Mariane et le Marabout, Le Conseil de discipline, Les Filsde l’amertume, Un Homme ordinaire pour quatre femmesparticulières, L’Avenir oublié, Prophètes sans dieu,

Mémoires à la dérive, Les confessions d’un musulman demauvaise foi, Peuple, peuple, La situation économique enAlgérie, Youm el-djemaa khardjou riam, Boualem zid el-gouddam, Babour eghraq. Romans: Les fils de l’amer-tume, Le silence de la falaise, La dernière nuit d’un damné,

Les colères du silence. Cinema: writing and/or partici-

pation in the writing of de Boualem zid el goudem,

(Mostra de Venise Prima œuvre 1980), Vent de sable (by

Mohamed Lakhdar Hamina, 1978), Le mariage deYoucef (by Mefti, 1979), Il était une fois la guerre(Franco-Algerian coproduction by Ahmed Rachedi

and Maurice Vailvic 1980), Le harem de madameOsmane (by Nadir Moknèche 1999), Le neuvième mois(Franco-Palistinian production by Ali Nassar 2000),

Viva l’Aldjérie (by Nadir Moknèche 2002).

Maryse Condé (Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et

des Lettres 2001, Prix de l'Académie Française

1988, honorary member of Académie des Lettres du

Québec 1998)

Grand Prix Littéraire de la Femme 1987, Prix Alain

Boucheron 1987, Prix LiBeratur Allemagne 1988,

Prix Puterbaugh 1993, 50e Grand Prix Littéraire des

Jeunes Lecteurs de l'Ile de France 1994, Prix Carbet

de la Caraïbe 1997, Prix Marguerite Yourcenar

2000, Hurston/Wright Legacy Award 2005. Novels

and Short Stories: Heremakhonon, En attendant lebonheur (Heremakhonon), Une Saison à Rihata, Ségou:Les murailles de terre I, Ségou: La terre en miettes II,Pays Mêlé/Nanna-Ya, Pays Mêlé, Moi, Tituba, sorcière -Noire de Salem, La vie scélérate, Traversée de la man-grove, Les Derniers Rois Mages, La Colonie du Nouveau

Monde, La Migration des coeurs, Desirada, Le Coeur àrire et à pleurer, Célanire cou-coupé, La Belle Créole.

Plays: Dieu nous l'a donné, Mort d'Oluwémi d'Ajumako,

Le Morne de Massabielle, Pension les Alizés, An TanRevolisyon, Comédie d'amour. Children’s books: ‘Victor

et les barricades’. Je Bouquine, Haïti chérie (Rêvesamers), Hugo le terrible, La Planète Orbis. Anthologies:

Anthologie de la littérature africaine d'expressionfrançaise, La Poésie antillaise, Le Roman antillais,

Bouquet de voix pour Guy Tirolien, Caliban's Legacy,

L'Héritage de Caliban, Penser la créolité, co-edited with

Madeleine Cottenet-Hage. Audio materials: CheikhHamidou Kane, Hamadou Hampaté Ba, Joseph Zobel,Aimé Césaire. Maryse Condé has also published

numerous articles and essays.:

304


Past Guest EditorsThe editors wish to thank the following scholars for having invaluably con-tributed to the journal by commissioning and editing the following issues:

Ian Magadeara(University of Liverpool)France-India-Britain: (post)colonial trianglesVolume 5 Number 2 (2002)

Valerie Orlando(University of Illinois Wesleyan)Memory in North African writingsVolume 6 Number 2 (2003)

Najib Redouane(California State University Long Beach)Sephardic literature in North Africa and CanadaVolume 7 Number 1 (2004)

Pascale De Souza(John Hopkins University)

H. Adlai Murdoch(University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)Oceanic Dialogues: from the Black Atlantic to the Indo-PacificVolume 8 Numbers 2&3 (2005)

Inmaculada Diaz Narbouna(University of Cadiz)Perspectives and problematic of the African EssayVolume 9 Number 1 (2006)

Rosemary Chapman(University of Nottingham)Linguistic and Cultural Contact and Conflict in Francophone CanadaVolume 9 Number 3 (2006)

Azzedine Haddour (University College London)

Margaret A. Majumdar(University of Portsmouth)Whither Francophone Studies? Launching the DebateVolume 10 Numbers 1 and 2 (2007)

Alec G. Hargreaves(Florida State University)

Jean-Marc Moura(Université de Lille-III)Extending the Boundaries of Francophone Postcolonial StudiesVolume 10 Number 3 (2007)

306IJFS 10 (3) 306 © Intellect Ltd 2007

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International Journal of Francophone Studies Volume 10 Number 3© 2007 Intellect Ltd

Editorial. English Language. doi: 10.1386/ijfs.10.3.307/2

Editorial introductionExtending the boundaries of francophonepostcolonial studiesAlec G. Hargreaves Florida State University

Jean-Marc Moura Université de Lille-III

‘Francophone’ and ‘postcolonial’ studies have often been seen as rival ifnot antagonistic academic fields. Where work in the second has been ledby anglophone scholars for whom the politics of culture has been of pri-mordial importance, the first has generally been preferred by scholars inFrance who have seen in ‘postcolonialism’ an oversimplified and undulypoliticized ‘Anglo-Saxon’ approach to the cultures of formerly colonizedpeoples. In recent years, there has been an increasingly fruitful dialoguebetween researchers from both sides of this divide. If it is true that therehas often been greater enthusiasm for this dialogue among scholars basedin the English-speaking world,1 their counterparts in French-speakingcountries have become increasingly willing to acknowledge that postcolo-nialism is at least worthy of debate,2 despite the persistence of considerablescepticism in France. At the same time, both approaches have been chal-lenged and stimulated by new theoretical paradigms focusing on develop-ments such as globalization and transnationalism.3 These and otherdevelopments have significantly expanded the horizons of francophonestudies in a great variety of ways, key aspects of which are explored in thisspecial issue of the International Journal of Francophone Studies.

This is the final part of the Tenth Anniversary volume of the journal.In their introduction to the first part, Azzedine Haddour and MargaretMajumdar asked: ‘Whither Francophone Studies?’4 The answer which theyformulated to this question had both descriptive and normative aspects. Intheir description of the state of the field today, they highlighted the relation-ship between francophone studies and postcolonialism as a nodal pointof current debates. In charting a preferred course for the future, they warnedagainst the dangers of postcolonial theory, arguing that francophonestudies will blossom most fully if it is conceived as a form of Area Studiesopen to a wide range of multi- and inter-disciplinary approaches.

The value of a body of theory depends in part on what it is held to consistof. Some, such as Richard Serrano, see postcolonial theory as fixated uponthe colonial past, ‘bent on making every author tell the same story overand over’.5 Others, including Haddour and Majumdar, believe that anglo-phone postcolonial theorists such as Homi Bhabha and Stuart Hall obfus-cate the specificities of colonial history and are in danger of leadingfrancophone studies into a politically irresponsible a-historical ‘meta-discourse

IJFS 10 (3) 307–311 © Intellect Ltd 2007

1. Examples includeAlec G. Hargreavesand Mark McKinney(eds), PostcolonialCultures in France,London/New York:Routledge, 1997;Charles Forsdick andDavid Murphy (eds),FrancophonePostcolonial Studies: A Critical Introduction,London: Arnold,2003; Kamal Salhi(ed.), FrancophonePost-colonial Cultures:Critical Essays,Lanham, MD:Lexington, 2003; H. Adlai Murdochand Anne Donadey(eds), PostcolonialTheory and FrancophoneLiterary Studies,Gainesville: UniversityPress of Florida,2005; Margaret A.Majumdar,Postcoloniality: TheFrench Dimension,Oxford: Berg, 2007.

2. Among the firstpublications reflectingthis interest were athemed number ofDédale, nos 5–6,Spring 1997, entitled‘Postcolonialisme :Décentrement,Déplacement,Disséemination’;Jean-Marc Moura,Littératuresfrancophones etthéorie postcoloniale,

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which is bent on the theorization of the ambivalence of the subject’.6 Whiledifferently configured in important respects, both critiques warn that post-colonial theory has become too big for its boots. Ironically, in both casespostcolonialism is accused of having itself become imperialist in nature.Serrano claims that ‘Postcolonial Studies has essentially made the entireplanet and its entire history its domain’,7 while Haddour and Majumdarask rhetorically if postcolonialism has ‘developed into a metatheory of glob-alization which forgets that globalization has not put an end to exploitationand to the practice of colonialism?’8

If, as Haddour and Majumdar fear, postcolonial approaches to writingof French expression are apt to become attempts to ‘subsume francophoneliterature’,9 placing the whole of francophone literature under the aegis ofpostcolonialism, this would indeed be a cause for concern. But in counter-ing that danger, it is important not to throw out the baby with the bath-water. Understood in its broadest and most literal sense to include allwriting of French expression, francophone literature may be seen toembrace all writing in French within as well as outside France, includingcountries such as Belgium and Switzerland where French is not a colonialimportation and where, by the same token, a postcolonial perspective hasonly limited relevance. Yet most scholarly work on literatures qualified as‘francophone’, including that appearing in the International Journal ofFrancophone Studies and many comparable publications, applies the termsolely to the work of writers who are situated outside France or in migrantdiasporas now present in the hexagone but originating outside it. As thegreat majority (though not all) francophones living or originating outsideFrance have their ethnic origins in formerly colonized peoples amongwhom the legacy of French domination is still very far from effaced, itwould be misguided to deny that approaching their writings from a post-colonial perspective can often be fruitful. While francophone postcolonialstudies thus needs to be seen as a legitimate, indeed vital part of the widerdomain of francophone studies, it would be equally misguided to regard itas a replacement for this broader field. If, as Haddour and Majumdar hope,francophone studies develop into a fully formed variant of Area Studies,there is every reason to believe that the inter- and multi-disciplinaryapproaches characteristic of such a field can and should readily includepostcolonial perspectives.

The interface between postcolonialism, francophone studies and newerparadigms such as globalization and transnationalism was explored byparticipants at the international conference on ‘Boundaries and Limits ofPostcolonialism: Anglophone, Francophone, Global’ hosted by FloridaState University’s Winthrop-King Institute for Contemporary French andFrancophone Studies in association with the Society for FrancophonePostcolonial Studies on 30 November–2 December 2006. The articlesassembled here have been selected from among the hundred or so paperspresented at the conference. If the articles may appear at first sight to besomewhat disparate – they span several centuries and range from theCaribbean, West Africa and the Mediterranean basin to Eastern Europe –they were selected because of an important underlying similarity: theinnovativeness with which they explore the relationship between post-colonialism and francophonie. It is the contention of the scholars who

308 Alec G. Hargreaves and Jean-Marc Moura

Paris: PressesUniversitaires deFrance, 1999; anissue of Africultures,no. 28, May 2000,entitled‘Postcolonialisme:inventaire et débats’;Jacqueline Bardolph,Etudes postcoloniales etlittérature, Paris :Champion, 2002. Thepace of suchpublications hasquickened recently.Notable recentexamples includePascal Blanchard andNicolas Bancel (eds),Culture post-coloniale1961–2006, Paris:Autrement, 2006 andin the same yearthemed issues of thejournals Hérodote,Labyrinthe, Multitudesand Contretemps; athemed number ofMouvements followedin 2007.

3. See, for example, thethemed number ofPMLA, 116: 1,January 2001, entitled‘Globalizing LiteraryStudies’, andstatements collectedby Patricia Yaeger in‘Editor’s Column: TheEnd of PostcolonialTheory? A Roundtablewith Sunil Agnani,Fernando Coronil,Gaurav Desai,Mamadou Diof, SimonGikandi, Susie Tharu,and Jennifer Wenzel’,in PMLA, 122: 3, May2007, pp. 633–51.

4. Azzedine Haddourand Margaret A. Majumdar,‘EditorialIntroduction: WhitherFrancophone Studies?Launching theDebate’, InternationalJournal of FrancophoneStudies, 10: 1–2,2007, pp. 7–16.

5. Richard Serrano,Against the Postcolonial:‘Francophone’ Writersat the Ends of French


have contributed to the present collection not simply that postcolonialismcan in general terms help us to understand significant aspects of fran-cophonie but, more specifically, that a postcolonial approach to the fran-cophone world can illuminate regions, individual writers and historicalperiods in ways that have not hitherto been considered with the benefit ofthis approach.

Like the first part of this anniversary volume, the articles collected hereshow that francophone studies is becoming an increasingly rich and diversefield with expanding spatial, diachronic and disciplinary boundaries. Theyalso reflect a similar expansion in the field of postcolonial studies, whichwas initially concerned almost exclusively with African, Asian and Oceanicpeoples marked by the colonial imprint of west European nations. Recentlyit has been observed that east European and Asian peoples previouslydominated by the Soviet Union may also be productively studied within apostcolonial optic. Over a long period of time before, during and after theduration of the Soviet Union, a significant number of writers originating inRussia and eastern Europe have chosen to express themselves in French.Some, such as Eugène Ionesco, have generally been treated as ‘French’writers. Others, such as Milan Kundera and Andreï Makine, have beenlabelled as ‘francophone’. Until now, few have been studied within a post-colonial optic. Article One bridges this divide by exploring the extent towhich East Europeans who write in French may be considered not only asfrancophone but also as postcolonial writers.

The article rightly observes that this new slant on both francophoneand postcolonial studies involves not only the redrawing of spatial framesof analysis but also the recognition of the salience of diachronic changes indetermining the pertinence of the postcolonial paradigm. If, as the articlesuggests, virtually every culture may be considered to have been dominatedby another at some point in time, the pertinence of a postcolonial approachdepends crucially on the balance of power in transcultural relations at spe-cific historical moments. While the recognition of changes over time maylimit the pertinence of such an approach in relation to certain culturalspaces, elsewhere a strong case may be made for applying a postcolonialapproach to ‘French’ or ‘francophone’ spaces over longer periods thanthose most commonly associated with postcolonial studies. Citing the caseof the Haitian revolutionary leader Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Article Twosuggests that we need to revise customary notions of the beginnings ofpostcolonial theory. In presenting Dessalines as an opponent not only ofslavery but also of colonial domination, the article claims a place for himas a precursor of twentieth-century Caribbean writers such as Aimé Césaireand Frantz Fanon, who are more commonly regarded as founding figuresof postcolonialism. Casting the net wider, Article Three argues for a thorough-going re-theorizing of francophonie and postcolonialism from the AncienRégime through the revolutionary period and down to the present day.The article suggests that the French and Haitian Revolutions led to theemergence of new discourses in French: the former slave, who was muteor inaudible according to the Code noir, became able to articulate his orher own speech and to become, literally, francophone. Article Four arguesin turn that in the short-lived Ecole d’Alger, led by writers such asGabriel Audisio and Albert Camus during the apogee of European colonial

309Editorial introduction. Extending the boundaries of francophone...

Empire, Lanham, MD:Lexington, 2005, p. 3.

6. Haddour andMajumdar, p. 14.

7. Serrano, p. 3.

8. Haddour andMajumdar, p. 14.

9. ibid., p. 11.


domination, may be seen the seeds of radical challenges to the binarycultural politics promoted by colonizing states such as France.

In different ways, Article Five and Article Six problematize the culturaldynamics most commonly highlighted by proponents of postcolonial studies,who have generally focused on ‘high’ culture of an essentially literarynature, giving less attention to more popular cultural forms. Article Fivesees in Mongo Beti’s turn to crime fiction the reconciliation of a popularliterary genre with the advancement of postcolonialism. It suggests thatBeti crafted his last two books as crime novels because this type of fictionallows the author to reconcile two contradictory but important literarycriteria in the African postcolonial context: realism and popularity. ArticleSix makes the case for a more engaged, interdisciplinary approach toCaribbean cultural history giving due recognition to the importance ofrhythmic and other musical forms. In a further plea for interdisciplinarystudies, Article Seven suggests that the interface between liberation fromsexual domination on the one hand and from colonial domination on theother has been insufficiently explored. The article shows how FrantzFanon and Simone de Beauvoir, key figures in the struggles for colonial andsexual liberation respectively, interconnected in neglected but important waysduring the Algerian war of independence. The story of their meeting, told inde Beauvoir’s La Force des choses, leads to a postcolonial reading of their writ-ings that sheds light on important themes such as the crucial place Fanonaccorded to women in his theory of decolonization.

We hope that in this collection of articles readers will find not only newideas and forms of understanding pertaining to the relationship betweenfrancophone cultures and postcolonialism but also stimulation to under-take further research going beyond the customary limits of francophonie. Itis thus our hope that in extending the boundaries of francophone postcolo-nial studies, in place of the tense stand-off which has sometimes charac-terized relations between proponents of francophone and postcolonialstudies respectively, the relationship between these two fields may be seento be synergetic rather than oppositional in nature.

ReferencesAfricultures (2000), no. 28, May, themed number entitled ‘Postcolonialisme:

inventaire et débats’.

Bardolph, Jacqueline (2002), Etudes postcoloniales et littérature, Paris : Champion.

Blanchard, Pascal and Bancel, Nicolas (eds) (2006), Culture post-coloniale 1961–2006,Paris: Autrement.

Contretemps (2006), no. 16, May, themed number entitled ‘Post-colonialisme etimmigration’.

Dédale (1997), nos 5–6, Spring, themed number entitled ‘Postcolonialisme:Décentrement, Déplacement, Disséemination’.

Forsdick, Charles and Murphy, David (eds) (2003), Francophone Postcolonial Studies:A Critical Introduction, London: Arnold.

Haddour, Azzedine and Majumdar, Margaret A. (2007), ‘Editorial Introduction:Whither Francophone Studies? Launching the Debate’, International Journal ofFrancophone Studies, 10: 1–2, pp. 7–16.

Hargreaves, Alec G. and McKinney, Mark (eds) (1997), Postcolonial Cultures in France,London/New York: Routledge.

310 Alec G. Hargreaves and Jean-Marc Moura


Hérodote (2006), no. 120, January, themed number entitled ‘La Questionpostcoloniale’.

Labyrinthe (2006), no. 24, Fall, themed number entitled ‘Faut-il être postcolonial?’

Majumdar, Margaret A. (2007), Postcoloniality: The French Dimension, Oxford: Berg.

Moura, Jean-Marc (1999), Littératures francophones et théorie postcoloniale, Paris:Presses Universitaires de France.

Mouvements (2007), no. 51, Fall, themed number entitled ‘Faut-il avoir peur dupostcolonial?

Multitudes (2006), no. 26, Fall, themed number entitled ‘Postcolonial et histoire’.

Murdoch, H. Adlai and Donadey, Anne (eds) (2005), Postcolonial Theory andFrancophone Literary Studies, Gainesville: University Press of Florida.

PMLA (2001), vol. 116, no. 1, January, themed number entitled ‘Globalizing LiteraryStudies’.

Salhi, Kamal (ed.) (2003), Francophone Post-colonial Cultures: Critical Essays,Lanham, MD: Lexington.

Serrano, Richard (2005), Against the Postcolonial: ‘Francophone’ Writers at the Endsof French Empire, Lanham, MD: Lexington.

Yaeger, Patricia (2007), ‘Editor’s Column: The End of Postcolonial Theory? ARoundtable with Sunil Agnani, Fernando Coronil, Gaurav Desai, MamadouDiof, Simon Gikandi, Susie Tharu, and Jennifer Wenzel’, in PMLA, 122: 3, May,pp. 633–51.

Suggested citationHargreaves, A. G. and Moura, J.-M. (2007), ‘Editorial introduction. Extending the

boundaries of francophone postcolonial studies’, International Journal ofFrancophone Studies 10: 3, pp. 307–311, doi: 10.1386/ijfs.10.3.307/2

Contributor detailsAlec G. Hargreaves is Director of the Winthrop-King Institute for ContemporaryFrench and Francophone Studies at Florida State University. A specialist on post-colonial minorities in France, he has authored and edited numerous publicationsincluding The Colonial Experience in French Fiction (London: Macmillan/AtlanticHighlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1981), Voices from the North African ImmigrantCommunity in France: Immigration and Identity in Beur Fiction (Oxford/New York:Berg, 1991), Immigration, ‘Race’ and Ethnicity in Contemporary France (London/New York: Routledge, 1995), Memory, Empire and Postcolonialism: Legacies ofFrench Colonialism (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2005) and Multi-Ethnic France:Immigration, Politics, Culture and Society (London/New York : Routledge, 2007).Contact: Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics, 402 Diffenbaugh,Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida 32306-1540, USA.E-mail: [email protected]

Jean-Marc Moura is professor of Comparative Literature at the University Charles-de-Gaulle-Lille III (France) and director of the Centre de Recherches en LittératureGénérale et Comparée of this university. Among his publications are Littératuresfrancophones et théorie postcoloniale (Paris : P.U.F., 1999), Exotisme et lettres fran-cophones (Paris: P.U.F., 2003), and with V.Gély, J.Prungnaud, E.Stead (eds):Littératures européennes et mythologies lointaines (Lille : UL3, 2006). Contact:Université Charles-de-Gaulle-Lille III, Domaine universitaire ‘Pont de Bois’, B.P.60149,59653 Villeneuve d’Ascq Cedex, France.E-mail: [email protected]

311Editorial introduction. Extending the boundaries of francophone...


313


Article. English Language. doi: 10.1386/ijfs.10.3.313/1

Francophone postcolonialism fromEastern EuropeAlison Rice University of Notre Dame

Abstract This article draws from recent research that makes an argument for studying lit-erature from what David Chioni Moore calls ‘the post-Soviet sphere’ under therubric of postcolonial theory. It contends that conceiving of countries formerlyunder Soviet rule as having some characteristics in common with countries onceunder French colonial rule can yield productive results. It is quite possible that theconcentration in literary studies on relations between the First and Third Worldshas left a void with respect to the Second World, at least with respect to francophonewriters. We can begin to fill this void by studying texts in French by writers fromplaces formerly under Soviet domination, and this article examines the fictional andtheoretical works of Julia Kristeva, Agota Kristof, Milan Kundera, Andreï Makineand Brina Svit. Their insights are used here to explore the extent to which intellec-tuals from small Central and Eastern European countries find themselves in a ‘post-colonial’ position – politically and linguistically – similar to that of francophonescholars and writers from the Maghreb, sub-Saharan Africa or the Antilles.

Résumé Cet article s’inspire des publications récentes qui suggèrent qu’on puisse utile-ment concevoir la littérature de ce que David Chioni Moore appelle ‘la sphèrepost-soviétique’ à la lueur de la théorie postcoloniale. Il propose qu’une étude dessimilitudes entre les pays ayant subi la domination soviétique et les anciennescolonies françaises nous mène à des résultats convaincants. Il est possible que lafocalisation habituelle sur les relations entre le Premier et le Tiers monde en littéra-ture ait laissé un vide par rapport au Deuxième monde — du moins pour ce quiconcerne les écrivains francophones — et on peut commencer à remplir cettelacune en étudiant des textes en français écrits par des auteurs provenant des lieuxautrefois soumis à l’empire soviétique. Dans cet article, j’examine les ouvragesthéoriques et fictifs de Julia Kristeva, Agota Kristof, Milan Kundera, AndreïMakine, et Brina Svit. Leurs réflexions, ici, servent à voir à quel point les intel-lectuels des petits pays de l’Europe centrale et de l’Europe de l’Est se trouvent dansune position ‘postcoloniale’ — à la fois politique et linguistique — semblable àcelle des chercheurs et des écrivains du Maghreb, de l’Afrique subsaharienneou des Antilles.

‘J’appelle la langue française une langue ennemie’1 are words written not bysomeone from a former French colony, but instead by European authorAgota Kristof whose fiction in French has met with considerable success notonly in the original, but also in translations in over thirty languages. After


KeywordsAndreï Makine

borders

Eastern Europe

European Union

francophonie

Milan Kundera

postcolonialism

translation

1. Agota Kristof,L’analphabète, Geneva:Éditions Zoé, 2004,p. 24.

IJFS_10.3_02_art_Rice.qxd 11/6/07 4:13 PM Page 313

fleeing her native Hungary in 1956, Kristof was afforded asylum inSwitzerland where she initially found work in a factory. Her experience inthe West was similar to that of many immigrants who struggle with the lan-guage, and the culture, of the new place of residence. In her autobiographi-cal récit, Kristof evokes the seemingly paradoxical status of this beautifulcountry that is a ‘désert’ for refugees, ‘un désert qu’il nous faut traverserpour arriver à ce qu’on appelle “intégration,” “assimilation”’.2 Although shehas become a celebrated author of the French language, this foreign-bornwriter insists that she has not mastered this tongue, and that she is unableto exercise her profession without frequently consulting the dictionary. Thisis, at least in part, why French is an ‘enemy’ to her. It is a language that shemaintains she ‘did not choose’. It was imposed upon her by destiny, bychance, by circumstances.3 To make matters worse, this imposed form ofexpression is ‘killing her mother tongue’, in Kristof ’s own estimation: ‘lalangue française […] est en train de tuer ma langue maternelle’.4

Because she often carries the label ‘French feminist theorist’, we tend toforget that literary critic and novelist Julia Kristeva also hails from EasternEurope.5 In a recent text, Kristeva reminds us that leaving behind one’snative tongue is an act similar to matricide when she speaks of the ‘infinitemourning’ that accompanies exile: ‘Dans ce deuil infini, où la langue et lecorps ressuscitent dans les battements d’un français greffé, j’ausculte lecadavre toujours chaud de ma mémoire maternelle’.6 The title of her reflec-tions points to Kristeva’s conviction that a second language ultimatelyoffers the possibility of life, particularly for the writer or the intellectual:‘L’autre langue ou la condition d’être en vie’.7 But the circumstances thatconditioned her own thorough acquisition of French were not without con-sequences, and she experiences the affliction of her exile even after residingfor over forty years in Paris, far from her Bulgarian homeland: ‘la souf-france me revient, Bulgarie, ma souffrance’.8

The particular suffering that plagues writers from Eastern Europe iswell formulated by novelist Brina Svit from the former Yugoslavia, whoalso left her country for France: ‘mon grand problème était plutôt de quit-ter ma langue maternelle, de la trahir: quand on appartient à un petit peu-ple de deux millions d’habitants qui fonde toute son identité sur sa langue,les choses se posent en ces termes-là’.9 Like Czech-born Milan Kundera,Svit first established herself as a writer in her native tongue; it was notuntil she had lived in France for a number of years that she exchanged her‘small language’ for a ‘large one’, taking the advice of a well-knownFrench intellectual according to her account: ‘Je me souviens avoir [sic]demandé à Philippe Sollers ce qu’il aurait fait s’il était né dans une petitelangue comme la mienne. “Je l’aurais échangée contre une grande”,s’est-il exclamé’.10

In her oft-quoted study La République mondiale des lettres, PascaleCasanova addresses the phenomenon of writers from small countries whoconvert to a ‘grande langue’, such as French or English, in order to reach alarger audience and escape the marginalization of what she terms ‘untrans-lated’ writers, underscoring the particular role of Paris as a ‘denationalizedliterary capital’ that allows for exchange of novel ideas across national lin-guistic borders.11 Casanova’s use of the word untranslated is at oncemetaphorical and literal. In her view, untranslated writers usually do not

314 Alison Rice

2. ibid., p. 44.

3. ibid., p. 54.

4. ibid., p. 24.

5. It is not my goal inthis article todistinguish betweenCentral and EasternEuropean countries,since such a divide iscomplicated and controversial. When Irefer to ‘EasternEurope’, therefore, I am including countries arguablysituated in ‘CentralEurope’ in a categorythat I define as ‘east’of such ‘western’European countries asFrance, Germany,Italy and Austria.

6. Julia Kristeva, ‘L’autrelangue ou la conditiond’être en vie’, 15 October 2006,http://www.kristeva.fr/1565. html?*session*id*key*=*session*id*val*

7. ibid.

8. ibid.

9. Brina Svit, Moreno,Paris: Gallimard,2003, p. 26.

10. ibid.

11. Pascale Casanova, La République mondialedes lettres, Paris: Seuil,1999, p. 380.


have their texts translated into other tongues because they do not composeworks with an appeal that extends beyond national linguistic borders.David Damrosch adopts a similar stance with respect to translation andnational belonging in his analysis of the concept of ‘World Literature’:

The balance of credit and loss remains a distinguishing mark of national

versus world literature: literature stays within its national or regional tradi-

tion when it usually loses in translation, whereas works become world liter-

ature when they gain on balance in translation, stylistic losses offset by an

expansion in depth as they increase their range.12

One might argue that by writing directly in a language other than theirmother tongue, Eastern European francophone authors are themselvesengaging in a sort of ‘translation’ in the original that allows them to trans-cend national borders from the outset of the literary creation.

In various interviews, as well as in her fictional and theoretical texts,Kristeva evokes her experience as a young woman from Eastern Europewho arrived in Paris in late December 1965. In her spoken reflections onthe subject, aired on the radio station France Culture in 1988 and printedin an English version nearly a decade later, Kristeva turned to the termtranslation in order to describe the psychoanalytic experience that was socrucial to her development, personal and professional, after her move toFrance. According to her understanding of the term, it can be applied toliterature as well as psychoanalysis:

My analysis was conducted in French, which enabled me to ‘translate’ my

childhood impressions of the colors, tastes, and sounds of my country into

French and to transpose them onto my new French culture. Because my

work focuses specifically on language and culture, I found this process to be

invaluable. Without such an experience, a foreign language would be merely

a second skin, artificial and mechanical. If we want to understand literature

or our psychoanalytic patients, we must translate childhood memories into a

foreign language. For me, the analytic process is what enabled this transla-

tion to occur.13

In later weekly contributions to the same radio station, Kristeva devotedone programme to another woman writer who has received considerablepraise for her literary translations of memories (both her own and those ofothers from her country of origin): Assia Djebar. In her morning mono-logue for France Culture, Kristeva addressed the exiled writer’s relation-ship to the French land and language in the following fashion:

Inutile de vous dire que l’exilée que je suis, Française d’adoption, ne peut que

se reconnaître dans cette aventure… Comme Assia Djebar, j’aime le français,

sa rigueur logique, sa précision sensuelle qui n’a d’égale que la géométrie

d’un jardin à la française.14

By underscoring her similarities to the Algerian-born author in this man-ner, Kristeva takes a meaningful step towards creating new categories ofcomparison among writers of French. Drawing from her own experience

315Francophone postcolonialism from Eastern Europe

12. David Damrosch,What is WorldLiterature? Princeton:Princeton UniversityPress, 2003, p. 289.

13. Julia Kristeva, JuliaKristeva Interviews,New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press,1996, p. 4.

14. Julia Kristeva,Micropolitique, Paris:Éditions de l’Aube,2001, p. 168.


to address Djebar’s ‘adventure’ is a gesture that prompts literary critics toconsider the creative work of writers from Eastern Europe alongsidethat of authors from areas formerly under French control, such as theMaghreb.15

In La République mondiale des lettres, Casanova is careful to distinguishbetween colonized or formerly colonized writers and those from smallcountries, insisting that a different form of domination characterizes thesituation of European authors like Romanian-born Émile Cioran or Irish-born Samuel Beckett who at some point adopted French as their lan-guage of writing: ‘Pour tous les écrivains issus des pays qui ont longtempsété sous domination coloniale, et pour eux seulement, le bilinguisme(comme traduction incorporée) est la marque indélébile et première de ladomination politique’.16 While I agree with Casanova that it is importantto distinguish between francophone writers from Europe and franco-phone writers from former French colonies, I think that the differencesbetween them become complicated if we begin to examine the experienceof Eastern European writers in the context of new research that seeks toconsider countries formerly under the domination of the Soviet Union as‘postcolonial’.

Applying this new research to the case of Eastern European writers ofFrench seems to follow Mireille Rosello’s incitement to ‘unhome’ franco-phone studies through transnational comparative studies:

I would hope that such transnational and transdisciplinary encounters

between types of Francophone studies would lead to a sort of ‘unhoming’

of the field: it would make us perceive our discipline not as ‘homeless’

(Francophone studies do have a space in the institutional home) nor exiled

(home is not somewhere else), but as struggling with unhomeliness, where

legitimacy is a ghost that we keep conjuring up. 17

Julia Kristeva participates in the act of ‘unhoming’ francophone studies,even though this is not her primary field of expertise, in her radio pro-grammes for France Culture. Her reflections bring attention to franco-phone writers from Algeria, as we have already seen, but they go beyond toreveal a larger view of ‘francophonie’ when Kristeva speaks highly of con-temporary works in French composed by writers from such unexpectedplaces as China:

Le plus étonnant, dans cette épopée, c’est qu[e cette épopée] est écrite

directement en français, et qu’elle inscrit dans notre langue une étrangeté

inconnue. Le français qui s’est ouvert, déjà, au monde maghrébin et antil-

lais, subit ici un nouveau métissage. La langue de Rabelais et de Voltaire

absorbe, comme faisant partie de sa propre mémoire, ces histoires de familles

paysannes qui sortent de leurs yadong.18

The new ‘métissage’ to which Kristeva refers in this passage is one thatalso marks her own work as a writer from Eastern Europe. She brings herpersonal perspective as ‘a foreigner, a migrant’ to writing in French insuch a way that this second language is changed by the mother tongue, atransformation brought about by

316 Alison Rice

15. Though I think it isfruitful to compareworks by writers like Julia Kristeva and Assia Djebar, I intend in no way to undermine the significant differencesbetween writers fromformer Frenchcolonies and thosefrom Eastern Europe.The relationshipbetween postcolonialfrancophone writersfrom such places asAlgeria and theFrench language isnotoriously fraughtwith difficulty becauseof the tongue’s violenthistory in their land.Assia Djebar makes it clear in L’Amour, la fantasia that writing in French isparticularly difficultfor her due to thispast: ‘Cette langueétait autrefoissarcophage des miens[…] Me mettre à nudans cette langue mefait entretenir un dan-ger permanent dedéflagration’, AssiaDjebar, L’Amour, lafantasia, Paris: AlbinMichel, 1995, p. 241.

16. Casanova 2000: 352.

17. Mireille Rosello,‘UnhomingFrancophone Studies:A House in the Middle of the Current’,in Farid Laroussi andChristopher L. Miller(eds), Yale FrenchStudies, 103, 2003, p. 132.

18. Kristeva, Micropolitique,p. 168.


the grafting of what comes from another culture, another mentality, onto

the language I adopt and that I assume welcomes me. In this case, it means

grafting onto the body of the French language and syntax an experience of

sorrow and hurt that originates elsewhere and is perhaps liable to awaken

other effects.19

It is my conviction that bringing attention to the particular ‘sorrow’ and‘hurt’ from the ‘elsewhere’ that is Eastern Europe, at once proximate anddistant to the ‘western world’ epitomized by France, will create a valuablenew area of study or scholars concerned with the phenomenon of franco-phonie as it intersects with ‘postcolonial studies’.

Eastern European as postcolonialAn example of the rather recent classification of Eastern European litera-ture as postcolonial appears in the Canadian Review of ComparativeLiterature: the final section of a special 1995 issue of the bilingual publica-tion is devoted to ‘East Central European Postcolonialities’. In her intro-duction to the publication, Sneja Gunew writes that ‘the break-up of theSoviet empire might suggest a fertile field for post-colonial questions’.20

Steven Tötösy’s complementary introduction develops this suggestionthrough a ‘centre/periphery’ approach to illustrate the way the formerSoviet Union exerted power. Tötösy justifies this approach in the followingmanner:

Based on the assumption that the former USSR may be understood as centre

by its political, military, economic, and ideological parameters in its relation-

ships with its satellite countries, East Central European literatures are under-

stood as the periphery in relation to the Soviet centre and consequently, as

post-colonial situations.21

In a 2001 PMLA article devoted exclusively to this question, David ChioniMoore seeks to prove ‘how extraordinarily postcolonial the societies of theformer Soviet regions are’ and makes a convincing case for the study of‘the post-Soviet sphere’ under the rubric of postcolonial theory.22 Moore’stitle, ‘Is the Post- in Postcolonial the Post- in Post-Soviet?’, an obvioussend-up to Kwame Anthony Appiah’s essay ‘Is the Post- in Postmodernismthe Post- in Postcolonial?’,23 bears a subtitle that reveals his leanings:‘Toward a Global Postcolonial Critique’. His characterization of the situa-tion in Central Europe echoes Tötösy’s argument:

I speak here principally of the post-World War II Soviet expansion to

the independent Baltics and into nations such as Poland, Hungary,

Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria. By most classic measures—lack of

sovereign power, restrictions on travel, military occupation, lack of convert-

ible specie, a domestic economy ruled by the dominating state, and forced

education in the colonizer’s tongue—Central Europe’s nations were indeed

under Russo-Soviet control from roughly 1948 to 1989 or 1991.24

Gayatri Spivak has also spoken out in favour of including post-Soviet countriesin comparative postcolonial studies. In The Death of a Discipline, for instance,


19. Julia Kristeva, JuliaKristeva Interviews, p. 169.

20. Sneja Gunew,‘“Hauntings byOtherness”: Theory’sHome, Post-ColonialDisplacements, and the Future ofComparativeLiterature’, CanadianReview of ComparativeLiterature, 22: 3–4,September/December1995, p. 405.

21. Steven Tötösy deZepetnek, ‘Post-Colonialities: The“Other,” the System,and a PersonalPerspective, or This(Too) is ComparativeLiterature’, CanadianReview of ComparativeLiterature, 22: 3–4,September/December1995, pp. 400–01.

22. David Chioni Moore,‘Is the Post- inPostcolonial the Post- in Post-Soviet?:Toward a GlobalPostcolonial Critique’,PMLA, 116:1,January 2001, p. 121.

23. Kwame AnthonyAppiah, ‘Is the “Post”in “Postcolonial” the “Post” in“Postmodern”?’Lingua Franca, 17: 2,Winter 1991.

24. Moore, ‘Is the Post- inPostcolonial thePost- in Post-Soviet?’p. 121.


she addresses her hope for a ‘new Comparative literature’ that places theold areas (namely ‘Africa, Asia and Hispanic’) alongside several unprece-dented ones: ‘It will take in its sweep the new postcoloniality of thepost-Soviet sector and the special place of Islam in today’s breakingworld’.25 It is significant that Spivak should turn in this passage to ‘thepost-Soviet sector’. It is also worthy of note that she should mentionthis sector in the same phrase as ‘the special place of Islam’ at present.Such a juxtaposition recalls the comparison Julia Kristeva establishesbetween her own experience and that of Assia Djebar. One might objectthat Spivak seems to be encouraging critics to engage with rather vastspheres of comparison, but the postcolonial similarities between theseregions might be more pertinent than we would initially think.

In his 2006 study, Altérités de l’Europe, Marc Crépon calls attention tothe continent’s inherent division in a tellingly titled section, ‘Mémoiresd’empire’. Crépon provides a compelling argument that the EuropeanUnion can be split according to each member nation’s relation to empire:‘Une ligne de fracture traverse l’Europe. Elle sépare les États membres,ainsi que ceux qui aspirent à le devenir, en deux grands ensembles’.26

Crépon turns first to delineating what many would call ‘Western Europe’:

D’un côté, la majorité de ces États (presque tous jusqu’au dernier élargisse-

ment de l’Europe à vingt-cinq) se distinguent par le fait que leur relation

avec le reste du monde a pris, à un moment ou à un autre de leur histoire

récente (et parfois, beaucoup plus anciennement), la forme d’une domina-

tion coloniale — qu’ils ont considéré telle ou telle partie de la Terre, proche

ou lointaine, contiguë ou non, comme leur possession. France, Allemagne,

Italie, Espagne, Portugal, Belgique, Pays-Bas, Autriche, tous ont en commun

de porter dans leur histoire, et de garder présentes, les traces de cette appro-

priation. Mieux, cette mémoire (qu’elle soit avouée ou non) est une partie

constitutive de leur identité culturelle. Elle alimente de vieux réflexes quant à

la langue et la culture. Elle a son vocabulaire propre, que la plupart des gou-

vernements utilisent sans réserve: le rayonnement, la mission, l’exemple.27

The lasting legacy of imperialism has left its imprint on ‘Eastern Europe’ inthe opposite sense:

À l’inverse, la plupart des derniers États intégrés à la Communauté (la Pologne,

la République tchèque, les Républiques baltes) et ceux qui aspirent y entrer (la

Bulgarie, la Roumanie) ont une tout autre mémoire de l’empire. À l’exception

de la Turquie (dont l’histoire impériale appartient de plein droit à celle de

l’Europe et qui relève, à ce titre, du premier ensemble), ces États n’ont jamais

été en mesure d’exercer quelque domination coloniale que ce soit. Bien davan-

tage, leur statut fut longtemps celui de minorités à l’intérieur d’un empire

(Empire russe, Empire ottoman, mais aussi, avec un tout autre exercice de l’im-

périalité, Empire austro hongrois). Tandis que les frontières des autres États

membres de l’Union actuelle s’étendaient au-delà des mers, les leurs étaient en

fonction des démembrements et des remembrements de ces puissances.28

When Crépon reminds us that some European countries were in a positionof colonial domination while others suffered from domination, he gives us

318 Alison Rice

25. Gayatri ChakravortySpivak, The Death of aDiscipline, New York:Columbia UniversityPress, 2003, p. 84.

26. Marc Crépon, Altéritésde l’Europe, Paris:Galilée, 2006, p. 72.

27. ibid., pp. 72–73.

28. ibid., p. 73.


a ‘refresher course’ on a European history, both recent and distant, that iscarved out in imperial terms. Defining the current configurations ofEurope in this fashion provides insight into the situation of the writer fromBulgaria or Slovenia who opts to take up both residence in France and thepen to write in French.

Julia Kristeva remembers that she initially came to Paris thanks to thedream of a French head of state that Europe would take on a more expan-sive form:

I left my country in part because Charles de Gaulle dreamed of a Europe that

would stretch from the Atlantic Ocean to the Ural Mountains. His idea suited

me perfectly because the French government was awarding scholarships for

young Eastern European students to study in the West.29

Her autobiographical novel, Les Samouraïs, reveals just how very far awayKristeva’s homeland seemed to many of the French people, who imaginedthe Eastern country to be more exotic and more ideal than it actually was:

Cette curiosité pour ce qui se passait là-bas, les “erreurs staliniennes” impres-

sionnant moins que la “vague de fond”, le “vent d’Est”, comme ils disaient,

qu’ils avaient grande tendance à mythifier. Dangereux naïfs? Ils créaient des

idoles à partir des “origines de la Révolution” ou des “avant-gardes esthé-

tiques”.30

Despite the somewhat positive attention she initially received for herintriguing origins, Kristeva has occasionally found it ‘painful’ to be a for-eigner in France over the years:

Although I consider myself to be well assimilated into French culture, I think

that the French people themselves do not find me to be so. They communi-

cate this to me indirectly, yet I am constantly reminded that I come from

somewhere else.31

It is important to note from Kristeva’s experience that even those foreign-ers who may be able to ‘assimilate’ more quickly and easily in France –because of marital status, linguistic competence, intellectual acclaim andeven physical appearance – remain relegated to an ‘outside’ that charac-terizes them as ‘other’.

When Julia Kristeva indicates that she is forever reminded that she isnot native to France, she is identifying, in essence, the crucial paradox fac-ing the Eastern European francophone writer. This writer is located atwhat we might call the ‘fringes of francophonie’, often falling outside thecategorization of ‘francophone’, yet not quite fitting the classification of‘French’. Indeed, the Eastern European francophone writer is the incarna-tion of a certain ‘definitional’ dilemma: neither fully recognized as comingfrom elsewhere, nor thoroughly accepted as a French writer. In manyways, Kristeva has escaped the ostracism known to some immigrants; shequickly gained recognition for her scholarly work and found a position inthe French education system. But the fact that she feels ‘constantlyreminded’ that she is not from France reveals much about her adopted


29. Kristeva, Julia KristevaInterviews, p. 4.

30. Kristeva, LesSamouraïs, Paris:Gallimard, 1990, p. 29.

31. Kristeva, Julia KristevaInterviews, p. 4.


home and the experience of those from outside: ‘Foreigners must confronta ghost from the past that remains hidden in a secret part of themselves.’32

Marc Crépon argues that appropriately dealing with the various ‘mem-ories of empire’ in Europe is critical. In his view, it is wrong for the formercolonizer to ‘efface’ these memories; instead, the past should be ‘assumed’and ‘clarified’:

Or, au-delà de l’histoire et du récit qu’elles appellent, elles ne pourront l’être que

dans la définition nouvelle, inventive (utopique, peut-être) que l’Europe saura

donner de sa relation avec ceux qu’elle définit toujours comme ces autres, y

compris, et peut-être surtout, à l’intérieur de ses frontières actuelles et à venir.33

If we are convinced by Crépon’s reasoning, we might conclude that Franceis now home to ‘postcolonial subjects’ from its own former colonies as wellas from Eastern Europe. Demonstrating sensitivity to these discordantpasts is essential to creating a harmonious present.

While I have found the writings of critics like Marc Crépon and DavidChioni Moore important to my argument that it is possible to regardEastern European countries as postcolonial in numerous respects, I wouldlike to underscore the potential danger of Moore’s subtitle, ‘Toward aGlobal Postcolonial Critique’. It is dubious to extend the definition of analready ambiguous field of study to include nearly the entire planet, sinceat some point in time every culture was dominated by another and couldtherefore be considered postcolonial. In this point, I would agree withRussell Jacoby’s somewhat humorous contention about the widely inclu-sive nature of postcolonial studies in his article ‘Marginal Returns: TheTrouble with Post-Colonial Theory’. Jacoby takes issue with the expansivedefinition of ‘postcolonialism’ in the following remarks:

What’s left out? Very little. In their 1989 study The Empire Writes Back(Routledge), a founding text for post-colonial theorists, Bill Ashcroft, Gareth

Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin estimate that three quarters of the globe suffered

from colonialism. Here is a new field that claims four centuries and most of

the planet as its domain. Not bad.34

Indeed, a blanket application of the word postcolonial to all countries for-merly under Soviet control would be a mistake, as such countries sufferedvarying degrees of domination, just as did those under French control.Taking into account such differences in Soviet rule is what RoumianaDeltcheva advocates in her analysis of the literary process in Bulgaria:

Not all countries of the Eastern block were externally ‘colonized’ to the same

degree. One should qualitatively distinguish between Poland, Hungary,

Czechoslovakia, and East Germany, on the one hand, since they were physi-

cally occupied by Soviet troops throughout their Socialist stage of develop-

ment, and Yugoslavia, Romania, and Bulgaria, on the other, which were not

in a state of Soviet occupation.35

The writers I have already mentioned, from Hungarian native AgotaKristof to Bulgarian-born Julia Kristeva have known decisively different

320 Alison Rice

32. ibid.

33. Crépon, Altérités del’Europe, p. 77.

34. Russell Jacoby,‘Marginal Returns:The Trouble WithPost-Colonial Theory’,Lingua Franca,September/October1995, p. 30.

35. Roumiana Deltcheva,‘Post-TotalitarianTendencies inBulgarian Literature’,Canadian Review ofComparative Literature,22: 3–4, September/December 1995, p. 855.


situations and these must be acknowledged, but I am convinced that con-ceiving of countries formerly under Soviet communist rule as having somegeneral characteristics in common with countries under French colonialrule can yield productive results.

It is quite possible that the concentration in literary studies on rela-tions between the First and Third Worlds has left a void with respect to theSecond World.36 I believe we can begin to fill this void by studying texts inFrench by writers from places formerly under Soviet domination. I wouldlike to draw from their insights to explore the extent to which intellectualsfrom small Central and Eastern European countries find themselves in apostcolonial position – politically and linguistically – similar to that offrancophone scholars and writers from the Maghreb, sub-Saharan Africaor the Antilles.

Eastern European francophonie37

When Agota Kristof asserts that she had no choice as to the language ofher writing, she is making reference to the hazards of history that make upher personal story. If she had landed in another part of Europe, or evenanother part of Switzerland, her writing would have taken place inanother idiom. When Assia Djebar wrestles with her own status as a franco-phone writer, she maintains that she did not opt for this languageeither: ‘Ecrire se fait aujourd’hui, pour moi, dans une langue, au départ,non choisie, dans un écrit français qui a éloigné de fait l’écrit arabe de lalangue maternelle’.38 As she examines ‘the voices that besiege her’, Djebaremploys a term that recalls an earlier quotation from Kristof; the voices ofher countrywomen are, in Djebar’s words, ‘voix ennemies du français’.39

Ces voix qui m’assiègent is a collection of essays that make clear the specificchallenges faced by a writer whose land and people were literally and sym-bolically raped and pillaged by the French; such a history can only yield avery complicated relationship to the language of that experience. EasternEuropeans writing in French do not share directly the problematic pastthat is inextricable from written expression in the language of the oppressor.What is significant, however, is that – like Djebar – Kristof and otherEastern European writers are finding in French a language in which tocommunicate past violence and domination.

In a new essay whose title recalls his earlier study Portrait du colonisé,précédé du portrait du colonisateur, Tunisian-born francophone novelist andtheorist Albert Memmi evokes the dilemma of the ‘decolonized’ writer whopublishes in the language of the former colonizer, and brings to light thefact that struggle with language is not unique to the decolonized writer:

This is a drama common to all Francophone writers, who are as terrorized

by Paris as non-Parisian writers living in France. Moreover, experiencing a

vague feeling of betrayal, the decolonized writer will twist and squirm to

apologize. He will claim, for example, that he has appropriated, violated,

destroyed the language of the colonizer, along with other witless comments,

as if all writers didn’t do the same.40

Memmi goes on to assert that the language of the colonizer is ‘the onlytool he will have mastered and without it he would be reduced to silence’,


36. For a convincingargument on theimportance of reconsidering Second-World literature inthe domain of thepostcolonial, seeStephen Slemon,‘Unsettling theEmpire: ResistanceTheory for the SecondWorld’, WorldLiterature Written inEnglish, 30: 2, 1990,pp. 30–41.

37. Many writers fromEastern Europe eludethe category of ‘francophone’ despite the generalunderstanding thatthe term refers toauthors writing inFrench who are fromoutside the hexagonalspace that constitutescontemporary France.In this essay, Iobviously adhere tothis understanding,though I think it is aproblematic label that deservesreconsideration, particularly becauseof the artificialdistinction it impliesbetween writers fromFrance and writersfrom elsewhere, a distinction that oftenbecomes blurredwhen the writer from‘elsewhere’ is from the Europeancontinent. DavidMurphy sheds lighton the matter in anessay on francophonepostcolonial literature:‘En effet, même si,depuis ses débuts, l’étude de la littératuredite francophonerelève d’une attitudeinclusive, leslittératures francophones continuent d’unemanière généraled’être opposées à la“littérature française”,qui recouvre, àquelques exceptionsprès, les oeuvresd’écrivains blancs de


a point that might also apply to writers from small countries not formerlyunder French domination.41

In anticipation of the summit of the Organisation internationale de lafrancophonie, held in Bucharest in September 2006, secretary generalAbdou Diouf contributed an article to Le Monde Diplomatique in which hebrought attention to the growing presence of Eastern European countriesin his organization. According to Diouf, it is no accident that the newestmembers of the OIF are from a region formerly under communist rule:

Au Palais de Chaillot, où se déroule la quatrième rencontre des chefs d’Etats

et de gouvernements francophones, la Roumanie et la Bulgarie sont les pre-

miers Etats d’Europe de l’Est présents en tant que membres observateurs.

Nous sommes en 1991. Pour la première fois, la francophonie accueille alors

des Etats européens qui n’ont pas de passé colonial avec l’Afrique. Le fait que

ces nouveaux membres sont issus de cette région, qui sort du communisme,

ne doit rien au hasard. Un peu comme l’avaient fait les Etats africains trente

ans plus tôt, ces pays s’affranchissent de la tutelle politico-économique des

régimes communistes et intègrent les organisations intergouvernementales

et multilatérales occidentales qui leur étaient jadis interdites.42

Throughout his article, Diouf makes it clear that he finds nothing amiss inthe bringing together of African and Eastern European countries underthe umbrella of francophonie.43 To the contrary, he seems to find thisregrouping quite natural, and even promising. Joining ‘East’ and ‘South’in this way will destabilize some of the binary divisions that typically priv-ilege the West: ‘leur arrivée au sein de la francophonie institutionnellebouleverse les équilibres Nord-Sud’.44 Theorist Étienne Balibar under-scores the importance of disrupting such binary divisions in his reflectionson European borders, articulating an argument for a reconsideration of‘Third Worlds’ that have ‘blurred the local question of the partition of theworld’ throughout history:

We would have to notice the same figure everywhere: that of a binary divi-

sion of world space (of the ‘sphere’ or the whole) that is disturbed not so

much by the fluctuations of the balance of power between ‘camps’ as by the

intervention of a third, which can be manifested as aggression, resistance, or

even a simple ‘passive’ presence that renders the partition invalid.45

Balibar’s observation – as well as Diouf ’s perspective on Eastern Europeanadditions to ‘la francophonie institutionnelle’ – seems to resonate withMoore’s assertion that the discursive line between the ‘East’ and ‘West’ inthe post-Soviet sphere has stood in the way of solidarity between postcolo-nial Europeans and those from other postcolonial regions of the world:‘the post-Soviet region’s European peoples may be convinced that some-thing radically, even “racially,” differentiates them from the postcolonialFilipinos and Ghanaians who might otherwise claim to share their situa-tion’.46 In my view, adherence to the Organisation internationale de la fran-cophonie is a crucial step for what Moore calls the ‘postcolonial-post-Sovietnations’47 because it allows for productive comparisons between singularpostcolonial situations in a common, unifying language that ultimately

322 Alison Rice

la Francemétropolitaine (maison permet parfois à detalentueux européensd’accéder à ce clubexclusif: je pensenotamment à Beckett,à Ionesco et plusrécemment àKundera)’, DavidMurphy, ‘À larecherche d’unelittératurefrancophone etpostcoloniale:réflexions sur lesenjeux de la compara-ison’, FrancophonePostcolonial Studies, 4:2 (Autumn/Winter),2006, pp. 31–32. AsMurphy’s commentsindicate, writers ofEuropean origin haveslipped more easilyinto the category of‘French’ while thosefrom other ethnicitieshave been character-ized more readily as‘francophone’,indicating not onlythe current tendencyto rely on race butalso recalling a longhistory of racialdiscrimination thatwas used at least inpart to justify Frenchcolonial expansion.This particular experi-ence is not shared byfrancophone writersfrom Eastern Europe;though many of themwere – and still aretoday – subjected tostereotypical presup-positions and certainforms of xenophobiaas immigrants toFrance, EasternEuropeans have not endured discrimi-nation based on skincolor, nor do theyaddress race in theirwritings as a specificaspect of their pastexperience underSoviet domination.

38. Assia Djebar, Ces voixqui m’assiègent… enmarge de ma francopho-nie, Paris: AlbinMichel, 1999, p. 28.


serves as a vehicle for expression beyond the colonial, perhaps evenbeyond the postcolonial.48

David Chioni Moore insists repeatedly on including contemporaryRussia in the post-Soviet sphere, since ‘the Soviet Union and its predeces-sor Russian empire were often as lethal to their Russians as to non-Russians, and […] the USSR radically devalued specifically Russianidentity for several decades’.49 Russian-born author Andreï Makine hasreceived considerable acknowledgement for his written production inFrench, his 1995 novel Le testament français winning both the Prix Médicisand the Prix Goncourt.50 In a more recent work of fiction, Requiem pourl’Est, Makine takes the reader on a whirlwind visit of the contemporaryworld and of Russian history, jumping from one continent to another inthe present and one generation to another in Russia to make some power-ful statements about life in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Thisnovel deserves special mention because of its evocation of two phenomena,the first consisting of the presence of Russia in Africa in the not-so-distantpast and the lasting impact of that presence. Two undercover Russian spiesare given a tour of an unnamed African country, travelling on roads thathave been torn apart by mines of which the guide says:

C’est les Russes qui nous ont trompés. D’abord ils nous ont promis le paradis,

tous les peuples sont frères et tout ça, et puis nous avons vu qu’ils n’y croy-

aient pas eux-mêmes. Et maintenant qu’ils sont partis pour toujours, on se

tue pour rien.51

This passage is important because it reveals that Soviet domination did notoccur only in Europe but also in Africa, another factor uniting the tworegions. The guide’s words also indicate that France was not – and is not –the only pernicious influence in Africa, a continent currently character-ized by poverty and strife due to a number of complicated factors.

The second phenomenon that Makine brings up in his novel also con-cerns Africa, focusing this time on the current differences of interactivemodes between the ‘North’ and ‘South’: ‘Tout ce qui, au Nord, était mots,conciliabules feutrés, lentes approches d’une personne clef devenait, auSud, cris de douleur, sifflement du feu, corps à corps haineux. Comme siune horrible traduction déréglée s’était installée entre ces deux conti-nents’.52 The inadequate translation between these two continents isalready being addressed and corrected, I would argue, by the very exis-tence of this novel. Written in French by a foreigner to this particular‘North’, Requiem pour l’Est concentrates on the ‘lost empire’ of the Englishtranslation of its title53 only in order to point beyond that bygone era andindicate a future of global postcolonial translation into French, a move-ment in concert with literary critic Robert Jouanny’s conception of fran-cophonie as a ‘multidirectional internationalism’.54 In Jouanny’s view,writing in French presents a way out for many who find themselves at aloss for a tongue in which to express their non-belonging to certaindogma:

Si l’attrait du français comme mode d’expression littéraire est loin de se

démentir, c’est souvent parce que son usage et l’adhésion à la culture qu’il


39. ibid., p. 29.

40. Albert Memmi,Decolonization and theDecolonized,Minneapolis:University ofMinnesota Press,2006, p. 40.

41. ibid.

42. Abdou Diouf, ‘Lesenjeux européens duSommet de Bucarest’,Le MondeDiplomatique,September 2006, p. 1.

43. In their editorialpreface to apublication thatunites articlesexploring the‘expanding horizons’of French andfrancophone studies,Farid Laroussi andChristopher Miller citesome of the currentfactors – rangingfrom immigration todevelopments in theEuropean Union –that are exerting aninfluence on how weview the word‘francophone’ withrespect to ‘metropoli-tan’ literary studies:‘These questions ofcourse run parallel tosocial issues in Franceitself and in France’srelations to its formercolonies and currentDépartements d’Outre-Mer and Territoiresd’Outre-Mer: immigra-tion, integration,nationalism, theattempt to form a sortof commonwealthunder the aegis offrancophonie, the riseof the EuropeanUnion, and of courseglobalization. Thecore question in ourinquiry here is thus:What has been, whatis, and what shouldbe the relationbetween metropolitanFrench literary studiesand Francophoneliteratures from


véhicule sont perçus comme des moyens de défendre une identité ou une

idéologie menacées. Ou bien parce que depuis le pays natal ou la terre d’exil,

ils apparaissent comme ‘l’autre solution’, celle qui permettra de sortir d’une

impasse. D’être davantage soi-même, en quelque sorte, sous un vêtement

d’emprunt.55

For those from small countries whose culture and identity were smotheredby the Soviet Union, the French language offers hope for new birth. AgotaKristof ascertains that nobody knows the number of victims Stalin has onhis conscience. In her country alone, there were thirty thousand deaths in1956. In her assessment, what cannot be counted is just as important asthe potentially calculable numbers of those who perished:

Ce que l’on ne pourra jamais mesurer, c’est le rôle néfaste qu’a exercé la dic-

tature sur la philosophie, l’art et la littérature des pays de l’Est. En leur

imposant son idéologie, l’Union soviétique n’a pas seulement empêché le

développement économique de ces pays, mais elle a essayé aussi d’étouffer

leur culture et leur identité nationales.56

For a fellow Hungarian-born francophone writer named Eva Almassy,gaining a new national identity meant giving up her earlier one:

Je n’ai pas d’autre nationalité, pas la double nationalité, pas d’autre passe-

port. La Hongrie, c’était la mère-patrie, je suis orpheline de mère, de père, de

patrie. Je suis française sur le papier: les papiers officiels et les pages de mes

livres.57

The location of her political asylum is now the sole source of her identity,at least in official terms. But the fact that her papers are so intimately tiedto her books means that the language is at least as important, if not moreso, than the country of residence.

Although they are generally optimistic, francophone EasternEuropean writers are lucid about current challenges in France. AndreïMakine has often praised the French language and the culture it vehicles,but in recent remarks he has called attention to the fact that French canalso communicate in ways reminiscent of the ‘double language’ heobserved in his Russian mother tongue when he was a young man in theSoviet Union:

La formulation est volontairement polémique. C’est ce ton-là qui, à mon

arrivée en France, m’a aidé à saisir la réalité des choses derrière les panneaux

publicitaires de la propagande: la France des ‘potes’, des ‘black-blanc-beur’,

du multiculturalisme et d’autres impostures idéologiques. D’ailleurs le

décalage entre le discours officiel et les commentaires que les Français

osaient en privé me rappelait la situation dans ma patrie soviétique. Le même

double langage, la même schizophrénie collective. Sauf que cela se passait

dans le pays de Voltaire!58

This sobering commentary alerts readers to the present political ‘reality’in France, a reality that all writers of French must wrestle with as they

324 Alison Rice

around the world?’,Farid Laroussi andChristopher L. Miller,‘Editor’s Preface:French andFrancophone: TheChallenge ofExpanding Horizons’,in Farid Laroussi andChristopher L. Miller(eds), Yale FrenchStudies, 103, 2003, p. 2. In his recentessay, Cette Francequ’on oublie d’aimer,Andreï Makine callsfor a ‘clear language’that would eliminatethe racist words hehears regularly in hisadopted land, usingterms that recallBenedict Anderson’sconception of thenation as animaginarycommunity; it is justsuch a notion ofnation that Makinecontends is neededtoday to unite the dif-ferent inhabitants of amultiracial France:‘Oui, des mots clairspour dire qu’il ne peuty avoir qu’une seulecommunauté enFrance: lacommunauténationale. Celle quinous unit tous, sansdistinction d’origine etde race’, AndreïMakine, Cette Francequ’on oublie d’aimer,Paris: ÉditionsFlammarion, 2006,pp. 105–06.

44. Diouf, ‘Les enjeuxeuropéens du Sommetde Bucarest’, p. 2.

45. Étienne Balibar, ‘TheBorders of Europe’,James Swenson(trans.), in PhengCheah and BruceRobbins (eds),Cosmopolitics: Thinkingand Feeling beyond theNation, Minneapolis:University ofMinnesota Press,1998, p. 221.


seek the right words to offset ‘official discourse’ and more accuratelydepict the wide-ranging, international ‘multiculturalism’ that character-izes the growing numbers of diverse writers creating contemporary litera-ture in French.

Milan Kundera has titled the second part of a recent book publication‘Weltliteratur’, harking back to Goethe’s famously coined term and speak-ing out in favour of an opening up to the ‘grand contexte’ of global litera-ture rather than a continuing focus on the ‘petit contexte’ of nationalliterary production. The title of his book sets the tone for his reflections, forLe Rideau reminds readers of Kundera’s own national history and the rea-sons behind his advocacy of an international exchange of ideas ratherthan a concentration on particular writing from within borders. Thisdesire for international exchange undoubtedly stems from the situationKundera observed from ‘within’ the Soviet empire, so to speak, for it turnsout that very little – if any – communication took place between differententities under Soviet occupation, as Caryl Emerson explains:

In 1984, far before anyone suspected the end, Milan Kundera wrote a bitter

essay on the tragedy of Central Europe, a region distinguished, he said, by

the ‘greatest variety within the smallest space,’ swallowed and flattened by

Soviet Russia, whose ideal was ‘the smallest variety in the greatest space.’

After the collapse of the Soviet system and the liberations of 1989, some of

the consequences of this flattening for comparative literature studies became

clear. It was discovered, for example, that Moscow’s policy toward her

colonies both east and west had been to translate as much as possible from

their ‘native writers’ into imperial Russian—but not to sponsor collateral

translations among the satellite states themselves—say, Bulgarian into

Kazakh, Latvian into Hungarian, Polish into Slovak. 59

Given these insights into the lack of pre-existing comparative studies in thepost-Soviet sphere, the postcolonial francophone studies I propose herewould bring to the same page authors and works from Eastern Europe thathave not previously been analyzed together.

In Le Rideau, a text that is at once theoretical and highly personal, theCzech-born author recalls visiting a French overseas territory shortly afterhis emigration in 1975:

Quelques mois après avoir quitté à jamais mon petit pays kidnappé, je me

suis retrouvé à la Martinique. Peut-être, pour quelque temps, voulais-je

oublier ma condition d’émigré. Mais c’était impossible: hypersensible comme

je l’étais au destin des petits pays, là-bas tout m’a rappelé ma Bohême ; d’au-

tant plus que ma rencontre avec la Martinique a eu lieu au moment où sa

culture était passionnément en quête de sa propre personnalité’.60

While he found many common attributes between his Bohemia and theCaribbean island, Kundera put his finger on a crucial difference that char-acterized Martinique: ‘l’oubli fondamental et fondateur’.61 This forgettinggave way to creative works by such writers as Aimé Césaire and PatrickChamoiseau that made waves, in Kundera’s opinion, far beyond the shoresof their land, extending to the entire world as Weltliteratur.


46. Moore, ‘Is the Post- inPostcolonial the Post- in Post-Soviet?’p. 117. In hisexploration of theterm ‘francophone’and its connotations,Nicholas Harrisonascertains – inremarks similar tothose found in DavidMurphy’s articlequoted above – thatthis label is notapplied in the sameway to authors fromEurope as it is toauthors from formercolonies. The criticpoints out thatbecause of thisdichotomy, the use ofthe word‘francophone’ imme-diately creates ‘racial’and ‘ethnic-cultural’expectations: ‘Indeed,this use of “francoph-one”, a term thatmight appear to meanFrench-speaking, torefer to writers ofFrench (from) outsideFrance, but not all ofthem, is coded in sucha way as to imply thisdistinction of criticalpractice, and is allabout the differentways in which criticsattach writers todifferent ethnic-cultural “groups”.While authors such asIonesco or Beckett –and even Camus –have generally beenstudied on “French”literature courseswithout much atten-tion to theirnon-French origins,then, the NorthAfrican novel, likeother “postcolonial”texts, has been tiedacademically to itsnotional “place oforigin” […] Thenotion of the“francophone author”or of the “postcolonial novelist” thusdesignates a certain


Kundera turns from the island to the continent in order to ask the ques-tion, ‘who are we’ in the context of ‘une Europe oubliée’, ‘a forgottenEurope’. He points out that much time has passed since the eighteenth cen-tury, when comparisons could be made between politics, literature and art.

Difficile d’imaginer que, il y a trente ans, quelqu’un ait écrit (par exemple): la

décolonisation, la critique de la technique de Heidegger et les films de Fellini

incarnent les plus grandes tendances de notre époque. Cette façon de penser

ne répondait plus à l’esprit du temps.62

Kundera goes on in the following sentence to assert that today, no onewould accord the same importance to a cultural work and the disappear-ance of communism in Europe. The proximity of his reflections on decolo-nization and the disappearance of communism bolster my belief that wecan take up David Chioni Moore’s invitation to consider Eastern Europeancountries as ‘postcolonial-post-Soviet’ and consider the aftermath of Sovietdomination in Europe as having much in common with that of Frenchcolonial domination in other parts of the globe. But I would like to suggestthat this reconsideration of Eastern Europe as postcolonial serve only as astep that will ultimately inspire us to quicken our pace, in order to match‘l’esprit du temps’ in a positive sense that seeks to move outside the limitsof the postcolonial and look towards the potential for new francophonetranslations in a global literary setting that, in accordance with the ideasexpressed by Pascale Casanova and Milan Kundera, make an impact thatresonates beyond borders.

ReferencesAlmassy, Eva (2006), ‘Exil en hongrois se dit számüzetés’, in De la mémoire du réel

à la mémoire de la langue: Réel, Fiction, Langage, Paris: Éditions Cécile Defaut,

pp. 37–52.

Anderson, Benedict (1991), Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin andSpread of Nationalism, New York: Verso Books.

Appiah, Kwame Anthony (1991), ‘Is the Post- in Postmodernism the Post- inPostcolonialism?’ Critical Inquiry, 17: 2 (Winter), pp. 336–57.

Ashcroft, Bill, Griffiths, Gareth and Tiffin, Helen (1989), The Empire Writes Back:Theory and Practice in Post-colonial Literatures, London: Routledge.

Balibar, Étienne (1998), ‘The Borders of Europe’, James Swenson (trans.), in PhengCheah and Bruce Robbins (eds), Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling beyond theNation, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 216–29.

Casanova, Pascale (1999), La République mondiale des lettres, Paris: Seuil.

Crépon, Marc (2006), Altérités de l’Europe, Paris: Galilée.

Deltcheva, Roumiana (1995), ‘Post-Totalitarian Tendencies in Bulgarian Literature’,Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, 22: 3–4 (September/December),pp. 853–65.

Diouf, Abdou (2006), ‘Les enjeux européens du Sommet de Bucarest’, Le MondeDiplomatique, September, pp. 1–2.

Djebar, Assia (1999), Ces voix qui m’assiègent… en marge de ma francophonie, Paris:

Albin Michel.

Damrosch, David (2003), What is World Literature? Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress.

326 Alison Rice

“author-function”, touse the term offeredby Foucault in hisfamous essay “Whatis an author?”: partic-ular aspects of theauthor’s real or imag-ined biography, in thisinstance includingnotably “race” ornational origins, areseen by the reader aspertinent to the text,and as providing alegitimate or evencrucial means of mak-ing sense of it”’,Nicholas Harrison,Postcolonial Criticism:History, Theory and theWork of Fiction,Cambridge: PolityPress, 2003, p. 104.

47. Moore, ‘Is the Post- inPostcolonial the Post-in Post-Soviet?’ p. 123.

48. What I have in mindis comparative studyin line with the intel-lectual undertakingschampioned byFrançoise Lionnet andher University ofCalifornia colleaguesin their workinggroup onTransnational andTranscolonial Studies:‘A transversalcomparative approachthat allows us to linkthe cultures of decolo-nization, immigration,and globalizationwithin a conceptualframework that seekscommondenominators—whileremaining suspiciousof simplisticgeneralizations—canhelp us go a long waytoward a rethinkingof the place andnature of theoreticalinvestigation withinour discipline’,Françoise Lionnet,‘Cultivating MereGardens? ComparativeFrancophonies,Postcolonial Studies,and TransnationalFeminisms’, in Haun


Emerson, Caryl (2006), ‘Answering for Central and Eastern Europe’, in HaunSaussy (ed.), Comparative Literature in an Age of Globalization, Baltimore: TheJohns Hopkins University Press, pp. 203–11.

Gunew, Sneja (1995), ‘“Hauntings by Otherness”: Theory’s Home, Post-ColonialDisplacements, and the Future of Comparative Literature’, Canadian Review ofComparative Literature, 22: 3–4 (September/December), pp. 399–407.

Harrison, Nicholas (2003), Postcolonial Criticism: History, Theory and the Work ofFiction, Cambridge: Polity Press.

Jacoby, Russell (1995), ‘Marginal Returns: The Trouble with Post-Colonial Theory’,Lingua Franca, (September/October), pp. 30–37.

Jouanny, Robert (2005), ‘Écrire en français: un choix ?’ Interculturel Francophonies.Écrivains Francophones d’Europe, 7: (June–July), pp. 9–17.

Kristeva, Julia (1990), Les Samouraïs, Paris: Gallimard.

—— (1996), Julia Kristeva Interviews, New York: Columbia University Press.

—— (2001), Micropolitique, ‘Première édition’ mercredi 8h25 (2000 –2001), Paris:Éditions de l’Aube.

—— (2006), ‘L’autre langue ou la condition d’être en vie’, http://www.kristeva.fr/1565.html?*session*id*key*=*session*id*val*.Accessed 15 October 2006.

Kristof, Agota (2004), L’analphabète, Geneva: Éditions Zoé.

Kundera, Milan (2005), Le Rideau, Paris: Gallimard.

Laroussi, Farid, and Miller, Christopher L. (2003), ‘Editor’s Preface: French andFrancophone: The Challenge of Expanding Horizons’, in Farid Laroussiand Christopher L. Miller (eds), Yale French Studies, 103, pp. 1–6.

Lionnet, Françoise (2006), ‘Cultivating Mere Gardens? Comparative Francophonies,Postcolonial Studies, and Transnational Feminisms’, in Haun Saussy (ed.),Comparative Literature in An Age of Globalization, Baltimore: The Johns HopkinsUniversity Press, pp. 100–13.

Makine, Andreï (1995), Le Testament français, Paris: Mercure de France.

—— (2001), Requiem pour l’Est, Paris: Gallimard.

—— (2003), Requiem for a Lost Empire (trans. Geoffrey Strachan), New York:Washington Square Press.

—— (2006), Cette France qu’on oublie d’aimer, Paris: Éditions Flammarion.

Memmi, Albert (2004), Portrait du décolonisé: arabo-musulman et de quelques autres.Paris: Gallimard.

—— (2006), Decolonization and the Decolonized (trans. Robert Bononno), Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press.

Moore, David Chioni (2001), ‘Is the Post- in Postcolonial the Post- in Post-Soviet?Toward a Global Postcolonial Critique’, PMLA, 116: 1 (January), pp. 111–28.

Murphy, David (2006), ‘À la recherché d’une littérature francophone et postcolo-niale: réflexions sur les enjeux de la comparaison’, Francophone PostcolonialStudies, 4: 2 (Autumn/Winter), pp. 28–41.

Rosello, Mireille (2003), ‘Unhoming Francophone Studies: A House in the Middleof the Current’, in Farid Laroussi and Christopher L. Miller (eds), Yale FrenchStudies, 103, pp. 123–32.

Slemon, Stephen (1990), ‘Unsettling the Empire: Resistance Theory for the SecondWorld’, World Literature Written in English, 30: 2, pp. 30–41.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (2003), The Death of a Discipline, New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press.


Saussy (ed.),Comparative Literaturein An Age ofGlobalization,Baltimore: The JohnsHopkins UniversityPress, 2006, p. 105.

49. Moore, ‘Is the Post- inPostcolonial the Post-in Post-Soviet?’ p. 123.

50. Andreï Makine, LeTestament français.Paris: Mercure deFrance, 1995.

51. Andreï Makine,Requiem pour l’Est,Paris: Gallimard,2001, p. 104.

52. ibid., p. 106.

53. Andreï Makine,Requiem for a LostEmpire, GeoffreyStrachan (trans.),New York:Washington SquarePress, 2003.

54. Robert Jouanny,‘Écrire en français: unchoix?’ InterculturelFrancophonies,Écrivains Francophonesd’Europe, 7, June/July2005, p. 10.

55. ibid.

56. Kristof, L’Analphabète,pp. 27–28.

57. Eva Almassy, ‘Exil enhongrois se ditszámüzetés’, De lamémoire du réel à lamémoire de la langue:Réel, Fiction, Langage,Paris: Éditions CécileDefaut, 2006, p. 39.

58. Andreï Makine, CetteFrance qu’on oublied’aimer, 2006, p. 72.

59. Caryl Emerson,‘Answering for Centraland Eastern Europe’,in Haun Saussy (ed.),Comparative Literaturein an Age ofGlobalization,Baltimore: The JohnsHopkins UniversityPress, 2006, p. 204.


Svit, Brina (2003), Moreno, Paris: Gallimard.

Tötösy de Zepetnek, Steven (1995), ‘Post-Colonialities: The “Other,” the System,and a Personal Perspective, or This (Too) is Comparative Literature’, CanadianReview of Comparative Literature 22: 3–4 (September/December), pp. 399–407.

Suggested citationRice, A. (2007), ‘Francophone postcolonialism from Eastern Europe’, International

Journal of Francophone Studies 10: 3, pp. 313–328, doi: 10.1386/ijfs.10.3.313/1

Contributor detailsAlison Rice teaches twentieth- and twenty-first-century French and francophone

literature at the University of Notre Dame. Her current research project,

‘Metronomes: A Series of Filmed Interviews’, focuses on francophone women writ-

ers from around the world. She received the 2002 Florence Howe Award for

Feminist Scholarship for her article, ‘The Improper Name: Ownership and

Authorship in the Literary Production of Assia Djebar’. Her recent book, TimeSignatures: Contextualizing Contemporary Francophone Autobiographical Writing fromthe Maghreb, published by Lexington Books in 2006, closely examines the work of

Hélène Cixous, Assia Djebar and Abdelkébir Khatibi. Contact: Alison Rice,

Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, University of Notre Dame,

343 O’Shaughnessy Hall, Notre Dame, IN 46556, USA.

E-mail: [email protected]

328 Alison Rice

60. Milan Kundera, Le Rideau, Paris:Gallimard, 2005, p. 184.

61. ibid., p. 186.

62. ibid., p. 187.


329



Before Malcolm X, Dessalines: a ‘French’tradition of black Atlantic radicalismDeborah Jenson University of Wisconsin-Madison

AbstractThis article explores the anticolonial and postcolonial thought of Haitian revolu-tionary leader Jean-Jacques Dessalines. Dessalines, like Malcolm X, whom CornelWest calls a ‘prophet of Black rage’, is part of a black Atlantic radical tradition.Dessaline’s secretary Louis-Félix Boisrond Tonnerre has often been viewed as the‘author’ of some of Dessalines’ documents, including the Haitian Declaration ofIndependence, but I argue that Dessalines’ voice remains distinctive and that heand his secretaries should be viewed as authorial teams. Dessalines’ vision is syn-cretic, incorporating African diasporan views of the spiritual world and natureinto his decisively anticolonial political ideology. These texts challenge the anglo-phone identity of the black Atlantic, and invite reconsideration of the diverse‘beginnings’ of the postcolonial.

RésuméLa pensée anticoloniale et postcoloniale de Jean-Jacques Dessalines, chef de laRévolution haïtienne et premier empereur d’Haïti, est considérée ici vis-à-vis de latradition de l’Atlantique noir formulée par Gilroy, et surtout par rapport àMalcolm X en tant que ‘prophète colérique’ de l’Atlantique noir. Malgré le statut‘d’auteur’ de la déclaration de l’indépendance haïtienne souvent conféré ausecrétaire Boisrond Tonnerre, la pluralité des documents produits par Dessalinesen conjonction avec plusieurs secrétaires laissent entendre une voix distincte.L’idéologie anticoloniale de Dessalines incorpore de façon syncrétique des tracesd’interprétations africaines du monde spirituel et de la nature. Ces proclamationset manifestes mettent en question l’identité anglophone de l’Atlantique noir etnous invitent à interroger les diverses ‘commencements’ du postcolonial.

Nous avons osé être libres sans l’être, par nous-mêmes et pour nous-mêmes.

– Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Declaration of Independence, 1 January 1804

[…] which powers never concede to people like us who are the authors of

their own liberty […].

– Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Acceptance of his nomination as Emperor, 15 February 1804

Postcolonial history in theory and postcolonial theory in historySince the eclipse of a certain form of late twentieth-century postcolonialtheory in which, as Frederick Cooper summarizes, there was at timesa ‘double occlusion’ resulting from ‘turning the centuries of European


Keywordsblack Atlantic

Bois Caïman

decolonization

Jean-Jacques

Dessalines

journalism

manifesto

postcolonial theory

the Haitian Revolution

IJFS_10.3_03_art_Jenson.qxd 11/6/07 4:17 PM Page 329

colonization overseas into a critique of the Enlightenment, democracy, ormodernity’,1 there have been numerous reconsiderations of the relation-ship of postcolonialism to history. For Cooper, such reconsiderations havethe potential to reveal both ‘the specificity of colonial situations’ and ‘theimportance of struggles in colonies, in metropoles, and between the two’.2

For Ella Shohat, who queried ‘When, exactly, does the “postcolonial” begin?’3

in 1992, exploration of these temporal parameters highlights not only theforgotten continuity of postcolonial and Third World studies, it alsoprompts further productive questions of the politics of any single historicalframework: ‘Which region is privileged in such a beginning? What are therelationships between these diverse beginnings?’4 The insufficiently theo-rized beginnings of the postcolonial may conceal insights, Shohat suggests,into why the notion of the postcolonial ‘does not lend itself to geopoliticalcritique’5 in the context of contemporary conflicts such as the Gulf Warand the Iraq War. In this article, I will be engaging not so much with howto theorize postcolonial history, as with how to situate postcolonial theoryin history – how to expand the domain of postcolonial theory and itstwentieth-century black Atlantic canon, which includes Aimé Césaire andFrantz Fanon, to include earlier ‘theorists’ from an earlier ‘beginning’ of thepostcolonial. The Haitian revolutionary leader Jean-Jacques Dessalines,I will propose, left textual traces of anticolonial philosophy not just in earlynineteenth-century post-revolutionary practice, but ‘in theory’. These ‘theo-retical’ antecedents help to articulate the politics of the postcolonial, andthey also expand the conventional chronological and linguistic boundariesof black Atlantic radicalism.

Paul Gilroy’s paradigm of the black Atlantic was inspired by the failureof nationalist paradigms when ‘confronted by the intercultural and transna-tional formation’ of black participation in ‘abstract modernity’.6 Curiously,however, the construct of the black Atlantic remains documented predomi-nantly with anglophone materials, particularly with regard to pre-twentiethcentury modernity. Since languages tend to function as extensions ofnational(ist) paradigms, this creates an implicit national and imperialframe for an explicitly transnational concept. ‘England and Englishness’7

are deconstructed by black history in Gilroy’s research, but ‘English’ – inthe Caribbean, the United States, Africa and Britain – remains uncontestedas the language in which black history is represented. From CrispusAttucks to Olaudah Equiano, Denmark Vesey to William Cuffay, RobertWedderburn to Frederick Douglass, Marcus Garvey to Claude McKay andTeddy Riley to Funki Dreds, the black Atlantic is anglophone, even whenthe English in question is a second language. The travels or exile of MartinDelaney, W.E.B. DuBois, Nella Larsen, Richard Wright and Quincy Jonesin Liberia, Haiti, Denmark, Paris and Sweden also reach us in Englishform. Gilroy’s work frequently refers to black Atlantic writings ‘about’ theHaitian Revolution, but not ‘from’ the Haitian Revolution. This monolingualcasting of the transnational research net excludes most direct representa-tions of the Haitian Revolution, which was by any measure a major blackAtlantic contribution to abstract modernity.

It also overlooks the dimension of nearly simultaneous anglophonetranslation of important Haitian revolutionary texts, since major procla-mations frequently were published in English in US media at close to the

330 Deborah Jenson

1. Frederick Cooper,‘Postcolonial Studiesand the Study ofHistory’, in AniaLoomba, Suvir Kaul,Matti Bunzl,Antoinette Burtonand Jed Esty (eds),Postcolonial Studiesand Beyond, Durham,North Carolina: DukeUniversity Press,2005, p. 403.

2. ibid., p. 401.

3. Ella Shohat, TabooMemories, DiasporicVoices, Durham,North Carolina: DukeUP, 2006, p. 238.The essay ‘Notes onthe “Postcolonial”’was initiallypublished in SocialText, 31–32 (Spring1992), pp. 99–113.

4. ibid., p. 238.

5. ibid., p. 233.

6. Paul Gilroy, The BlackAtlantic: Modernityand DoubleConsciousness,Cambridge, MA:Harvard UniversityPress, 1993, p. 1.

7. ibid., p. 10.


time of their original composition, as part of the Haitian leadership’sappeal to a public beyond the (post) metropole. For example, one ofDessalines’ secretaries, B. Aimé, appealed in 1803 to the editor of Poulson’sDaily Advertiser to publish a proclamation on behalf of the newly freedinhabitants of Saint-Domingue, in the spirit of (transnational) Republicanimpartiality:

Monsieur,

Vous êtes invité, au nom des hommes libres de St-Domingue, et plus encore au

nom de l’impartialité qui doit caractériser tout bon républicain, d’insérer dans

votre prochain numéro la proclamation incluse. Vous obligerez infiniment

Votre très humble

B. Aimé

Secrétaire8

Without taking into account Haitian revolutionary ‘theorizations’ of anearly nineteenth-century ‘beginning’ of the postcolonial, it is difficult tofully consider Laurent Dubois’ provocative recontextualization of theEnlightenment as an ideology both illuminated and refashioned by slavesor former slaves and their political battles in the Revolutionary Caribbean.

The enslaved revolutionaries challenged the racialized colonial system of the

day, deploying the language of republican rights and the promise of individ-

ual liberty against a social order based on the denial of their humanity. In

winning back the natural rights the Enlightenment claimed as the birthright

to all people, however, the formerly enslaved laid bare a profound tension

within the ideology of rights they had made their own.9

Since postcolonial theory originally emerged partly as a contestation ofEnlightenment humanism as a paradoxical frame for imperialist modernity,it is especially congruent with the ongoing development of postcolonialstudies to integrate voices from a late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century interrogation of the politics of universalism.

The limited universalism of the French Revolutionary ‘Rights of Man’was challenged in the Haitian Revolution. In 1804, French colonial powerin Saint-Domingue was overthrown not by colonists, as in the AmericanRevolution, or by the colonized, as in Algeria, but by the slaves of colonists.

Yet the most celebrated Haitian revolutionary leader, ToussaintLouverture, viewed the colony as indissociable from republic, and revolution,whether in France or Saint-Domingue, as a republican product. Or at least,historians such as C.L.R. James have gathered as much from the politicalvalues that he reflected back to the French. There is considerable evidenceto temper this non-independence model, including Toussaint’s practicalinability to tolerate the colonial authorities sent to Revolutionary Saint-Domingue, from the abolitionist Léger-Félicité Sonthonax to the racist Countof Hédouville, and also his tacit encouragement of anglophone powersin their conviction that he was simply awaiting the right moment to declareindependence from France. Nevertheless, in his own writings, Toussainthad not fundamentally targeted the colony as an unacceptable political andeconomic organization the way that he had targeted slavery as an

331Before Malcolm X, Dessalines: a ‘French’ tradition of black Atlantic radicalism

8. Letter cited by H. Pauléus Sannon inHistoire de ToussaintLouverture, 3 vols.,Port-au-Prince:Imprimerie A. A.Héraux, 1920, vol. 1,p. 203.

9. Laurent Dubois, AColony of Citizens:Revolution and SlaveEmancipation in theFrench Caribbean,1787–1804, ChapelHill, North Carolina:North CarolinaUniversity Press,2004, p. 3.


unacceptable practice. Toussaint’s fellow general Henri Christophe becameknown under his own later rule for his long-standing competitive parody ofthe French monarchy, replete with dukes and duchesses of Lemonade andMarmelade, so he seems even less likely to serve as a catalyst for a generalepistemological challenge to colonialism. Alexandre Petion, who ruled in theSouth while Christophe ruled in the North, initially had participated in theNapoleonic military expedition ‘against’ the blacks, and only defected fromthe colonial army after the kidnapping of Toussaint, so he is a similarlyunlikely source of general anticolonial ideology. Michel-Rolph Trouillot, inSilencing the Past, draws our attention to the importance of maroon andbossale leaders of pre-Independence insurrections, who may have been moreradical in their challenges to colonialism than the Haitian generals andleaders affiliated with the French military, but they left virtually no textualtraces.10

Unlike other Haitian revolutionary leaders, Dessalines, the first rulerof Independent Hayti, from 1804 to his assassination in 1806, explicitlycontextualized himself as radically anticolonial. In his famous ‘I haveavenged America’ manifesto, dated 28 April 1804, and first publishedin English in the United States in June of 1804, prior to being publishedin France on 7 August 1804,11 Dessalines stated:

A little unlike him who has preceded me, the ex-general Toussaint

Louverture, I have been faithful to the promise which I made to you when

I took up arms against tyranny, and whilst the last spark of life remains in

me I shall keep my oath. Never again shall a colonist or a European set his footupon this territory with the title of master or proprietor. [original emphasis]

New York Commercial Advertiser, 4 June 1804

He went on to contextualize this anticolonial axiom, this rejection not justof slavery but of colonial or European mastery and ownership, as ‘the fun-damental basis of our constitution’. In the Declaration of Independence,Dessalines had cautioned that it was not enough to have expelled the fac-tions ‘qui se jouaient tour à tour du fantômme [sic] de liberté que la Franceexposait à vos yeux, il faut par un dernier acte d’autorité nationale, assurerà jamais l’empire de la liberté […]’.12 The ghostly liberty of the FrenchRevolution would be replaced by liberty’s anticolonial empire in Haiti.

Dessalines’ vivid anticolonial poetics would inspire horror in the mindsof many western observers. The French political theorist Benjamin Constant,after reading the proclamation cited above, reflected, ‘Il y a quelque chosede sauvage dans ce style nègre, qui saisit d’une particulière terreur nousautres, accoutumés aux formes et à l’hypocrisie de l’état social.’13 In manyways, Dessalines served as an early, non-anglophone, ‘prophet of blackrage’, to quote Cornel West in his portrait of Malcolm X: ‘His profoundcommitment to black humanity at any cost and his tremendous courageto accent the hypocrisy of American society made Malcolm X the prophetof black rage – then and now.’14

The ex-slave leader as political ‘author’Can we really use the illiterate Dessalines’ proclamations and correspondenceas bona fide texts attesting to a radical black Atlantic intellectual tradition?

332 Deborah Jenson

10. Michel-RolpheTrouillot, ‘The ThreeFaces of Sans Souci’,Silencing the Past,Boston: Beacon Press,1995, pp. 31–69.

11. The Journal des Débatspublished what itcalled ‘l’extrait d’uneproclamation qui futpubliée parDessalines, le 28 avrildernier’, on 7 August1804. The Journal didnot specify the sourceof the original Frenchpublication, and theextract given isderived from anAmerican newspaper,documented onlywith the followingreference: ‘Nouvellesétrangères, Etats-Unisd’Amérique, NewYorck [sic] 18 juin.’The French version issomewhatabbreviated incomparison withAmerican versions.

12. Jean-JacquesDessalines,Declaration ofIndependence, 1 janvier 1804,Archives nationales,AF III 210. TheArchives nationalesmanuscript of thedeclaration differs insmall ways from theconventionally citedversion, fromThomas Madiou’sHistoire d’Haïti.

13. Benjamin Constant,Journaux intimes, ARoulin and C. Roth(eds), Paris:Gallimard, 1952, p. 123.

14. Cornel West,‘Malcolm X andBlack Rage’, in JoeWood (ed,), MalcolmX in Our Own Image,New York: St.Martin’s Press,1992, p. 48.

IJFS_10.3_03_art_Jenson.qxd 11/6/07 4:17 PM 2

What about the frequently cited caveat that Dessalines’ transcribed procla-mations, notably the Declaration of Independence, were actually writtenby his secretary, Louis-Félix Boisrond Tonnerre?

Texts mediated by dictation, transcription, editing and translation, areendemic to the field of political writings, as well as to specifically blackAtlantic genres such as the slave narrative. Textual mediation stands outas an obvious factor in relation to documents produced by former slaves,who were often either illiterate or partly and idiosyncratically literate, likeToussaint Louverture.15 Yet we do not dismiss correspondence by NapoleonBonaparte or General Leclerc because it was transcribed by secretaries.I will show in the textual analyses that follow that there are particularreasons to confirm the readability of Dessalines’ authorial voice in hisIndependence documents. His proclamations were transcribed not onlyby Boisrond Tonnerre, but also by Juste Chanlatte and other anonymoussecretaries. If their role was predominant, one might expect to see severaldistinct conceptual and rhetorical faces of the writings attributed toDessalines. Yet all the documents in which Dessalines theorizes Haitianfreedom and political autonomy share a clear pattern of ferociously anti-colonial position statements and an exhortatory rhetoric divided betweenheroic exultation and bitterly vengeful warnings. Symbolism concerningnature and magical powers, and a concern with the fate of slave commu-nities in other colonies, are also prominent.

Dessalines’ early proclamations are such remarkable speech acts thatthey prod us to recognize that even if Boisrond Tonnerre and Chanlattewere on some level co-authors, there is no reason to devalorize hybridauthorial productivity between an illiterate ex-slave leader and othermore privileged blacks who had more access to education and were alsoimportant political figures. Boisrond Tonnerre was a black Atlanticauthor of very significant merit in his own right, and although his secre-tarial role should not disqualify Dessalines as a political voice, it shoulddraw attention to his own literary legacies. Before his assassination at anearly age in 1806, Boisrond Tonnerre wrote a memoir that also serves asa history of the Haitian Revolution.16 Like Toussaint Louverture’s mem-oir, this text constitutes an urgent reclamation of narrative politicalpower and identity. Boisrond Tonnerre, like Dessalines, was a radicalvoice. Chanlatte was an author of the 1824 Histoire de la Catastrophe deSaint-Domingue,17 as well as of the first Creole play of the Independenceera.18 The fact that the voices of general and secretaries are forever inter-woven in Independence documents does not lessen their importance. Ineffect, Dessalines’ textual legacy serves as a reminder that western cate-gories of authorship exclude slaves by default. The cult of original authorialvoice, deployed through the individual’s published writing, leaves littleroom to recognize the mediated speech acts of those who have beenbarred from education in the segregated worlds of ‘creolization’, in which,as Césaire notes in La Tragédie du roi Christophe, a ‘peuple de transplantés’must ‘naître à lui-même’.19

The politics of the proclamationDessalines’ texts are characterized by an acute awareness of the psycho-logical impact and manipulative potential of political proclamations; their


15. On ToussaintLouverture’s writingand literacy, seeDeborah Jenson,‘ToussaintLouverture, SpinDoctor? Launchingthe HaitianRevolution in theFrench Media’, inDoris Garraway (ed.),Tree of Liberty:Cultural Legacies of theHaitian Revolution inthe Atlantic World,Charlottesville, VA:Virginia UniversityPress, forthcoming2008.

16. See BoisrondTonnerre, Mémoirespour servir à l’histoired’Haïti, Port-au-Prince, Haiti: EditionsFardin, 1852.

17. See Juste Chanlatte etBouvet de Cresset,Histoire de la catastrophe de Saint-Domingue, Paris:Librairie de Peytieux,1824.

18. See Juste ChanlatteL’Entrée du roi en sacapitale isanthologized in Jean-Claude Bajeux,Mosochwazi pawòl kiekri an kreyòl ayisyen(Anthologie de lalittérature créole haïtienne), Port-au-Prince, Haïti:Editions Antilia,1999.

19. Aimé Césaire, LaTragédie du roiChristophe, Paris:Présence Africaine,1963, p. 23.


power is a frequent subject of his own proclamations. In the Declarationof Independence, Dessalines condemns ‘notre crédulité et notre indul-gence, vaincu non par les armées françaises, mais par la piteuse éloquencedes proclamations de leurs agens’. In other documents, Dessalines shows asimilar preoccupation with the effects of French writings on the colonized.In a 8 May 1804 proclamation issued to the inhabitants of neighbouringSanto Domingo (the Dominican Republic), which he hoped to govern,Dessalines, working with the Secretary- General Chanlatte, first warnedagainst ‘seduction’ by the writings of French officers who were attemptingto gain a foothold there:

Déjà je m’applaudissais du succès de mes soins, qui ne tendaient qu’à

prévenir l’effusion du sang; mais un prêtre fanatique n’avait pas encore souf-

flé dans votre âme la rage qui le domine; mais l’insensé Ferrand n’avait pas

encore distillé parmi vous les poisons du mensonge et de la calomnie. Des

écrits enfantés par le désespoir et la faiblesse ont circulé aussi plusieurs d’entre

vous, séduits par des insinuations perfides, briguant l’amitié et la protection

des français.20

He was likewise conscious of the potency of his own political image, andrelished the horror he inspired in proponents of colonialism. In theDeclaration of Independence, he urged, ‘Rappelle-toi […] que mon nom estdevenu en horreur à tous les peuples qui veulent l’esclavage, et que lesdespotes et les tyrans ne le prononceront qu’en maudissant le jour qui m’avu naître.’

An additional dimension of Dessalines’ strong interest in semiotic poli-tics was the issue of the colonial language, French, versus Creole, which,although spoken by the colonists also, nevertheless was strongly identifiedas the slaves’ own ‘jargon’. The French naturalist Michel-Etienne Descourtilz,who observed Dessalines during his time as a political prisoner of theHaitian army, recorded that he foreswore the use of French after Napoleon’sarmies had landed in 1802, in a conscious appropriation of the local dis-course and a rejection of colonial semiotics:

Dessalines, commençant à se prononcer ouvertement contre l’armée expédi-

tionnaire, évitoit, détestoit jusqu’à leur idiome; c’est pourquoi il reprit

très-sévèrement le fils d’un propriétaire des Gonaïves, qui, créole de Saint-

Domingue, s’avisa de lui parler en français: ‘Tiembé langue à vous, lui dit-il en

le toisant avec dédain, pourquoi chercher tienn’ les autr’?’21

Dessalines’ ‘authorial’ role thus extends beyond his own speech acts, to hispolitical critique and manipulation of the very stakes of authorship.

The African Emperor in the postcolonial New WorldWe learn from Dessalines’ acceptance of his nomination as Emperor,dated February of 1804, that he viewed himself as a warrior, and wouldremain identified as a general even in his new, ostensibly more presti-gious, role as Emperor. This proclamation, signed by Dessalines, GovernorGeneral, and by the Adjutant General Boisrond Tonnerre, was widelypublished in English translation in the United States, although not until

334 Deborah Jenson

20. Jean-JacquesDessalines,‘Proclamation ousommation faite auGénéral quicommandait à SantoDomingo,’ 8 février1804, copied in theNotes historiques deMoreau de Saint-Méry,Archives d’Outremer,F3, vol. 141, pp. 549–53.

21. M.-E. Descourtilz,Voyages d’un naturaliste à Saint-Domingue, 3 vols.,Paris: Dufart, 1809,vol. 3, p. 281.


October and November of 1804, almost six months after the apparentdate of the original proclamation:

I am a soldier. War has ever been my portion; and as long as the cruelty, the

barbarity, and the avarice of our enemies, bring them to our shores, I will

justify your choice, and combating at your head, I shall prove that the title of

your general will ever be honorable to me.

Daily Advertiser, 11 October 1804

Napoleon’s imperial nomination had occurred during a special session ofthe Tribunat on 1 May, at which Citizen Curée had introduced a motion‘1) que le Gouvernement de la République soit confié à un Empereur;[et] 2) que l’Empire soit héréditaire dans la famille de NapoléonBonaparte, actuellement Premier Consul.’22 The February 15 date ofDessalines’ acceptance thus seems to indicate that his own nominationas Emperor preceded that of Napoleon. But the almost binaristic contrastof style and content between the two immediately begs the question ofwhich nomination and acceptance actually responded to and critiquedthe terms of the other. Although Curée’s motion, and the rapturousaccord of all members of the Tribunat but the beleaguered LazareCarnot, was delivered in heroic terms (‘Charlemagne avait gouverné laFrance en homme qui était supérieur de beaucoup à son siècle’[Moniteur universel 11 floréal an 12]), the final French confirmation wasdry, pompous and legalistic. It stressed that the ‘imperial dignity’ wouldbe hereditary, passing on from male to male by primogeniture amongNapoleon’s children or those of his brothers. It stipulated details rangingfrom the role of the senate under the Empire to the residences of theEmperor and the salary percentages of a hypothetical future ‘minorEmperor’ and Regent.23

By contrast, Dessalines’ acceptance speech is dramatic and personal.Not only is it focused on his warrior status, it has a strongly non-westerntone. Hereditary transmission of imperial status is the first target of whatappear to be his revisions of the structures of empire. And in fact, thenineteenth-century Haitian historian Thomas Madiou confirms thatDessalines’ tone of critique was just that: his nomination and acceptancewere backdated to January and February of 1804, but they were actuallycomposed in August, after the Haitians had received news of the newFrench Empire.24 This is why the nomination and acceptance did notappear in American newspapers until early October. This manipulativeattempt simultaneously to compete with critique French power does notreduce the interest of the Haitian identification, however; on the contrary,it shows Dessalines’ conscious differentiation of his own practices andbeliefs from those of the European metropole he had defeated. Haitianemperors have been belittled as mimic emperors, but Dessalines was also acritic emperor.

Dessalines speaks in the acceptance of never allowing his sword to‘sleep’ in order to pass on his own valour to the national family of warriors:

The supreme rank to which you elevate me tells me that I am become [sic]

the father of my fellow citizens, of whom I was the defender; but the father of


22. Imperial nominationof NapoleonBonaparte, Moniteuruniversel, 1 May1804 (11 floréal, an12 de la République).

23. The report of the‘Organic SenatusConsultum’ ofFloreal, year 12,stated in Article 1that ‘The governmentof the republic shallbe entrusted to anemperor, whoassumes the titleof emperor of theFrench.’ The DailyAdvertiser, 26 July1804.

24. Thomas Madiou,Histoire d’Haïti, Port-au-Prince, Haiti:Imprimerie de Jh.Courtois, 1849, vol.3, p. 170.


a family of warriors never suffers the sword to sleep if he wishes to transmit

his valor to his descendants, to inure them to battles.

Although the power of his sword can be magically transmitted, and willguarantee the safety of his soldiers, Dessalines specifically renouncesheredity (‘ancestry’) in the transmission of imperial power:

I renounce, yes, I formally renounce, the unjust custom of transmitting my

power to my family. I shall never respect ancestry, but when the talents req-

uisite for a good governor are united in the subject. Frequently the head

which is fired by the burning ardor of youth, contributes more effectually to

the happiness of his country than the cool experience of age, which tempo-

rizes at the moment when temerity alone should govern.

This non-dynastic transmission of power reflects Dessalines’ belief thatauthority is earned through prowess and the inspired military exhibitionof paternal concern for the national family. For Dessalines, authority isalso compensated in full by this national military/spiritual bond. In theDeclaration of Independence, he noted that he had never sought anymaterial gains from his leadership role, but considered himself paid in fullby the Haitians’ hard-earned freedom: ‘Je ne suis riche que de ta liberté.’

Dessalines’ distrust of the moderating influence of age is a sign of hisbelief in the necessity of not just one revolution, but revolutions in theplural: ‘If the sober passions make common men, half measures will arrestthe rapid march of revolutions.’ Revolution was an ongoing process, andleaders were necessarily revolutionaries. There were no halfway revolutionsfor Dessalines, in theory or in practice.

Dessalines showed a preoccupation with magical projections of powerclosely related to the glory of the warrior. There are frequent references to‘idols’ and ‘relics’ in proclamations he issued through both BoisrondTonnerre and Chanlatte. On first glance, in these references Dessalinesappears to be using the western critique of religious or magical materialismin the same sense, but against the accuser. On closer examination, itbecomes apparent that he is critiquing the power of western idols withoutrenouncing other magical practices and powers. Thus in his acceptance ofthe imperial nomination, he attacks the French use of ‘idols’ and ‘relics’,and derides their power. The Africans, he contends, had been enslaved as a‘sacrifice’ to the French ‘idol’ of prejudice. The Haitians had smashed thisidol through their own autonomous agency, which was, he implies, theonly way abolition could actually overthrow the western beliefs of whichthe institution of slavery was a projection: ‘We are men who have foundedour Independence to the prejudice of that consideration which powersnever concede to people who like us are the authors of their own liberty’, hestates. ‘[We] have no occasion to beg for foreign assistance to break the idolto which we were sacrificed. That idol, like Saturn, devoured its children,and we have trampled it under our feet.’ This passage, published in 1804,quite precisely foreshadows the terms of Hegel’s assertion that freedomfrom bondage could not come in the form of a gift. Dessalines implies thatslavery was only a concrete ‘idol’ of a larger sacralized field of westernprejudices and hierarchical values.

336 Deborah Jenson


A similar critique of French magical projections of power appears inDessalines’ 8 February 1804 proclamation, composed with Chanlatte, tothe inhabitants of Santo Domingo. Napoleon, hoping to repossess SantoDomingo as a base from which to contest the Haitian decolonization, hadinstalled General Ferrand as governor of Santo Domingo in January 1804.Ferrand would coordinate a French naval presence and try to ward off theincursions of the Haitians. (In an illustration of the French determinationto control Santo Domingo, Napoleon instructed Vice-Admiral Decrès on1 September 1805 to send a ship from Martinique that would rendezvouswith two other ships off of Santo-Domingo, ‘où ils prendront des ordres dugénéral Ferrand, pour croiser autour de la colonie et en imposer aux bâti-ments qu’armeraient les noirs et aux autres bâtiments qui croiseraientavec les rebelles.’25) Dessalines was determined to overthrow French con-trol of Santo Domingo, and in his proclamation he mocked the Dominicans’magical thinking with regard to the powers of the French:

Vous sauvera-t-il ce ministre imaginaire lorsque le fer et la flamme à la main

je vous poursuivrai jusque dans vos derniers retranchemens ? Eh ! Sans doute

ses pensées, ses grimaces, ses reliques ne pourront m’arrêter dans ma course.

Vous préservera-t-il de ma juste colère ?26

Dessalines had come to count the citizens of Santo Domingo among his‘children’, but he warned them that if they aligned themselves with therelics and magical thinking of the French, his vengeance would be as drasticand powerful as that of nature’s offended boundaries:

Qu’ils apprennent donc que je suis prêt, que la foudre va tomber sur leurs

têtes : qu’ils sachent que mes soldats impatiens n’attendent qu’un signal

pour aller réconquérir les limites que la nature et les éléments nous ont

assignés. Encore quelques instans et j’écrase les débris des français sous le

poids de ma puissance.

Another, and decisive, representation of Dessalines’ belief in the superiorpowers of his own righteous vengeance occurs in the English version ofthe ‘I have avenged America’ proclamation. Dessalines generally wasattentive to established political metaphors, but rather than reiteratingthem, he recast them so that they were simultaneously appropriated andcritiqued. In the proclamation, he redeploys the ‘tree of liberty’ metaphorto striking effect.

The Revolutionary French had made the ‘tree of liberty’ a centrepieceof popular celebrations of the Revolution. In Saint-Domingue, the ‘tree ofliberty’ also had been celebrated by the French commissioners and byToussaint. When Toussaint was seized and deported by the French, hefamously proclaimed, ‘In overthrowing me, they have uprooted in Saint-Domingue only the trunk of the tree of the liberty of the blacks; it willgrow back because its roots are deep and numerous.’27 The tree of libertyin Toussaint’s Gonaives statement was the tree of liberty ‘of the blacks’.But for Dessalines, liberty in the mouths of the French was a euphemismfor the veiled existence of slavery and prejudice, and so the tree of libertybecame the tree of slavery and prejudice. Likewise, the French, renowned


25. Letter of NapoleonBonaparte to Vice-Admiral Decrès,1 September 1805:http://www.histoire-empire.org/correspondance_de_napoleon/1805/septembre_01.htmAccessed 30 April2007.

26. Jean-JacquesDessalines,‘Proclamation ouSommation Faite auGénéral quicommandait à Santo-Domingo, Au Cap, 8février 1804, Jean-Jacques Dessalines,Gouverneur-Généralaux habitants de lapartie Espagnole,’Archives d’Outre-merF3, vol. 141, p. 550.(The date on thismanuscript appearsto be wrong ; themajority of historicalsources provide thedate of 8 May 1804.)

27. Cited in Pamphile deLacroix: ‘Headdressed thesememorable words tothe division chiefSavary, commanderof the vessel: “Inoverthrowing me,they have onlyknocked over inSaint-Domingue thetrunk of the tree ofthe liberty of theblacks; it will growback by the roots, forthey are deep andnumerous.”’Mémoires pour servir àl’histoire de Saint-Domingue, Paris:Pillet aîné, 1819, vol. 2, p. 203.


throughout the western world as champions of the rights of man, were forDessalines ‘the implacable enemies of the rights of man’. He claimed tohave given the signal through which the justice of God had worked throughthe slaves to bring ‘the axe upon the ancient tree of slavery and prejudices’.But it is the further development of this metaphor that is truly striking.Dessalines imagines that once the Haitians have brought down the tree ofslavery and prejudice, they place its bared wood against their hearts like amagical amulet. The contact of the wood against their hearts makes themas cruel as their enemies, and their vengeance becomes like an overflowingtorrent, carrying away everything that opposes it:

In vain had time, and more especially the infernal politics of Europeans, sur-

rounded it [the tree of slavery] with brass; you have stripped it of its triple

armour: you have placed it upon your heart that you may become an over-

flowing, mightly [sic] torrent, that tears down all opposition, your vengeful

fury has carried away every thing in its impetuous course. Thus perish all

tyrants over innocence!

The wood of the tree of slavery, worn protectively against their chests,hardens the slaves’ hearts, and allows them to fell their abusers.

Anticolonial natureDessalines arguably aspired to the legacy of Makandal, the slave who wasexecuted in 1757 for his attempt to organize an anticolonial revolution bymass poisoning, as much as to that of Toussaint Louverture. In the ‘I haveavenged America’ proclamation, we see that for Dessalines, Makandal’sattempted insurrection was on a continuum with the yellow fever thathad decimated the French troops (killing even their leader, Leclerc), andthe fires with which the Haitians had blocked Napoleon’s repossessionof cities that had come under the control of the ex-slaves. Poison, diseaseand conflagration were all manifestations of the supernaturally offendedspirit of the slaves, animating the natural realm in sympathetic cataclysm.He warned the world that the sea itself would rise up against hostile navalincursions:

Let that nation come who may be mad and daring enough to attack me.

Already at its approach, the irritated genius of Hayti, rising out of the bosom

of the ocean, appears; his menacing aspect throws the waves into commotion,

excites tempests, and with his mighty hand disperses ships, or dashes them

in pieces; to his formidable voice the laws of nature pay obedience; diseases,

plague, famine, conflagration, poison, are his constant attendants. But why

calculate on the assistance of the climate and of the elements? Have I forgot

that I command a people of no common call, brought up in adversity?

Dessalines’ environmental poetics of invincible revolution was quite elabo-rate. Even if the colonists should penetrate the seaside cities, he warns, in areference to the successful guerilla tactics of the former slaves and maroons,‘woe to those who approach too near the mountains!’ Jean Fouchard’sformulation of the ‘maroons of liberty’ is consistent with Dessalines’ identifi-cation of postcolonial Haiti with the military sanctuary of the mountains.

338 Deborah Jenson


The Haitian Revolution is of course believed to have begun with theceremony and the oath of the Cayman woods, which Haitian historianHérard Dumesle provided in Creole form in 1824:

Bondié qui fait soleil, qui clairé nous en haut,

Qui soulévé la mer, qui fait grondé l’orage,

Bon dié la, zot tandé? caché dans youn nuage,

Et la li gadé nous, li vouai tout ça blancs faits!

Bon dié blancs mandé crime, et part nous vlé bienfets

mais [sic] dié lá qui si bon, ordonnin nous vengeance;

Li va conduit bras nous, la ba nous assistance,

Jetté portrait dié blancs qui soif dlo dans gié nous,

Couté la liberté li pale coeurs nous toùs [sic]28

It translates from the Creole as follows:

God who makes the sun that illuminates us from above,

Who embroils the seas, who makes the storm rage,

God is there, do you hear?, hidden in a cloud,

And there he watches us, he sees everything the whites are doing!

The God of the whites orders crime, and wants nothing good for us,

But the God there who is so good, orders us to take vengeance;

He will guide our arms, he will give us assistance;

Cast down the portrait of the god of the whites, who thirsts for tears in our

eyes;

Listen to liberty, it speaks in all of our hearts.

Dessalines’ figure of the irritated genius of Hayti resembles the environ-mental eruptions of God in the oath, who sends stormy seas from hisvengeful vantage point in the clouds. Even more explicitly, in a stunningline at the end of the ‘I have avenged America’ proclamation, Dessalinesexplains that he has extended his mercy only to whites who had taken anoath to live with the former slaves in the woods: ‘A handful of whites, com-mendable by the religion they have always professed, and who havebesides taken the oath to live with us in the woods, have experienced myclemency. I order that the sword respect them.’

Nature symbolism is especially prominent in this proclamation, but italso appears in others. In the Declaration of Independence, Dessalineslauds ‘notre climat vengeur’, and asks when the Haitians will grow wearyof breathing in the same air as that breathed by the French: ‘Quand nouslasserons-nous de respirer le même air qu’eux?’ And in the proclamationto the inhabitants of Santo Domingo, as previously mentioned, he outlinedhis determination to reconquer ‘les limites que la nature et les élémentsnous ont assignés’. Far from the culture/nature binarism of westernthought, Dessalines framed nature as an animated anticolonial force cen-tral to the Empire of liberty.

Black universalism, or Dessalines’ pan-Africanist ideologyThe unabashed animism, militant anticolonialism, relish for vengeanceand critique of French revolutionary hypocrisy in Dessalines’ proclamations


28. Hérard Dumesle,Voyage dans le nordd’Hayti, ou révélationsdes lieux et des monumens, AuxCayes, Haiti:De l’imprimeriedu Gouvernement,1824, 90.


mark his discourse as distinctively non-western. His political outreach toslaves in other colonies further characterizes his thought as an earlymanifestation of pan-Africanist political solidarity. Although Dessalines’sradical distrust would cause him ultimately to order the massacres notonly of whites, but also of mulattoes – a move which would lead to his ownassassination in 1806 – in the ‘I have avenged America’ proclamation of1804 he viewed a general racial solidarity as crucial. No more divide andconquer tactics through racial ideology, he warned:

Blacks and yellows, whom the refined duplicity of Europeans has for a long

time endeavoured to divide: you who are now consolidated, and make but

one family: without doubt it was necessary that your perfect reconciliation

should be sealed with the blood of your butchers. … That happy harmony

amongst yourselves … is the secret of being invincible.

That solidarity extended not just to the allegedly separate racial categories ofthe African diaspora in Saint-Domingue, but to the African diaspora in othercolonies. Dessalines urged not only remembrance of ‘the catalog of atrocitiescommitted against our species’, and the reinslavement plotted ‘with thecalmness and serenity of a countenance accustomed to similar crimes’, butremembrance of Delgrès’ unsuccessful 1802 revolt in Guadeloupe: ‘thebrave and immortal Delgresse, blown into the air with the fort which hedefended, rather than accept their offered chains’. He wishes that he coulddecolonize not only Guadeloupe but also Martinique: ‘Unfortunate people! Ifonly I could fly to your assistance, and break your fetters!’

The historical question of Dessalines’ intentions with regard to otherAfrican diasporan colonial populations is an important one for the illumi-nation of his political philosophy. Although as discussed above, Dessalinesdid, unsuccessfully, attempt to bring the inhabitants of Santo Domingointo his political/military ‘family’, his argument for doing so was essen-tially that the Dominicans were being deceived, and even bewitched, intothis French alliance, and that the island of Hispaniola was naturally sepa-rate from the frontiers of Europe. He had made it abundantly clear in theDeclaration of Independence that he was against any proto-colonial orneo-colonial exercise of Haitian authority in the Caribbean region. TheDeclaration exhorts, ‘Gardons-nous cependant de l’esprit de prosélitisme,[…] laissons en paix respirer nos voisins. Qu’ils vivent paisiblement sousl’égide des lois qu’ils se sont faites.’ He cautions against becoming ‘législa-teurs des Antilles’, or letting the Haitians’ glory consist in ‘troubling therepose of neighboring islands’. This section of the Declaration concludes,‘Paix à nos voisins, anathème au français!’ And yet Jean Baptiste Saint-Victor argues that Dessalines had a ‘pan-American’ ideology with strongconnections to early South American independence struggles: ‘Et c’est à lafaveur de ce climat de liberté crée dans les Amériques par le triomphe desarmes indigenes que, vers le mois d’août 1804, les patriotes du Vénézueladéléguèrent auprès de Dessalines une mission chargée de solliciter sonconcours pour l’Indépendance de ce pays.’29

The most detailed evidence of Dessalines’ intentions to spread the revo-lution in Haiti came in 1806, when a French colonist from Saint-Domingue,Roberjot Lartigue, who was then working as a French commissioner in

340 Deborah Jenson

29. St-Victor JeanBaptiste, Le Fondateurdevant l’histoire, Port-au-Prince, Haiti:Imprimerie Eben-Ezer, 1954, p. 241.


Saint Thomas, reported that he had uncovered a plot by Dessalines toforcibly decolonize Guadeloupe and Martinique and liberate their Africandiasporan populations. To date, there is somewhat indirect documentationfor this plot. Lartigue’s narrative to M.L.E. Moreau de Saint-Méry on thematter has the disadvantage of being a retroactive reconstitution, in 1814,of original correspondence on the matter that had allegedly been lost in1806. Yet Lartigue’s description resonates with Dessalines’ earlier state-ment of wistful military solidarity with the black revolutionaries whoperished in Guadeloupe in 1802. The possible veracity of the story is alsorecommended by the fact that it would have been a logical strategy forcircumventing the British (and French) naval blockade around Hispaniola.It is furthermore substantially – yet not definitively – supported by an1815 pamphlet in which Lartigue, campaigning for a royal retirementpension based on his meritorious service, reprinted letters from a widearray of Caribbean officials who testified to their knowledge of Dessalines’plot at the time.30

Lartigue claimed that Dessalines had sent a number of black and mixedrace Haitians to St. Thomas to form a club. There, they worked on a planto slip into the French colonies and instigate an uprising of the blacks.Lartigue reported that in October of 1806,

Dessalines expédia de St. Domingue des émissaires pour exécuter le projet

monstrueux de descendre à la Martinique et à la Guadeloupe, d’y assassiner

tous les habitants, de brûler les villes, de soulever tous les nègres et les gens

de couleur et d’y former 14 régimans, s’en rendre maître et y établir l’indépen-

dence de ces deux colonies.31

Having learned of the plot, Lartigue rushed to inform the authorities andallegedly succeeded in having an injunction passed on 18 October 1806against any commerce with the ‘nègres révoltés de St. Domingue’. He triedto have deportation proceedings initiated, but in the meantime, some ofthe plotters relocated to Trinidad, where they continued to raise supportfor an anticolonial insurrection on Christmas eve in Guadeloupe andMartinique. They were, however, discovered and punished by the Trinidadiangovernment, according to Lartigue. In the meantime, Dessalines himselfhad been assassinated, on 17 October 1806.

Dessalines’ documented and rumoured attitudes towards the otherenslaved populations of the Caribbean reveal what one could describe eitheras early pan-Africanism, or as a paradoxical ‘black universalism’: a univer-salism, like that preached by the Enlightenment, delimited in de facto termsby loyalty of race, region and privilege. Pan-Africanism has always con-tained this paradox of being a particularist and a universalist ideology atonce; Dessalines’ critique of French Revolutionary universalism reminds usthat prior to the Haitian Revolution, it was similarly fashioned as a kind ofpan-Europeanism rather than universalism in an absolute sense.

XMalcolm X remained best known by the ‘X’ conferred generically onNation of Islam members to replace their ‘slave names’32 until they hadearned an Arabic one, long after he had earned his new name. This is no


30. Roberjot Lartigue,Rapport de la conduitequ’a tenue M. RoberjotLartigue, au sujet del’entreprise formée parDessalines, poursoulever la Martinique,la Guadeloupe, etMarie-Galante, Certifiéde MM. Le Lieutenant-générale-Gouverneur dela Guadeloupe et dépendences; leGénéral-Préfet colonialet le Général-commandant destroupes de la même île;le Colonel-commandantde la ville et arrondisse-ment de St.-Pierre; leGrand-Juge de laMartinique; le Général-commandant en chef,Administrateur-généralde Santo-Domingo;d’un Habitant, Officierde la Trinité espagnole;et le Grand-Juge de St-Thomas, Conseiller deJustice actuel de S.M. le Roi de Danemarck.Paris: Dubray,imprimeur, 1815.

31. Letter from RoberjotLartigue to M.L.E.Moreau de Saint-Méry,backdated 20 May1806 (delivered toMoreau 29 August1814), Archivesd’Outre-mer F3, vol. 141bis, pp. 453–62.

32. As biographer KofiNatumbu explains,‘All Africans broughtto the Americas wereinitially given the lastname of theslaveholder who“owned” them.’Critical Lives: The Lifeand Work of MalcolmX, Indianapolis, IN: Alpha Books,2002, p. 140.


doubt because the X expressed something unique to his ideology andactivism. This ‘prophet of Black rage’ often indirectly suggested that out-side of some future pan-African reinvention – from scratch – of society,African Americans could have no genuine hope. The X of his transitionalstatus resonated with this oblique oxymoron of nihilistic rebirth. In 1962he wrote, ‘There is no justice for us black people. There is no future for usnor our children in “civilized” America.’33 Without overtly advocating theviolence that had infused both the poetics and the tactics of Dessalines,Malcolm X taught hatred of the white blood that circulated in his ownbody, which he viewed as a legacy of rape, just as Dessalines chafed atbreathing air that had been breathed by white masters.

When Dessalines claimed to have ‘avenged America’, he was, in part,claiming a new start in radical fidelity to the historically oppressed peoplesof post-Columbian America. In the Declaration of independence, he promiseda stable government to the ‘indigenous people’ of the country abruptlyrenamed ‘Ayiti’ after the aboriginal Taino Indian name for the ‘highlands’of the island of Hispaniola. Of course, the diasporan population of formerslaves could hardly have been less ‘indigenous’ in a literal sense, and theactual indigenes had succumbed to genocidal extinction long before. Ineffect, the indigeneity chosen by Dessalines and other officers as a modelfor postcolonial Independence was a traumatic and paradoxical indigeneityof lost homelands on the one hand, and vanished homeland populationson the other.

Malcolm X and Dessalines, separated by language, nation and almosttwo centuries, were nevertheless part of a black Atlantic tradition whoseleaders have, all too often, had to imagine rather than read their dia-logue. Dessalines, in conjunction with his secretaries, left one of the earliestknown ‘oeuvres’ of radical black Atlantic political theory, in which hecontested every trace of French colonial slaveholding culture: ‘Touty retrace le souvenir des cruautés de ce peuple barbare, nos lois, nosmoeurs, nos villes, tout encore porte l’empreinte française, que dis-je?’These unique documents, French-language challenges to ‘Frenchness’,provide us with a pre-twentieth century and non-anglophone model ofthe ‘beginning’ of the postcolonial – marked with an X for its prophecyof black rage.

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Port-au-Prince, Haiti: Editions Fardin.

Bonaparte, Napoleon (2007), Letter to Vice-Admiral Decrès: http://www.histoire-empire.org/correspondance_de_napoleon/1805/septembre_01.htm Accessed 30 April 2007.

Césaire, Aimé (1963), La Tragédie du roi Christophe, Paris: Présence Africaine.

Chanlatte, Juste (1824), et Bouvet de Cresset, Histoire de la catastrophe de Saint-Domingue, Paris: Librairie de Peytieux.

—— (1999), L’Entrée du roi en sa capitale in Jean-Claude Bajeux, Mosochwazi pawòlki ekri an kreyòl ayisyen (Anthologie de la littérature créole haïtienne), Port-au-Prince,Haïti: Editions Antilia.

Constant, Benjamin (1952), Journaux intimes, Ed. A. Roulin and C. Roth Paris:Gallimard.

342 Deborah Jenson

33. ibid., p. 255.


Cooper, Frederick (2005), ‘Postcolonial Studies and the Study of History’, inAnia Loomba, Suvir Kaul, Matti Bunzl, Antoinette Burton and Jed Esty (eds),Postcolonial Studies and Beyond, Durham, North Carolina: Duke UniversityPress.

Descourtilz, M.-E. (1809), Voyages d’un naturaliste à Saint-Domingue, 3 vols., Paris:Dufart.

Dessalines, Jean-Jacques Declaration of Independence, 1 janvier 1804, Archivesnationales, AF III 210.

—— (1804), ‘Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Gov. General, to the Inhabitants ofHayti’ [‘I have avenged America’], New York Commercial Advertiser, 4 June.

—— (1804), ‘Nouvelles étrangères, Etats-Unis d’Amérique’ [French version, ‘Ihave avenged America’], Journal des débats, 7 August.

—— ‘The Governor General of Hayti, to the Generals of the Army, and to the Civiland Military Authorities, Organs of the People’ [Acceptance of imperial nomi-nation], Daily Advertiser, 11 October 1804

—— ‘Proclamation ou sommation faite au Général qui commandait à SantoDomingo’, 8 février 1804, copied in the Notes historiques de Moreau de Saint-Méry, Archives d’Outre-mer, F3, vol. 141, pp. 549–53.

Dubois, Laurent (2004), A Colony of Citizens: Revolution and Slave Emancipation in theFrench Caribbean, 1787–1804, Chapel Hill, North Carolina: North CarolinaUniversity Press.

Dumesle, Hérard (1824), Voyage dans le nord d’Hayti, ou révélations des lieux et desmonumens, Aux Cayes, Haiti: De l’imprimerie du Gouvernement.

Gilroy, Paul (1993), The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness,Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Jean Baptiste, St-Victor (1954), Le Fondateur devant l’histoire, Port-au-Prince, Haiti:Imprimerie Eben-Ezer,.

Jenson, Deborah (2008),’Toussaint Louverture, Spin Doctor? Launching theHaitian Revolution in the French Media’, in Doris Garraway (ed.), Tree ofLiberty: Cultural Legacies of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World,Charlottesville, VA: Virginia University Press, forthcoming.

Pamphile de Lacroix (1819), Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de Saint-Domingue,Paris: Pillet aîné.

Lartigue, Roberjot Letter to M.L.E. Moreau de Saint-Méry, Archives d’Outre-mer F3,vol. 141bis, pp. 453–62. [814, backdated to 1806]

—— (1815), Rapport de la conduite qu’a tenue M. Roberjot Lartigue, au sujet de l’en-treprise formée par Dessalines, pour soulever la Martinique, la Guadeloupe, etMarie-Galante, Certifié de MM. Le Lieutenant-générale-Gouverneur de laGuadeloupe et dépendences; le Général-Préfet colonial et le Général-commandant destroupes de la même île; le Colonel-commandant de la ville et arrondissement deSt.-Pierre; le Grand-Juge de la Martinique; le Général-commandant en chef,Administrateur-général de Santo-Domingo; d’un Habitant, Officier de la Trinitéespagnole; et le Grand-Juge de St-Thomas, Conseiller de Justice actuel de S.M. le Roide Danemarck. Paris: Dubray, imprimeur.

Madiou, Thomas (1849), Histoire d’Haïti, Port-au-Prince, Haiti: Imprimerie deJh. Courtois.

Natumbu, Kofi (2002), Critical Lives: The Life and Work of Malcolm X, Indianapolis,IN: Alpha Books.

Organic Senatus Consultum (1804), The Daily Advertiser, 26 July.

Sannon, H. Pauléus (1920), Histoire de Toussaint Louverture, Port-au-Prince:Imprimerie A. A. Héraux.



Shohat, Ella (2006), Taboo Memories, Diasporic Voices, Durham, North Carolina:Duke University Press.

Trouillot, Michel-Rolph (1995), ‘The Three Faces of Sans Souci,’ Silencing the Past,Boston: Beacon Press.

West, Cornel (1992), ‘Malcolm X and Black Rage’, in Joe Wood (ed.), Malcolm Xin Our Own Image, New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Suggested citationJenson, D. (2007), ‘Before Malcolm X, Dessalines: a ‘French’ tradition of black Atlantic

radicalism’, International Journal of Francophone Studies 10: 3, pp. 329–344, doi: 10.1386/ijfs.10.3.329/1

Contributor detailsDeborah Jenson teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her monographBeyond the Slave Narrative: Sex, Politics, and Manuscripts in the Haitian Revolution isunder contract with Liverpool University Press. A translation and critical edition, withDoris Kadish, of Marceline Desbordes-Valmore’s colonial novella Sarah is forthcom-ing from MLA Editions. Previous work includes Trauma and Its Representations: TheSocial Life of Mimesis in Post-Revolutionary France (Johns Hopkins University Press,2001), the “Haiti Issue (1804 and Nineteenth Century French Studies)” of YaleFrench Studies (no.107, Spring 2005), and articles in Differences, The Yale Journal ofCriticism and The Columbia Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century French Thought.Contact: Department of French and Italian, 618 Van Hise, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706.E-mail: [email protected]

344 Deborah Jenson


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Article. French Language. doi: 10.1386/ijfs.10.3.345/1

Don du français et parole (post) colonialeLaurent Dubreuil Cornell University

AbstractThis article aims to give a renewed theoretical substance to the words of francophonie.It tries to reconstruct the conditions of enunciation which characterize the French(post) colonial scene – from the Ancien Régime to the present. In each epoch of theFrench colonial empire, a theologico-political core governed the effects of censor-ship and of lingual reduction through the so-called ‘gift of languages’. If, accord-ing to the Code noir especially, a slave was mute or inaudible by definition, theFrench and Haitian Revolutions opened a new space for ‘a black discourse inFrench’. Such a lingual event, as well as the triumph of the Jacobinist conceptionof the national idiom, helps us to understand the uses and ruses of the ThirdRepublic regarding the teaching of the French language in the colonies. Thus, anecessarily (post)colonial francophonie could name the process of bypassing thecolonial order of speech and silence.

RésuméCet article veut redonner une substance théorique au langage de la francopho-nie, via une reconstruction des situations d’énonciation propre à la scène(post) coloniale – de l’Ancien Régime à la France d’aujourd’hui. En privilégiant lamatière théologico-politique, il s’agit de revenir sur les effets de censure et deréduction qu’opéra le ‘don des langues’ dans les diverses époques de l’Empirefrançais d’outre-mer. On considère ici comment l’esclave était tout simplementmuet par définition avant d’observer la transformation opérée par l’ouverture de laparole noire durant les Révolutions françaises et haïtiennes. Un tel événementlangagier, allié à la conception jacobine du français unitaire, explique les tours etdétours de la politique d’enseignement de l’idiome national dans les colonies sous laTroisième République. La francophonie, nécessairement (post) coloniale, pourraitdevenir le nom de cette sortie de l’ordre hiérarchique des paroles et des silences.

Qui parle, le peut-il? Trouve-t-on une force ou une instance nousautorisant à dire, à écrire? Assurément, l’usage social du langage privilégiedes acteurs, des oratrices au détriment d’autres. Mais il n’est pas de don dela parole sans que celle-ci ne se prenne effectivement. En d’autres termes,c’est le seul droit de proférer que l’on peut conférer; détenir une parole,voilà une autre affaire. A la restriction a priori du recours au discourss’ajoute pour le colonial un ensemble d’impossibilités prononcées, quitouchent à la parole au moyen de la langue. Si un idiome s’acquiert tou-jours, loin de toute naturalité, un Français dit de souche n’a pas plus deprédisposition à sa langue qu’un individu fraîchement annexé à l’empire.


Keywordsenseignement du

français

francophonie

Haïti

Toussaint Louverture

Révolution Française

postcolonial

parole

théologico-politique

théorie

IJFS_10.3_04_art_Dubreuil.qxd 11/13/07 9:32 PM Page 345

Pourtant, dans bien des textes que nous allons lire, nous trouverons laformulation d’une inaptitude linguistique chez le colonisé. Du coup,l’indigène francophone, par exemple, passera pour une poupée deventriloque – ou, au contraire, un prodige. En ce cas, miracle divin oupreuve vivante de l’action surnaturelle de l’éducation nationale, le nou-veau locuteur devra encore affronter une certaine histoire de la langue, quichercha à se prémunir de toute ‘bâtardise’ et qui voulut imposer un silencejusqu’au cœur des mots. Don et censure du français visaient à garantir unefrancophonie instrumentale contre toute (velléité de) parole.

Je voudrais ici désigner les principaux procédés de justifications de cettecensure, ainsi que leurs dispositions pratiques. En un sens, je me livre ici àune retraversée de la ‘théorie coloniale’ française, en isolant trois scènes:la programmation théologico-politique du premier Empire, celui del’Ancien Régime et du Code noir; l’ouverture d’une parole noire en françaisautour de 1789; et la controverse linguistique des années 1880–90, d’oùva sortir la doctrine républicaine de l’enseignement du français auxcolonisés. Un mot supplémentaire: je vais parler de la constitution de lacensure, et très peu des moyens de la déjouer. Qu’il soit entendu, heureuse-ment, que l’interdit dans le dit n’a jamais fait que rendre très difficile voirequasi-impossible une parole de décolonisation – mais la prescription aéchoué aussi, qui nous donne la possibilité de nos études dites francopho-nes et postcoloniales. Je me livre donc plutôt à la description des pièges etdes prohibitions, sans préjuger de leur levée.1

Silence absolu et don des languesNous entrons dans la programmation théologico-politique contre la parole indigèneet par la langue. ‘Par la langue’ est la spécificité du second empire colonial, et sapostérité. Non que l’Ancien Régime ait favorisé de quelque façon l’expressiondes esclaves. Mais la langue ne jouait pas du tout le rôle que nous avonscommencé d’annoncer. La censure s’exerçait d’une autre manière, que je vaisme contenter d’approcher à grands traits.

Le Code noir, rédigé par Colbert et signé par Louis XIV, est le texte de loiqui régit l’esclavage dans les colonies françaises, pendant plus d’un siècle. Ilest riche de prescriptions et de détails, en particulier dans le domaine des‘obligations’ des maîtres (dont on sait qu’elles furent assez peu respectéespour la plupart) et des châtiments (eux généralement appliqués). Or le Codenoir ne mentionne pas même la possibilité que l’esclave puisse parler.L’interdit ici est général, la censure radiale. L’esclave est littéralement unenfant: il n’a pas voix au chapitre, mais la possibilité de sa parole est enoutre niée d’avance. En conséquence, les seuls méfaits des Noirs (pour leCode) se situent dans les coups qu’ils peuvent porter, les voies de faits, le vol,la fuite.2 Les affranchis, eux, sont enjoints de témoigner un respect partic-ulier envers leurs anciens maîtres et descendants directs. ‘L’injure’, men-tionnée à l’article 58, serait punie selon des circonstances aggravantes. Endroit ancien, l’injure peut être physique ou verbale. La capacité d’une paroleblessante n’est donc introduite qu’à partir de l’instant où, l’esclavage ayantcessé, l’âme est légalement réintégrée dans le corps jusque-là possédé. L’éditroyal annihile la parole par la visée performative de son langage; mais l’an-nulation n’est pas le fait de la langue française. Le texte de loi aurait vocation

346 Laurent Dubreuil

1. Ce texte est extrait de ma recherche (provisoirement intitulé L’Empire de la langue) où j’analyseles politiques, philosophies etprescriptions liées àl’inculcation dufrançais aux colonies.

2. Respectivement: articles 33, 34, 35 et36, 38 du Code noirdont le texte peut être trouvé par exemple dans LouisSala-Molins, Le Codenoir ou Le Calvaire deCanaan, Paris: PressesUniversitaires deFrance, 2002.


à se réaliser, quel que soit l’idiome dans lequel on le traduirait. Quant à l’in-jure, elle serait reconnue indépendamment du parlé qui la formulerait.

C’est que l’Ancien Régime a facilement toléré un plurilinguisme de faitau sein du royaume. La langue n’est pas le socle identitaire. La célèbreordonnance de Villers-Cotterêts (1539) mentionne le ‘langage maternelfrançois’ dans un seul article.3 A partir de la Renaissance, la dimensionsociale de la prescription langagière est intrinsèquement associée à l’exer-cice du pouvoir royal (la Cour, les cours de justice, la Capitale, etc.). La pro-duction livresque, et particulièrement la littérature, vont étendre cet usagedu français. Enfin, l’injonction du français pour tous et partout n’est nifondamentale ni effective dans la France d’Ancien Régime. La situationlinguistique est au contraire diffractée selon les lieux et les milieux.

Dans un tel contexte, la mise au silence des esclaves ne pouvait doncpas être fortement liée à la langue. Cela n’exclut en rien une modélisa-tion théologico-politique des parlers. Seulement, les voies empruntéescroisent rarement l’option majoritaire que nous découvrirons à la fin dudix-neuvième siècle. Dans un pays de diversité linguistique et de particu-larismes, le créole est une dégénérescence supplémentaire, un nouveaupatois, c’est-à-dire un ‘langage corrompu’ pour reprendre la définitiondonnée par l’Encyclopédie de Diderot et D’Alembert. Cette vision de ladéliquescence peut être structurellement solidaire de la condamnationbiblique:4 les hommes sont voués à se comprendre de moins en moins.L’exil hors de la ville de Babel, la dispersion géographique sont les facteursde la multiplication idiolectale. Même s’il n’est alors pas reconnu commeune langue, le créole relève du processus de différenciation qui est à l’œu-vre dans l’histoire théologique de la Chute, et ses répétitions. L’apparitiond’une espèce vulgaire parlée par le vulgaire coïncide avec la séparationhiérarchique du corps politique et le témoignage de l’Ancien Testament.

L’inévitable corruption saurait-elle être évitée? Les Missions, en répan-dant la bonne parole, déplacent la question de la langue. L’épisode de laglossolalie que décrivent les Actes des Apôtres5 sert autrement la conquêtedes colonisés. Dans ce passage, Luc présente les apôtres comme inspirés parl’esprit saint. Des ‘langues de feu’6 signalent le nouveau don: les prédica-teurs s’adressent à une foule cosmopolite, et chacun reconnaît sonlangage. Le message du Dieu évangélique n’a pas besoin d’une languedonnée. Le Nouveau Testament corrige donc la malédiction de Babeldans l’universalité (cf. grec katholikos) de la parole du Christ. LesMissionnaires de l’époque moderne vont s’atteler à leur tour à évangéliserdans les langues des peuples lointains, colonisés ou asservis ouévangélisés. L’inculcation du français et du latin d’Eglise a bien lieu, maisl’avancée décisive se fait toujours par l’idiome de l’autre. Les difficultésengendrées par les incertitudes linguistique des prêtres et des interprètesravivent le récit de la Pentecôte. ‘Faute de sçavoir la langue’, note l’ecclési-astique Pierre Biard en 1610, on ne peut ‘instruire’ à fond.7 Biard ne faitque redire la conviction portée dès le siècle précédent par les membresibériques de la Compagnie de Jésus, tel prédicateur affirmant ‘il est néces-saire de comprendre la langue’ ou cet autre ‘nous apprenons la langue,nous en tirons de nombreux fruits’.8 Les Jésuites en particulier sontmaîtres de cette propagation du Verbe divin par le biais des langues. L’unedes premières relations de mission en terre étrangère est rédigée par Paul Le

347Don du français et parole (post) coloniale

3. Voir l’article 111 de l’ordonnance deVillers-Cotterêts. Letexte en est disponibleà l’adresse Internethttp://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/histoire/villers-cotterets.asp

4. Bible; Genèse 11, 1–10.

5. Bible; Actes des Apôtres 2.

6. Bible; Actes des Apôtres 2, 3.

7. The Jesuit Relations andAllied Documents, vol.1 Acadia: 1610–1613,Cleveland: TheBurrows Brothers,1897, p. 160.

8. MonumentaMissionum SocietatisIesu, vol. 5 MissionesOrientales. Documenta Indica II(1550–1553), Rome:Monumenta HistoricaSocietatis Iesu, 1950,pp. 158 et 562, textesde 1551 et 1552respectivement; jetraduis.


Jeune, dans les années 1630. Dans la Nouvelle France de Champlain, il n’ade cesse de souligner l’importance du plurilinguisme pour l’homme de foi.En même temps qu’il apprend ‘l’A, B, C’ à un enfant indien et un ‘petitNeigre’9 originaire de Madagascar, Le Jeune s’attelle à l’étude assidue du‘langage des Sauuages’.10 Le missionnaire jésuite doit se passer d’inter-prète, devenir polyglotte et même adapter les prières dans un nouvelidiome. Le Jeune mentionne ainsi ‘le Pater noster qu[‘il a] composé, quasien rimes en leur langue’.11 Parmi les derniers mots de la Relation de 1633figure le souhait ‘O que ne sçavons nous les langues de ces pauuvresSauuages! Ce sera quand il plaira à Nostre Seigneur.’12 Au Nouveaumonde ou en Asie, l’action missionnaire reste liée au respect de la paroledivine, indépendamment de la langue pratiquée. Les idiomes vernacu-laires européens, le latin, comme les langages des Indes ou d’Amérique sontaptes à répandre le message biblique.

L’articulation du théologique et du politique est ainsi complexe etdifférenciée. Le plan du pouvoir mondain n’est pas détaché de l’Eglise, c’estmême le sacré de la souveraineté qui le permet – mais il n’est pas celui dupouvoir intemporel, où la religion doit malgré tout passer par sa réalisationsociale. Le théologico-politique devient alors bifide, se proposant des butsdivergents, quoique l’action les rendent compatibles de fait. En l’occurrence,la force de loi annihile la possibilité de parole chez l’esclave et réduit auminimum l’expression du ‘sauvage’, fût-il affranchi. Cependant, afin d’éprou-ver le don divin des langues, le missionnaire a besoin de reconnaître que lecolonisé (Indien ou Noir) parle un autre idiome, langue à part entière oupatois. Loin qu’une pareille ‘contradiction’ fasse s’écrouler le systèmecolonial, elle entretient la violence de la subjugation. L’existence individu-elle est régie par les mouvements intempestifs d’un plan à l’autre duthéologico-politique. Dans la phrase de possession, on assiste à une sériealéatoire de raptus, succédant d’ailleurs au rapt physique – expulsion d’unlieu vers l’autre, brèches dans la continuité, extases légales. Le colonisé seratoujours possédé à la fin du jeu. Enfin, chaque plan est susceptible depoursuivre un exercice au moins paradoxal. Certes, le prodige apostoliqueratifie la faculté langagière jusque chez le sauvage, sans quoi pas demerveilleux; mais cette capacité des catéchisés se présente subrepticementcomme un effet second de l’énergie pastorale. Ceux d’outre-mer parlaientavant l’arrivée des Jésuites; seulement l’inculcation de la parole de Dieuleur refait le langage. Gardons la relation de Le Jeune. L’auteur souligne àde nombreuses reprises ses difficultés dans l’apprentissage linguistique.Pourtant, quand, en 1633, il décrit son enseignement, il est, par la grâcede Dieu, celui qui met les mots dans la bouche d’enfants ne parlant pasfrançais. On lit ainsi ‘ie leur fais dire le Pater, Aue, & Credo, en leur langue:ie leur explique grossierement le mystere de la Sainte Trinité, & del’Incarnation; & à tous bouts de champ ie leur demande si je dis bien, s’ilsentendent bien, ils me respondent tous, eoco, eoco, ninisitoutenan: ouy, ouy,nous entendons.’13 L’inquiétude née de la mauvaise maîtrise de la langueest levée par l’assentiment des élèves, qui contresignent l’existence d’uneforce glossolalique. Mais il y a plus. Les enfants n’ont ici la parole que pourdire des prières rédigées par le prêtre dans leur propre langue – et déclarerqu’ils entendent. Le divin et le phatique. Le Jeune devient le vrai dépositairede cette langue indigène, qu’il apprit à demi. Il peut s’en rendre maître en


9. Les textes de Paul LeJeune sont reproduitsdans The JesuitRelations and AlliedDocuments, vol. 5Québec: 1632–1633,Cleveland: TheBurrows Brothers,1897, p. 62.

10. ibid., p. 112.

11. ibid., p. 188.

12. ibid., p. 264.

13. ibid., p. 186.


la réinventant: ‘ie forge des mots approchans de leur langue, que ie je leurfais entendre.’14 Les néologismes forment le nouveau lexique catholiqued’un idiome en révolution. Notons au passage que la syntaxe de ladernière citation est à la limite de l’amphibologie; et il se pourrait lire quele prêtre fait entendre leur langue aux élèves. Cela ne constituerait au fondqu’une extrapolation de la prière qu’a écrite Le Jeune et dont il donne lui-même les premiers mots dans le texte original et leur traduction enfrançais: ‘Mon Seigneur ou Capitaine Iesus; enseignez moy vos paroles &vostre volonté!’15

Quand un missionnaire en vient à recréer la langue de l’autre, ce quefirent tous ceux qui adaptèrent des termes européens pour exprimer ladivinité ou imposèrent un nouveau sémantisme au lexique d’autreslangues,16 la parole du sauvage finit par n’être plus qu’une conséquencedu surnaturel lié au pouvoir ecclésial. Avant l’arrivée des Européens, lesindigènes ne faisaient qu’attendre la révélation de leur propre idiome parle Verbe d’Eglise. Sur le versant plus temporel des choses, le droit est l’insti-tution qui va le plus loin dans les tactiques contraires. Le Code noir réduit àrien la parole de l’esclave, on l’a vu. Toutefois, la scène judiciaire est le lieuoù le Nègre, s’il est appelé, doit parler. La transcription du témoignage,comme toujours, est médiatisée de telle sorte que l’expression ne soit pointidentique au propos tenu. Il y a fort à parier que l’esclave sommé de tenirdiscours par le même droit qui n’envisage pas sa parole ait peu à gagnerdans l’opération. ‘Fort à parier’, ai-je écrit, car nous ne disposons que depeu de documents sur les procès citant des Noirs. Or la chose n’est pas for-tuite. Fait rarissime apparemment, les archives légales des Antilles ont trèslargement été détruites en 1787, sur ordonnance du roi satisfaisant à unedemande du Conseil souverain de la Martinique, au motif de ‘l’encombre-ment’ des greffes.17 A cet égard, il resterait à accomplir un grand travail decollation des bribes, membra disjecta et fragments dans les fonds quisurvécurent à la destruction légale. Je retiens ici les manœuvres d’un con-trôle qui annule, puis redonne sous la contrainte, puis efface la parole desesclaves.

L’ouverture d’une parole noire francophone Maintenant, quelles que soient les divergences internes, la colonisation despays, des corps, des esprits et des âmes considère la langue française (ici)comme incidente pour son projet. Le don des langues est une conséquencebabélique ou un miracle apostolique. La mise au silence absolu estindépendante de l’idiome employé. Rien n’est propre au français. L’époquerévolutionnaire va changer ces répartitions en enracinant désormais lacolonie (via la nation) dans une langue. A cela s’ajoute pour nous la nou-velle émergence d’une parole francophone tenue par des Noirs jusque-làbâillonnés ou interdits.

En particulier depuis la publication du collectif Une Politique de la langueen 1975, il est notoire que, même si d’autres options furent envisagéesen leur temps, l’unification par la langue devient un impératif républicainsous la Terreur.18 Il vaut la peine d’y insister, le centrage idiomatiquen’était pas une obligation historique, ni l’inévitable résultat que présentesouvent le grand récit légendaire de la ‘progression du français’. La justifi-cation apportée par Bertrand Barère devant les autres membres du Comité


14. ibid., p. 188.

15. ibid., p. 188.

16. Voir l’étude deShenwen Li, Stratégiesmissionnaires desjésuites français enNouvelle-France et enChine au XVIIe siècle,Saint-Nicolas/Paris:Presses de l’UniversitéLaval/L’Harmattan,2001.

17. Liliane Chauleau,‘Quelle histoire pourl’esclavage? Quelleparole de l’esclave?’ in Marie-ChristineRochmann (éd.),Esclavage et abolitions,Mémoires et systèmesde représentation, Paris: Karthala,2000, p. 28.

18. Lire les analyses deLorenzo Reni, LaPolitica linguistica dellaRivoluzione francese,Naples: Liguori, 1981et JacquesGuilhaumou, LaLangue politique et larévolution française,Paris: MéridiensKlincksieck, 1989.


de Salut Public en l’an II est plus adéquate que le mythe de la linéarité.Il s’agit pour Barère d’opérer une rupture: ‘Nous avons révolutionné legouvernement, les lois, les usages, les mœurs, les coutumes, le commerceet la pensée même; révolutionnons donc aussi la langue, qui est leurinstrument journalier’.19 Le mot d’ordre est logiquement ‘Citoyens, lalangue d’un peuple libre doit être une et la même pour tous’.20 La consub-stantialité entre le régime politique et la langue est prescrite comme jamaisauparavant. La souveraineté du roi étant redonnée à la république qui estl’unité du collectif, la pluralité doit céder. Ces nouveaux transferts relèventencore du théologico-politique, et l’on ne se surprend pas de lire dans lerapport de l’abbé Grégoire, ‘avec trente patois différents, nous sommesencore, pour le langage, à la tour de Babel’.21 Le français est la langue dela France, un Français doit parler français. Semblables tautologies sontacquises historiquement, et, quelles que soient les événements antérieursqui contribuent à les autoriser, elles émergent dans le contexte du renou-vellement politique postérieur à 89 et d’exhaussement de la nation.

Or la Révolution est aussi le moment où des gens de couleur et desNoirs, dans les colonies et la métropole, publient, écrivent des lettres, s’ex-priment au-delà des cercles qui étaient les leurs dans l’Ancien régime. Orles acteurs historiques, s’ils souhaitaient verbalement interpeller le nou-veau pouvoir, devaient le faire en français. Et lorsque l’idiome se retrouveun porteur essentiel et sacré de l’identité nationale, l’obligation langagièrese renforce d’un cran. Mon intention n’est pas ici d’interroger par principela couleur des hommes et femmes qui nous lèguent un texte en françaisdans cette fin du dix-huitième siècle. Je me préoccupe d’une parole quiconstruit son locuteur comme indigène, ou noir. Il n’y a donc pas de natu-ralisme en l’occurrence. La parole noire ou l’éloquence mulâtre tirent leursens d’elles-mêmes, en tant que speech acts. Doit nous intéresser principale-ment l’édification du sujet de couleur par sa diction. L’obstacle matérieln’est pas négligeable, je l’accorde. Les cahiers de doléance, par exemple,dans la suite automatique du pouvoir monarchique, ont presque toujoursexclu les Noirs par principe, qui ne pouvaient rien consigner, donc, de cequ’ils voulaient ou pouvaient dire. Les mulâtres étaient souvent des héri-tiers, parfois riches, de colons blancs. Les ‘hommes et femmes libres decouleur’ pouvaient aussi prospérer dans le commerce et nombre d’entreeux possédaient aux colonies des esclaves et des terres. Cette bipartitionentre métis et Nègres marquera pour longtemps la république libre d’Haïti,où seule la dictature de Duvalier fera vraiment émerger une durable classebourgeoise noire. Reproduisant le discours de domination par continuité,profit et calcul, nombre de mulâtres auteurs publics de libelles ou pétitionspendant la Révolution prennent fait et cause pour l’esclavage. Là aussi, lesdocuments restent plus ou moins épars et mériteraient un réexamen com-plexe sur la politique des races à la fin des Lumières. Ces questions délicatesse retrouvent au cœur de plusieurs essais remarquables, qui se consacrentà la fin de la colonie de Saint-Domingue et à sa transformation enrépublique indépendante d’Haïti. Je vise plutôt ici à situer un événementdans l’ordre colonial des paroles qui est en soi plus important que lesthèses du compromis avec l’esclavagisme. Quand les mulâtres rejoignirentdes positions conservatrices, ils le firent au nom de leur ascendanceeuropéenne. Dans la pétition de mars 1791 que les Citoyens de couleur


19. Le rapport de Barèreest réédité dans UnePolitique de la langue,p. 295.

20. ibid., p. 297.

21. ibid., p. 302 pour lerapport de Grégoire.


adressent à l’Assemblée nationale, les signataires se désignent biencomme autres que les Blancs ou que les Noirs. Les auteurs réclament unélargissement systématique des mulâtres – dont ils écartent aussitôt lesNègres. Leurs motivations relèvent-elles du réalisme politique? La chosen’est pas impensable. Le champion de l’émancipation que fut l’abbéGrégoire, un des membres de la Société des Amis des noirs, déclaraitaprès tout que la liberté immédiate serait ‘un présent funeste’ pour lesAfricains asservis.22 Le résultat reste. L’appel des mulâtres aux députésde l’Assemblée culmine dans un grand retour de l’ancêtre blanc: ‘lesblancs sont les pères, les frères des citoyens de couleur; c’est leur sang,c’est le sang François qui coule dans leurs veines’.23 De ce point de vue,la prise de parole est au moins ambiguë, car le mulâtre se distingued’abord afin de mieux s’identifier par l’inexorable factualité de la généra-tion. La fraternité invoquée (‘les frères des citoyens de couleur’) appartientau registre révolutionnaire de la naturalisation du lien politique. Aussitôt,l’ajout de la paternité, combinée à la métaphore du sang (qui est alors unproche équivalent de ce que nous nommerions davantage race aujour-d’hui), déplace le débat vers la politisation du lien naturel. En cettepérilleuse zone, le citoyen de couleur est défini par sa race et sesancêtres, où le Blanc prime par principe sur le Noir. On reconnaît bienune des racines de la hiérarchie implicite des métissages qui sévira audix-neuvième siècle et classera les ‘sangs-mêlés’ en raison inverse de laproportion d’ascendance africaine, et, par exemple, l’octavon (un huitièmede sang noir) avant le quarteron (Nègre pour un quart).

Ici, donc, la prise de parole, acte a priori inédit chez des gens de couleur,aura eu tendance à simplement s’effondrer. Nous parlons en tant quemulâtres – mais nous le devons au fait que nous sommes enfants desBlancs et des colons, et c’est en ce nom que nous écrivons. En ce derniercas donc, rien de plus normal. L’événement s’annule et ne menace plusaucun impératif de mise au silence. Cette situation fait d’autant plusressortir le choc de la parole noire qui se prend dès 1789 et réclame l’abo-lition que ni ‘Amis’ officiels ni mulâtres ni colons en leur majorité n’enten-dent leur accorder. Le 29 août 1789, un groupe d’esclaves de la Martiniquese présente comme ‘la Nation entière des Esclaves Noirs’.24 Le terme denation appartient à l’usage ancien, biblique, et désigne un groupe humainliés par une histoire et des alliances communes. Ainsi qu’on parlait de lanation des Hébreux ou des différentes ‘nations africaines’, les signatairesde la lettre évoquent la ‘Nation blanche’ et la ‘Nation orgueilleuse’ desmulâtres.25 Mais ces nations s’organisent au sein d’une entité qui prend lesens de nation française. Ce que tentent ici les esclaves est comparable à laconstitution des nations indiennes aux Etats-Unis, où les sens sociaux etpolitiques du terme s’entremêlent. Le moyen de cette revendication inouïetient à la production d’une parole, que décrit la fin de la lettre: ‘tous lesesclaves d’une voix unanime ne font qu’un cri qu’une clameur pourréclamer une liberté qu’ils ont justement gagnée par des siècles desouffrance et de servitude ignominieuse’.26 Toute la pétition est parcouruepar les figures de l’unanimité, de l’intégralité, de l’union, poussées à leurparoxysme (cf. ‘la Nation entière des esclaves Noirs réunis ensemble’27). Ellessont transformées, ou renforcées, dans l’unisson sonore. La requalificationlexicale de voix à cri puis clameur et réclamer, le polyptote dû à ces deux


22. Henri Grégoire, Lettreaux Philanthropes …,Paris: Belin, 1790,p. 3.

23. Pétition nouvelle desCitoyens de couleur desîles françoises, àl’Assemblée nationale,Paris: Patriotefrançois, 1791, p. 8.Même rhétoriquedans Grégoire un anplus tôt: ‘ce sont nosenfans. Vos enfans, etle cœur paternel lesrepousse’ (Lettre auxPhilanthropes, p. 17).

24. Lettre transcrite dans MoniquePouliquen éd.,Doléances des peuplescoloniaux à l’AssembléeNationale Constituante1789–1790, Paris:Archives nationales,1989, p. 73.

25. Ibid. Un autrecommentaire de cettelettre est à trouverdans le très bonouvrage de LaurentDubois, A Colony ofCitizens. Revolution andSlave Emancipation inthe French Caribbean,1787–1804, Virginia:The University ofNorth Carolina Press,2004, pp. 86 et suivantes.

26. Monique Pouliquenéd., Doléances des peuples coloniaux …, p. 74.

27. ibid., p. 74.


derniers termes, la coalescence qu’engendre l’absence de ponctuationentre ‘qu’un cri’ et ‘qu’une clameur’, le soulignement allitératif rendentsensible le processus de formation d’une énonciation noire. Une voixnouvelle se forme et se fait entendre.

Avec l’émergence du locuteur collectif apparaît la figure du porte-parole noir. Plusieurs hommes politiques sortis de l’esclavage jouent unrôle considérable lors de la Révolution française. CLR James écrivit dans lesannées 1940 un ouvrage devenu ‘classique’ (mais toujours peu lu enFrance) sur les Jacobins noirs.28 Parmi eux l’un des plus marquants resteToussaint Louverture, dont la renommée historique et littéraire estaffective et constante depuis le dix-neuvième siècle. Or Toussaint n’est passeulement un grand militaire, un tacticien de la révolution ou un -dictateur. Il est bien tout cela, même si l’hagiographie gomme souvent lahonteuse constitution haïtienne qu’il signa en 1801, peu avant d’êtredéporté dans le Jura sur ordre de Napoléon. Mais il convient d’ajouter,dans la perspective qui est la nôtre, que « le premier des Noirs » contribuaencore à la constitution d’un corpus en français, tenu depuis la place ducolonisé. Louverture (orthographié parfois L’Ouverture) est un surnomdont l’origine est discutée. A défaut de consensus, je lie à dessein cecognomen à l’ouverture d’une parole indigène en français. Il est alors frappantde constater la force et la variété extraordinaires des interventions deToussaint. Nous sont conservés de lui des lettres, des rapports, des textesparus en libelles. Tous témoignent d’une brillante utilisation des ressourcesrhétoriques et génériques du discours en cette fin du dix-huitième siècle. Onpasse ici du silence ou de l’injure à la prononciation d’une parole dontl’efficace politique passe par la mobilisation des Belles Lettres. L’Extrait durapport adressé au Directoire exécutif se présente ainsi comme la narrationdes entrevues de Toussaint avec Sonthonax, commissaire de la républiqueà Saint-Domingue. Dans les deux parties, nommées ‘conférences’, le récituse le plus souvent ce qu’il désigne comme ‘la forme du dialogue’.29 Lacapacité à changer de forme selon la nature du dit marque chacun destextes de Toussaint qui élisent puis épuisent des formes langagières. LaRéfutation d’un texte de Viénot Vaublanc est ainsi conduite à la façon d’uncommentaire de texte, d’une exégèse où le Discours de Vaublanc estdécomposé en quatorze ‘assertions’, citées avant d’être décryptées,critiquées, contrecarrées. Loin du ton épidictique, l’Extrait renvoie autantau dialogue socratique qu’au théâtre. Les deux personnages (Toussaint etSonthonax) se répondent, et l’on distinguerait sans mal certains desmoments nécessaires à la tragédie – comme l’exposition ou la catastrophe(quand Sonthonax – Louverture dixit – propose l’indépendance de Saint-Domingue vis-à-vis de la France.)30 Des didascalies ponctuent le texte quirenforcent la vivacité de la scène (post) coloniale. Alors que Toussaintdans ces indications continue d’utiliser le je, à l’occasion, une troisièmepersonne survient, comme cette précision sur ‘le général Toussaint:(Avec une impatience qu’il ne pouvoit plus dissimuler)’.31 Sans vouloirparaphraser trop fort Maurice Blanchot, je crois volontiers que ce glissementdu je au il fait entrer le politique dans l’orbite du littéraire. Toussaint est unpersonnage pour lui-même et les autres. Roi de tragédie, despote et sublime,il construisit son personnage de théâtre avant la pièce qu’écrit Lamartine en1840 (et que nous retrouvons sous peu) ou le Monsieur Toussaint d’Edouard


28. C. L. R. James, TheBlack Jacobins.Toussaint L’Ouvertureand the San DomingoRevolution, New York:Random House, 1963[2ème éd.].

29. Toussaint Louverture,Extrait du rapport …Cap français: Roux,1797, p. 2.

30. ibid., pp. 5–7.

31. ibid., p. 13.


Glissant (1961). A bien des égards, Toussaint Louverture favorise lanaissance de la littérature francophone. Il est à la fois le porteur d’uneparole noire qui retentit dans l’événement poétique et, par sa critiquerépétée de l’esclavage, un pionnier de la critique du colonialisme quimarquera tant le corpus du vingtième siècle (avec Albert Memmi, FrantzFanon, Aimé Césaire, etc.).32

Notre exploration du moment révolutionnaire ne se veut pas exhaustive.Il s’agit plutôt ici de souligner qu’il se passe aussi quelque chose dans l’ordredes paroles coloniales après 1789. Il se forme un corpus indécis de textesqu’articulent d’anciens esclaves ou des gens de couleurs et qui profite de lasécularisation pour échapper à la simple répétition du dogme religieux. Lacondition théologico-politique, toutefois, reste présente, où République etRévolution pourraient jusqu’en un certain point remplacer l’Eglise et lagrâce divine. Soulignons que cet ensemble de paroles n’est pas univoque; ilen sera de même beaucoup plus tard. Ne cédons pas à la tentation d’organiser latextualité dans un sens (la dénonciation absolue de l’esclavage, par exemple);ce serait aller trop loin, dans un sens qui, aujourd’hui, nous paraîtrait plussatisfaisant politiquement. Pourtant, je retiens ce qui compte, l’avènementd’une textualité autre, lors de la première phase de la décolonisationmoderne. Toute absolue qu’elle fût, la mise au silence dans l’Ancien Régimeavait du moins une contrepartie énorme; le très éventuel retournement dela règle autorisait une parole à la mesure de la censure. Les lettres desesclaves de Martinique ou les écrits de Louverture condensent maîtrise etpolyvalence discursives. Cela se fait alors en français. Il y eut, sans doute,un usage intensif du créole lors des luttes d’indépendance. Une prière encréole, attribuée au leader noir Boukman, fut, paraît-il, prononcée lors duserment des rebelles au Bois-Caïman. Mais les traces de cette autre rhé-torique sont au moins douteuses – et même l’épisode du Bois-Caïman estincertain.33 De l’usage historique et émancipateur du créole, il nous resteessentiellement des mots apocryphes, des bribes de citations, çà et là dansdes histoires, des récits. Parce qu’il s’agissait de converser avec le pouvoirparisien et ses émissaires, le grand corpus de rébellion des Nègres a lieu enfrançais, pendant que le régime politique choisit de créer un idiome national.La légitimation par le français est trop forte en ces années pour que sepuisse développer une grande parole dans un autre idiome (le créole oul’une des langues africaines parlées par les esclaves).

Il s’ensuit une situation à deux niveaux. Le souvenir des prises deparoles francophones par Nègres ou mulâtres continuera de jouer dans lemaintien du prestige linguistique du français en Haïti, après l’indépen-dance. Quant au second empire colonial, tout en gardant certains desfondements théoriques de la hiérarchie des locuteurs, il va adopter des straté-gies a priori moins massives mais inextricables, car désormais internes à ladispensation de la langue.

Quand l’indigène parlera français Le nouvel empire qui se constitue à partir du dix-neuvième siècle, héritedonc des débats, des problèmes et des solutions antérieures. En particulier,la vie publique est marquée par le passé révolutionnaire. Dans l’après-coupde la Révolution, jusqu’à la Troisième République évidemment, la naturethéologico-politique de la doctrine linguistique n’est pas atteinte par la


32. Il est souvent dit,depuis la Révolutionmême, que Toussaintn’est pas le véritableauteur des textessignés en son nom. Ilest certain qu’il fut aumoins relu, peut-êtreaidé par des locuteursnatifs. Mais déclarerToussaint incapablede parler et dicter est une surprenantecontinuation de laphase de possessioncoloniale faisant icidu grand général unemarionnette.

33. Sur la querelle historiographiqueautour de lacérémonie du Bois-Caïman, lireDavid Patrick Geggus,Haitian RevolutionaryStudies, Bloomington:Indiana UniversityPress, 2002, pp. 89–92 enparticulier.


sécularisation, ni la laïcisation.34 L’argument majoritaire change enrevanche. Le corps de la nation tient la place de celui du Christ. Le Verbedivin, pour les missions apostoliques, unifiait la diversité des langues. Dansla nouvelle France théologico-politique, ce Verbe ne peut plus être que lefrançais, un idiome devenu naturellement transcendant.

Dans les controverses des années 1880 et 90 sur l’éducation et lescolonies, l’apprentissage de la langue nationale s’impose comme laposition majoritaire. Le modèle apostolique persiste dans la plupart desmissions religieuses; et ce justement parce qu’elles refusent le transfert detranscendance. Je m’intéresse plutôt aux attitudes qui s’affrontent non surla nécessité mais sur la possibilité d’inculquer le français aux colonisés.

Certains, dont la position ne vaincra point, théorisent l’incompatibilitéraciale. C’est le credo de Gustave Le Bon, clamé haut et fort au Congrèscolonial de 1889.35 ‘Des races différentes ne sauraient longtemps parler lamême langue.’36 La faculté d’expression chez les indigènes est un leurre,un ‘vernis provisoire’,37 car les hommes sont voués par la race à répéterles mots de leurs anciens.

La race doit donc être considérée comme un être permanent, affranchi du

temps. Cet être permanent est composé non seulement des individus

vivants qui le constituent à un moment donné, mais aussi de la longue

série des morts qui furent les ancêtres. […] Infiniment plus nombreux que

les vivants, les morts sont infiniment plus puissants qu’eux. Ils régissent

l’immense domaine de l’inconscient, cet invisible domaine qui tient sous

son empire toutes les manifestations de l’intelligence et du caractère.38

La race, aussi inconsciente qu’inexpugnable, insère chaque individu dansune continuité macabre. Nous ne sommes jamais que les mannequins d’unpassé ventriloque. Le principe de possession et d’envoûtement par les mortsne s’arrête pas à la colonie. Mais il désigne que le véritable empire sur lesêtres n’a rien à voir avec les fonctionnaires de l’empire français d’outre-mer. Les indigènes sont régis par leur complexion et leur histoire qui aconstruit leurs corps, leurs esprits. Sous le vernis, la fatalité raciale dirige.Partant, Le Bon nie par principe qu’un Noir, par exemple, puisse parlerfrançais. S’il semble y arriver, la signification des mots qu’il emploiedemeure configurée par l’hérédité et ne relève en rien du sémantisme de lalangue: ‘lorsque des peuples sont différents, les mots considérés chez euxcomme correspondants représentent des modes de penser et de sentirtellement éloignés qu’en réalité leurs langues n’ont pas de synonymes etque la traduction de l’une à l’autre est impossible.’39 Cet obstacle interne àla communication réelle entre des langues diverses empêche toute acquisi-tion authentique d’un idiome séparée par la race. Soit le colonisé devientune marionnette manipulée par deux forces. La bouche profère des motsfrançais, le sens réel du discours reste déterminé par une pensée indigène,que le passage dans un nouveau dialecte rend inaccessible. Soit lesindigènes s’amassent et changent le français de l’intérieur, comme autrefoisles Gaulois avaient transformé le latin.40 Cette hypothèse manque deprobabilité toutefois, à cause de l’infériorité des peuples conquis. Le Boncroit davantage à une grande dégénérescence, s’étendant sur le monde.L’âge est à ‘la décadence des races’.41 Le Bon se rattache donc au modèle


34. Il n’est pas possible icide rappeler tout ledébat sur larémanence duthéologique jusquedans la pratique politique ditemoderne. Il suffit dementionner que laposition d’uneparadoxale affinitéentre la structurereligieuse et lepouvoir (post)révolutionnaire setrouve dans la discussion que suscitent enAllemagne les thèsesde Max Weber audébut du vingtièmesiècle. Voir, dans MaxWeber, par exemple lacoexistence du charismeet de la rationalisationbureaucratique(Gesammelte Werke,Tübingen: JCB Mohr,vol. 22–4, 2005, pp.481–533) – et deuxthéories opposées duthéologico-politique,chez Walter Benjamin(entre autresGesammelte Schriften,Francfort: Sukrkamp,vol. 6, 1985, pp. 100–03) et CarlSchmitt (PolitischeTheologie. Vier Kapitelzur Lehre derSouveränität, Munich& Leipzig: Dunkler &Humboldt, 1922). Le problème est aujourd’hui prégnantdans l’œuvre deJacques Derrida (cf. Foi et savoir, Paris:Seuil, 2000). Danstous les cas, ilconvient de distinguerentre la structurethéologique dupouvoir et lespolitiques données:l’anticléricalisme‘éclairé’ sacrifie à unemystique de la nationlaïque.


babélique de la condamnation des hommes dans leurs divisions. Il trouvemême la confusion en chaque langue. La race se venge d’être délaisséepar une expansion nationale irrespectueuse de ses principes, et prolongel’arrêt de Yahveh.

En matière linguistique, le dogme républicain, que Le Bon critique,écartera d’abord la figure du Dieu vengeur. La France est dispensatrice.Puisque son verbe est sa langue, elle ne reproduira pas tel quel l’épisodeglossolalique des Actes. Il reste parfois le vestige du don des languesétrangères pour une partie restreinte des apôtres de la mission civilisatrice –voir la figure du savant, dont le langage ultime pourrait être la Science.Mais, pour l’essentiel, le don de langue sera celui du colonial au colonisé.Le français illumine l’esprit indigène à la manière de la grâce. On observequelquefois des prodiges. Un Noir habité par le français, qui s’est si bienlaissé envoûter par la civilisation, un miracle. En 1840, Lamartine, avantde signer la seconde abolition de l’esclavage, avait commis un ToussaintLouverture, qu’il jugeait une ‘œuvre politique’, pas ‘une œuvrelittéraire’.42 Dans ce drame étrange, Toussaint parle un français noble,sublime. Loin de la relecture vaudouisante des succès du Premier desNoirs, Lamartine, selon sa propre poétique religieuse, trouve en Toussaintun grand inspiré, comme ‘Moïse, Romulus, Mahomet, Washington! …’43

L’élu est à la fois propagateur d’un idéal sacré et du pouvoir temporel. Lechef des rebelles s’adresse directement à Dieu, ‘Oui, tu m’as suscité surcette nation.’44 Quand il dit aux Blancs venus arrêter son œuvre les griefsqu’ont les Noirs contre la France, l’un des auditeurs s’exclame ‘Quellangage!’45 La fable laïque, plus tardive, admirerait à égalité l’incroyableparole de l’indigène francophone venu de Tombouctou. Citons unesurvivance (en 2005), le qualificatif journalistique de ‘fils prodige’ pourmon ancien camarade d’Ecole normale Louis-Georges Tin, cet Antillais(descendant du premier Empire colonial), agrégé des lettres quichercherait à ‘prouver à tous qu’il est bien un vrai Noir.’46 Bien sûr,l’expression de ‘fils prodige’, jouant sur les mots, rappelle le contexteévangélique de la parabole du ‘fils prodigue’. Il faut donc croire qu’ildemeure une part de grâce inexplicable, due plus ou moins à la présenceréelle de la France en Martinique.

Les hommes politiques, les pédagogues du Congrès colonial de 1889concèdent certainement la surnature. Ils en respectent même tellementl’anormalité qu’ils n’entendent pas compter sur elle. Un des orateurs duCongrès colonial défendra l’enseignement du français pour les Indochinoispar son refus d’anticiper la fécondation miraculeuse des esprits:

Enfin, qui a donc parlé d’une sorte d’opération du Saint-Esprit qui ferait

subitement renoncer le peuple annamite à sa langue? J’ai dit expressément et

je répète que, pour cette oeuvre gigantesque, l’implantation de notre langue

en Indo-Chine, oeuvre qui seule justifiera la conquête, qui seule en assurera

les résultats immenses, il fallait compter sur trois générations, peut-être plus,

peut-être moins, selon le degré d’habileté des conquérants.47

Cette sortie d’Etienne Aymonier vaut d’autant plus qu’elle s’accorde à unrejet de la méthode utilisée auparavant par les congrégations religieusesen Indochine, qui avaient inventé une transcription à partir de caractères


35. Cf. Gustave Le Bon,‘Influence de l’éducation et desinstitutionseuropéennes sur lespopulations indigènesdes colonies’, Revuescientifique (Revuerose), 24 août 1889,pp. 225–37.

36. Gustave Le Bon, LesLois psychologiques del’évolution des peuples,Paris: Alcan, 1894, p.92.

37. Gustave Le Bon,Psychologie politique etla défense sociale, Paris:Les Amis de GustaveLe Bon, 1984 [rééd.du livre de 1911], p.211.

38. Le Bon, Loispsychologiques …, pp.14–15.

39. ibid., p. 93.

40. ibid., p. 92.

41. C’est le titre du livreIV du même ouvragede Le Bon.

42. Alphonse deLamartine, ToussaintLouverture, in Œuvrescomplètes, vol. 22,Paris: ‘chez l’auteur’,1863, p. 3.

43. ibid., acte II, scène 1, p. 41.

44. ibid., acte II, scène 1, p. 41.

45. ibid., acte III, scène 9, p. 98.

46. Sophie des Déserts,‘L’homme du CRAN’,Le Nouvel Observateur,15 décembre 2005.

47. Recueil des délibérationsdu Congrès colonialnational, vol. 2Rapport des commissaires.Documents annexes,Paris: Librairie des Annaleséconomiques, 1890,p. 330. Je souligne.


latins et signes diacritiques (le quoc-ngu) et privilégié la langue locale.Aymonier rend ici compte du projet linguistique que la TroisièmeRépublique se prend alors à former en dépit des divergences et scepti-cismes: il faut organiser une grâce ordinaire par l’enseignement dufrançais. Le maintien d’une foi (même tacite) dans le miracle français créecependant une ambiguïté. L’élection relativise l’instruction.

Je perçois là une des causes du grand écart entre le volontarisme dis-cursif et les retards dans l’éducation linguistique aux colonies. Le faibletaux de scolarisation dans l’Empire par rapport au territoire européen estl’un des symptômes de cette auto-négation de l’enseignement. On devraitmentionner aussi l’invention du français réduit, que prônait Faidherbe, ettous les choix comparables de troncature de la langue à destination desindigènes. On pourrait ajouter enfin que les instructions officielles onttoujours prévu moins d’heures de français à l’école primaire pour lesindigènes que pour les Français de métropole.48 Cette distinction estfrappante et fait contraste entre l’oppression classique à l’encontre deslangues régionales et le système pédagogique pour indigènes. Un Bretondoit subir les réprimandes du hussard noir, et abjurer son patois, afin derenaître à la France par l’idiome national. Un Antillais attendra plutôtl’action de la grâce, ordinaire ou pas; a-t-il à y gagner? Interrogeant le rap-port entre ‘le Noir et le langage’, Frantz Fanon comparait Bretagne etCaraïbes.49 Doit-on vraiment trouver une séparation entre la négation deslangues régionales, le mépris du particularisme provincial et la situationlinguistique coloniale? Fanon rapproche et sépare, estimant que la préten-due infériorité de race sauve finalement les Bretons … et perd les Noirs. Lelinguiste Louis-Jean Calvet a nommé glottophagie cette espèce de cannibal-isme de l’idiome local opéré au profit du français.50 En particulier sous laTroisième République, Bretons, Basques, Maghrébins ou Indochinoisauraient vécu l’attaque glottophage. Ils furent sommés de passer aufrançais et de renoncer à leurs parlers (s’ils ne l’avaient fait auparavant).Mais il faut ajouter (dans la lignée de Fanon et outre la possible comparai-son) que ce français n’était pas le même en fonction de l’énonciateur, et de sonappartenance à l’empire ou non.

En reconstruisant les spécificités historiques dans l’analyse de la parole,on aura compris que je cherche une remotivation du mot usé maisindispensable de francophonie. La résolution par les colonisés des interditssuccessifs de l’empire est une franco-phonie, soit l’élévation d’une nouvellevoix (phonê) passant par le français qu’un usage colonial avait mis à part ouminé. Cette signification, maximaliste, est contenue dans la revendicationfrancophoniste des années dix neuf cent soixante, quand des chefs d’Etatd’anciennes colonies demandèrent l’organisation d’institutions liéesgéographiquement à l’ancien empire mais conceptuellement à l’idiome. Ilva pourtant de soi que le mot de francophonie peut aussi appeler d’autressens: la poursuite d’une identification théologico-politique entre Verbe etnation, la volonté de contrôler le recours à l’idiome, la mise au point denouveaux champs de pouvoir, etc. La parole francophone, contre le babilimpérial, a permis l’organisation de la francophonie, qui, néanmoins, serévèle aussi à l’origine d’un langage conventionnel second, autre bruit defond, autre jargon d’institution. C’est qu’on ne parle jamais une fois pourtoutes. Une parole francophone résonne depuis l’ouverture du discours de


48. Sur ce dernier point,voir en particulierLinda Lehmil,‘L’édification d’unenseignement pourles indigènes:Madagascar etl’Algérie dansl’Empire français’,Labyrinthe. Atelierinterdisciplinaire, 24,2006-2, pp. 91–112.

49. Frantz Fanon, Peaunoire, masques blancs,Paris: Seuil, 1952,titre du chapitre 1.Notons au passageque même Fanonentérine la doctrinerépublicaine et fait ducréole un patois.

50. Louis-Jean Calvet,Linguistique et colonial-isme. Petit Traité deglottophagie, Paris:Payot, 1974.


l’esclave noir qui retentit à la fin du dix-huitième siècle. La transgressionparlée de l’ordre colonial est ainsi impliquée, malgré toutes les tentativesde réfection subreptice. Ce qui nécessite une construction ou unedestitution de l’indigénat (de l’asservissement, du racialisme) par l’énoncé.Ou la francophonie contre l’ordre des paroles, en excès, toujours.

RéférencesBenjamin, Walter (1985), Gesammelte Schriften, 6, Francfort: Suhrkamp.

Calvet, Louis-Jean (1974), Linguistique et colonialisme. Petit Traité de glottophagie,Paris: Payot.

Certeau, Michel de, Julia, Dominique, Revel, Jacques éd. (1975), Une Politique de lalangue, Paris: Gallimard.

Derrida, Jacques (2000), Foi et savoir, Paris: Seuil.

Déserts, Sophie des (2005), ‘L’Homme du CRAN’, Le Nouvel Observateur, 15 décembre2005.

Dubois, Laurent (2004), A Colony of Citizens. Revolution and Slave Emancipation in theFrench Caribbean, 1787–1804, Virginia: The University of North Carolina Press.

Fanon, Frantz (1952), Peau noire, masques blancs, Paris: Seuil.

Geggus, David Patrick (2002), Haitian Revolutionary Studies, Bloomington: IndianaUniversity Press.

Grégoire, Henri (1790), Lettre aux Philanthropes sur les malheurs, les droits et les récla-mations des gens de couleur de Saint-Domingue et des autres îles françoises del’Amérique, Paris: Belin.

Guilhaumou, Jacques (1989), La Langue politique et la révolution française, Paris:Méridiens Klincksieck.

James, C. L. R. (1963), The Black Jacobins. Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San DomingoRevolution, New York: Random House.

The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents (1897), 1, Acadia: 1610–1613, Cleveland:The Burrows Brothers.

The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents (1897), 5, Québec: 1632–1633, Cleveland:The Burrows Brothers.

Lamartine, Alphonse de (1863), Toussaint Louverture, in Œuvres complètes, 22,Paris: ‘chez l’auteur’.

Le Bon, Gustave (1889), ‘Influence de l’éducation et des institutions européennessur les populations indigènes des colonies’, Revue scientifique (Revue rose),24 août 1889, pp. 225–37.

—— (1894), Les Lois psychologiques de l’évolution des peuples, Paris: Alcan.

—— (1984), Psychologie politique et la défense sociale, Paris: Les Amis de Gustave Le Bon.

Lehmil, Linda (2006), ‘L’édification d’un enseignement pour les indigènes:Madagascar et l’Algérie dans l’Empire français’, Labyrinthe. Atelier interdisci-plinaire, 24, pp. 91–112.

Li, Shenwen (2001), Stratégies missionnaires des jésuites français en Nouvelle-France eten Chine au XVIIe siècle, Saint-Nicolas/Paris: Presses de l’Université Laval/L’Harmattan.

Louverture, Toussaint (1797), Extrait du Rapport adressé au Directoire exécutif par lecitoyen Toussaint Louverture, général en chef des forces de la République française àSaint-Domingue, Le Cap: Roux.

—— (s. d.), Réfutation de quelques assertions d’un discours prononcé au Corps législatif,le 10 prairial an V, par Vienot-Vaublanc.



Monumenta Missionum Societatis Iesu (1950), 5, Missiones Orientales. DocumentaIndica II (1550–1553), Rome: Monumenta Historica Societatis Iesu.

Pétition nouvelle des Citoyens de couleur des îles françoises, à l’Assemblée nationale(1791), Paris: Patriote françois.

Pouliquen, Monique éd. (1989), Doléances des peuples coloniaux à l’AssembléeNationale Constituante 1789–1790, Paris: Archives nationales.

Recueil des délibérations du Congrès colonial national (1890), 2, Rapport des commis-saires. Documents annexes, Paris: Librairie des Annales économiques.

Reni, Lorenzo (1981), La Politica linguistica della Rivoluzione francese, Naples:Liguori.

Rochmann, Marie-Christine éd. (2000), Esclavage et abolitions, Mémoires et systèmesde représentation, Paris: Karthala.

Sala-Molins Louis (2002), Le Code noir ou Le Calvaire de Canaan, Paris: Presses universitaires de France.

Schmitt, Carl (1922), Politische Theologie. Vier Kapitel zur Lehre der Souveränität,Munich & Leipzig: Dunkler & Humboldt.

Weber, Max (2005), Gesammelte Werke, 22–4 Herrschaft, Tübingen: JCB Mohr.

Suggested citationDubreuil, L. (2007), ‘Don du français et parole (post) coloniale’, International Journal

of Francophone Studies 10: 3, pp. 345–358, doi: 10.1386/ijfs.10.3.345/1

Contributor detailsLaurent is the director of the French Studies Program and an Assistant Professor

of French and Francophone literatures at Cornell University. His research focuses

on the literary response to the disciplines of knowledge. Working in several differ-

ent fields, he made a recent contribution to postcolonial studies in France by edit-

ing a special issue of the journal Labyrinthe (no. 24, 2006) entitled ‘Faut-il être

postcolonial ?’ [Should We Be Postcolonial]. In 2008, he will publish his second

book, a study on language and social prescription in the French colonial empire.

Contact: Department of Romance Studies & French Studies Program, 303 Morrill

Hall, Cornell University, 14853–4701 Ithaca, NY, USA.




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International Journal of Francophone Studies Volume 10 Number 3© 2007 Intellect Ltd.


Between nostalgia and desire: l’Ecoled’Alger’s transnational identifications andthe case for a Mediterranean relationEdwige Tamalet Talbayev University of California

AbstractThis article examines the transnational forms of cultural affiliation andMediterranean margin-to-margin circuits of production with which l’Ecoled’Alger (here, Audisio and Camus) experimented in the 1930s, and highlightsnew theoretical perspectives appropriate to these practices. The authors’ use of amythicized Mediterranean as a unifying trope downplays national and religiousdifferences to the benefit of a common utopian identity both cosmopolitan innature and generative of a regional awareness which runs counter to dominantcolonial segregationist discourses. Descendants of immigrants from throughoutthe Mediterranean, these writers occupy a unique positionality which enablesthem to open new spaces for identification and articulate anti-fascist stances aswell as a limited critique of colonial practices. These writers’ imaginative affilia-tions spell out a transnational position, which calls for regional areas of study tobe considered autonomously. Attention to regional spaces would constructivelydisplace analytical models where the theoretical existence of marginal spaces isbut a by-product of their necessary relation to the metropole. The recognition ofmargin-to-margin relations leaves room for théories de la Relation in keepingwith Glissant’s paradigm, thereby showing how, in a global decentred paradigm,relational theories from the margins can provide viable alternative frameworks.

RésuméCet article examine les formes alternatives d’affiliations culturelles développéespar l’Ecole d’Alger (ici, Audisio et Camus) dans les années 1930. Le recours àune Méditerranée mythique et transnationale qui transcenderait les clivagesnationaux et religieux met l’accent sur une identité commune pour tous les Méditerranéens, une identité cosmopolite génératrice d’une appartenance régionalequi va à l’encontre des discours ségrégationnistes coloniaux. Descendants d’immi-grés originaires de diverses régions méditerranéennes, ces auteurs occupent uneposition unique au-delà des polarités colonisateur/colonisé qui leur permet deconcevoir de nouveaux espaces identitaires et d’articuler des positions antifas-cistes ainsi qu’une critique limitée des pratiques coloniales. Les affiliationsimaginaires de ces auteurs développent une conception transnationale de laMéditerranée qui préconise un modèle d’études postcoloniales qui n’aurait paspour seule perspective l’inéluctable relation que l’ex-colonie entretient avec sonex-metropole. Une telle méthode pourrait fournir une alternative fructueuse à des


KeywordsAlbert Camus

Edouard Glissant

Gabriel Audisio

globalization

history

Mediterranean

(post)colonialism

postcolonial theory

relational theories

transnationalism

IJFS_10.3_05_art_Talbayev.qxd 11/6/07 4:36 PM Page 359

modèles analytiques qui ne considéreraient les espaces périphériques qu’au seind’une relation inégale avec l’Europe. Le principe de relations entre périphériesaffranchies d’un quelconque rapport avec la métropole ouvre le champ auxthéories de la Relation inspirées de Glissant qui, à l’âge de la mondialisation etd’une vision décentrée du monde, peuvent constituer de viables alternativesthéoriques.

In adapting postcolonial studies to the context of a globalized world,critics have been increasingly calling into question the adequacy of theo-retical approaches considering ex-colonial spaces individually and onlythrough a necessary one-to-one relation to the former metropole. Whilepostcolonial studies were in many ways founded on the elaboration of acritique of colonial binarism and a reconfiguration of the colonial hier-archy established between the metropole and its ex-colonies, recentscholarship has paid particular attention to transnational comparativeframeworks where entire regions have to be configured as unified objectsof study, be they centred on language groups (the francophone world, forinstance) or on a common history (the black Atlantic). Such a regionalapproach was also fundamental in early conceptions of North Africanidentities and cultures. Major authors such as Assia Djebar and Tahar BenJelloun have deconstructed the France–North Africa dyad in their writ-ings, striving to multiply connections between Maghrebi culture as awhole and other European traditions.1 In addition, influential postcolonialMaghrebi criticism of the past 25 years has set out to configure NorthAfrican culture as distinct from both the French colonial model and later,state-sponsored nationalistic configurations of the Maghreb as Arabiconly. Works such as Abdelkebir Khatibi’s Maghreb Pluriel (1983), forinstance, moved away from both colonial and nationalist frameworks toemphasize the residual Mediterranean cultural elements underlyingMaghrebi culture, thereby bringing to the fore the distinctive historicalintermingling of cultures in the area. Khatibi’s conception fruitfully pre-sented North Africa as a mosaic of cultures resulting from simultaneouswaves of conquests and occupations. Such a paradigm can profitably beextended to the whole Mediterranean, thereby underscoring the dynamicsof exchange and communication that tied the Maghreb to a variety oflocations throughout the Mediterranean during successive colonial experi-ences preceding the 130 years of French colonization – the Roman,Arabic, Ottoman conquests, on the one hand, and also the conquest ofSpain and parts of Southern Europe by the Arabs and certain Berbergroups on the other.

In keeping with that regional framework and in the aim of movingbeyond the North–South antagonism between Europe and North Africa inour global era, this article aims to reconfigure the Mediterranean as astrategic space of exchange and collaboration between its northern andsouthern shores. Decades of French, British and Italian colonization of theMediterranean’s southern shore in the name of civilization stand at theorigin of the opposition and exploitation governing many significantaspects of dealings between Europe and its orientalized other.Discriminatory political measures demarcated with precision the spacethat each community (French and Muslim) was to occupy within colonial

360 Edwige Tamalet Talbayev

1. See WinifredWoodhull,‘Postcolonial thoughtand culture inFrancophone NorthAfrica’, in CharlesForsdick and DavidMurphy (eds),FrancophonePostcolonial Studies, aCritical Introduction,London: Arnold,2003, pp. 211–20.


society, thus making segregation and confinement the logic of colonialpolicy-making. The polarization of the colonizer and the colonized, a con-figuration on which all subsequent relations were to be based, ensured theperpetuation of such a dichotomy into our postcolonial period. Findingalternative historical patterns of identification within the Mediterraneanbeyond the two poles of colonizer and colonized therefore carries with itpotential in a global context where new relational configurations ofregional spaces may offer fruitful alternatives to the colonial-inspired pri-macy of the metropole/European centre with regard to which the ThirdWorld can only stand as marginal and derivative. The option of multiple/regional identifications and margin-to-margin networks of production andcollaboration thus open up new cultural spaces that offer a corrective tothe failures of postcolonial global relations between centres and periph-eries. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Algérianiste conceptions,which will be analyzed in greater detail later, already conceived of Franceand Algeria as organically tied. Yet, their emphasis on native Berbers asthe only legitimate North African people downplayed the importance ofsuccessive waves of Muslim conquests, be they Arabic or Turkish. Berbers,who were believed to descend from Indo-Europeans, thus were seen as thehistorical heirs to North African ‘original’ culture – the Roman Christianone, a conception which ignored centuries of Islamic influence and con-doned French colonization as the legitimate repossession of Christian land.Less prone to revert to underlying polarization in this way was l’Ecole d’Alger,which during the inter-war period appeared more open to proteiform modesof syncretism.

A fruitful failureL’Ecole d’Alger was a literary movement that emerged in the Algerian capi-tal in the late 1930s as a utopian humanistic response to the colonialracialized discourses of modernity that had been mobilized in the coloniesto facilitate the institutionalization of the French colonial presence andassociated patterns of segregation. Those writers’ use of the Mediterraneanas a unifying trope downplayed race and religious differences to the benefitof a common transnational identity both cosmopolitan in nature and gen-erative of regional awareness. My analysis will intentionally focus on thetwo main founders of the movement’s philosophy, Gabriel Audisio andAlbert Camus. Their large theoretical output, which included essays andspeeches, will be privileged to the detriment of most of their fictionalwritings. Due to space constraints, only writings by these two authors willbe considered. Other contributors, such as Emmanuel Roblès or JeanAmrouche, for instance, were however no less important. In consideringtheir fruitful imaginative conception of social relations in the colonial con-text, an alternative articulated at the apex of modernity in the key decadeof the 1930s; it is imperative to note that the movement’s reconfigurationof the colonial order was mostly utopian and was outrun by the course ofevents. Their lack of anti-colonial activism, for instance, which has beenunderstandably condemned by critics, undoubtedly constitutes the mainlimit of their argument.2 Although the authors systematically denouncedthe segregation at work in colonial society, they paradoxically never advo-cated the end of colonization, a system that ‘needs’ segregation to survive.

361Between nostalgia and desire: l’Ecole d’Alger’s transnational…

2. For the sake of historical accuracy, itis nevertheless impor-tant to note that, in the late 1930s,Algerian nationalistshad only recentlyenvisionedindependence fromthe metropole as the only adequatesolution to thecolonial situation. Upto the failure of the1936 Blum-Violettebill, which aimed toendow certaincategories of Muslimswith Frenchcitizenship and itsprivileges, Algerianintellectuals, such asFerhat Abbas, hadbeen calling forgreater equalitybetween the twocommunities in anAlgeria that theyhoped would be‘départementalisée’,i.e. administrativelyintegrated into theFrench public spaceon a par with itsother regions. Theirhope for success hadbeen fueled by theirunremitting faith in the Frenchgovernment in Paris,which they dissociatedfrom the colonialFrench administrationruled by settlers’interests. Therejection of the Blum-Violette bill by the Frenchparliament thereforemarked the end oftheir confidence in apossible egalitariancollaboration betweenthe two peoples andpushed them towardsmore radical nationalist ideals,paving the way forindependence.


Moreover, their relativization of colonialism, which was envisioned as thehistorical standard for the area, undermined their utopian call for absoluteequality between North Africa and Europe. Their attempts at changingthe order of things therefore remained inadequate and at odds with the real-ities of colonial rule. Their reluctance to oppose colonization made theirposition untenable, especially in the context of exacerbated polarizationushered in by the Algerian war of independence and sealed the failure oftheir mythical reformative scheme, which, in some instances, seems to havebeen incapable to resist the very colonial dynamics of segregation that ithad set out to oppose. In this respect, it is important to remark that bothCamus and Audisio seem at times to have sensed the limit that the reality ofcolonial hierarchy set to their project and that segregation came to rever-berate on their arguments in a dynamics that could evoke the return of thecolonial repressed. This inability to successfully adapt itself to the reality ofcolonialism, however, does not in any way minimize the potential of l’Ecoled’Alger’s project for our purpose.

Reconfiguring the Mediterranean as a cultural centre in its own right,l’Ecole d’Alger opened up the colonial space of Algeria, which had hithertoonly been configured as peripheral with regards to the metropole, andintegrated it into a pan-Mediterranean backdrop. By redefining the north-ern Mediterranean, which had been discursively configured as Christianand exclusively European by restrictive colonial ideologies, the movement’sendeavours resulted in a genuine disruption of the rationale of hierarchi-cal segregation in the colonial space, albeit on the discursive level only. Iwill focus on the transnational alternative forms of historical and culturalaffiliation, and Mediterranean margin-to-margin circuits of production inwhich l’Ecole d’Alger engaged and highlight new theoretical perspectivesappropriate to these practices. Their reconsideration of polarized under-standings of the colonial Mediterranean appears to be particularly produc-tive in the context of our postcolonial era, if only to help us find productivealternatives to most socio-political approaches to multiculturalism in theFrench national context, approaches still predominantly conditioned by alogic of resentment directly inherited from the rigid, binary dynamics ofthe colonial period that culminated in the Algerian war. By articulatingtheir concept of a transcontinental Mediterranean identity around the critiqueof hierarchy, the authors associated with the l’Ecole d’Alger also helped todesegregate the concept of modernity, at the same time making an argu-ment in favour of culturally specific forms of the modern that need to beconsidered in and of themselves rather than in relation to an exterior cul-tural standard. The argument elaborated in the 1930s is still of great rele-vance in our globalized age owing to its advocacy of a transnationalregional paradigm that could be duplicated on the global level. It thus par-allels relational theories, such as Edouard Glissant’s théories de la Relation,which provide a compelling theoretical substitute for First World versusThird World hierarchized conceptions of our global world.

Imaginative disruptions of the colonial discursiveDuring the late 1930s, at the apex of the implementation of colonialmodernity, a group of writers descending from various Mediterranean cul-tures emerged in the Algerian capital in a movement that was to be



known as l’Ecole d’Alger. It should be noted that l’Ecole d’Alger (also calledEcole Nord-Africaine des Lettres) in no way constitutes a unified literarymovement. It was so identified years after most of its members had beenscattered throughout France, and this very designation was refuted byAlbert Camus and Emmanuel Roblès, two of its most eminent members.For the purpose of this article, however, we will disregard legitimate cri-tiques as to the somewhat incorrect appellation and use it to refer to theset of writings by Camus and Audisio that elaborated the theoretical andpolitical stances of the movement. The main contributors to this move-ment coalesced around the figure of Edmond Charlot, the founder of theEditions Charlot, whose collection ‘Méditerranéennes’ through its focus onthe celebration of (pan-)Mediterranean culture served as a locus of dia-logue for a nexus of authors with otherwise quite diverse interests. It is inthe small bookshop/library ‘Les vraies richesses’ owned by Charlot thatAlbert Camus met in 1937 with Gabriel Audisio, in those days the mostcelebrated writer of French Algeria (and the only one published in themetropole). Since the onset of French colonization, successive waves ofimmigrants from the northern Mediterranean had settled in French NorthAfrica. Maltese, Corsicans, Catalans, Provençal French, Spaniards andItalians, for instance, constituted a non-negligible part of the early coloniz-ers of French Algeria. It was not until 1896 that Algerian-born Europeansoutnumbered foreign-born immigrants, which made Algeria a land ofimmigration par excellence.3 Authors, such as Audisio and Camus, sharedsimilar transnational Mediterranean origins. Gabriel Audisio was born toa Piedmontese father and a Niçoise mother in Marseille although the fam-ily moved to North Africa soon after his birth. Early in his career, he evinceda strong interest in historical figures that united the Mediterranean: hisresearch on Mediterranean conquerors from the whole Latin and non-Latin Mediterranean resulted in the publication of two books on Hannibaland Haroun-al-Raschid, the leader of many expeditions launched againstthe Roman Empire in the Eastern Mediterranean.4 In a similar vein, hisanthology of the tales of Cagayous followed by a glossary of pataouète5

betrayed a fascination with the Mediterranean hybridity that such a populardialect evinced. After his French father’s death, Albert Camus was raisedby his mother’s Balearic family. He never seemed to master any other lan-guage than French, but his lack of linguistic skills was largely compensatedby his passion for Spanish (in particular, Andalusian) culture. Through hisveneration of Iberian culture, Camus acknowledged and cultivated anotherlayer of identity, one that proved irreducible to pied-noir or metropolitanFrenchness, no matter what his situation with regard to French citizenshipand its prerogatives.

It is from this very irreducibility to monolithic categories that theauthors’ identity springs, culturally but also in terms of class. Endowed withthe privilege of citizenship, unlike the Muslim subalterns, they neverthelessbelonged to underclass backgrounds. Southern European ethnicity and aworking-class background oftentimes seemed to go hand in hand, bothdenying them equality with the ruling land-owning French elite. Standingin between the main two communities, their vision of the colonial situation(and, beyond that, of the hegemonic discourses associated with it) thereforegoes beyond the dominant discursive framing of French colonial society and


3. See Jamil M. Abun-Nasr, A History of theMaghreb, Cambridge:Cambridge UniversityPress, 1971, p. 256.

4. In 1930, Audisio’s La vie de Haroun-al-Raschid was published byGallimard. Berger-Levrault published his Hannibal in 1961.Al-Raschid was thelate eighth centuryfifth Abbasid caliph in Baghdad.

5. Cagayous was aworking-classpicaresque hero ofAlgiers’s folkloreknown for his colourful vocabularyand his impudence.Originally from Bab-el-Oued, one of thepoorestneighbourhoods inAlgiers, he is the epitome of pied-noir(French colonist)vitality and boldness.Pataouète was thehybrid dialect spokenby the communities inBab-el-Oued and is ablend of ‘French,Arabic, Italian,Spanish, Maltese, andmore’ (GabrielAudisio, Algérie,Méditerranée, feuxvivants, Paris:Rougerie, 1957, p. 29). See alsoMusette, Cagayous(textes recueillis parGabriel Audisio),Paris: Balland, 1972.


opens new spaces for identification – that of a mythical pan-Mediterraneanidentity that, in a humanistic fashion, would transcend national and reli-gious divisions. The early decision to include in their circle Muslim writers,such as Mouloud Feraoun and Mohammed Dib, who would later play a cru-cial role in the development of a national postcolonial literature, enabledthem to mark out a distinctive position vis-à-vis colonizer–colonized polari-ties. Prominent members of l’Ecole d’Alger proved to be strong supporters ofMuslim Algerian authors: for instance, it was Charlot who publishedMouloud Feraoun’s first novel, Le fils du Pauvre (Editions Rivages). Moreover,the influence of the movement on the following generation of Algerian writ-ers has been commonly noted. Publisher Edmond Charlot thus claimed inan interview with Frédéric-Jacques Temple, a lesser known member of l’Ecoled’Alger, that Mouloud Feraoun decided to start writing after reading Roblès’novels.6 Charlot also reported that the treatment of the colonized figure seenin Roblès’ fiction fascinated Feraoun. Roblès initiated the publication ofimportant works of early postcolonial Algerian literature. As the head of LeSeuil’s ‘Méditerranée’ collection, he published authors such as Nabile Farès,Tahar Djaout and Mohammed Dib, all of whom were to become some of themost prominent writers of independent Algeria.

Audisio’s hybrid ‘eternal Mediterranean’Let us now turn to the forms that this reconfiguration of colonial relationstook in the authors’ writings. Gabriel Audisio was chronologically the firstof the group to develop an interest in the cultural interaction broughtabout by the colonial encounter. Because cultural mixing had been a con-stant in the history of the region, Audisio offered a vision of theMediterranean which construed Algeria not as a nationalized space butrather as a local space that would only gain significance as part of agreater region. The main feature of the Mediterranean land and its peoplewas, he suggested, its hybridity. A sound analysis of this hybridity can befound in the opening pages of Jeunesse de la Méditerranée- ‘Les Deux portes dela mer’.7 Significantly, the essay starts with a poetic description of sailorssleeping on a ship deck. The intertwined bodies trigger musings about thepossibility of human brotherhood as the idealized egalitarian, cosmopoli-tan group of sailors is perceived as the model for a type of intersubjectiverelations freed from the ‘secular antinomies’ caused by national rivalries(p. 10). Soon afterwards in the text, the evocation of cultural differencesseparating the sailors, once they emerge from their pacifying sleep, acts asa foil to the evocation of Mediterranean society. Audisio presents theMediterranean as a liquid continent, a fatherland (patrie) that unitesnationally diverse groups seen as pertaining to the same people, which hecalls the Mediterranean ‘race’ (p. 10). Mediterranean unity proceeds froma common condition, that of cultural syncretism of which North Africa isthe epitome: ‘ “Mon peuple”, a de multiples visages comme tout ce qui vit,et son authenticité repose, comme toutes les vérités, sur un amalgamed’antécédents suspects’ (p. 13). Unity thus proceeds from a common incor-poration of different cultural traditions (although mostly, as we will see,Graeco-Mediterranean ones), and this apprehension of a common state ofhybridity all over the Mediterranean region leads Audisio in essentialistdirections.


6. See Frédéric-JacquesTemple, ‘Souvenirsd’Edmond Charlot’ in Audisio, Camus,Roblès, frères de soleil- leurs combats,RencontresMediterranéennesAlbert Camus, Paris:Edisud, 2003, pp. 127–42.

7. Gabriel Audisio,Jeunesse de laMéditerranée, Paris:Gallimard. 1935


In his use of the term ‘race’ as opposed to ‘nation’ (p. 10), Audisio notonly emphasizes the transnational character of his vision, thereby annihi-lating nationalistic thinking as inadequate; he also reveals a belief in thebiological assimilation of what were originally cultural parameters. Indeed,the recurrence of cultural experiences and symbols throughout theMediterranean is used to demonstrate the existence of a distinctive, syn-cretic state of mind, the Mediterranean psyche, which is thought to be themost perceptible emanation of a specific biological constitution. In this con-text, the recurrent figure of Odysseus, the wanderer, in Audisio’s theoreticalproduction epitomizes such a transborder, hybrid Mediterranean identity.The hero links together vitality, nostalgia-inspired mobility and the pagan-ism inherent in oriental (non-Christian) cultural traditions – all character-istics that lie at the root of Audisio’s conception of the Mediterraneanpeople. This focus on essential Mediterranean features is part and parcel ofthe disruptive potential of Audisio’s discourse, as the very notion of hybrid-ity underlying it directly undermines dominant racialized discourses in thecolony, such as earlier Algérianiste theories, which provided a rationaliza-tion of colonial practices in the making. Based on the writings of LouisBertrand and Robert Randau in the early 1900s, the Algérianiste movementwas the first attempt in the literature produced in the French colony toenvision Algeria as a space of coexistence and cultural communicationbetween the Orient and the Occident. While rejecting the previous oriental-ist littérature d’escale on account of its exoticized foreign perspective, theAlgérianistes meant to provide a realistic account of the dynamics ofAlgerian colonial society through the depiction of the birth of a new race –les Algériens. By emphasizing for the first time the mixed Mediterraneancharacter of the land, the Algérianistes reconfigured Algeria as the cross-road of disparate western (Latin) and oriental cultural influences. Suchinterest in cultural hybridity could have potentially moved away frommonolithic understandings of culture. Yet, the promise of their writingswas short-lived as the transnational character of the Mediterranean influ-ence present in the colony was neutralized; Algeria was mapped out as anenclosed, self-sufficient regional space which obeyed exclusive dynamics.That elaboration of Algeria as a regional paradigm owes much to the con-temporary conceptions of regionalism as an incarnation of ‘True France’.8

In a dystopian national context where the rapid pace of modernization wasperceived as a threat to the ‘true’ national character, conservative region-alisms were regarded as the only legitimate form of resistance to nationaldecline. In traditional regionalist fashion, Algeria was thus envisioned as alocus of regeneration for the corrupted, weakened French Republic, whichhad just then lost the war against the Germans. Algeria appeared to be anew land full of promises, one that could compensate for the 1870 loss ofAlsace-Lorraine (Bertrand’s homeland, which was handed over to theGermans as reparations) and, through the colonial domination and ‘civiliz-ing’ of the natives in the name of North African Latinité (the Roman,Christian history of the land considered as its true tradition), restore Franceto its former grandeur. Gabriel Audisio was no stranger to Algérianiste inter-pretations of Algerian heritage as purely Latin. Early in his career, he hadcontributed to the group’s periodical Afrique and was therefore familiarwith its theories. His writings’ emphasis on the fluidity evinced in


8. For a discussion of the concept seeHerman Lebovics,True France:The Wars over CulturalIdentity, 1900–1945,Ithaca: CornellUniversity Press,1992.


Odysseus’s meandering journey back to Ithaca can thus be read as a reac-tion to the instrumentalization of concepts of hybridity evinced inAlgérianiste writings, as a geographical representation of an absolutehybridity promoted as political ideal.9 Here, the potential of Audisio’s con-cept rests on its geographical scope, as the choice of a local/transnationalparadigm immunizes it from nationalistic recuperation and ensures itspropagation as a vector of desegregation. The choice of the term ‘race’applied to all Mediterranean subjects, regardless of religion or geography,thus must be understood as a rewriting of modern exclusive implicationsusually associated with the concept. If the Mediterranean people (Muslimsand non-Muslims alike) constitutes a different race, it is one that presentsitself as rejuvenating for ‘old’ northern Europe. Its historical eternal youth,here, is not connoted as immaturity or cultural primitivism. A new seman-tics ties youth to regeneration and vitality, thereby displacing historicist dis-courses of the ‘not yet’.10

To the concept of stages in cultural development, Audisio opposes avision of the Mediterranean that would render all historicist judgementobsolete. In this regard, his argument extends the filiations of Mediterraneanculture and European culture, which claims to be descended from it, beyonda Graeco-Roman heritage.11 Audisio thus attempts to defuse discourses thatwould make that culture the only valuable one in the ancient Mediterraneanfor being the avowed precursor of northern European modernity, its con-temporaneous colonial tradition included. In ‘Le Sel de Carthage’,12

Carthage in its cultural hybridity becomes the epitome of an extensiveMediterranean unified beyond religious and geographical divides. Audisiohere again adopts a transnational perspective as his analysis endeavoursto replace Carthaginian culture in its historical context of migrations anddisplacement of populations instead of judging history through the lensof Roman culture. In revealing the reasons for the city’s historical con-demnation, Audisio relativizes it as he reveals that it was an anti-Semiticsentiment rooted in the fear of cultural/racial contamination that led tothe city’s repudiation. Audisio thus offers an alternative reading ofCarthaginian culture, not as a threat to the Latin culture then dominatingthe Mediterranean, but rather as its complement, a locus of fruitful collabo-ration between Orient and Occident. It thus displaces Graeco-Roman cul-ture as the central one in the Mediterranean, thereby relativizing thesuperiority attributed to the civilizations claiming that heritage. Throughhis consideration of Carthage, Audisio thus adds a new component to hisGreek-inspired Mediterranean hybridity: Semitic culture, taken heremostly as Jewish rather than Arabic (although both branches are insepa-rable for Audisio13), yet taken not so much in religious terms as in itsethnographic character. It is here the Semitic orient of mysticism (‘l’ori-ent sémitique (…) de la mystique juive’, p. 52) that is taken into accountas a foil to ‘Greco-Latin’ rationality (p. 52). Semitism is thus consideredmore as a principle of irrationality than as a purely Jewish element.Carthage rather embodies non-Christian/Oriental culture detached fromits later offshoot: Roman Christian culture, Christianity being taken hereas the rigid hierarchical organization of the Roman Church rather thanits mystical beliefs. Audisio’s Mediterranean is thus described as originatingfrom this perpetual conflicting encounter between East and West through


9. For the theoreticalmodalities of suchinstrumentalization oftheories of métissage,see Christopher Miller,Nationalists andNomads: Essays onFrancophone AfricanLiterature and Culture,Chicago and London:University of ChicagoPress, 1999.

10. I here useChakrabarty’sterminology designat-ing the theories envogue in colonial timesthat justified colonial-ism by the purportedimmaturity of colonialpeoples to dispose ofthemselves. See DipeshChakrabarty,‘Introduction’, inProvincializing Europe:Postcolonial Thoughtand HistoricalDifference, Princeton:Princeton UniversityPress, 2000.

11. Audisio’s writings pre-sent two sides of Greekculture that are put tothe fore according tothe historiography inwhich they arementioned: paganismand the culture ofepics (what Audisiosees as the fruitful sideof Greek culture), andGreek rationality,embodied either in itsphilosophy or in itspolitical achievements.It is the latter charac-teristic that is hereconveyed in the term‘Greco-Latin’, whichadequately puts to thefore the recuperationand limitation of Greekculture to what hasbeen adopted by itsLatin offshoot.Audisio’s use of (irra-tional) Greek cultureas epitome of an inclu-sive Mediterraneancharacter thus standscloser to the evocationof irrational Semitismdiscussed below thanit does to the Greco-Latin tradition.


‘horizontal’ waves of eastern migrations to the West. Carthaginian‘Semitism’ thus historically provided a counterpoint to a Roman/Christiandomination necessary to ‘faire des étincelles’ (p. 51), that is for culturalhybridity to eventually occur (all Audisio’s terms). Audisio’s Mediterraneanis therefore one of reconciliation, one of fusion between Orient andOccident, whose heartland lies in the central land of Tunisia. Eternal in itsshared hybridity, its culture stands the test of time and all waves ofcolonization: ‘Sous la domination romaine, la latinité n’y change presquerien’ (p. 55), a concept that could possibly include the French colonialpresence.

The two shifts from self-enclosed Algeria to the transnationalMediterranean and from Latin ancestry to Greek-Semitic ancestry thuswork hand in hand to form a reconfiguration of a utopian North Africancommunity included in a Mediterranean region that stretches beyondracial and religious divides. The recuperation of Semitism as part and par-cel of Audisio’s redefinition of a Mediterranean of reconciliation is thusintegral to his disruptive potential. In emphasizing the Mediterranean as aspace of reconciliation between Latinness and Judaism, Audisio’s argu-ment undermines the very working of Algérianiste thinking, which tendedto associate anti-semitism with faithfulness to an original common Latinculture. His words therefore resonate as anti-fascist, be it Italian fascism inthe guise of Latinness or European fascism, with the rise of Hitler inGermany and the growth of an anti-Semitic sentiment in France. Theinclusion of Islam in his vision, however, is much less conclusive. Audisio’sbiography of Haroun-al-Raschid provides insight into his perception ofIslamic culture. A romanced depiction of the life and achievements of theBaghdad caliph, whom Audisio interestingly presents as the head of theArab empire that stretched from Spain to India, the book enthusiasticallyportrays an idealized Islamic civilization of power and enlightenment onits way to conquering the whole Mediterranean. Although the focus lieson Haroun-al-Raschid’s empire in Asia, his reference to Al-Andalus, theMuslim rule over parts of the Iberian peninsula, emphasizes the transna-tional character of this golden age of Islamic civilization. Haroun-al-Raschid’s court therefore becomes the epitome of Islamic enlightenment,which is to be found throughout the Arab empire all the way to Al-Andalus, the Muslim rule over parts of the Iberian peninsula. Yet, thedefeat against Charles Martel spelled the end of Arab ambitions in theMediterranean and it is on a somewhat nostalgic note that Audisiodeplores the incompleteness of the Arab conquest of both Mediterraneanshores. The image of Islam in the Mediterranean is thus, to Audisio, that ofa failure, of an absence, one which holds sway over his treatment of Islamand Muslim natives in his theoretical configurations. In narrating the his-tory of the Arab empire in the East, Audisio chooses to present unadulter-ated Muslim civilization free of any intermingling with the nativepopulations of North Africa.14 Audisio thus dissociates Islam from theMediterranean region. The inclusion of Graeco-Mediterranean andSemitic cultures partake of the same objective: redefining theMediterranean as a transnational space of contact immune from national-istic recuperations. By choosing to focus on Islam outside theMediterranean region, Audisio fails to incorporate Islamic elements into


12. In Gabriel Audisio, LeSel de la Mer, Paris:Gallimard, 1936, pp. 47–75.

13. ‘On me somme dedistinguer entre Juifs,la race qui se dit élue,la nation d’Israël, etles peuples sémitiques,entre l’ethnographieet la religion. Chicanede mots qui nechange rien au fond.Les sémites d’Arabiene sont pas des Juifs,soit, mais l’Histoireatteste la fraternitésomatique etspirituelle des diverspeuples issus dumême terroir (…).’Ibid., pp. 48–49.

14. A major blind spot inAudisio’s conceptionis his perception ofBerber cultures.Rarely discussed perse, they are often only used as mereethnographiccounterpoint to theevocation of northernMediterraneancultures and do not significantlycontribute toAudisio’s mythicalconception ofMediterraneanhybridity. Audisiogenerally downplaysBerber specificitiesand subsumes themwithin what he calls‘le génie nord-africain’, a syncreticcultural constructreminiscent ofMediterraneanhybridity whichreduces Berbercultures to a disparityof cultural elementsassimilated fromsuccessive waves ofcolonization. It ispossible that Audisio’s reluctanceto acknowledge theexistence of specific,autonomous Berbercultures constitutes a reaction toAlgérianistetheories, which


this syncretic vision. Islam is therefore relegated to a superficial, marginalposition; it does not even warrant any thorough consideration of its richhistory in the North African region (in mythical Al-Andalus, for instance,the setting of many accounts of Islamic-inspired Mediterranean hybridity).It is thus not surprising that, in his theoretical production, the treatmentof the Muslim figures, be they Arabs or Berbers, should remain frustrat-ingly peripheral; nor is it surprising that his vision of a commonMediterranean identity should predominantly be influenced by Graeco-Mediterranean cultures. It is in this deficient representation of the Muslimnatives that the blind spots of Audisio’s theoretical configurations are mostperceptible, his dealings with the segregated natives possibly constituting acase of the return of the colonial repressed mentioned earlier.

Audisio’s main contribution, thus, lies in his attempt to promote analternative value system, albeit limited and utopian, which remaps theMediterranean locus as a transnational and, possibly, anti-segregationistone in its questioning of the rationale of the racializing discourses onwhich the colonial enterprise rests. His focus on a hybrid North Africatherefore transgresses its local boundaries as l’Ecole d’Alger made it a capitalsite in the global struggle against fascism and its associated segregation.That move was to be developed by Camus who took Audisio’s insights to ahigher philosophical level.

Camus’ existentialism: a transnational revision of the Marxistideology of revoltCamus’ conception of the Mediterranean is in many ways comparable tothat of Audisio: his texts evince the same distrust of the Algérianiste rein-forcement of racial and ethnic dichotomies as well as a similar interest in atransnational paradigm. His denunciatory approach nevertheless doesnot stop at the consideration of segregation as a mere conjectural phe-nomenon. If Camus shares Audisio’s belief in the ‘eternal Mediterranean’,his analysis strives to reconcile that belief in the non-hierachical nature ofMediterranean culture with the realities of colonial rule in Algeria. Hisdilemma is further compounded by his simultaneous adherence to Marxistdoctrines and associated ideals of progress and historicism that Audisio’snon-historicist, cyclical conception of history (waves of transient conquests)was so quick to dismiss.

The main text by Camus dealing with the issue in a Mediterraneancontext is the speech that he delivered at the inauguration of the Maison dela Culture in February 1937, an address generally considered to be thefounding manifesto of l’Ecole d’Alger.15 The text was composed at a crucialmoment in Camus’ relation to the PCF (French communist party) as hecame to oppose the party’s Eurocentric doctrines on account of its inca-pacity to adapt its ideological principles to the complexity and uniquenessof the Algerian situation. The connection between the PCF and Algeriannationalists had been a turbulent one, in which Camus directly partici-pated when in charge of the recruiting of Muslims. Indeed, the party’soriginal reluctance to accommodate devout Muslim groups in a politicalmovement that had always rested on the denunciation of religion waseventually mitigated by its crucial need for their support against thefascist threat in Europe. The party’s instrumentalization of the Muslim


instrumentalizedwhat they depicted as Berber culture’s‘eternal’ character to better justify theinsignificance of theArabic conquest andto reduce NorthAfrican culture to its Latin past.

15. The text can be foundin Albert Camus,Essais, Paris:Gallimard, 1965, pp. 1321–27.


people, combined with the official downplaying of their demands for justiceand equality within the colony, was to cause an irremediable rift betweenCamus and the elites of the party, from which he eventually resigned.16

The inaugural speech must thus be considered, in this tense context, interms of its opposition to monolithic doctrines defended by the PCF, whichCamus accused of sacrificing the well-being of the people in the name ofideology. While his argument does not reject the emancipatory claimsunderlying grand narratives, such as Marxism, it nevertheless emphasizeshow Orthodox Marxist doctrines from the late 1930s perpetuated a hier-archy between an essentialized Europe, where the threat of fascism had tobe defused as a main priority, and the rest of the world, where demands onthe part of the oppressed did not resonate with such urgency. As a matterof fact, in its assessment of political priorities, Marxist ideology partook ofthe same logic of abstraction that informs historicist conceptions of civi-lization based on the dangerous notion of progress. Despite its avowedfocus on the universal, it paradoxically resulted in the reinforcement ofnationalistic/racist hierarchies. Camus therefore suggests a reformulationof Marxism that would be more amenable to the distinctive context of colo-nial segregation in the Mediterranean.

Camus’ revision goes back to the evocation of an earlier form of(Mediterranean) culture, one of collaboration and harmony between allcommunities. In this respect, he appropriates the modern concept of nos-talgia for a state that pre-existed unruly modernization. Here, however, itis the state of culture of pre-modern societies, not their apparent primi-tivism or state of nature, that is considered. This backward movementshould not be confused with the regionalist conservatism that appeared inFrance around the same time. The goal here truly is to reappropriate apast deemed to have been less inimical to oppressed subjects in order topromote social advancement. What is argued truly engages the moderntheoretical apparatus at its best. Camus offers an alternative humanismworking its revision from within the limits of the modern, only in relationto that framework. The text starts with a defence of regionalism, disengag-ing it from backward traditionalist doctrines such as those of theAlgérianistes. Camus explicitly mobilizes a liberal subtext in order to betterframe the relevance of his proposition:

Il y a peut être quelque chose d’étonnant dans le fait que des intellectuels de

gauche puissent se mettre au service d’une culture qui n’intéresse en rien la

cause qui est la leur, et même, en certains cas, a pu être accaparée (comme

c’est le cas pour Maurras) par des doctrinaires de droite.17

This argument is first and foremost a diatribe against conservativenationalism, which is equated with imperial decadence, a desperate attemptto preserve the once fluid superiority of its spirit through the codificationof its relation to others. In opposition to such notions, Camus puts forththe idea that human nature and civilization are intrinsically good.Corruption stems from the adulterated relation of the subject to theworld, which is generated by unnecessary mediation through abstractions.History (here taken as the historicist narrative of progress), like all abstrac-tions, can only continue past injustices instead of escaping the logic of


16. See Roger Quilliot,‘Politique et cultureMéditerranéennes’ inCamus, Essais, pp.1314–20, for athorough discussionof the tumultuousrelationship betweenCamus and the PCF.

17. ibid., p. 1321.


subjugation, which has led to the current situation of oppression andsegregation. Abstracting ‘life’ (the ‘essence’ of Mediterranean culture forCamus), it also petrifies it in ‘pensée morte’ (dead thought); categories whicheventually shape realities that man, the subject of Camus’ humanisticreading of Marxism, should shape. Man is thus enslaved by this rational-ization of his experience. Camus’ text emphasizes the importance of thediscursive in the erection of unnatural oppressive dynamics, advocating aturn back to an ancestral Mediterranean ‘culture vivante’ (living culture)and the abandoning of Germanic/northern European ‘civilisation morte’(dead civilization, also understood as the nationalistic phase of culture).

The concept of a transnational Mediterranean is therefore presented asthe most adequate safeguard against possible nationalistic recuperations,for the hybrid quality of the culture it generates is ‘felt’ without mediationby every Mediterranean subject in a renewed (although utopian) solidarity.Camus’ analysis thus endows it with both historical and geographical rele-vance as it is substituted for nationalistic paradigms:

La Méditerranée est de tous les pays le seul peut-être qui rejoigne les grandes

pensées orientales. Car elle n’est pas classique et ordonnée, elle est diffuse et

turbulente […] Et à ce confluent, il n’y a pas de différence entre la façon dont

vit un Espagnol ou un Italien des quais d’Alger, et les Arabes qui les

entourent. Ce qu’il y a de plus essentiel dans le génie méditerranéen jaillit

peut-être de cette rencontre unique dans l’histoire et la géographie née entrel’Orient et l’Occident (my emphasis).18

Its undeniable connection to historical hybridity marks its very multifac-eted nature. But, beyond that, the appeal to a glorious past functions as acultural mémoire of which one can avail oneself in order to come to a gen-uine understanding of the world and to protect oneself from the harmfuleffects of chauvinistic, divisive abstraction.19 We can see how the mythicalnotion of a unified Mediterranean region pervading Audisio’s writings ishere reworked in the political/philosophical mode as an immediate inter-subjective relation, a rediscovered human solidarity, one that is meant tocompensate for the precarious absurdity of the human condition. Thelocal focus thus becomes essential as it is through local cultures alone thatmen better grasp their humanity and feel the need of community, of revoltfor a ‘common’ good that is really experienced as such. It is important toremark that although the hypothesis of immediate solidarity between sub-jects from all communities holds great potential for Camus’ theoreticalrevision of Marxism, it is doomed to have limited practical effects due tothe existence of unbridgeable material differences between communities ina colonial context. Interestingly, these material differences constitute thelatent text of Camus’ argument, thereby reverberating on his treatment ofnative figures who bear the brunt of segregation. Camus’ enumeration inthe preceding quotation constitutes a case in point. While the Spanish andItalian subjects are endowed with the privilege of individuality (and associ-ated agency), the natives are presented as an indistinct group (les arabes).Moreover, the focus here lies on the two central characters, the Europeansubjects, while the natives who surround them hold their habitual periph-eral, marginal position. Camus’ argument therefore appears to be at odds


18. ibid., p. 1325. I readthe phrase ‘la façon[de vivre]’ here as asynonym for theculture and traditionsof these ethnic groupsrather than theirliving conditions).

19. This concept ofculture vivante worksas a prefiguration ofhis pensée de midilater expounded inCamus’ mostcomprehensivepolitical work,L’homme révolté,Paris: Gallimard,1951. It is alsointeresting to see howthis idea prefiguresFanon’s argument inPeaux Noires Masques Blancswhere theMartiniquan developsthe notion of a locusof proud blackness asa reservoir fromwhich to draw thestrength to resistcolonial racistdiscourses deprivingthe individual of hishumanity (see FrantzFanon, Peaux Noires,Masques Blancs,Paris: Seuil, 1952).Both alternativecultural affiliationscan productively beexplored as elementsof the revision of aharmful normativehumanism.


with colonial reality and his theoretical efforts to promote equalitybetween all subjects, despite their critique of the ideological rigidity thatcauses exclusion, seem to eventually fall prey to the power of the colonialdynamics of segregation.

Yet, this address is significant in that it constitutes a strategic movetowards a small scale, culturally specific geography of revolt within aninternationalist framework, as the establishment of the newMediterranean paradigm is only the first step towards a globalized recon-figuration of Marxist understandings of the relation between the subjectand ideology. Even though other spaces are not specifically referred to, theallusion is quite forthright: ‘Dans le cadre de l’internationalisme, la choseest réalisable. Si chacun dans sa sphère, son pays, sa province consent àun modeste travail, le succès n’est pas loin.’ 20 In this respect, the Maisonde la culture was to become a crucial organ of local collectivism, therebyadvocating the relevance of regional frameworks to internationalist, globalprojects. It is nevertheless imperative here to disengage the idea of revoltfrom any advocacy of anti-colonial praxis. Revolt is to be enacted on thesocial level only as a personal commitment potentially duplicated on thegroup level. This notion does not in any way promote the end of colonial-ism or Algerian independence. Nationalistic thinking, even the anti-colonial kind, is dismissed, therefore further limiting the practical impactof Camus’ configuration since the natives’ position within colonial societyexcludes them from any configuration of revolt.

A language ‘close to laughter or poetry’: assessing the impactof l’Ecole d’Alger’s reconfigurationsCamus’ philosophy of revolt aims to show how thinking/praxis predicatedon partisanship and loyalty to rigid ideology necessarily leads to aporia. Inhis view, the remedy to dangerous abstraction lies in the rehabilitation ofpersonal agency in relation to over-determined social circumstances. Itappears then that the existentialist issue of individual responsibility and free-dom underlying Camus’ later work was already present in the 1937 inau-gural address discussed earlier, albeit as failed utopia. Yet, his insights,although inadequate to the context of colonialism, prove to hold tremendoustheoretical potential in our postcolonial context. Just as Mediterranean localcollectivism implies distance from a monolithic, pre-determined ideology, hisunderstanding of human responsibility rests on one’s liberation from identi-ties pre-determined by birth circumstances. In her book France and theMaghreb: Performative Encounters, Mireille Rosello insists on the overdeter-mined character of most postcolonial Franco-Maghrebi encounters. At thebeginning of her introduction, she presents the idea that

[T]he violence of some historical contexts makes any initial encounter with

another subject almost impossible. No first encounter can ever take place

when history, language, religion, and culture exert such pressures upon the

protagonists of the encounter that their desire to speak or be silent is trapped

by preexisting, prewritten dialogues and scenarios (p. 1).

Rosello’s argument places history and its share of conflict, physical orontological, as the main impediments to free-flowing encounters going


20. ibid., p. 1327.


beyond stereotypes and fossilized identities. Rosello’s analysis can shedlight on the disruptive potential of utopian discourse, such as l’Ecoled’Alger’s, in our postcolonial times. Their language, in keeping with heranalysis, is one ‘close to laughter or poetry’.21 Through what Rosello callsan ‘imaginative protocol of encounters’ (my emphasis), a protocol thatwould strip the parties involved of a pre-established relationship, utopianwritings can displace the primacy of discourses of absolute antagonismthat have shown their political and theoretical limits in our postcolonialperiod: ‘When we assume that we can identify the Mediterranean subjectswho will be the ordinary heroes of this book, if we already know what tocall them (…), the encounters that we imagine are already overdeter-mined by our narratives’ (p. 1, my emphasis). The erasure of alternativepatterns of relations can only encourage the perpetuation of a dialectics ofresentment between the communities involved in the colonial situation,which has often proved to lead into political dead-ends. The 2005 riots inmajor French cities provide of vivid example of the failure of current post-colonial relations in the context of multicultural France. The polarizationof the French and Algerian communities (now extended to all previouslycolonized ethnic groups), which increased exponentially during the war ofindependence, brought about enduring narratives of violence that are stillperceptible in the tension at work in the relations between Français desouche and Français issus de l’immigration. The far-reaching consequencesof durable resentment between colonizers and colonized, those eventsseem to be directly connected to monolithic, frozen conceptions of essen-tialized, polarized identities in a (post)colonial context, which pre-emptany effective integration, be it following the Republican model or other-wise, of ex-colonized populations into the nation. Therefore, the move-ment’s attempted reconfiguration of the normative dyadic understandingof colonizer–colonized relations can provide much-needed theoreticalalternatives to dynamics inherited from colonial times, especially in thecontext of the (French) multicultural nation. In that context, the conceptof transnational (regional) identities that would not be co-opted by mod-ern exclusive discourses has tremendous theoretical potential. Undeniably,the moment of a shared identity for Maghrebi and European communitieshas passed (as it already had in the days of French colonialism in Algeria).Yet, the fascination exerted by colonial Algeria as a unique colonial spaceof encounter between diverse civilizations in the Mediterranean testifiesto the (utopian) theoretical attraction of a locus rid of communitariantensions.

L’Ecole d’Alger thus emphasized the necessarily impromptu character ofencounters between subjects from different communities, a stance thatadequately matches the non-binary nature of Algerian society that themovement strove to put to the fore. That spontaneity informs the dynamicof the very concept of hybridity developed by Gabriel Audisio: a hybridityconstrued not as a middle ground position between two fixed subject posi-tions but an ever-changing hybridity based on relational dynamics predi-cated on individual experience (with the limitations mentioned earlier).The true impact of such a stance thus does not lie in direct praxis (it wasnever taken that far by any of the authors), but rather in the attempted(and sometimes successful) dislocation of stereotypical discourses that


21. Mireille Rosello,France and theMaghreb: PerformativeEncounters,Tallahassee:University Press ofFlorida, 2005, p. 6.


tend to polarize subject positions with the tragic consequences alreadymentioned. Therefore, albeit an ‘imaginative’, incomplete one, the reformbrought about by l’Ecole d’Alger is significant as its conception of theMediterranean provides a new context for possible reconfigurations ofintercultural relations in a (post)colonial context. Through their resistanceto the duplication of exclusive categories still at work in a postmodern con-text, the insights of l’Ecole d’Alger pave the way for a reconfiguration ofworldwide models of cultural relations that may be seen to fit with theglobal dynamics of our age. These writers’ cultural affiliations, politicalstances and literary practices spell out a transnational position, whichcalls for the elaboration of new areas of study – here, the Mediterranean –to be considered in their own right. Attention to regional spaces wouldconstructively displace models of representation in which the theoreticalexistence of the marginal space is but a by-product of its necessary relationto the metropole. The recognition of margin-to-margin self-sufficient rela-tions leaves room for relational theories, or théories de la relation, in keepingwith Glissant’s paradigm.

In his Poétique de la Relation, Edouard Glissant engages with the issue ofcultural relations through the lens of hybridity. Positing the ‘rapport àl’autre’ (relation to the other) as the basis of all identity, Glissant empha-sizes the importance of the issue of relating. Starting from a precise con-sideration of ancient colonial traditions (nomadisme envahisseur), which isbut a subcategory of a general principle of mobility (l’errance), Glissanttackles the issue of the representation of the other in a context of unequalcultural encounters. His argument pitches two dynamics of the ancientworld against each other: the attempt to impose Roman culture as universalversus the regional forms of resistance based on the extolling of particu-larism (p. 26). To Glissant, this tension between cultures in contact withone another lies at the root of civilization and constitutes the primummobile at the origin of cultural identity. It is indeed in that relating process(Relation) beyond absolute diversity that cultures come into being; anintrinsic paradigm of totality underlies all thinking about cultures thattakes into account the existence of difference:

La pensée de l’Autre ne cessera d’être duelle qu’à ce moment où les

différences auront été reconnues. La pensé de l’Autre“ comprend ” dès lors la

multiplicité, mais d’une manière mécanique et qui ménage encore les subtil-

ités de l’universel généralisant.22

One more step will be necessary to gain the awareness that cultures par-take of the same totality but Glissant implies that this underlying principleis present all along. The totality implied here is not one of totalitarianism(totalitarisme). It is in essence a decentred one, one where the logic of root-edness in one space has failed. All thinking about totality therefore impliesthe consideration of absolute ‘Relation’:

A partir du moment où les cultures, les terres, les femmes et les hommes ne

furent plus à découvrir mais à connaître, la Relation a figuré un absolu

(c’est-à-dire une totalité enfin suffisante à elle-même) […] Dans la mesure où

notre conscience de la relation est totale, c’est-à-dire immédiate et portant


22. Edouard Glissant,Poétique de la Relation -Poétique III, Paris:Gallimard, 1990, p. 30.


immédiatement sur la totalité réalisable du monde, nous n’avons plus

besoin, quand nous évoquons une poétique de la Relation, d’ajouter: relation

entre quoi et quoi ? C’est pourquoi le mot français ‘Relation’ qui fonctionne

un peu à la manière d’un verbe intransitif, ne saurait répondre par exemple

au terme anglais “relationship”. (pp. 39–40)

The very concept of Relation annihilates the notion of centre, be it geo-graphic (metropole) or cultural (language of the colonizer in a colony).Relation is thus multilingual, de-hierarchized and thereby reminiscent ofthe utopia of the l’Ecole d’Alger. The temptation of rootedness (la racine) isdismissed as the thought of Relation (la pensée de l’errance) has substitutedthe infinite quest for totality in place of nationalistic pretensions. Hereagain, we are faced with the power of the ‘imaginative’ as it dismantlesentrenched dynamics of hierarchization and exclusion. That abolition pro-ceeds from an explosion (éclat), which creates a world described as Chaos,each element of which retains its intricacy and irreducibility to a norm.Yet, that explosion should not be understood as pure scattering: all ele-ments partake of one whole to which they freely relate. In point of fact, theepitome of Relation is the Caribbean archipelago, a space of diffractionwhere all cultures violently clash before being momentarily reconciled viavariable processes of creolization. The Caribbean therefore is a small-scalemodel of cultural relating applicable to the global level. Here, Glissant’sfocus is on the Caribbean Sea. Yet a comparison with the Mediterraneanfollows where the latter is described as being more inclusive than theCaribbean. Nevertheless, no advantage is given to either with regard to itsexemplarity on the global level. For one of the main features of this ‘world-Chaos’ is its intrinsic simultaneous multifaceted movement that deniesboth logic and hierarchy.

Therefore, Glissant’s theory of Relation can, in and of itself, be appro-priated as a strategic response of postcolonial theory to the growing logicof globalization, one that would emphasize a genuine decentring thatcould not be recuperated into contemporary modern processes of hierar-chization. Although the paradigm can be duplicated on the global level, Iwould like to emphasize its particular relevance in the context of theMediterranean as contact zone between First and Third worlds. Eventhough l’Ecole d’Alger’s imaginative views have fallen into oblivion, theiranalysis restores a fuller picture of Mediterranean relations at the apex ofmodernity, thereby providing a much-needed revision of reductive, exclu-sionary notions of European identity. Through their recuperation ofSemitism as part and parcel of Mediterranean identity, these authors dis-placed the primacy of the interwoven history of the Roman Empire and therise of Christianity, which European modernity has claimed as its heritage.Their revision of Mediterranean history presented both sides of theMediterranean (the western/Christian one and the eastern/Semitic one) asinseparable, thereby annihilating any distinction between a civilizedMediterranean and its barbarian other. This redrawing of the boundariesof European genealogy resonates with current-day issues of what shouldconstitute the borders of Europe. While discursively, the rift betweenEurope and North Africa has been perpetuated through decades of anti-immigration policies that have worked to make the two sides of the




Mediterranean irretrievably opposed, the reality of trans-Mediterraneanmigrations begs to differ. The growing influx of migrants from westernand northern Africa through the Mediterranean gateways of Ceuta andMelilla (two Spanish enclaves within mainland Morocco), as well as theCanary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean have proven how porous and blurrythe borders between Europe/the First World and Africa/the Third Worldtruly are.

Such a massive arrival of immigrants has given rise to nationalisticdefensive reactions with regard to the influence of immigrant culture ona European identity that globalization has increasingly hybridized.Reconceiving the Mediterranean as a space of contact and cooperation inour era of globalization is therefore particularly relevant, as North Africahas become a major stake in European dealings with Africa as a whole.Reconfiguring Mediterranean cultures as historically linked and mutuallydependent seems to be crucial in the days when the rise of Muslim funda-mentalisms, which sparked the civil war in Algeria, has also contributedto the ostracism of Muslim countries (and Muslim minorities in Europe)in the context of the US-led war on terror. Moreover, acknowledging theintrinsic cultural diversity of Mediterranean Algeria would be a first steptowards questioning the alleged cultural purity of the Algerian nation,thereby undermining the essentialist discourses on which fundamen-talisms rely and historically reconfiguring Algeria as a space of tolerance‘on a par with Europe’. The need to underscore the historical nature ofNorth–South relations in the Mediterranean area, which continuallyshift as economic, political and social dynamics change, therefore seemsto resonate with increased urgency as theoretical constructions inheritedfrom the colonial hierarchies between colonies and metropole seem morethan ever unable to rise to the theoretical challenge posed by our globaldynamics.

ReferencesAbun-Nasr, Jamil M. (1971), A History of the Maghreb, Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

Audisio, Camus, Roblès, frères de soleil- leurs combats (2003), RencontresMéditerranéennes Albert Camus, Paris: Edisud.

Audisio, Gabriel (1930), La vie de Haroun-al-Raschid, Paris: Gallimard.

—— (1935), Jeunesse de la Méditerranée, Paris: Gallimard.

—— (1936), Sel de la mer, Paris: Gallimard.

—— (1957), Algérie, Méditerranée, feux vivant, Paris: Rougerie.

—— (1961), Hannibal, Paris: Berger-Levrault.

Camus, Albert (1951), L’Homme révolté, Paris: Gallimard.

—— (1965), Essais, Paris: Gallimard.

Chakrabarty, Dipesh (2000), Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought andHistorical Difference, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Fanon, Frantz (1952), Peaux Noires, Masques Blancs, Paris: Seuil.

Glissant, Edouard (1990), Poétique de la Relation - Poétique III, Paris: Gallimard.

Lebovics, Herman (1992), True France: The Wars over Cultural Identity, 1900–1945,Ithaca: Cornell University Press.


Miller, Christopher L. (1999), Nationalists and Nomads: Essays on FrancophoneAfrican Literature and Culture, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

Musette (1972), Cagayous (textes recueillis par Gabriel Audisio), Paris: Balland.

Rosello, Mireille (2005), France and the Maghreb: Performative Encounters,Tallahassee: University Press of Florida.

Woodhull, Winifred (2003), ‘Postcolonial Thought and Culture in FrancophoneNorth Africa’, in Charles Forsdick and David Murphy (eds), FrancophonePostcolonial Studies, a Critical Introduction, London: Arnold, pp. 211–20.

Suggested citationTalbayev, E. T. (2007), ‘Between nostalgia and desire: l’Ecole d’Alger’s transnational

identifications and the case for a Mediterranean relation’, International Journal ofFrancophone Studies 10: 3, pp. 359–376, doi: 10.1386/ijfs.10.3.359/1

Contributor detailsEdwige Tamalet Talbayev is agrégée d’anglais and a Ph.D. student in the LiteratureDepartment at the University of California, San Diego. She is currently working onher dissertation ‘Modernity Relativized: Retrieving Imaginaries of theTranscontinental Mediterranean’, which deals with transnational imaginativeconceptions of the Mediterranean in French and Spanish colonial literatures of the1930s. She is the author of various papers focusing on the intersection of mod-ernism and Mediterranean literature in a colonial context. Contact: 402 CaminoMilitar, Santa Fe, NM 87501, USA.E-mail: [email protected]



377



A descent into crime: explaining Mongo Beti’s last two novelsPim Higginson Bryn Mawr College

AbstractThis study examines Mongo Beti’s last two novels, Trop de soleil tue l’amour(1999) and Branle-bas en noir et blanc (2000). Using his 1955 essay ‘AfriqueNoire, littérature rose’, it ties his earliest literary work to these final narrativeendeavours. In particular, ‘Afrique Noire’ insists on two criteria for literary excel-lence: realism (meaning an acknowledgement of the crimes of colonialism) andpopularity (meaning something accessible and read by the Cameroonian people).The problem, according to the author, is that Africans are largely illiterate and toopoor to afford books; and France controls the editorial means of production. Thesecombined factors make reconciling the two criteria of popularity and realismimpossible. If a novel is popular (sells), which it can only do in France, it is becauseit does not realistically represent the crimes of colonialism. On the other hand, ifthe novel is realistic, no one will ever publish or distribute it. Thus, according toBeti, within the colonial and subsequent postcolonial context, the classical realistnovel cannot achieve his stated goals. Mongo Beti’s turn to crime fiction cun-ningly reconciles these otherwise contradictory criteria by turning to a populargenre particularly well equipped to speak of the conditions of his homeland.

RésuméCet article étudie les deux derniers romans de Mongo Beti, Trop de soleil tuel’amour (1999) et Branle-bas en noir et blanc (2000) en utilisant son essaide 1955 ‘Afrique Noire, littérature rose’, pour faire le lien entre les premiers écritsde l’auteur et les derniers. ‘Afrique Noire’ insiste sur deux critères pour déterminerl’excellence d’une œuvre: son réalisme (il devra traiter du colonialisme) et la popu-larité (l’œuvre devra être lue). Le problème est que la majorité des Africains sontillettrés et trop pauvres pour acquérir des livres; et la France contrôle la totalité desmoyens de production éditoriaux. Ces deux facteurs font qu’il est impossible decombiner les deux critères qui constituent les éléments essentiels d’un ‘bon’ romanAfricain. Si un roman a du succès (en France) c’est qu’il n’est pas réaliste; et s’il estréaliste il n’a aucune chance d’être publié. Dans le contexte colonial et/ou postcolo-nial, le roman réaliste ne peut pas s’accorder à ces critères. Le tournant vers leroman noir de Beti représente une réconciliation des deux exigences apparemmentcontradictoires, et cela à travers un genre particulièrement bien adapté aux conditionscriminelles du pays natal de l’auteur.

Writing in 1955, in the pages of Présence Africaine, Cameroonian authorMongo Beti begins an essay entitled ‘Afrique Noire, littérature rose’ with the


Keywordscrime fiction

ideology

literature

Mongo Beti

noirpopular culture

postcolonial literature

realism novel

Ville cruelle

IJFS_10.3_06_art_Higginson.qxd 11/6/07 4:15 PM Page 377

following bombshell: ‘il n’y a guère […] d’œuvre littéraire de qualité inspiréepar l’Afrique Noire et écrite en langue française.’ What does he mean by‘œuvre de qualité’? First, such a work must be demonstrably popular: ‘uneœuvre accueillie, connue, admise comme telle par le grand public.’1 Second,it should be in a realistic genre, otherwise, ‘elle risque de manquer de réso-nance, de profondeur, de ce dont toute littérature a le plus grand besoin:l’humain’ (p. 135). Mentioning novels by Camara Laye, René Maran andOusmane Socé as failing to abide by these criteria, the young Cameroonianwryly concludes, ‘j’ai en fait cité tous les écrivains africains auxquels le pub-lic français et sa critique ont daigné accorder leurs faveurs depuis unedizaine d’année’ (p. 136). With one gesture, Beti reduces the totality of thenascent francophone African literary canon to mendacious renderings of acolonial fantasy.2

The author then complicates his analysis by attributing this literaryvoid to western economic control over the means of production and distri-bution. An African aspiring to produce this ideal text would inevitably face‘le public français et sa critique’ who only ‘daign[ent] accorder leurs faveurs’(p. 136) to a few works such as Camara Laye’s (1928–80) L’Enfant noir(1953) that answer a narrow series of criteria. As Christopher Millerpoints out in Theories of Africans, ‘Camara’s first novel succeeded in Francebecause it seemed to be an exotic African idyll […].’ Miller also notes, forthe very same reasons, that ‘L’Enfant noir has […] gone on to become thebest-known francophone African novel, the most widely read, in manyways the ‘first’ of its genre.’3 According to Beti, the publishing industry isof equal or greater significance in that it generates and anticipates its pub-lic, the ‘Français-qui-lit-des-romans’ (p. 136). Conversely, Africa’s massesare illiterate and too poor to afford books, and its acculturated elite disin-terested in African authors. The readership is instead primarily white,French and bourgeois; such works must, therefore, satisfy Europe’s intimateconvictions and prejudices. This de facto censorship prevents the represen-tation of ‘la seule réalité actuelle de l’Afrique Noire, sa seule réalité profonde’which is ‘avant tout la colonisation et ses méfaits’ (p. 137).

In the 1950s it would appear that the pro-colonial bias of the publishingindustry precludes producing a great work of African literature and assuresthat economic questions profoundly impact African aesthetic considera-tions. Despite his objection to this western regulation, the strategy by whichBeti chooses to resist paradoxically runs through a model, nineteenth-century realist literature that is constitutive of the very colonial ideology heopposes. In addition, the insistence on popularity locates the question ofeconomic access at the very heart of his project. Having identified thesource and means of oppression, the author’s argument neverthelessremains suspended between a suspect literary tradition inherited from thecolonial relationship, and a literary project that ‘Afrique Noire’ can onlygrope for. On the one hand, Beti seemingly refuses a high-aesthetic stan-dard by imposing popularity as a fundamental criterion; on the other hand,he also grafts himself into a specifically European (r)evolutionary paradigmin the Sartrian tradition of Qu’est-ce que la littérature, which maintains theliterary as an operative – as a necessary – category.4 How can an Africanauthor adhere to a nineteenth-century literary-aesthetic model (Realism)without being interpellated by the exclusionary mechanisms encrypted into

378 Pim Higginson

1. Eza Boto, ‘AfriqueNoire, littérature rose’,Présence Africaine, 1: 5, 1955, p. 133.

2. Where Beti situateshis Ville cruelle (1954)published one yearbefore his essay, withrespect to the workshe cites, is open tospeculation.

3. Christopher Miller,Theories of Africans,Chicago: UP Chicago,1990, p. 125.

4. In his work on theAfrican novel and tradition, MohamadouKane articulates thistension in similar,though positive fashion: ‘La volontéde décrire […] lasociété coloniale, laconjonction des traditions de réalismeet d’engagement,débouchent sur lerecours à destechniquesd’expositionsappropriées quirenforcent le souci deprésentation relevédans une phaseantérieure du roman’(p. 93). By ‘phaseantérieure’ he meansthe realist novel of thenineteenth century.Mohamadou Kane,Roman africain et tradition, Dakar:Nouvelles EditionsAfricaines, 1982,p. 93.


the medium – writing – of constitutive dissemination? Posing this doubleimperative, popularity and a particular conception of literariness, identifiesbut does not escape the double bind that, despite everything, continues tohaunt postcolonial African fiction.

In what follows, I want to propose that the young Mongo Beti poses thequestion of African literature – and, as we will see, subsequently answersit – within what will become two dominant critical fields. In his essay, heclearly states that one cannot understand the place and meaning ofAfrican writing without considering the colonial experience. His subse-quent fiction and non-fiction writings make the colonial and neocolonialexperience essential features of his authorial Weltanschauung. In short, Betiis a ground-breaking contributor to a postcolonial perspective within fran-cophone African studies. In proposing this connection, I am acceptingDavid Murphy’s invitation to include francophone authors within thepurview (and at the origin) of postcolonial studies. This process, Murphyhopes, will thereby challenge ‘certain Anglophone opinions about French-language material […]’.5 In keeping with this, Beti needs not only to beplaced alongside such canonical francophone postcolonial icons as AiméCésaire and Albert Memmi, more importantly, he should be read forwardas someone whose work followed the trajectory of postcolonial criticisminto the twenty-first century, though he never expressly participated in theacademically constituted field.6 By reading him this way, I insistently(re)locate this author, but, as will become clearer as my argument pro-gresses, situate him in an even more radical destabilizing network thatDominic Thomas calls transpostcolonialism7 in which the binary assump-tions of an exclusive relationship between (neo)colonial centre and periph-ery are replaced by more productive critical strategies that recognize theglobal quasi-meteorological densities, eddies and flows of cultural, economicand ideological phenomena’s circulation.

Having noted this easy identification, I would add that I am not sug-gesting that one should read Mongo Beti exclusively within a traditional orrestrictively postcolonial purview. Indeed, I want also to insist on anotherfeature of his early article: its overarching concern for popularity. By insis-tently gauging valence according to popular response, Beti opens the wayfor what a decade later (beginning in 1964) Richard Hoggart, and subse-quently Stuart Hall inaugurate as the cultural studies movement’s chal-lenge to the exclusion of mass and popular expressive media from academicconsiderations of the aesthetic and the ideological. In the process, and pre-cisely because ‘Afrique noire, littérature rose’ underscores the imbricationof the popular and the postcolonial, the Cameroonian author facilitates, atthe very site of African literary canon formation, the process so forcefullyargued for in Chris Bongie’s ‘Exiles on Mainstream’. For Bongie, while‘[P]ostcolonial literary studies ostensibly writes back against the hierarchi-cal distinctions of the “Western” literary canon and renders audible thesilenced voices of marginalized people,’ too frequently ‘its unstated relianceon a high/middlebrow vision of literature and its reluctance to take inau-thentic popularity into serious account’ leads to a ‘watered-down versionof canonical thinking’ that only gives voice to the ‘people when they say,do, and consume the “right” things’.8 In short, in this vision of the field,postcolonial studies cryptically reproduces the categories it purports to

379A descent into crime: explaining Mongo Beti’s last two novels

5. David Murphy, ‘De-centering FrenchStudies: Towards aPostcolonial Theory ofFrancophoneCultures’, FrenchCultural Studies, 13,2003, p. 167.

6. A simple glance at hisnumerous titlesshould be enough toconvince any sceptic.

7. Dominic Thomas,‘Intersections andTrajectories’, in H.Adlai Murdock andAnne Donnadey (eds),Postcolonial Theory andFrancophone LiteraryStudies, p. 237.

8. Chris Bongie, ‘Exileson Main Stream:Valuing the Popularityof Popular Culture’,Postmodern Culture,14: 1, 2003, p. 20.


challenge, reinforcing a manner of distinction that is foundational of westernmodes of identification and exclusion that threaten to (re)constitute a dan-gerously appropriative neocolonial apparatus.

If postcolonial studies sometimes fail to recognize the importance of massculture, as we have already seen in the passages cited at the outset, Betiinstead takes this purportedly ‘inauthentic’ popularity very seriously. Thus,rather than simply or problematically assimilating Beti into postcolonialstudies (whatever specifically that might be), I prefer to suggest that he par-ticipates in many of its critical gestures while overlapping significantly withmany ‘schools’ – including, and perhaps most importantly, cultural studies.As I have already noted, if part of Beti’s thinking accommodates the post-colonial, the cultural occupies an equally important position. Bongie, as wehave seen, broadly takes to task postcolonial criticism’s unwillingness toengage the popular. Indeed, the critical treatment of African literature hasfared only nominally better than, say, the literature of the Caribbean onwhich he founds his argument. Those studying African literature have, upuntil recent years, mostly been preoccupied with the continent’s various andhighly complex engagements with the conundrum of the high literary.Nevertheless, such critics as Bernth Lindfors, Karin Barber and, subsequently,Stephanie Newell, among others, have paid attention to popular culturalproduction, most notably in an anglophone context.9 They have also signifi-cantly complicated the idea of the popular. Of particular import in thisrespect is Karin Barber’s warning that

When the distinction between ‘folk’/’traditional’, ‘popular’, and ‘mass’, or

that between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture is transplanted to Africa, then the already-

porous and ambiguous classifications seem to turn around on their axes and

reconfigure themselves into an unstable, almost unusable paradigm.10

In refuting the Frankfurt school’s (and particularly Theodor Adorno’s) dis-missal of the popular, and instead invoking Bourdieu, Barber neverthelessalso acknowledges the extreme difficulty of providing a consistent differen-tial calculus by which the authentic and inauthentic, the high and low, oragain the popular might be convincingly established as discrete categories.

My own contribution to this discussion proposes that Beti’s use of theexpression ‘littérature rose’ hints at the difficulty of reading African litera-ture through the lens of mass cultural phenomena, while also announcingone strategy by which African texts might begin to dodge the high-literaryexpectations Bongie warns us against. In the title of Beti’s essay, theexpression ‘littérature rose’ refers specifically to Laye’s L’Enfant noir, whichthe former famously accuses of failing to be realistic. What interests me isless his comments on the Guinean author, however, than those on theAmerican author to whom he compares him. Here, we arrive at a signifi-cant instance of Thomas’ transpostcolonialism. Noting the resemblance intitles, Beti juxtaposes L’Enfant noir to Richard Wright’s (1908–60) BlackBoy (1945). This appeal to Wright further explains what the youngCameroonian means when he speaks of a realist novel: the social-realiststyle that Wright inherited from such authors as H.L. Mencken, UptonSinclair and Theodore Dreiser. Wright’s grim narrative provides the mate-rial ground for his ideological critique. In contrast to Laye, ‘Wright […]

380 Pim Higginson

9. It should be notedthat a significantnumber of localAfrican critics beganworking at an earlydate on such ‘popular’phenomena asOnitsha market literature in Nigeria.Nevertheless, thesewestern critics haveprovided an overviewon which I am – notunproblematically –drawing here.

10. Karin Barber,‘Introduction’,Readings in AfricaPopular Cultur, KarenBarber (ed.), p. 4.


dédaignant la moindre coquetterie à l’égard du public, pose les problèmesdans toute leur crudité, évite les lieux communs, les futilités, les naïvetés’(p. 420). The American author facilitates the use of the literary as anoperative (and utilitarian) concept. By turning to Wright (and away fromFrance/Laye-as-lackey), ‘Afrique Noire, littérature rose’ initiates a BlackAtlantic handshake, a diasporic bridge between Africa and the UnitedStates that anticipates later narrative strategies. The argument, thoughnever stated explicitly, is that reproducing the exclusive relationship(whether aesthetic, economic or ideological) between the colony and theMétropole dooms francophone African writing. Invoking Richard Wrightestablishes a black Atlantic operational field (rather than a binary rela-tionship with France) in which to locate African literature. The American’srhetorical intervention thus does more than provide the correct model incontrast to Laye’s failure; it authorizes a nomadic genre, a writing no longerfencing with (and fenced in by) the master, but operating at the mobilecrossroads of multiple traditions and trajectories. In arguing for the liter-ary imperative, we can see that Beti emphasizes the importance of localAfrican textual production while simultaneously joining those like Wrightwho, in Paul Gilroy’s words, ‘repeatedly articulate a desire to escape therestrictive bonds of ethnicity, national identification, and sometimes even“race” itself ’.11

The logic behind citing Wright is multifold. For one, the American isfamously unrelenting in his critique of American racism. Of equal impor-tance is the phenomenal success of his novels. As such, they clearly answerthe criteria of engagement and of popularity – or so it appears. If Wright isappealing for these reasons, the American author also happens to beknown for his problematic elitism. As his novel Native Son shows, and aswould become increasingly clear with his non-fiction 100 Million BlackVoices, Richard Wright is profoundly indebted to, and invested in a ‘highliterary model’. He categorically refuses to accord any aesthetic worth topopular African American culture; it is merely symptomatic of historicaldegradation.12 While Beti is clearly far less convinced of western civiliza-tion’s inherent superiority, it is unclear what literary discourse he mightinvent that could communicate (with) the African people. The pressingquestion that remains suspended is, therefore, francophone African writ-ing’s relationship to the vernacular. How should francophone Africanwriting represent Africans’ experiences and speech? Richard Wright,because of his lack of interest in popular culture, relegates the issue of ver-nacular representation to the background. Half a century later, in respond-ing to this same dilemma, the mature Beti turns to a popular genre, thecrime novel, when searching for new ways of representing – in realisticfashion – the complexities of the postcolonial quotidian.

Ultimately, ‘Afrique Noire, littérature rose’ is about the relationshipbetween the political and the literary. What role will/can the literary playwith respect to the ideological? The essay clearly advocates a ‘littératureengagée’, which will be Beti’s guiding criterion throughout his life.13 Yet,how can or should African authors marshal the literary for this purposeand how can one communicate textually with Africans? What will such awork look like? His first answer to these questions is his 1954 Ville cruelle.14

This inaugural text attempts to represent the colonial scene through the


11. Paul Gilroy, BlackAtlantic, Cambridge:Harvard UP, 1993, p. 19.

12. Wright’s discomfortand ultimately hiselitism will become alltoo apparent in hisnon-fiction BlackPower about his travelsto Kwame Nkruma’sGhana.

13. As Kom Say in hisintroduction to hislong interview inMongo Beti parle, ‘Surla scène politiquecamerounaise, dansles milieux littéraireset intellectuelsafricains, Mongo Betiest presque entré dansla légende tant sonécriture et les opinionsqu’il émet suscitentdébats et controverses.’Ambroise Kom (ed.),Mongo Béti Parle,African Studies Series,Bayreuth: EckhardBreitinger, 54, 2002,p. 17.

14. The novel bitterly critiques a repressivecolonial regime whosesole purpose is the pillaging of Africa andits people. But,whereas Camara Layedepicts an idyllicvillage life ruled byancestral values, Betishows that village isdominated by theopportunistic rule of aclass of stubborn andconservative elders.For Beti, the village isthe past. Thequestion, for this earlynovel, is what lies inthe future.


eyes of a largely illiterate protagonist. Without going into great detail, asthe title suggests, the narrative already dwells on the effects of demo-graphic urbanization and an evolving social and economic African moder-nity that will preoccupy subsequent works of African fiction andparticularly the crime novels that begin to appear from the 1980s onwards.For a number of reasons, Ville cruelle is not (yet) a fully constituted ‘polar’;it is, nevertheless a proto-crime novel in that it employs many of the tropesand techniques of the genre.

Read 50 years later, the essay ‘Afrique Noire’ appears to announce theturn to crime fiction as a logical conclusion to Beti’s quest for an effectivepostcolonial aesthetic model. His first and subsequent fiction depicts thepresence and effect of ubiquitous criminality within urban Africa andrepeatedly links it to similar phenomena occurring globally. Ville cruelleanticipates the moment when the postcolonial is already neocolonial andsurvivalist delinquency becomes the only response to state-sponsored lar-ceny and murder. In addition, the literary work itself insistently flouts thelaws of economic necessity cited above by refusing to accept the limitationof its African readership and by ignoring white expectations. If it does nothold up to further scrutiny as a proto-crime novel within this particularoptic, it is because, among other things, it borrows heavily from anothertradition altogether (the romance novel). Ville cruelle also fails to entirelyqualify in its refusal to allow the protagonist to become urbanized. Instead,like the work itself, the main character remains suspended between genres(crime, romance, realist) rather than turning him into a fully constitutedmodern citadin.

This somewhat deviant and devious reading of Ville cruelle productivelyconnects Mongo Beti’s first and last two novels, giving coherence to his tra-jectory as writer and as a militant. His 32 years of exile and his tense rela-tions with France and the Ahmadou Ahidjo (1960–82) and Paul Biya(1982– ) governments bolster the claim that he and his writing were alwaysin direct confrontation with one form of law or another. The Cameroonian’swork has challenged colonialism’s crimes and therefore has always been, inboth senses, against the law – whether colonial or postcolonial. Indeed,according to him, criminal activity and various forms of violence bindAfrican and European histories together.15 We can ultimately distil thisrecurring focus on crime to a critique of the pernicious effects of westerncapitalism on his homeland that bridges the 46 years between Ville cruelle(published in 1954), and Branle-bas en noir et blanc (published in 2000).

As we have seen thus far, the principal preoccupation the novelist facesis inventing a discourse adapted to the vernacular experience of his nation’speople. Ville cruelle suggests, through its protagonist’s circular musings andincantatory third person indirect discourse that it is struggling with thetransformation of an oral African language into a French literary text.Beti’s early essay argues that ‘[L’]Afrique Noire’ is limited to ‘littératurerose’, a static vision of a romanticized past. ‘Littérature rose’, for Beti is thea-political novel, the narrative that does not – or refuses to – account forthe criminality of capitalist exploitation inherent to the colonial condition.Having noted this, the expression ‘littérature rose’ alludes to a specificgenre. In using the expression ‘rose’, he accuses L’Enfant noir of exploitingthe tropes of the romance novel, known in French as ‘littérature [à l’eau de]

382 Pim Higginson

15. If, as Stephen Arnold’sintroduction to CriticalPerspectives on MongoBeti suggests, his workfits into distinct peri-ods, these categoriescede to criminality asa symptom of theurban modernitycharacteristic of thecolonial andsubsequentpostcolonial eras.Stephen H. Arnold(ed.), Criticalperspectives on MongoBeti, Boulder, Colo:Lynne Rienner, 1998.


rose’. Beti’s critique of Laye simultaneously decries the Guinean’s lack ofpolitical engagement and denounces his generic choice. Thus, the debatewould then reside between whether the romance or crime genres, romanticlove or ironic violence, can better represent the real conditions of theAfrican people. This association remains cryptically embedded in his argu-ment since Beti apparently does not yet perceive how popular literary cul-ture might reconcile the simultaneous conditions of mass appeal and thecriterion of representational ‘realism’. Though it seems that like his AfricanAmerican model, Richard Wright, Beti rejects popular or ‘formulaic fiction’,this reading interprets ‘littérature rose’ as anticipating the possibility of ‘lit-térature noire’ –African fiction, but also noir fiction. That is, it would not bethe popular that is problematic so much as the genre one chooses. Withinthe broad register of the popular, one genre, romance fiction, is deemed use-less and alienating/alienated; the other, noir, follows the parameters ofwhat critic Bernard Mouralis calls a ‘counterliterature’, that is, a literaturethat actively resists the normative strictures of the bourgeois high literarymodel.16

In an interview conducted shortly before his death, the author revisitsthe issues raised in ‘Afrique Noire’ and begins to explain his move towardsnoir. Of particular note is his emphasis on a new setting for his narratives.Discussing his last two novels with Cameroonian critic Ambroise Kom, heemphasizes that, ‘dans Trop de soleil tue l’amour, je mets en scène pour lapremière fois peut-être des […] citadins. C’est vrai, c’est la première fois.’17

While this may be the first time, as I have suggested, he has been travellingthe road between city and country since the beginning. Beti does not priv-ilege the city only because Africa is increasingly urban, however. He alsodoes so because there he finds a voice, a ‘language’, a new aesthetic tem-plate and palette. This new voice is connected to ‘l’amorce d’une languecollective, un français collectif ’, that despite what the author sees as itssemantic limitations ‘peut aider à la communication des gens de dif-férentes ethnies, […] une langue populaire’ (p. 147).

Though latent throughout his œuvre, this langue populaire correspondsto what Alessandro Triulzi has called ‘rumor and street buzz’, also knownin francophone Africa as ‘radio trottoir’ or ‘radio tam-tam’. This is a rhi-zomatic medium of circulation of unknown origin and destination. ForTriulzi, ‘This return of orality and its shift from the country to the city isone of the new signs of contemporary Africa and its strategies of identity.’Contrasting this new vernacular form to older forms of speech, he addsthat this is ‘no longer the fixed, ennobled word of oral tradition, passed onby the griots […]’. Instead, ‘it is the living word, profane and multiform, ofthe new, urban generations of independent Africa’.18 Such a popular modeof dissemination is increasingly proliferating throughout an African urbanfiction set upon depicting a world in which informational transactionsoccur under the vest, au noir.19 The idea is, therefore, that this ‘françaiscollectif ’ should operate beyond the reach of state radio and television, andoutside the networks of a corrupt and/or ineffective press. Because crimefiction is the genre historically most attentive to this form of vernacularexchange, it becomes increasingly clear why Beti chose this particular tra-dition to pursue his project: not only because it is expressly urban,20 butbecause it is also a genre historically preoccupied with the vernacular.


16. Bernard Mouralis, LesContre-littératures,Paris: PUF, 1975.

17. Op. cit. Beti Parle,Beyreuth AfricanStudies, 54, p. 147.

18. Alessandro Triulzi,‘African Cities,Historical Memoryand Street Buzz’, inIain Chambers andLidia Curti (eds), ThePost-Colonial Question,New York: Routledge,78-91, p. 78.

19. Referring to theunavailability ofnews, Beti will say inMain-basse sur leCameroun that ‘sousAhmidou Ahidjo, le‘citoyen’ camerounaisn’ignore pas seulementles évènements de l’étranger […] il neconnaîtra que par letam-tam africain et àtravers cesdéformationshabituelles, les évène-ments importants quise seront déroulésdans un quartiervoisin du sien […]’.Mongo Beti, MainBasse sur le Cameroun,Rouen: Peuples noirs,1984, p. 99.

20. Yet, there is anothersignificant aspect tothis move that speaksto his life’s work. Hiswhole career, it wouldseem, and this withall of the irony thathis 34 years in Franceimply, has been toexorcize France fromAfrica’s system. Hismove to crime fictionis also motivated bythe need to escape theoppressive binary,Africa-France. Theturn to crime fictionis also a move awayfrom France as amonolithic entity.This is not, however,in order to substituteFrench hegemony forlocal hegemony, a gesture that would


The shift to the detective novel nevertheless happened in a striking way.As Beti repeatedly notes in interviews and in his writing, his primaryconcern is to communicate effectively with the Cameroonian people, animperative that became even more pressing once he had returned fromexile in 1993. Yet, Beti sensed that he was not reaching his desiredaudience because the people could not afford his books and his writingwas too ideological, too serious. At this moment of aesthetic doubt, Betidecided to listen to a quasi-literary agent, ‘qui m’avait suggéré de changerun peu ma manière d’écrire.’ Given his long career, this seems like a radi-cal solution; nevertheless, Beti promised to try, ‘en lui expliquant [que] jesuis un grand admirateur de Chester Himes, un passionné des romanspoliciers.’ He concludes ‘[j]e vais essayer de faire dans le genre.’21 As heundoubtedly knows, the association of ‘faire dans le genre’ (emphasisadded) and Chester Himes (1909–84) is rich with potential because theAfrican American likewise found the means of commenting on whiteexploitation by turning to crime fiction. Once again, an African Americanauthor serves to project in an exemplary manner, the possibility of aninnovative francophone textuality, this time within a postcolonial-pop aes-thetic. Beti’s own crime fiction is thus situated within another ‘blackAtlantic’ gesture, a second stylistic and thematic opening to the Africandiaspora that doubles the early nod to Richard Wright. It likewise appealsto the complex histories connecting Africa to the United States andFrance. Whereas fame eluded Himes in his homeland, he found it inFrance and in French (a language he never learned). Appealing to thiscomplex biography allows Beti to appropriate a non-French literary tradi-tion while recognizing the problematic relationship of English to theAfrican American experience, thereby strategically replacing one oppres-sive history with another. Beti’s choice of crime fiction happens throughan author who struggled to publish and sell his work throughout his lifeand who turned to crime fiction out of necessity, for whom writing crimenovels provided access to the literary marketplace.22 If one takes seriouslyBeti’s argument, ‘qu’on ne peut tenir pour chef-d’œuvre, du point de vuede l’efficacité actuelle, une œuvre que personne ne lit ni ne connaît’ (p. 134),Himes’ exemplary fiction guides Beti towards the specific means of privi-leging accessibility and popularity over ‘intellectual’ and ‘high-literary’concerns that he had been seeking since Ville cruelle.

In addition to the shift in genre, the move to crime fiction in the last twonovels, Trop de soleil tue l’amour and Branle-bas en noir et blanc, also represents adramatic move away from the earnestness of the romantic revolutionary idealevident in Beti’s previous works. While his earliest protagonist is illiterate,subsequent ones are not. In each case, the author’s vehement prose under-scores the indispensability of writing, and by extension, of the writer. In Tropde soleil, which almost functions as an anti-Künstlerroman, this authorialghost finally appears – only to disappear – in the figure of an intellectual jour-nalist.23 The difference here is that, as already noted, in this final incarnationthe character metamorphoses into a helpless and hopeless author, whothroughout Trop de soleil drinks himself to death in endless bouts of self-pityand disappears altogether from the second novel. Indeed, in the closingmoments of Branle-bas we learn that Zam has mysteriously self-immolated,apparently killing several hundred people in the process in a symbolic

384 Pim Higginson

fall into precisely thetrap that he warnedagainst in ‘littératurerose’. In a strikingshift, he suggests analtogether newliterary genealogy.

21. Op. cit. Mongo Betiparle, p. 109.This scene in factastonishingly echoesa scene that occurredthirty five yearsearlier: ‘It sohappened that while Iwas [in Paris] I raninto the man who hadtranslated my firstnovel into French,Marcel Duhamel, whowas then the directorof Gallimard’s detective[…] series, La SérieNoire, the only onethen successful inFrance. And he askedme how would I liketo write a detectivestory for his series.

‘I would if I knewhow…’ (ChesterHimes, My Life ofAbsurdity, New York:Paragon House,1990, p.101–2).

22. As anothercircumstantial crimewriter, Boris Vian,would ironically statein the ‘translators’preface’ to J’irai crachersur vos tombes, ‘ma foi,c’est une manière devendre sa salade.’ Thatis, crime sells.Boris Vian, J’iraicracher sur vos tombes,Paris: Editions duScorpion, 1946, p.9.

23. Though this character,Zam, is Beti’s first truewriter-as-character, heappears in variousmutations in at leastsix works. In all ofthem, he represents apure revolutionarypotential, whether asthe innocent yetsophisticatedGuillaume Dzewatama(nicknamed Zam) oras the orphan Mor-Zamba of


expiation of his double guilt: of collaboration with the government in his earlyyears, and of impotent intellectualism in his subsequent role as a journalist inthe opposition.

Parallel to Zam, and replacing him entirely in Branle-bas, is an altogetherdifferent kind of character, a lawyer ‘qui n’en était pas vraiment un’, and who‘s’appelait communément Eddie, bien qu’Eddie ne fût pas vraiment son nom,ainsi qu’il arrive souvent ici, surtout depuis ces dix dernières années qui ontvu l’anarchie, la fraude et le désarroi envahir la société.’24 The antithesis ofZam, Eddie25 is the very essence of the urban, not to say cosmopolitan prag-matist. He has lived in France (from which he was forcibly ‘chartered’ out ofthe country for dealing in drugs) and in the United States where he unsuc-cessfully tried to be a Jazz musician. He has money from untraceable sourcesand a counterfeit law degree. In contrast to the highly educated Zam, Eddie’scultural capital consists of an intimate knowledge ‘des œuvres complètes defeu Coluche’. However, Eddie is highly educated –street smart – in matters ofsurvival in an illogical postcolonial universe. Confirming the imbrication ofhis character and the emerging crime genre that houses him, late in Trop desoleil, Eddie announces, ‘je viens de me reconvertir dans la police privée,enquêtes, filature et le toutim. Il paraît que c’est l’avenir de la littérature et del’humanisme’ (p. 159).

A brief summary of both novels may be useful here. Following thesocial and epistemological collapse characteristic of noir’s narrative envi-ronment, neither story really leads anywhere. In Trop de soleil, Zam thewriter/journalist mysteriously loses his Jazz CDs, finds a dead body in hisapartment, drinks, whines and insults his girlfriend who finally disappears.At the conclusion of the first story, a son (he never knew he had) kidnapsand tortures him for the (supposed?) rape of his mother which led to hisconception. In the meantime Eddie, the pseudo-lawyer, tries to keep thewriter out of jail for the murder that produces the body and subsequentlyspends time looking for Zam’s girlfriend, Bébète, when she disappears.Midway through, a French character, Georges, who has had a child withBébète, begins to search for her as well. In this parallel narrative, theFrenchman (perhaps a ‘barbouze’) winds up in a strange castle in thecountryside owned by a high-ranking government official. There, Georgeshas an ‘affair’ with a barely pubescent girl, witnesses various horrorscommitted by the regime, and discovers that Bébète has been kidnapped.26

In the second volume of Branle-bas, Zam disappears as well. Instead, Eddiethe lawyer-become-detective allies with Georges to form a bi-racial odd-couple looking for Bébète. They get involved in a series of increasingly con-voluted side stories in which nothing is as it appears.27 The tale ends withGeorges apparently planning on living polygamously with two women,Eddie contemplating an unlikely true love affair with a prostitute and Zamhaving burned to death. Attempting to summarize this absurdist series oftwists and turns, that is closer to a carefully crafted series of set pieces, isalmost hopeless. Despite the difficulty of producing an effective summary,it is clear that both novels exploit the standard features of the crime novelinasmuch as they are far more about mood than about conveying acoherent story.

This paradoxical stasis is consistent with the typological specificities ofnoir. Rather than adhere to a Bakhtinian chronotope that exemplifies the


Remember Ruben(1974) and La Ruinepresque cocasse d’unpolichinelle (1979).

24. Mongo Beti, Trop desoleil tue l’amour, Paris:Julliard, 1999, p. 42.

25. His moniker derivesfrom the saxophonistEddie ‘Lockjaw’ Davis,and thus serves as onedozens of references toAmerican culture,and particularly Jazz,in the story. Indeed,Beti’s novel remindsone of a Boris Viannovel. Vian, who isexplicitly mentionedin Branle-bas, is alsotied to the crime tradi-tion and questions ofracial identity.

26. She has been takenby a trafficking andprostitution ring.

27. This in large partexplains Eddie’s effec-tiveness, for, as thenarrator notes, ‘Eddien’a jamais aimé que lefaux’ (op. cit. p. 158).


bourgeois novel, crime fiction focuses on the environmental elements thatconstitute modernity. As such, the genre constructs its narrative universethrough a series of recurring concerns or tropes that mirror many of thethemes of the francophone African realist novel of the 1950s and 1960s.28

Among these are: the place of writing and its relation to the vernacular orwhat Raymond Chandler calls ‘the speech of common men’;29 the speci-ficity of the narrative’s urban setting;30 a stylized emphasis on the role ofmovement, particularly expressed as speed, or what Francis Lacassin calls‘[l]e mouvement, intense ou anodin’; what, in his comment on the SérieNoire he had just launched, Marcel Duhamel called, ‘de la violence – soustoutes ses formes et particulièrement les plus honnies – du tabassage et dumassacre’; the place and role of capital.31 Finally, organizing these varioustropes (writing, space, speed, the body, capital) both textually and meta-textually is the question of the law. These categories appear repeatedly invarious forms throughout the crime tradition. They are also, to an aston-ishing degree, the very issues that Beti covers in ‘Afrique Noire’ and in Villecruelle and yet for which he fails to discover an appropriate aesthetic solutionprecisely because of the (epistemological and economic) laws regulating,or rather (following the dire conclusions of his essay) preventing, Africanwriting.

The turn to crime fiction at the end integrates the violent contradictions of‘legality’, particularly for an African author, into the narrative medium. Tropde soleil and Branle-bas make extensive use of each one of the aforementionedtropes while couching them in the irony that characterizes the hard-boiledschool of the 1930s onwards, and that is a salient feature of Himes’ writing aswell. However, the novels reserve their most scathing commentary for thegovernment, police and judges who constitute the ‘legal’ apparatus of thecountry. This is where Beti’s most persistent ideological concern, the totalabsence of civil society in Cameroon, gains its greatest traction. In theprocess, he participates in an evolving postcolonial-popular aesthetic that notonly corresponds to the confounding absurdity, violence and anarchy of thecurrent Cameroonian (and more broadly, African) situation but also rootsitself in a longstanding and complex legacy of similar representations, mostimportantly, that of Chester Himes, that have evolved globally. This crossgrafting onto the American crime tradition posits a necessary literary-ontological origin while displacing the colonial discourse so problematicallylocated in Beti’s earliest meditations on the condition(s) of African writing. Inshort, Beti discovers that one way of outmanoeuvring the law preventingAfrican writing is to actively engage in the crime (writing) that was implicitall along.

The specific constitutive elements of both conceptions of the literaryare evident from the outset in the juxtaposition of the two figures of theeducated writer and the trafficking lawyer, Zam and Eddie. As we haveseen, the turn away from Zam marks a shift. Aesthetically speaking, whatis perhaps most striking is that, while irony had always been an importantfeature of his writing, here Beti unleashes a dizzying flow of slang, wordplays, inside jokes, historical, pop and high-cultural references and physicalgags.

Nevertheless, the most pressing aspect of Beti’s narratives is his scathingand grimly humorous critique of Cameroonian lawlessness. References to

386 Pim Higginson

28. For more on thesetropes, within anAfrican context, seemy article in YaleFrench Studies: PimHigginson, ‘Mayhemat the Crossroads: TheRise of FrancophoneAfrican Crime Fiction’,Crime Fictions, AndreaGoulet and SusannaLee (eds), New Haven:Yale UP, 2005, pp.160-176. For thespecifically tropologicalaspect of the genre, seeJohn Cawelti’s ground-breaking work on thecrime genre in hisAdventure, History, andRomance: FormulaStories as Art andPopular Culture (1976).

29. See RaymondChandler’s famousessay, ‘The Simple Artof Murder’. For abroader discussion ofthe rise of vernacularfictions see GavinJones’ broad study ofwhat he calls ‘dialectliterature’.

30. This urban imperativehas been repeatedlynoted in the criticalassessments of thegenre from GilbertKeith (G.K.)Chesterton’s ‘Defenseof Detective Stories’(1901) through RegisMessac’s Le ‘DetectiveNovel’ et l’influence dela pensée scientifique(1929) and beyond.

31. There have beennumerous discussionsof this particular ques-tion. Perhaps the mostentertaining and politi-cally mordent is inJean-PatrickManchette’s Chroniqueswhere he explicitlyconnects the advent ofthe hard-boiled novelwith the victory ofhigh capitalism.


this legal vacuum are everywhere. For example, the narrator nicknamesEddie’s policeman friend Norbert, ‘le Flic amateur d’extra’ because he extortsmoney – the ‘extra’ of his name – from cab drivers as he directs traffic.Norbert’s direct superior (with whom he shares his ill-gotten gains) is‘honest’ because he has only taken bribes personally a few dozen times. Infact, taking bribes and extorting money is the only real task the police per-form since they are expressly forbidden from engaging in any manner ofinvestigation because any inquest inevitably leads to the guilty regime.Norbert himself gets away with murder by having Eddie, whose law degreeis fake, ‘talk’ to the judge. Ironically underscoring the critical state of thecountry, one of the characters mockingly tells Eddie that you cannotbecome a private eye in the absence of a legitimate police force with whichto contrast yourself. Eddie himself notes that ‘dans une société taillée àcoups de serpe par la violence au bénéfice de la mafia en place et surtoutde ses parrains lointains, survie et probité étaient inconciliables’ (p. 173).This world has no laws; or rather, these are made up by those with thepower and/or shrewdness to do so. As Eddie ironically notes elsewhere,

Chez nous, le chef de l’Etat fait dans l’évasion des capitaux, ministres et haut

fonctionnaires dans l’import-export et autres business pas toujours honnêtes,

curés et évêques dans le maraboutisme, assureurs et banquiers dans l’extor-

sion de fonds comme les gangsters, les écolières dans la prostitution, leurs

mamans dans le maquereautage, le toubib dans le charlatanisme, les garag-

istes dans le trafic de voitures volées, on fait tous dans l’escroquerie (p. 224).

What Eddie describes is the grim negation of a functional civil society;everything operates contrary to the way it should; such would be the onlylaw to transcend individual interests. It is important to add that, as theexpression ‘parrains lointains’ in the previous citation, and the presence ofGeorges in both novels, make amply clear that corruption spreads out farbeyond the African continent, implicating the West as an equal ‘partner incrime’, and as the greatest beneficiary of Cameroon’s necrosis. Equallyimportant, the proliferation of criminal enterprises is ultimately the productof a feral capitalism in which the latent features of this particular westerneconomic model reappear atavistically. In other words, perhaps the mostconsistent preoccupation of every character in both novels (with theexception of Georges, who is comfortably bourgeois) is the accumulation ofmoney, thus, in more visibly grotesque form, the same principles driving awestern liberal democracy.

Perhaps the most dramatic instance of the lawlessness and corruptionBeti describes is manifest in the overwhelming violence that saturates bothnovels. Deaths occur at regular intervals, from the discovery of the body inZam’s apartment in the very beginning of Trop de soleil, to the floatingbody of the young pimp in the baseball outfit late in Branle-bas. These var-ious murders and beatings happen locally within every echelon of society,from the presidential palace (where rumour has it that the president haskilled his own wife) to the highly disturbing and graphic description of themob lynching of a young Chadian thief.32 In the latter case, Georges’sshock at this scene contrasts dramatically with the complete disinterest ofthe numerous other witnesses (including two police officers). As was the


32. It should be notedthat all the murdersof highly visible publicfigures in the novelare taken from exist-ing cases, or, as withthe lynching, fromcommon occurrencesin the Camerooniancapital.


case with the lawless accumulation of capital, and despite Georges’srepeatedly expressed disgust, France participates in various ways in makingthis horror possible. The numerous references to the old colonial power’sabetment of the Rwandan genocide, the shadowy French advisors whopopulate the background of the text and the equally troubling revelationof France’s illegal disposal of dioxin in Cameroon all speak of the ways inwhich Africa is – and is also produced as – a site of ubiquitous violence.Physical coercion is ultimately the most prominent form of political andeconomic exchange. In this context, the law is what Rousseau in his SocialContract ironically labels, ‘la loi du plus fort’. That is, power offers two pos-sibilities: to those with something to offer, accept corruption or expectphysical coercion; to the rest, await further debasement. In the final analy-sis both novels suggest that the law (should one name it thus) expressesitself almost exclusively through violence, with the most extreme and ter-rifying form being murder. The fact that murder is the most consistentmotivating narrative trigger for virtually all crime fiction makes it clearonce again why the genre should be so appealing to an author living in aland where a killing is a quotidian, almost banal occurrence.

In conclusion, Mongo Beti’s (1955) ‘Afrique Noire, littérature rose’analyses African writing from three different perspectives. The first twoconsist of imperatives. The novel should be realistic, meaning that itshould honestly portray the grim reality of African modernity and thesources of ambient oppression as the necessary effects of the colonial expe-rience. Next, it should be popular; Beti believes that literary greatnessdepends on universal accessibility – that a novel not read by the ‘grandpublic’ is not successful. From these two imperatives, he proceeds to exam-ine the conditions of possibility of this ideal literature in his third majorpoint, which is that the single most important institutional force determiningthe success or failure of an African novel is editorial power. Unfortunately,this third point complicates the earlier two. Examined more closely, theacknowledgement of French editorial hegemony ultimately makes the rec-onciliation of his initial guiding criteria, realism and popularity, impossibleto follow since it assures that what is popular is not realistic and what isrealistic is unpublishable (and/or unmarketable).

Forty-five years later, while Beti’s guiding literary principles remain intact,the postcolonial environment brings the incongruity between an earnesthigh-literary aesthetic and the absurd anarchy of Cameroon into evensharper focus. Such material circumstances further press African literature toaccount for the neocolonial interests and puppet regimes insuring that thecontinent is increasingly urban, anarchic and poor. Yet, inasmuch as thesesame material factors also condition the editorial sector, African literaturefails to speak to the very people whose lives Beti assigns it to document andrevolutionize. As we have now seen, the solution to the apparently impossiblereconciliation of the popular and the realistic in the face of these overwhelm-ing constraints is a strategic turn towards crime fiction. Just as significantly,African American author Chester Himes discovered the crime genre at virtu-ally the same moment as the younger writer was penning ‘Afrique Noire,littérature rose’, making the African’s later critical turn possible.

Crime fiction’s appeal is first practical. The genre proves structurallyadequate to African conditions because the hard-boiled crime novel evolved

388 Pim Higginson


under – and accounts for – similar conditions: the corrupt inner-colonizationof the United States inherent to a victorious Fordist economy. The genre’srepresentational tools and tropes assure the adequate equation of modernurban reality and literary representation. Perhaps the most important fea-ture in this respect is the genre’s exploration of the vernacular because itsignals noir’s demotic preoccupations while also facilitating its appeal tothose it describes. Just as significantly, in the case of both Himes and Beti,editorial advice actually led to this literary metamorphosis. Indeed,whereas the various fictional and non-fictional broadsides that bothauthors produced sold relatively poorly, their crime novels sold briskly,thereby allowing them to pursue their ideologically inflected literary pro-jects. Appealing to capitalist principles of profit finally cut the Gordianknot of editorial control: profit is the single most important motive of thepublishing industry, and as popular fiction, crime sells. In the final analy-sis, profit trumps politics.

The proof of Beti’s fundamental understanding of the ideological implica-tions and possibilities of this literary choice are evident in how he finallydecided to publish his last two novels. He first donated Trop de soleil tue l’amourand Branle-bas en noir et blanc to Le Messager, an opposition newspaper whichran both stories in serial form. As such, he doubled the power of his criticismof the ruling regime by using his name to promote a largely accessible venuein which readers would not only read his contributions, but other criticalvoices as well. He then sold the manuscripts to the French publisher Julliard,which in turn marketed the novels in France to considerable success, therebyassuring Beti the necessary income to continue running his Yaoundé book-store, Librairies des peuples noirs. In the process, perhaps for the first time, Betisucceeded in touching equally French and African publics. Finally, ratherthan unwittingly paying tribute to the French cultural ideal by publishing ina venue and a genre inherited from the colonial experience, he cunninglytranscended this high literary heritage by using a newspaper;33 and byappealing to an African American, and native English speaker, ChesterHimes, as his literary model. In the process, he left us two significant – andwildly funny and entertaining – novels to consider as we continue to ponderhis rich and complex legacy. Perhaps the writer Boubakar Boris Diop bestsummed the effect of these two novels and their paradoxical simultaneousbreak with – and continuation of – the Cameroonian author’s literary past:

[…]Trop de soleil tue l’amour et Branle-bas en blanc et noir frappent par leur furie

jubilatoire. Après quatorze années de silence entre Le roi miraculé et Mainbasse sur le Cameroun, il avait peut-être envie de faire un sort à la littérature

elle-même. Ses derniers textes donnent pourtant l’impression d’une boucle

qui se referme, car Mongo Beti semble y avoir retrouvé la joie d’écrire de ses

jeunes années, avec en prime l’amertume et le désir de foutre le bordel.34

As Diop suggests, the Cameroonian author concluded his exemplary liter-ary career with two aggressively disruptive counter-literary works. WhatDiop makes equally clear is the deep ideological engagement that persistsin these narratives. As I have argued throughout this essay, the crimegenre authorizes the optimistically anarchistic ‘furie jubilatoire’ that hadalways been at the heart of Mongo Beti’s literary project.


33. The irony is that bothhigh literary genres(e.g. Dickenson,Balzac) and the origi-nal lowbrow crimegenre (Poe, Gaboriaux)were often publishedin serial form thusconfusing theapparent distinctionlargely developed inthe twentieth centuryconcerning the realistnovel between serialpulps and highbrowhard covers. It shouldalso be noted thatsome have argued forboth Balzac andDickenson asinaugural figures ofthe detective/crimegenre.

34. Boubakar Boris Diop,‘Mongo Beti et nous’,http://1libertaire.free.fr/MongoBeti01.html


ReferencesBarber, Karen (1997), ‘Introduction’, in Karen Barber (ed.), Readings in Africa

Popular Culture, Bloomington: Indiana UP, pp. 1–12.

Beti, Mongo (1984), Main Basse sur le Cameroun, Rouen: Peuples noirs.

—— (1999), Trop de soleil tue l’amour, Paris: Julliard.

—— (2000), Branle-bas en noir et blanc, Paris: Pocket.

Bongie, Chris (2003), ‘Exiles on Main Stream: Valuing the Popularity of PopularCulture’, Postmodern Culture, 14: 1, electronic journal, paragraph number1053–1920.

Boto, Eza (1955), ‘Afrique Noire, littérature rose’, Présence Africaine, 1: 5, pp. 133–40.

Camara, Laye (1994), L’Enfant noir, Paris: Pocket.

Cawelti, John G. (1976), Adventure, Mystery, and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture, Chicago: Chicago UP.

Chandler, Raymond (1995), ‘The Simple Art of Murder’, Raymond Chandler: LaterNovels and other Writings, New York: The Library of America.

Chesterton, Gilbert Keith (1946), ‘In Defense of the Detective Story’, in HowardHaycraft (ed.), The Art of the Mystery Story: A Collection of Critical Essays, NewYork: Simon and Schuster, pp. 3–6.

Diop, Boubakar Boris, ‘Mongo Beti et Nous’, http://1libertaire.free.fr/MongoBeti01.htmlAccessed on 20/7/2007.

Duhamel, Marcel (1948), http://www.gallimard.fr/collections/fiche_serienoire.htmAccessed on 22/7/2007

Gilroy, Paul (1993), Black Atlantic, Cambridge: Harvard UP.

Higginson, Pim (2005), ‘Mayhem at the Crossroads: The Rise of Francophone AfricanCrime Fiction’, in Andrea Goulet and Susanna Lee (eds), Crime Fictions, NewHaven: Yale UP, pp. 160–76.

Himes, Chester (1990), My Life of Absurdity, New York: Paragon House.

Jones, Gavin (1999), Strange Talk: The Politics of Dialect Literature in Gilded Age America,Berkeley: California UP.

Kane, Mohamadou (1982), Roman africain et tradition, Dakar: Nouvelles EditionsAfricaines.

Kom, Ambroise (ed.) (2002), Mongo Béti Parle, Bayreuth: Eckhard Breitinger,African Studies Series, 54.

Lacassin, Francis (1993), Mythologie du roman policier, Paris: Christian Bourgeois. 200.

Manchette, Jean-Patrick (2003), Chroniques, Paris: Payots & Rivages.

Messac, Regis (1929), Le ‘detective novel’ et l’influence de la pensee scientifique, Paris: Honoré Champion.

Miller, Christopher (1990), Theories of Africans, Chicago: UP Chicago.

Mouralis, Bernard (1975), Les Contre-littératures, Paris: PUF.

Murphy, David (2003), ‘De-centering French Studies: Towards a PostcolonialTheory of Francophone Cultures’, French Cultural Studies, 13, pp. 165–85.

Stephen H. Arnold (ed.) (1998), Critical Perspectives on Mongo Beti, Boulder, Colo:Lynne Rienner.

Thomas, Dominic (2005), ‘Intersections and Trajectories’, in H. Adlai Murdochand Anne Donadey (eds), Postcolonial Theory and Francophone Literary Studies,Gainesville, Florida: UP Florida, pp. 235–57.

390 Pim Higginson


Triulzi, Alessandro (1996), ‘African Cities, Historical Memory and Street Buzz’, inIain Chambers and Lidia Curti (eds), The Post-Colonial Question, New York:Routledge, pp. 78–91.

Vian, Boris (1946), J’irai cracher sur vos tombes, Paris: Editions du Scorpion.

Wright, Richard (1991), Black Boy, New York: Library of America.

Suggested citationHigginson, P. (2007), ‘A descent into crime: explaining Mongo Beti’s last two

novels’, International Journal of Francophone Studies 10: 3, pp. 377–391, doi: 10.1386/ijfs.10.3.377/1

Contributor details Pim Higginson is an associate professor at Bryn Mawr College where he teachescourses on French and francophone literature. He is currently completing a bookmanuscript on the francophone African crime novel. He has also written on therelationship between music, writing and constructions of racial identity, and haspublished essays on food as an ideological construct within the francophone novel.Contact: French and Francophone Studies Department, Bryn Mawr College, 101North Merion Ave, Bryn Mawr, PA 19010.E-mail: [email protected]



393



Listening to Caribbean history: music andrhythm in Daniel Maximin’s L’Isolé soleilMartin Munro University of the West Indies

AbstractThis article deals with the relationship between music, rhythm and black Caribbeanhistory and identity. It begins by considering briefly some of the ways that sounds,including music and rhythm, shaped and defined the experience of slavery, and thenargues that despite the importance of rhythm to this experience and to subsequentCaribbean cultural history, most critics and scholars have tended to neglect orignore rhythm in their work. Drawing evidence from Daniel Maximin’s novel L’Isolésoleil (1981), the article argues that the grand historical sweep of Maximin’s novel,and the recurrence of rhythm and music in the text at many key stages ofGuadeloupean, Caribbean and broader black diasporic history seems to suggest anintimate bond between rhythm, music and Caribbean identity, a bond that Maximinimplies has been continually strengthened, even as it has mutated, from the slaveryperiod to the present. The article also considers some of the ways in which Maximin’swork relates to that of Édouard Glissant, notably in terms of narrative structures,and in the authors’ conceptions of history, memory and music. Finally, I suggestthat Maximin’s novel prefigures the current interest among historians of under-standing the past through considering its auditory aspects.

RésuméCet article traite du rapport entre la musique, le rythme, l’histoire et l’identité desAntilles. Il débute en considérant les façons dont les sons, parmi lesquels ceux de lamusique et du rythme, ont formé et défini l’expérience de l’esclavage. Selon nous, mal-gré l’importance du rythme dans cette expérience et dans l’histoire culturelle antil-laise en général, la grande majorité des critiques négligent le rythme dans leursétudes. En nous basant sur une étude détaillée du roman de Daniel Maximin, L’Isolésoleil (1981), nous montrons que ce texte attribue une position prééminente aurythme et à la musique à des moments-clés de l’histoire de la Guadeloupe, des Antilleset plus généralement du monde de la diaspora noire. Il s’ensuit que Maximin proposeun rapport très étroit entre la musique, le rythme et l’identité antillaise, qui persisteencore à l’époque contemporaine. Nous considérons aussi des points de convergenceentre l’œuvre de Maximin et celle d’Édouard Glissant, notamment sur le plan de lastructure narrative, et de leurs conceptions de l’histoire, de la mémoire et de lamusique. Finalement, nous suggérons que dans ce roman Maximin anticipe l’intérêtqu’on trouve parmi certains historiens pour les aspects auditifs du passé.

How did slavery sound? What did the slave ship, the plantation, slaverevolts and slave dances sound like? Were the sounds of slavery similar


KeywordsCaribbean

Glissant

history

Jazz

Maximin

memory

music

rhythm

slavery

IJFS_10.3_07_art_Munro.qxd 11/6/07 4:16 PM Page 393

across the plantations of the New World, from Brazil to Virginia? What par-ticular sounds have persisted through time, and can still be heard today,and do these sounds constitute living ties with the past, parts of history thathave outlived slavery, and yet still bear witness to the lived experience ofbondage? Slavery had many discordant sounds: the cracking of overseers’whips; the cries and screams of slaves; the pealing of bells and the soundingof conch shells to mark out different periods of the slaves’ working day; thegrating, mechanical noise of the sugar refineries; the call-and-responsesinging of working slaves; the genteel sounds of the masters’ dances and thedrumming, singing and clapping that accompanied slave dances on week-ends and holidays. Many of these sounds, both musical and industrial, wererhythmic and repetitive, sonic accompaniments to lives that were them-selves governed by repeated routines and rhythmic patterns of work.

If rhythm was a fundamental aspect of slave experience, and if it is stillone of the most persistent aspects of Caribbean culture, it remains alsoperhaps one of the most misunderstood and under-theorized elements ofCaribbean historical and cultural experience. There is generally a reticenceamong Caribbeanist critics to mention rhythm, especially it seems amongnon-black, non-Caribbean observers. The reason for this reticence nodoubt lies in the longstanding negative, stereotypical image of the naturallyrhythmic black, and in critics’ unwillingness to be construed as essential-ist, reductivist or worse, racist. Another related reason for the criticalneglect of rhythm, at least in the francophone postcolonial domain, is thatrhythm is most closely related to Négritude’s outmoded ideas on race andculture; few authors would declare now as Césaire did in 1961 that rhythm‘est une donnée essentielle de l’homme noir.’1 Indeed, most critics wouldquite rightly question such an assertion, much as both René Ménil (1981)and Frantz Fanon (1952) did in Tracées and Peau noire, masques blancs,respectively. In the post-Fanon era, rhythm has almost become a taboosubject for critics wary of racial and cultural essentialism. But to ignorerhythm completely is to neglect a fundamentally important feature ofCaribbean aesthetics, history, and indeed contemporary lived experience.A more engaged, interdisciplinary criticism is required if we are to arriveat a sophisticated and enlightened understanding of Caribbean rhythm.Scholars will have to engage not only with literature, but also with broaderCaribbean cultural history, with, for example, the history of Carnivals,dance, drumming and black Atlantic music more generally. Nick Nesbitt’swork on Daniel Maximin’s L’Isolé soleil, which uses jazz theory to tease outthe intricate relationships between the novel and North American jazz,indicates the creative and critical potential of this kind of interdisciplinaryapproach.2 Similarly, with an emphasis on the ‘unique harmonic idiom’ ofMaximin’s jazz-influenced narrative, Jason Herbeck has skilfully used the-ories of jazz improvisation in his reading of L’Isolé soleil.3 This article tosome extent complements Nesbitt’s and Herbeck’s work on Maximin’snovel; at the same time, however, my interest lies more specifically inrhythm as a fundamental feature of Caribbean music, and in rhythm’slong, evolving association with black Caribbean identity. I argue that thegrand historical sweep of Maximin’s novel, and the recurrence of rhythmand music in the text at many key stages of Guadeloupean, Caribbean andbroader black diasporic history seems to suggest an intimate bond between

394 Martin Munro

1. Jacqueline Sieger,‘Entretien avec AiméCésaire’, Afrique, no.5, October 1961,p. 65, cited in GeorgesNgal, Aimé Césaire: Unhomme à la recherched’une patrie, Paris:Présence Africaine,1994, p. 152.

2. See Nick Nesbitt,Voicing Memory:History and Subjectivityin French CaribbeanLiterature,Charlottesville andLondon: University ofVirginia Press, 2003,pp. 147–63.

3. See Jason Herbeck,‘“Jusqu’aux limites del’improvisation”:Caribbean Identityand Jazz in DanielMaximin’s L’Isolésoleil’, DalhousieFrench Studies, 71,Summer 2005,pp. 161–75 (p. 174).


rhythm, music and Caribbean identity, a bond that Maximin implies hasbeen continually strengthened, even as it has mutated, from the time ofslavery to the present. The article also considers some of the ways inwhich Maximin’s work relates to that of Édouard Glissant, notably in termsof narrative structures, and in their conceptions of history, memory andmusic. Finally, I will suggest that Maximin’s novel prefigures the currentinterest among historians in understanding the past through payingattention to its auditory aspects.

Memory and music in Maximin and GlissantThe influence of Édouard Glissant’s early novels, and particularly LeQuatrième siècle (1964), ripples across subsequent French Caribbean fic-tion rhythmically, insistently so that it is possible to trace Glissantianthemes and figures in the great majority of Antillean novels from the1970s to the present. Perhaps nowhere is this influence so apparent, andso ably incorporated and developed than in the novels of Daniel Maximin,which much like Glissant’s fiction, are characterized by self-referentialnarrative structures that interrogate history in a way that ‘puts in ques-tion our ability to know the past’ (Nesbitt, p. 148).4 Maximin’s L’Isolé soleil(1981) largely introduces the themes and characters that he revisits in hissubsequent two novels, Soufrières (1987) and L’Île et une nuit (1995), andis a sprawling historical epic in the Glissantian vein, which traverses fivegenerations of Guadeloupean history from slavery to the contemporaryperiod, and traces the evolution of a discourse of resistance to colonialdomination and assimilation. As in Glissant’s work, the past in L’Isolé soleilis not a static, closed entity, and Maximin’s writing is informed by his con-viction that many people create for themselves multiple, shifting concep-tions of the past, that ‘the present always invents a past for itself out of itsown desire’.5 The ancestral history and the predominantly masculinistidentity that are typically associated with the Guadeloupean past areaccordingly for Maximin little more than ‘inventions generated out ofdesire, a rhetorical inventio’.6 Maximin’s characters, again like Glissant’s,are obsessed with the past, with reinventing history and with variousmodes of remembrance, including personal letters, private diaries, inter-textual references to Césaire and the Tropiques group, the historical mem-ory of Guadeloupean rebel Louis Delgrès (incinéré dans nos mémoires) orwriting fiction itself.7 The central figure Marie–Gabriel is primarily preoc-cupied with reconstructing the lost notebook of her father, Louis–Gabriel,who died in the 1962 plane crash in Guadeloupe. Louis–Gabriel had writtena history of the Caribbean, and Marie–Gabriel’s narrative becomes, inpart, what Murdoch calls a ‘simulacrum of her father’s journal’, as sheinvents a new history which also incorporates the rediscovered writings ofher ancestor Jonathan, her mother Siméa’s journal and the notebook ofher friend Adrien.8 An important aspect of Marie–Gabriel’s project is theshift that she effects from the male-centred stories of the past to a narra-tive that incorporates and validates women’s histories. More generally,Marie–Gabriel is charged with unlocking and repossessing the past:

Tu ouvriras les tiroirs de notre histoire confisquée, ceux d’héroïsme et de

lâcheté, ceux de la faim, de la peur et de l’amour; tu rafraîchiras la mémoire

395Listening to Caribbean history: music and rhythm in Daniel Maximin’s L’Isolé soleil

4. As Bongie rightlystates, Maximin’s second novelSoufrières (1987)rewrites L’Isolé soleilin ways that echoGlissant’s own fictionand which read as ‘abelated and parodichomage to the self-ref-erential world ofGlissant’s novels, withtheir cast of recurringcharacters andepisodes’. Islands andExiles: The CreoleIdentities ofPost/ColonialLiterature, Stanford:Stanford UniversityPress, 1998, p. 357.

5. Clarisse Zimra,‘Introduction to LoneSun’, Daniel MaximinLone Sun,Charlottesville:University of VirginiaPress, 1989, p. xxvii.

6. Bongie, Islands andExiles, p. 358.

7. Daniel Maximin,L’Isolé soleil, Paris:Seuil, 1981, p. 19.Subsequent referencesto this novel will beindicated in the text.

8. H. Adlai Murdoch,Creole Identity in theFrench Caribbean Novel,Gainesville: Universityof Florida Press,2001, p. 109.


des témoignages et des récits, tu mettras la vérité au service de l’imaginaire et

non pas le contraire (p. 18).

This distinction, which prioritizes imagination over truth, recalls the wayGlissant, in Le Quatrième siècle, favours a remembrance evoked from thesenses and the imagination over the memories contained in facts, datesand incontrovertible truths.

There is also a similar dialogic construction of history, a swirl of narra-tive voices both past and present, figured around the two central voices ofMarie–Gabriel and Adrien. The ‘drawers’ of memory in the novel are relatedto three key moments in the growth of Guadeloupean consciousness: first,and most fundamentally, to 1802, when the French army landed inGuadeloupe to bolster Napoleon’s reintroduction of slavery after eightyears of abolition, and the mulatto army officer Louis Delgrès led a popu-lar revolt, which ended with his and his soldiers’ mass suicide at FortMatouba. The second key moment is Second World War, when Guadeloupewas controlled by the Vichy government, and resistance inhered in indi-rect satire and parodies. Third, the crash of a Boeing aircraft carrying theleaders of the Guadeloupean independence movement in the 1960s isevoked as a traumatic moment, and related to the wider global maelstromof racial militantism, and to the American Black Power movement in par-ticular. Crucially, then, each of these moments is linked to various periodswhen island history clashes or meshes with broader historical developments,when events on the small island resonate directly with the outside world.This more outward-looking perspective marks another distinction withGlissant’s Le Quatrième siècle which, relatively speaking, is more resolutelyfocused inwards, towards the specificity and idiosyncrasies of Martiniqueand its history.

Consequently, and again in specific relation to Glissant’s novel, Maximin’swork tends to incorporate outside (black, diasporic) influences more freelyand with more conviction. While Glissant’s novel is firmly grounded in thespecifics of the French Antilles, and while Glissant believes that in many cru-cial aspects the Caribbean has a shared history, Maximin’s idea of a commonCaribbean (and black Atlantic) culture suggests more directly a fundamentalbond between different islands that generally transcends the local and theparticular and that encompasses ‘une histoire d’archipel, attentive à nosquatre races, nos sept langues et nos douzaines de sangs’ (p. 9).9 In the wordsof the character Siméa, to speak simply of Martinique or Guadeloupe in isola-tion (and especially in the case of Césaire and the Tropiques group, who applyEuropean ethnography, psychoanalysis, Marxism and surrealism in their con-ception of Martinican identity) is a kind of ‘manie’ (p. 193). Identificationwith Europe (and also Africa) is to her ‘l’ennemie de l’identité’; and she pro-poses that all Caribbean people form a single, essentially coherent civilization:‘Je suis nécessairement Antillaise, et je ne suis Guadeloupéenne que parhasard!’ (p. 193). Crucially, the single most important means by which thiscommon black Caribbean (and black Atlantic) culture is transmitted is rhyth-mic music: L’Isolé soleil is a novel that quite literally moves to the beat of blackmusics, from calypso and steeldrum to bolero, merengue and jazz.

Although he does not incorporate music into his work as extensively asMaximin does, Glissant is nevertheless keenly aware of the importance of

396 Martin Munro

9. Glissant’s evolution asa novelist and theoristhas been characterizedby an increasinginterest in culturalrelation and thebroader effects of cultural and economicglobalization. At thesame time, he hasretained a primaryinterest in the specificsituation ofMartinique.


rhythm and music to French Caribbean culture.10 In Caribbean Discourse,he states plainly his view that music is ‘constitutive’ of Martinican histori-cal and everyday existence, and that this is so ‘par le rythme’. Just as hetends to look towards Faulkner’s American South for literary models of theplantation, so he compares the history of Martinican music to the ‘histoireprestigieuse’ of jazz. He traces the history of black American music back tothe plantation, and to the collapse of the plantation system and the subse-quent migrations, first to New Orleans, then to northern cities such asChicago and New York. At each historical stage, Glissant says, blackAmerican music was reborn – gospel, blues from New Orleans and Chicago,Count Basie’s big band, bebop and free jazz – so that the music records thehistory of the community, ‘son affrontement au réel, les failles par où elles’insère, les murailles contre lesquelles trop souvent elle bute’. And if jazzhas become a universal form, he argues, it is because it is never a music ‘enl’air’, but ‘l’expression d’une situation donnée’.11

When he compares the great musical triumphs of North Americanblacks to the history of the Creole song in Martinique and the beguine inGuadeloupe, Glissant sees a historical rupture between French Caribbeanmusic and the evolution of the people. When the island plantations col-lapsed, he says, nothing, neither large-scale urbanization nor industrial-ization came to replace it, and the Martinican people remained ‘comme ensuspension’. The consequences for Martinican music are that it becamecut off from work and ‘une nécessité existentielle’, ceased to evolve, andthus became folkloric, ‘au mauvais sens du terme’.12 Even if, he says, thebeguine was in the past the ‘voix’ of the French islands, it ceased to be soin Martinique in 1902 (the year of the great St. Pierre volcano) and inGuadeloupe in 1940 – presumably due to the effects of the war, the Vichygovernment and then departmentalization in 1946. No longer the reflec-tion of collective experience, Martinican music has become an empty,folkloric form. Of course, as Glissant does not state, the emptiness andstagnation of the music could be viewed as a very direct expression of asociety rendered apathetic by the collapse of all productivity and creativity,and by the ‘néantisation suspensive’ that is the consequence of depart-mentalization. By way of contrast, Glissant looks to independent Jamaica,and to reggae’s emergence as a necessary creation born out of relentlessstruggle and resistance.13 Fittingly, Glissant sees the salvation of Martinicanmusic in its adoption of outside influences – the jazz stylings of the 1930s,the hybrid contemporary Caribbean forms that mix salsa, reggae and jazz,and which cross the Atlantic to Africa – and in the possibilities of culturalsyncretism.14 It is this exposure to outside influences that in Glissant’sview offers the greatest hope for renewal, and which could allow ‘desenrichissements et des complicités qui permettront de supporter lenon–enracinement, de sauter par–dessus le néant actuel’. 15

‘Taking the music seriously’ in L’Isolé soleilIn effect, Maximin’s L’Isolé soleil enacts and recounts just such a project ofFrench Antillean renewal through creative engagement with diverse dias-poric musical styles. The novel is replete with musical references and withcharacters who, like the narrator Adrien, are ‘passioné[s] de toutes lesmusiques noires américaines’ (p. 25). In the short epilogue, Maximin


10. Herbeck makes tellingconnections betweenGlissant’s theories ofthe Caribbean ‘Tout-monde’ and ideas ofjazz improvisation in‘Jusqu’aux limites del’improvisation’, pp.163–65.

11. Édouard Glissant, LeDiscours antillais,Paris: Seuil, 1981;Seuil Folios, 1997,pp. 382–83.

12. ibid., p. 383.

13. ibid., p. 385.

14. ibid., p. 112.

15. ibid., p. 386.


introduces the idea of the French Caribbean islands as broken and bloodyfragments, with on every hillside the ruins of the plantation, and yet theislands continue to exist and are alive to the ‘rythme du tambour–Ka’ (p. 9).It is, moreover, Marie–Gabriel’s father, Louis–Gabriel, the rootless musicianfigure, who weaves Guadeloupean music into the broader tapestry (or sound-scape) of New World black diasporic music: a multi-instrumentalist whoplays jazz, beguine and Afro-Cuban, he leaves Vichy Guadeloupe in 1943and shifts with apparent ease between New York, Cuba, London, Paris andHaiti, the places where he can play ‘la musique de son cœur’ (p. 17). Hisaim, something like Maximin’s, is to write a history of the Antilles throughmusic (p. 16); and as Maximin himself has said, L’Isolé soleil is a novel‘which shows from beginning to end the memory of music and song’.16

Much as this history seeks to connect Guadeloupe through music to thewider diasporic world, it also involves a fundamental inquiry into the func-tions of the local and the Creole. The narrator Adrien at one point proposesa long list of axiomatic truths, and among them is the belief that ‘il nousfaut parler créole: le créole des tambouyeurs/le créole des tambours–ka’(p. 103). A language in other words that is closely associated with rhythmand music, key aspects of Maximin’s Creole culture. In one party scene, acurrent Haitian hit is followed by a Cuban bolero (a ‘sacred’ music anddance form), and during an intermission a record of Antillean ‘slows’ isplayed, a ‘spécialité locale’ based on Creole rhythms and bland lyrics sungin French rich rhymes. It is, the narrator says, as if emotional pain ordeclarations of love were too serious or too derisory for the Creole lan-guage, which at the time was only used for lascivious allusions and virileboasts (p. 24). The tacit general acceptance of this linguistic and culturaldistinction is suggested in the observation that the music drifts over thepartygoers without their listening to it (p. 24); the ‘message’ of the separateroles of French and Creole language and culture is almost subliminallycommunicated and accepted. This misconception of Creole culture assomething childlike or banal is, according to Adrien, similarly prevalent inpopular literature, which favours childhood memoirs over the moreengaged writing (specifically that of Césaire and the Tropiques group) thatMaximin’s narrators draw on and cite with the intertextual zeal of thetrue disciple. As Adrien says, the danger in endlessly retelling tales ofchildhood is that they ‘endorment les cœurs’, and that Caribbean peoplebe seen as children seeking solace and comfort in the memories of child-hood, while in reality they are ‘volcans endormis qu’il nous faut réveilleravec des histories de zombis, de macaques, de bambous, de rhum sec, demusique et de coutelas’ (p. 24). The model for cultural renewal throughdiasporic engagement is once again provided by the example of Louis–Gabriel, the musician who plays the North American music, jazz, butwhose clarinet notes ‘d’argent fin’ raise the music far above its foundationsin the ‘rythmique grace des blues–men’, like a ‘chapelet d’îles envoléesau–dessus d’un continent. Comme une révolte qui pénètre les cœurs àpetites cuillers pour durer plus profond’ (p. 25). The musician’s aim is not,therefore, to simply imitate, but to transform, transcend, penetrate andfinally to create something new that reflects the shape and character ofthe islands; in Herbeck’s terms, a ‘composite whole’ made up of the novel’smany ‘disparate voices’.17

398 Martin Munro

16. Daniel Maximin,‘Entretien’, LesNouvelles du sud 3,1986, p. 50.

17. Herbeck, ‘Jusqu’auxlimites de l’improvisa-tion’, pp. 173, 174.


The past that Maximin evokes is in fact characterized by the close asso-ciation between art and what Glissant calls ‘une nécessité existentielle’.18

Maximin’s slave figure Georges, at age eighteen one of the best violinists inGuadeloupe, teaches fellow slaves to read, and following his teaching, goesto play his violin, improvising ‘des mélodies à l’unisson des vois aiguës despaysannes, sur le rythme des tambours gros–ka’ (p. 34). In its fusion ofthe ‘civilized’ European violin melodies, popular voice and Africanizedrhythmicity, this scene evokes the plantation as a matrix of creolized culture,of a new and nameless form emerging from disparate elements. Signi-ficantly, music is presented as a malleable form that in the spontaneousjamming of the melodic violinist, the singers and the rhythmic drummerscreates almost immediately something new and unforeseen. Music in thiscase is a means of attaining the creative and identitary freedom that wasdenied and suppressed by the institutions of colonialism and slavery, butwhich was nevertheless an important aspect of the ‘imperatives of the real-ity’ of slave life; it is an indirect, almost subliminal means of inventing andaffirming black Creole identity in a situation that as Georges writes, seeksto render slaves ‘des êtres sans patrimoine et sans paternité’ (p. 41). Thisidea of music as an invisible force that insinuates itself into the dominantdiscourse is reinforced by Georges’s description of his search for liberty‘sous l’eau’ (p. 41). In distinction to Jonathan, his twin and a maroon wholives among the trees and the volcano, Georges says he has chosen to be‘un enfant du temps, de l’eau et de la nuit’, preferring to live by water andthe shore, slowly forming the ‘pierre précieuse de notre liberté’ (p. 41).19

The destiny of water, he says, is always to flow to the lowest point, the spa-tial opposite to the volcano, which is associated with the sun, its morefixed dualistic day-and-night movements, and which is unable to reach thedepths of the water or the deepest forests (p. 41). Georges’s attachment towater is, therefore, also a commitment to the patient moulding of a moreprofound freedom, and just as the water moves inexorably, weaving its waytowards the lowest, deepest parts of the island, so his music permeates thedominant ideology, slowly eroding it, and touching finally the deepestparts of the new creolized Antillean reality. Much as Glissant does inLe Quatrième siècle, Maximin tends to blur the dichotomy between themountain and the plain, between the slave and the maroon. Georges callsfor the concerted action of the maroons and the island’s recently emanci-pated blacks against the combined forces of the planters, proprietors, mil-itarists, mulattoes and lower class whites, in order to truly liberatethemselves from the treacherous elements and to protect themselves fromthe revenge of the French (p. 43). In Georges’s case, education, music andrevolution are interconnected: he spends all of his time teaching blacksoldiers in Point-à-Pitre, yet takes time to play music, and composes songsthat comment indirectly on the political situation. He specifically writes a‘méringue haïtienne’ that tells of rats who entrusted cats to supply themusic for their ball, and who are eaten at midnight by the cats (pp. 44–45).The refrain clarifies the meaning of the song: ‘Si rat’ v’lé dansé: mèt chat’dèrô!/Si nèg’ v’lé dansé: mèt’ chat’ dèrô!!’ (p. 45).

The cat, therefore, symbolizes the white man, the mulatto or indeed theduplicitous black army general – anyone who works to keep the black peoplesubordinate. The choice of the Haitian meringue form is also significant in


18. Glissant, Le Discoursantillais, p. 383.

19. As Murdoch pointsout, Georges andJonathan are doubledwith ‘California’sSoledad Brothers,George and JonathanJackson’, and ‘thesetemporal intersectionsof resistance andrevolt continue towiden and redefinethe context ofregional identitythrough its pan-American points ofreference and recallthe narrator’s conceptof Caribbean identityas the product of anongoing culturalinteraction betweenthe transplantedblacks of the Americas’(Creole Identity, p. 129).


that Haiti offers to the Guadeloupean rebel a very contemporary exampleof ‘putting the cat outside’ (mèt chat’ dèrô). More generally, Maximin sug-gests some of the ways in which music acts as a vehicle for subversiveideas, and as a means of spreading revolutionary sentiment. Indeed, in alater scene in the novel when Delgrès is surrounded at Matouba, the gen-eral says he has heard Georges’s song, and that Georges had given him theviolin as a souvenir, saying that ‘la musique et la mort nous unissent plussolidement que les paroles de la vie’ (p. 55). Music is thus confirmed as aprimary bonding force between Caribbean blacks, more so than language,which in this context is inevitably connected to loss and alienation, andsubject to control and compromise.

Music is also the one true inheritance, passed on to and modified witheach generation: the character Carole is a repository of old Creole songs,and plays the banjo and the saxophone at balls, while her sons Ignace andLouis – named after their famous rebel predecessors Joseph Ignace andLouis Delgrès – spend all of their leisure time playing music with theirorchestra, Ignace on drums, and Louis playing the violin in a way thatrecalls Georges’s earlier fusions of melody and rhythm. Later, too, Louis–Gabriel, named by his mother Louise in honour of Georges (in their sharedinitial G), himself becomes a musician, in circumstances that invoke des-tiny and fate. His mother, father and twin brother Jean–Louis (named inhonour of Jonathan) are killed in the hurricane of 1928, which devastatedthe whole of the island. In the novel hurricanes have their own rhythm,returning regularly, and approaching the island slowly, inevitably ‘aurythme du chapelet des vieilles’ (p. 94). The 1928 disaster leads to themodernization and ‘civilization’ of the island, through the construction ofnew concrete and stone buildings. Louis–Gabriel escapes the hurricane byplaying truant from school to listen to the practice sessions of a Haitianorchestra, which took place by chance in the cellars of the Royal Hotel, aneffective shelter from the ravages of the hurricane. None of the musiciansor their young admirers were killed in the hurricane, and Louis–Gabriel,the orphan ‘s’étant joué en musique du destin’ became a musician, a‘grand spécialiste de l’improvisation’ (p. 81). Again, music survives disas-ter and adapts to new circumstances, in this case Louis–Gabriel emergesquite literally from the rubble of the past as a great master of the modernmode of improvisational jazz.

Of all the diasporic musical modes evoked in L’Isolé soleil, it is jazz – principally bebop, its precursors and the free jazz of the 1960s and 1970s – that is most tellingly represented and incorporated textually as a dynamicmeans of refiguring and transcending history and culture; as Nesbitt says,‘Jazz is thoroughly linked to L’Isolé soleil’s production of meaning, a drivingforce in its historiographic machine that formulates and generates con-structions and critiques in ever-new combinations of once-buried memo-ries.’20 The creative incorporation of North American jazz into thethematic and narrative texture of the Caribbean novel is essentially moti-vated and enabled by the two modes’ shared interest in addressing the‘dilemmas of historical representation’.21 Beyond this fundamental sharedobjective, however, jazz and (Caribbean) literature are apparently, asNesbitt says, ‘two highly dissimilar signifying practices’,22 the formerbeing more closely associated with oral, vernacular culture, while the

400 Martin Munro

20. Nesbitt, VoicingSilence, p. 148. OfMaximin’s FrenchCaribbeanpredecessors, RenéMénil has shown anenduring interest inand engagement withjazz. See, for example,Ménil’s ‘Situation dela poésie aux Antilles’,Tropiques, 11, May1944, pp. 127–33.

21. Nesbitt, VoicingSilence, p. 148.

22. ibid., p. 150.


written word, particularly in the French Caribbean, is often synonymouswith the discourse of the master, and carries implications for the blackwriter of self-betrayal.23 It is this basic antinomy between apparently nat-ural, unmediated musical expression and highly codified and compro-mised literary creation that Maximin interrogates and seeks to transcendin L’Isolé soleil. He does this in two essential and complementary ways: bypresenting music as an elevated, highly sophisticated, and indeed codifiedmeans of black expression; and conversely by writing in ways that evokethe black musical tropes of riffing, jazz improvisation and cultural syn-cretism. In formal terms, Maximin’s prose perhaps evokes most closely thetropes of riffing and improvisation in Siméa’s narrative, which in its free-flowing, unpredictable form echoes and plays on experimental jazz style,especially Coleman Hawkins’ Body and Soul, which is evoked throughout hernarrative as a model of contemporary black expression. Jazz, for Maximin,is more than mere musical practice; it is, as Nesbitt suggests

a vehicle of communication that tells a more than musical story in an encoded

form, a story that is more than organized sound, one that instead contains

within its material existence encryptions of the social reality out of which it

arose.24

In this sense, Maximin prefigures Paul Gilroy’s project of ‘Taking the musicseriously’, and presents music in terms that echo Gilroy’s view of how it hasdeveloped from the ‘grudging gift’ that supposedly compensated slaves fortheir exclusion from modern political society into a refined form of expres-sion, ‘an enhanced mode of communication beyond the petty power ofwords – spoken or written’.25 This search for a transcendent form of com-munication takes Maximin’s writing to a new and original plane; a space,as Bongie says, ‘that is between the oral and the written, and that puts intoquestion the (inescapable) binary thinking that would cordon them offfrom one another’.26 It is true more generally that music in L’Isolé soleil isprivileged as the most dynamic, searching and profound expression of blackAtlantic experience. In this regard, it is significant that Maximin, unlike hispredecessors Zobel and Glissant, or the later Créolité writers, does not evokestoryteller figures as repositories of history, language and culture. Maximinin a sense substitutes the storyteller with musicians who, much as inGilroy’s formulation, transcend the ‘petty power’ of words in their creative,often improvised modes of communication.

In L’Isolé soleil Louis–Gabriel’s movement out of the rubble into the mod-ern, essentially jazz mode is complemented by the broadening of the politicalframe of reference to include extra-Caribbean influences. These influencescome principally from North America, and less from Africa, which, it is sug-gested, fades in the memory over time, and loses its cultural and political rel-evance to the Caribbean. As Adrien says, by the mid-twentieth century, thepeasants’ gros–ka drum had long ceased to stir up a memory of Africa, andby then only stoked the imagination (p. 92). Just as the new music flowsbetween various points on the diasporic map, so political ideas travel and areincorporated into island thinking. At one point, Adrien talks about hearingthe Black Power militant Stokely Carmichael – born in Trinidad yet mostclosely associated with North American radicalism, thus himself something


23. Herbeck challengeswhat he sees asNesbitt’s ‘deconstruc-tionst approach’ andaccentuates the‘productive’ qualitiesof jazz, its ‘trueperformancepotential’ as a‘compositionalmethodology ofcreation’. ‘Jusqu’auxlimites de l’improvisa-tion’, p. 165.

24. ibid., pp. 157–58.

25. Paul Gilroy, The BlackAtlantic: Modernity andDouble Consciousness,London: Verso, 1993,p. 76.

26. Bongie, Islands andExiles, p. 400.


of a free-flowing diasporic militant – speaking in London. Carmichael’s argu-ment was that the only true revolutionaries he had ever encountered werejazz musicians playing in a cellar. For his part, Adrien is less convinced aboutthe political function of music, which, he says, ‘ne joue jamais la révolution.’In his view, revolution and music may ‘parfois danser ensemble. Commedeux corps amoureux improvisant leurs gestes au diapason du rythme,quand la révolution a un moment de liberté’ (p. 90). At the same time, how-ever, Adrien affirms unequivocally the importance of black Americanradicalism to his youthful dream of Antillean liberation. Recalling how heand his fellow black male students, ‘powerless rebels’, would be forced to sitat the back of their high school class, while white children sat at thefront, Adrien remembers their discussions of their future combat andtheir certainty that:

Le salut du monde noir viendrait des Noirs de l’Amérique, tendus comme un

arc tout d’une pièce depuis Bahia jusqu’à Harlem, avec nos Antilles au centre,

sûrs de vaincre lucidement après trois siècles d’expérience de révolte. Nous

étions naturellement solidaires de nos cousins d’Alabama et Chicago, même

sans comprendre la dureté de leurs voix et la tristesse de leur blues comparées

à la chaleur de nos rythmes. Sans doute notre sentiment s’accompagnait–il

d’un peu d’envie de gratte–ciel, de Chevrolets et de westerns. (p. 92)

Adrien’s identification with North America is, therefore, a fairly complexmix of racial solidarity and almost covetous fascination with classic imagesof (white) American modernity and film culture. Interestingly, too, there isan element of discord or misapprehension between diasporic musical forms,between the rhythmic ‘warmth’ of Creole music and the more downbeatmelancholy of the blues. This imperfect synthesis of Caribbean and blackAmerican music is also a preoccupation of the Guadeloupean jazzmanLouis–Gabriel who, after leaving the island for New York in the mid-forties,spends his nights in Harlem clubs searching for the elusive synthesisbetween the ‘rigueurs antimélodiques, la violence austère de la nouvellemusique bop et le coulé généreux, la flamboyance sereine,’ of island musi-cians (pp. 263–64).

Adrien’s youthful projection outward for sources of inspiration suggeststhe classic French Caribbean sentiment of alienation and powerlessness:where Césaire projects towards Africa, Maximin’s characters look to NorthAmerica (Glissant, of course, looks inward more insistently and exclusively).Indeed, when Adrien moves to Paris, he feels himself less alienated than hewas in Guadeloupe (p. 96). This is because, he says, the island sun hidfrom him the shadow of his double, an unknown part of him that hadgrown up without, he says, ‘troubler ma solitude, jusqu’au moment dudéracinement.’ He becomes aware of this doubling of himself on the firstday of school in Paris, when he receives a kick, and is able to control hisreaction calmly, mastering his aggression, shame, indulgence and disdain(p. 96). He relates this doubling to the need he feels to prove himself as ablack, and to in a sense represent his race in the colonial metropole. Thusin addition to proving himself a good basketball player (which is expectedof him as a black teenager), he tries to show his brilliance in English (asrevenge against his racist former teacher), in French, through his love of

402 Martin Munro


poetry, and in history and geography so that he may open himself up tothe world without prejudice. Spending his leisure time at the theatre, thecinema and the jazz club, Adrien says ‘j’édifiais tout mon être comme unfils du roi Christophe’, that is as an exemplar for the black race. All of thisconstitutes for Adrien the ‘fardeau de la négritude’, an obligation that hefulfils willingly, as it made of him a ‘papillon multicolore’ (p. 97) who liveshis blackness without it being defined by the dichotomies of race: he is not,he says, a black man ‘par réaction’, or ‘de fraternisation imposée avec lesuns, d’hostilité distante avec les autres’ (p. 98).27

The metropole is thus a kind of stage upon which Adrien plays out thedramas and tensions that are the legacies of centuries of colonial distortionof relationships between ‘blacks’ and ‘whites’ and the hypostatization of thenotions of blackness and whiteness. Music and rhythm are, of course, pri-mary elements in this unequal exchange of (mis)conceptions of the other.The reception of ‘black music’ in Europe is often far from innocent orneutral, and tends to solidify distorted images of the other, as Adrien realizeswhen he visits a record shop in Paris and finds a second-hand album of livesteelband music from Trinidad. The record sleeve contains a short text inthree languages, which is intended as an introduction to the music, cultureand character of the Caribbean:

Le calypso est la musique originale propre aux Antilles. Elle a su capter tout le

côté magique et féerique de ces îles. Et elle reflète admirablement le tempéra-

ment heureux et insouciant des insulaires de la mer Caraïbe. Il est réconfortant

de penser que les Antillais en Europe demeurent fidèles à la musique de leur

pays d’origine. Les harmonies remarquablement gaies d’un calypso reflètent le

caractère même de l’Antillais: heureux, insouciant, mais aussi très sensible.

Malgré les nombreux et constants obstacles qu’il rencontre, l’Antillais ne se

décourage pas: il n’en demeure pas moins courtois. (p. 99)

These sleeve notes effectively express the commonly held European concep-tion of the Caribbean as a ‘magical’ place, peopled by smiling, insouciantcharacters who are never anything less than polite and courteous. Historyand ongoing hardship – ‘the numerous and constant obstacles’ – are men-tioned only obliquely and remain conveniently unspecified and forgotten byEurope and by the Caribbean people, who in any case are at all timesblithely deferential. At a time when Europe was losing its empires, suchimages of the Caribbean seem to serve as reassuring myths that help erasethe inconvenient truths of island history. The easy-going rhythms of steel-band calypso music similarly reinforce the image, and in this way lull thesenses, creating as the notes say, an ultimately ‘comforting’ misconceptionof a musical form that in truth is firmly rooted in class and race struggle. Inits travels to Europe, therefore, this kind of music is translated into anotherdiscourse that falsifies its original forms and functions. The fact too thatAdrien finds the record in the second-hand section of the record shop seemsto suggest that the idea is already worn, used, but is still passed aroundinvisibly and discreetly in the metropole.

Highly sensitive to this kind of stereotyping, and indeed compelled toact out to some extent the image of the courteous black, Adrien writes hisown acerbic note to the white people of London and Paris, imploring them


27. Murdoch interpretsAdrien’s doubling as ameans of protectinghimself against‘white-engenderedalienation’, whereby‘Adrien reverses andappropriates colonialpatterns of power,inverting and translat-ing this gesture into ahybrid metaphor ofresistance, a resitingand reinvestiture ofcolonial paradigms ofdivision that simulta-neously animate thecomplex intersectionsof the colonial experi-ence’. Creole Identity inthe French CaribbeanNovel, p. 118.


to have trust in their Caribbean bus conductors and hospital orderlies, andto preserve their elemental racism while feigning to appreciate ‘le rythmede leurs reggae, leurs biguines, leurs cadence–rampas et leurs calypsos’(p. 100). Continuing in this caustic vein, Adrien asks that the whites limittheir thresholds of tolerance, to be sensitive to the quality of blacks’ serviceand devotion, which are guaranteed by three centuries of practice, and todisperse the blacks into little pockets among the vast greyness of the sub-urbs. Striking a more openly defiant, even prophetic tone, Adrien assertsthat in this case it will not be so easy to effect the sweet and happy colo-nization of these ‘nouvelles îles des Antilles que tu as voulu créer toi–mêmepour ton profit à Londres et à Paris’ (p. 100). It will therefore be moredifficult to perpetuate the myth of the joyfully obliging black man whenthese new islands (or indeed ghettoes) grow up in the heart, or even onthe margins of the metropole. Implicitly, too, the music that will come outof the new islands will challenge the easy yet insincere appreciation of tra-ditional, rhythmic Caribbean musical forms: Adrien’s prophecy implies thedevelopment of more grating, confrontational rhythms that will betterreflect the new urban reality of displaced Caribbean communities.28

Maximin’s novel suggests more generally the importance of the audi-tory aspects of the past, especially for black diasporic cultures, who asGilroy says have transformed music, ‘the grudging gift’ that was oftentheir only true means of retaining memory and of self-expression, into aremarkably persistent and dynamic means of recording history and ofinventing cultural identity.29 As such, Maximin effectively prefigures thecurrent interest among historians for aural history, for ‘hearing history’and sensing the past more deeply and broadly than traditional historiogra-phy has allowed. Maximin’s interest in the aural aspects of history implic-itly aligns him with ground-breaking historians such as Mark M. Smith,who sees in this new historiography the hope of redirecting the ‘visuallyoriented discipline of history’, a discipline which often places emphasis onthe search for ‘perspective’ and ‘focus’ through the ‘lens’ of evidence thatis heavily ‘indebted to the visualism of ‘Enlightenment’ thinking and waysof understanding the world’.30 In his fiction, Maximin is similarly inter-ested in de-emphasizing the visual, and in stopping to listen to history as ithas been communicated through diverse black diasporic musics. Historyfor Maximin has its own sounds that can be re-heard at privilegedmoments, and its own rhythms that are at once part of the music and alsoconstant echoes of an ancestral past that for all its subsequent mutationscan still be momentarily heard, felt and sensed.

ReferencesBongie, Chris (1998), Islands and Exiles: The Creole Identities of Post/Colonial

Literature, Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Fanon, Frantz (1952), Peau noire, masques blancs, Paris: Seuil.

Gilroy, Paul (1993), The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, London:Verso.

Glissant, Édouard (1964), Le Quatrième siècle, Paris: Gallimard.

—— (1989), Caribbean Discourse: Selected Essays (trans. J. Michael Dash),Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.

404 Martin Munro

28. Adrien’s prophecy hasbeen largely and spec-tacularly confirmed inthe subsequenthistory of black musicin England andFrance. See, for exam-ple, Gilroy, The BlackAtlantic, p. 16, onSoul II Soul’s transat-lantic success.

29. Gilroy, The BlackAtlantic, p. 76.

30. Mark M. Smith,‘Introduction: Onwardto Audible Pasts’, inMark M. Smith (ed.),Hearing History: AReader, Athens andLondon: TheUniversity of GeorgiaPress, 2004, p. ix.


Herbeck, Jason (2005), ‘“Jusqu’aux limites de l’improvisation”: Caribbean Identityand Jazz in Daniel Maximin’s L’Isolé soleil’, Dalhousie French Studies, 71: (Summer),pp. 161–75.

Maximin, Daniel (1981), L’Isolé Soleil, Paris: Éditions du Seuil.

—— (1986), ‘Entretien’, Les Nouvelles du sud, 3, Ivry-sur-Seine: Éditions Silex.pp. 35–50.

—— (1987), Soufrières, Paris: Éditions du Seuil.

—— (1995), L’Ile et une nuit, Paris: Éditions du Seuil.

Ménil, René (1944), ‘Situation de la poésie aux Antilles’, Tropiques, 11: (May),pp. 127–33.

—— (1981), Tracées: Identité, négritude, esthétique aux Antilles, Paris: RobertLaffont.

Murdoch, H. Adlai (2001), Creole Identity in the French Caribbean Novel, Gainesville:University Press of Florida.

Nesbitt, Nick (2003), Voicing Memory: History and Subjectivity in French CaribbeanLiterature, Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press.

Ngal, Georges (1994), Aimé Césaire: Un homme à la recherche d’une patrie, Paris:Présence Africaine.

Smith, Mark M. (2004), ‘Introduction: Onward to Audible Pasts’, in Mark M. Smith(ed.), Hearing History: A Reader, Athens and London: The University of GeorgiaPress, pp. ix–xxii.

Zimra, Clarisse (1989), ‘Introduction to Lone Sun’, Daniel Maximin, Lone Sun,Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.

Suggested citationMunro, M. (2007), ‘Listening to Caribbean history: music and rhythm in Daniel

Maximin’s L’Isolé soleil’, International Journal of Francophone Studies 10: 3,pp. 393–405, doi: 10.1386/ijfs.10.3.393/1

Contributor detailsMartin Munro is Senior Lecturer in French and Francophone Literatures at theUniversity of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago. His researchinterests are in Francophone Caribbean literature, and especially Haitian litera-ture. He is the author of Shaping and Reshaping the Caribbean: The Work of AiméCésaire and René Depestre (2000), and of Exile and Post–1946 Haitian Literature:Alexis, Depestre, Ollivier, Danticat, Laferrière (2007), and co-editor of Reinterpretingthe Haitian Revolution and its Cultural Aftershocks (2006). He is currently working onrhythm in Caribbean cultural history. Contact: Department of Liberal Arts,University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago, West Indies.




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Article. French Language. doi: 10.1386/ijfs.10.3.407/1

Féminisme et postcolonialisme: Beauvoir, Fanon et la guerre d’AlgérieAnnabelle Golay Tulane University

AbstractFanon, Beauvoir: two writers, two theorists, who embodied the battles that theyfought – decolonization and feminism. Although distinct, these two struggles arelinked. They share a ‘situatedness’: the absolute otherness of women in relation tomen and of the colonized in relation to the colonizer. They share a project: to changethe future through the liberation of revolution. In fact, Beauvoir and Fanon met:their struggles and the story of their meeting in 1961 are recounted in Beauvoir’sLa Force des choses, which links French feminism to the project for decolonization.The international visibility of The Second Sex overshadowed Beauvoir’s other polit-ical projects, notably, her significant role during the Algerian war of independence.The crucial place Fanon accorded to women in his theory of decolonization has beenoverlooked. In a re-reading of texts by Beauvoir and Fanon, this article exploreshow these struggles are interconnected at the moment of the Algerian war, andhow, in the contemporary postcolonial context, Beauvoir and Fanon can both be readas postcolonial authors.

RésuméFanon. Beauvoir. Deux écrivains, deux théoriciens, qui ont incarné les luttesqu’ils ont portées: la lutte pour la décolonisation et le féminisme. Originellementséparées, comment ces luttes pourraient-elles se rejoindre? A travers une commu-nauté de situation: l’altérité absolue de la femme par rapport à l’homme et ducolonisé par rapport au colon. A travers des enjeux communs: forger un avenirnouveau par une révolution libératrice. La rencontre Beauvoir-Fanon a-t-elle eulieu? Le récit de leur rencontre en 1961, dans la Force des choses, est mise enprésence littéraire des luttes de Beauvoir et de Fanon, et permet d’établir le lienqui unit le féminisme français et les revendications de la décolonisation. Le reten-tissement universel du Deuxième sexe a laissé dans l’ombre une partie de l’en-gagement politique de Beauvoir, notamment, son rôle remarquable pendant laguerre d’Algérie. Dans la théorie de la décolonisation de Fanon, la place essentiellefaite aux femmes, reste peu connue. A partir d’une relecture des textes deBeauvoir et de Fanon, il s’agit de comprendre comment ces luttes s’interpénètrentau moment de la guerre d’Algérie, et comment dans le contexte postcolonialactuel, Beauvoir et Fanon peuvent être lus comme des auteurs postcoloniaux.

Théoricien majeur de la décolonisation, passionné défenseur de la causealgérienne, Frantz Fanon rencontra au cours de l’été 1961, peu avant samort, Simone de Beauvoir, dont l’entière solidarité avec les Algériens et le


Keywordsautobiographie

décolonisation

féminisme

guerre d’Algérie

lutte de libération

morale

postcolonialisme

situation

IJFS_10.3_08_art_Golay.qxd 11/6/07 4:46 PM Page 407

rôle, pourtant remarquable, pendant la guerre d’Algérie est moins connu.Le récit de leur rencontre dans la Force des choses (1963),1 permet depenser les enjeux communs aux nations et aux individus opprimés,femmes et colonisés, et d’établir le lien qui unit le féminisme français et lesrevendications de la décolonisation. L’altérité de la femme par rapport àl’homme est comparable à celle du colonisé par rapport au colon. Beauvoirmet en lumière ce parallèle dès les premières pages du Deuxième sexe(1949). L’essai doit être relu, à cet égard, à partir de sa situation d’écritureet du contexte colonial. Depuis, ce parallélisme est devenu l’un des objetsdes Postcolonial Studies:

In many different societies, women like colonised subjects, have been rele-

gated to the position of ‘Other’, ‘colonised’ by various forms of patriarchal

domination. They thus share with colonised races and cultures an intimate

experience of the politics of oppression and repression. It is not surprising

therefore that the history and concerns of feminist theory have paralleled

developments in post-colonial theory.2

Fanon, dans un article paru dans Résistance Algérienne en 1957, intitulé‘Les femmes dans la Révolution’, indique la conscience que les respons-ables du F.L.N. ont toujours eue du rôle important de la femme dans lalibération nationale. Ainsi le même problème s’est posé aux femmes etaux individus colonisés, héritant les uns et les autres d’un lourd passé dedomination: il s’agit pour eux de forger un avenir nouveau par une révo-lution libératrice. Même combat pour prendre place dans le monde,mêmes chemins vers la liberté. Investi(e)s, dominé(e)s par des existencesétrangères, élevé(e)s dans le respect de la supériorité de l’homme ou ducolon, les femmes et les peuples colonisés partagent l’expérience à la foisintime et collective de l’oppression, et ont en commun d’avoir été privésde leur humanité. Il leur faut la reconquérir en se révoltant contre ledonné subi. Assumer et comprendre leur condition. Ne pas répudier eneux ce qu’il y a de ‘différent’ mais au contraire l’affirmer. Trouver desvoies où exprimer leur vision singulière. Deux possibilités: la littérature etla violence.

Dans ses œuvres littéraires, véritables manifestes, L’An V de la Révolutionalgérienne (1959) et Les Damnés de la terre (1961),3 Fanon soutient la thèsede la nécessité et de la valeur de la violence, puisque c’est en elle quel’opprimé puise son humanité. C’est en effet dans un contexte de violenceet de ‘contre-violence’ extrême, que l’Algérie obtient son indépendance auterme de huit années d’atrocités françaises. Exécutions, tortures, mutila-tions, attentats. En mai 1960, Beauvoir défend le cas d’une jeune femmeAlgérienne torturée, Djamila Boupacha, dans un article du Monde qui faitscandale (Le Monde est saisi à Alger), écrit une préface au livre que lui con-sacre son avocate Gisèle Halimi, et choisit de le co-signer en 1962 pour enpartager avec elle la responsabilité. En mettant sa notoriété au service dela cause algérienne (‘manifeste des 121’, délégations, conférences, mani-festations, témoignages) et n’hésitant pas à prendre tous les risques (men-aces d’emprisonnement, d’attentat, de plasticage), Beauvoir manifeste sonsoutien absolu au peuple algérien. Son engagement politique se doubled’un engagement dans l’écriture: l’honnêteté intellectuelle et la lucidité de

408 Annabelle Golay

1. Simone de Beauvoir,La Force des choses,Paris: Gallimard,1963.

2. ‘Feminism and Post-colonialism’, inBill Ashcroft et al.(eds), The Post-colonialStudies Reader,London/New York:Routledge, 2002(first published1995), p. 249. Voirégalement ‘Feminismand post-colonialism’,in Bill Ashcroft et al.(eds), The EmpiresWrites Back, London/New York: Routledge,2002 (first published1989), pp. 172–75.

3. Frantz Fanon, L’An Vde la Révolution algérienne, Paris:Editions de laDécouverte et Syros,2001 (premièreédition Maspero1959); Les Damnés dela terre, Paris:Editions laDécouverte, 2002(première éditionMaspero 1961).


La Force des choses, troisième volet de ses Mémoires, érigent ce texte entémoignage capital sur la guerre d’Algérie, où s’exprime dans la contin-gence quotidienne, la souffrance déchirante et partagée des Algériens.

Des liens très forts se nouent entre un premier féminisme français, poli-tique, engagé, représenté par Simone de Beauvoir, et les revendicationspour la décolonisation portées par Fanon. Dans la continuité des essais cri-tiques postcoloniaux (notamment ceux des auteurs de The Empire WritesBack, de Françoise Lionnet, d’Elleke Boehmer ou de Gayatri Spivak), qui sesont non seulement attachés à étudier les évolutions parallèles du fémin-isme et du postcolonialisme, mais ont aussi tenté d’en penser la rencontre,il s’agit dans cette étude de montrer à travers des textes de Fanon et deBeauvoir, comment au moment de l’émergence de la lutte pour la décoloni-sation et de la lutte féministe, ces combats se sont interpénétrés l’unl’autre. Il s’agira d’autre part de déterminer si la rencontre Beauvoir-Fanon a véritablement eu lieu, et si oui, en quels termes? S’ils se sont effec-tivement retrouvés en présence l’un de l’autre à Rome en 1961, il reste àmettre au jour les points de convergence ou d’intersection entre leursluttes concrètes, que ce soit en acte ou en écriture, mais essayer égalementd’en esquisser de possibles limites. Peut-on déceler une hiérarchie entre lesluttes ou entre les ‘différences’, comme le postule l’analyse de GwenBergner de Peau noire, masques blancs: ‘race over gender’ (‘The Role ofGender in Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks’, 1995, p. 84)? S’il est admis queFanon est un des auteurs fondateurs du postcolonial, peut-on envisagerune approche féministe de son œuvre à partir de ‘L’Algérie se dévoile’,dans la mesure où ce texte constitue l’un des rares, parmi les premiersessais sur la décolonisation, à traiter la question de la situation et de lalibération des femmes? Réciproquement et inversement, le retentissementuniversel du Deuxième sexe n’a-t-il pas laissé dans l’ombre la possibilitéd’une lecture postcoloniale de l’œuvre de Beauvoir (Julien Murphy, en1995, a été le premier à mettre en lumière dans un excellent article l’en-gagement politique personnel de Simone de Beauvoir au moment de laguerre d’Algérie4)? Il faut donc se poser la question: Beauvoir et Fanonsont-ils des auteurs féministes et postcoloniaux?

Féminisme de Fanon?Dans L’An V de la Révolution algérienne, l’un des premiers livres édités parFrançois Maspero, Fanon consacre le chapitre d’ouverture à une réflexionsur le rôle des femmes dans la révolution algérienne. Il avait déjà briève-ment abordé ce thème dans un article de 1957; il le reprend deux ans plustard, pour le développer sous le titre: ‘L’Algérie se dévoile’. Toute la réflex-ion de Fanon est centrée sur le signe emblématique qu’est le voile, le haïk,dans l’aire culturelle du Maghreb arabe; il s’agit pour lui de montrer com-ment cet élément vestimentaire, ‘traditionnel’ et ‘stabilisé’, est devenu unenjeu majeur dans la guerre d’indépendance (p. 29). Anne McClintock atoutefois souligné avec justesse dans son essai ‘No Longer in a FutureHeaven’, que l’insistance de Fanon à affirmer ‘l’inertie du voile est discutable(puisqu’elle reviendrait à dénier toute signification au voile dans lesrelations entre sexes), et témoigne surtout d’un rejet de la conceptioneuropéenne du voile comme signe de soumission de la femme dans lasociété algérienne:

409Féminisme et postcolonialisme: Beauvoir, Fanon et la guerre d’Algérie

4. Julien Murphy,‘Beauvoir and theAlgerian War: Towarda Postcolonial Ethics’,in Margaret A.Simons (ed.), FeministInterpretations ofSimone de Beauvoir,University Park:Pennsylvania SateUniversity Press,1995, pp. 263–97.


So eager is Fanon to deny the colonial rescue fantasy that he refuses to grant

the veil any prior role in the gender dynamics of Algerian society. Having

refused the colonial’s desire to invest the veil with an essentialist meaning

(the sign of women’s servitude), he bends over backward to insist on the

veil’s semiotic innocence in Algerian society.5

Premier mouvement: ‘le culte du voile’. Pendant la période de colonisation, levoile symbolise, pour les forces occupantes, la situation de la femme algéri-enne, perçue comme ‘humiliée, mise à l’écart, cloîtrée’ (p. 19). A propos duvoile, naît une doctrine politique coloniale, qui prend pour thème d’action lesfemmes: en les pressant de se dévoiler pour se libérer d’une sujétion sécu-laire, la stratégie des colonialistes vise à les ‘convertir’, à les gagner à leursvaleurs, à en faire leurs ‘complices’, pour déstructurer de l’intérieur lasociété algérienne (p. 20). La réponse du colonisé à cette agression est decontre-assimilation et de contre-violence: ‘A l’offensive colonialiste autour duvoile, le colonisé oppose le culte du voile’ (p. 29). Le voile devient ‘mécanismede résistance’: on se voile parce que l’occupant ‘veut dévoiler l’Algérie’ (p. 47).

Dans les discours antagonistes de l’impérialisme colonial et de la résis-tance nationale, le voile constitue paradoxalement dans les des deux cas,une représentation métonymique de la nation algérienne, comme l’ontdécrit Diana Fuss dans ‘Interior Colonies’ et John Mowitt dans ‘AlgerianNation’,6 un symbole à abattre ou à maintenir. Le corps de la femmedevient, dans cette perspective, un champ de bataille idéologique, un ‘fétiche’,un signe ostentatoire de l’identité algérienne en l’absence de nation (auvoile sont aussi attribuées des propriétés de fétiche sexuel, de signifiantérotique, pour l’occupant7). Il faut noter un autre paradoxe propre àFanon: tandis que le titre du chapitre ‘L’Algérie se dévoile’ assimile lafemme à la nation algérienne à travers la synecdoque du voile (ce quireviendrait à nier la possibilité d’action des femmes en les objectivantcomme enjeu du conflit), la femme et/ou la nation algérienne sont ici l’agentactif du verbe, contrairement à la passivité induite dans la traduction enlangue anglaise du titre: ‘Algeria unveiled’ (voir l’introduction du livred’Anne Donadey, Recasting Postcolonialism, 2001).8

Second mouvement: ‘L’Algérie se dévoile’. A l’occasion de la révolutionalgérienne, une mutation intervient à propos du haïk. La crise du voileayant placé les femmes au centre des enjeux, les révolutionnaires sontamenés à repenser leurs méthodes d’action. Une idée nouvelle germe, quirepose sur un retournement de la stratégie de l’occupant: en dégageant lecorps de la femme du voile presque organique, qui l’enveloppe et le prend,‘la femme dévoilée algérienne évolue comme un poisson dans l’eau occi-dentale’ (p. 41). Pour entrer véritablement dans l’action révolutionnaire et‘pénétrer’ dans la ville européenne, la femme algérienne, selon une ‘nou-velle dialectique du corps et du monde’, doit ‘réapprend[re] son corps, leréinstalle[r] de façon totalement révolutionnaire’ (p. 42). Insoupçonnable,noyée dans le milieu, la ‘femme-arsenal’, selon Fanon, devient ‘porteusede revolvers, de grenades, de centaines de fausses cartes d’identité ou debombes’ (pp. 41–42). Au cours de l’action révolutionnaire, les femmesdeviennent un ‘maillon capital’ de la lutte de libération nationale.

Cette valorisation du rôle des femmes algériennes dans la révolutiondemeure toutefois ambiguë pour Anne McClintock, qui remarque que

410 Annabelle Golay

5. Anne McClintock,‘No Longer in aFuture Heaven:Gender, Race, andNationalism’, inAnne McClintock,Aamir Mufti andEllena Shohat (eds),Dangerous Liaisons:Gender, Nation, andPostcolonial Perspective,Minneapolis:University ofMinnesota Press,1997, p. 97.

6. Diana Fuss, ‘InteriorColonies: FrantzFanon and the Politicsof Identification’, inDiacritics 24: 2–3(Summer-Fall 1994),pp. 20–42. JohnMowitt, ‘AlgerinaNation: Fanon’sFetish’, CulturalCritique 22 (Fall1992), pp. 165–86.

7. Diana Fuss, op. cit.,p. 26.

8. ‘The problem with(national) allegoriesis that they erase theterm on which theyground themselves.As Winifred Woodhulland Anne McClintockhave shown, evenFrantz Fanon, one ofthe very few (if notthe only) early decol-onization theorists ofdecolonization tohave attempted toaddress the issue ofgender in his work,was not entirely ableto escape the allegoryof Woman as Nation.When women areequated to the land,there is no discursivespace for them ascitizens. Whenwoman stands in fornation, it becomesdifficult to presentthe women of thenation as agents inthat nation’sconstitution becausetheir body image isbeing activated as theobject for which tofight.’ Anne Donadey,


l’entrée des femmes dans l’action n’est pas présentée, dans le texte deFanon, comme le résultat de leur volonté propre, mais d’abord comme unenécessité liée à un déterminisme mécanique (‘Les rouages révolutionnairesavaient pris une telle envergure, la machine marchait à un rythme donné.Il fallait compliquer la machine’, p. 31), puis comme une action médi-atisée, une désignation par les dirigeants:

Women’s agency for Fanon is thus agency by designation. It makes its

appearance not as a direct political relation to the revolution but as a medi-

ated, domestic relation to man: “At the beginning, it was the married women

who were contacted. Later, widows or divorced women were designated”. [. . .]

As designated agents, moreover, women do not commit themselves: “It is

relatively easy to commit oneself . . . The matter is a little more difficult when

it involves designating someone”. Fanon does not consider the possibility of

women committing themselves to action.9

Il faut toutefois de nuancer cette assertion en précisant que le texte de Fanonse poursuit en expliquant que bientôt ‘le volontariat de plus en plus nombreuxde jeunes filles, condui[t] les responsables politiques à faire un autre bond, àbannir toute restriction, à prendre appui indifféremment sur l’ensemble desfemmes algériennes’ (p. 34). Les hommes restent certes décisionnaires maisles pratiques sont modifiées sous l’impulsion des femmes algériennes.

D’autre part, A. McClintock met au jour un aspect déroutant dans lesdescriptions de Fanon, où les femmes agissant au sein de la lutte, sontmétaphoriquement masculinisées:

Fanon resorts to a curiously eroticized image of militarized sexuality.

Carrying the men’s pistols, guns and grenades beneath her skirts, “the

Algerian woman penetrates a little further into the flesh of the Revolution”.

Here the Algerian woman is not a victim of a rape but a masculinized rapist.

As if to contain unmanning threat of armed women – in their dangerous

crossings – Fanon masculinized the female militant, turning her into a phallic

substitute, detached from the male body but remaining, still, the man’s “woman-

arsenal”. (p. 98)

Masculinisation ou instrumentalisation, la femme engagée dans la lutterévolutionnaire n’est plus tout à fait une femme sous la plume de Fanon(qui écrivait aussi au moment de la décision de faire entrer les femmes dansl’action: ‘Il faut exiger de la femme une élévation morale et une force psy-chologique exceptionnelle’, suggérant une infériorité morale originelle de lafemme par rapport à l’homme, p. 31). L’analyse d’Anne McClintock tend àmontrer que dans son texte Fanon essaie de donner l’image d’un peuplealgérien unanime, soudé dans la lutte (renforçant le manichéisme de lalutte révolutionnaire ou anticoloniale en une opposition binaire entre eux etnous – voir l’introduction d’Anne Donadey, Recasting Postcolonialism). Ceteffort pour constituer le peuple algérien en lutte comme un tout unifié,empêcherait Fanon d’affronter la question de possibles luttes internes entresexes, voire de la nier (cf. l’inertie prétendue du voile). Toutefois, le textemanifeste à plusieurs reprises une volonté de souligner le fait que la révo-lution nationale crée et créera l’égalité entre sexes.


‘Introduction:RecastingPostcolonialism’ inRecastingPostcolonialism:Women WritingBetween Worlds,Portsmouth:Heimann, 2001, p. xxx.

9. Anne McClintock, op. cit., p. 98.


Troisième mouvement: reprise du voile. A partir de 1957, les militairesfrançais apprennent – certaines militantes ayant parlé sous la torture –que des femmes d’apparence très européanisées tiennent un rôle fonda-mental dans la lutte. Pour les révolutionnaires, il s’agit alors de réinventerune nouvelle technique de dissimulation: le voile est repris, et le corps del’Algérienne, qui s’était libéré et élancé, est désormais écrasé. Il faut le ren-dre difforme, ‘à l’extrême le rendre absurde’ (p. 45). Pour écarter toutesuspicion, il faut, écrit Fanon, ‘se faire une telle “tête de Fatma” que le sol-dat soit rassuré’ (p. 45). Si le voile reparaît, il est ‘définitivement dépouilléde sa dimension exclusivement traditionnelle’ pour être ‘instrumentalisé,transformé en technique de camouflage, en moyen de lutte’ (p. 44).

Il existe donc, selon les termes de Fanon, ‘un dynamisme historique duvoile’. Dans ce chapitre, significativement placé en tête de L’An V de la révo-lution algérienne, Fanon n’a de cesse de souligner son admiration pour l’ac-tion féminine dans la lutte pour l’indépendance (‘maîtrise de soi et succèsincroyables’, ‘dimensions véritablement gigantesques’), et de montrercomment à travers la lutte, les femmes algériennes conquièrent une lib-erté, qui ne soit pas le fait ‘de l’invitation’ de la France ou du général deGaulle (p. 46), mais la leur propre, gagnée grâce à leur engagement totaldans l’action révolutionnaire. Le 13 mai 1958, l’investiture de PierrePflimlin, favorable à l’ouverture de négociations avec le F.L.N., suscite àAlger des manifestations des partisans du maintien de la souveraineté dela France sur l’Algérie: le colonialisme français réédite alors sa ‘campagned’occidentalisation de la femme algérienne’, et décide de dévoiler ‘symbol-iquement’ et publiquement des femmes. Opposant au colonialisme françaiset à ses valeurs, leur autonomie de choix, des Algériennes depuis longtempsdévoilées, reprennent, ‘spontanément et sans mot d’ordre’, le haïk (p. 46).

L’analyse d’Anne McClintock vient nuancer ce propos de Fanon surl’autonomie de choix et d’action des femmes, en pointant le fait que dans‘L’Algérie se dévoile’, les femmes ne semblent pouvoir agir et se libérer quepar le seul moyen de l’engagement national:

Women’s liberation is credited entirely to national liberation, and it is only

with nationalism that women “enter into history”. Prior to nationalism,

women have no history, no resistance, no independent agency. And since the

national revolution automatically revolutionizes the family, gender conflict

naturally vanishes after the revolution.10

Fanon cherche cependant à montrer en suivant dans son analyse lachronologie des événements, comment l’évolution du rôle des femmes aucours de la révolution doit aboutir à leur libération. Avant la décision, en1955, d’incorporer pleinement les femmes dans la lutte, leur rôle étaitessentiellement celui du soin prodigué aux combattants (les sociologies du‘care’ ont montré que le soin est généralement conçu comme une ‘affairede femmes’11). Puis, à partir de 1956, c’est par et dans le corps des femmes,que se réalise la révolution: pour répondre aux nouvelles tâches qui leursont confiées, les femmes doivent, par une ‘authentique naissance’, ‘sansapprentissage, sans récits, sans histoire’ (p. 33), inventer de nouvellesmanières d’être dans le monde. Sans se faire remarquer, il leur fauts’élancer dans la rue avec un corps altéré (puisque dénué du voile qui

412 Annabelle Golay

10. Anne McClintock, op. cit., p. 99.

11. Voir Le Souci des autres:éthique et politique ducare, sous la directionde Patricia Paperman,Paris: Editions de l’école des hautesétudes en sciencessociales, 2006.


participait normalement de leur schéma corporel) et avec au bout de lamain un sac de grenades ou l’argent de la révolution: ‘Il y a [. . .] uneabsence de jour entre la femme et la révolutionnaire. La femme algériennes’élève d’emblée au niveau de la tragédie’ (p. 33).

Ce passage du texte de Fanon a suscité des nombreux commentaires(notamment de la part d’Elleke Boehmer et d’Anne McClintock), qui inter-prètent cette idée d’un apprentissage révolutionnaire instinctif et spon-tané, comme un stéréotype de Fanon sur la femme, qui serait un êtrefondamentalement non historique, et marqué par la fonction reproduc-trice (image de la naissance naturelle et authentique).12 Toutefois, lorsquel’on sait l’influence de la philosophie de Sartre sur Fanon, une autre lec-ture devient possible, à partir de la notion d’authenticité qui, au senssartrien, est le contraire de la mauvaise foi, du rôle joué, de l’imitation(le travail de Diana Fuss, dans ‘Interior Colonies’, vise en partie à montrercomment la ‘transformation’ de la femme algérienne en Européennerelève d’une contre-stratégie politique de résistance à une identificationimposée).13

Les chemins de la liberté des femmes algériennes sont sinueux et appel-lent parfois des décisions ambiguës, que Fanon a l’honnêteté de remarquer:la reprise du voile en 1958 est une réaction immédiate, qui s’inscrit dans‘l’attitude globale de refus des valeurs de l’occupant, même si objectivementces valeurs gagneraient à être choisies’ (p. 46). L’essentiel reste que dansson article paru dans Résistance Algérienne du 16 mai 1957, Fanon insistaitdéjà avec force sur le fait que ‘la guerre révolutionnaire n’est pas uneguerre d’hommes’, mais bien ‘une guerre totale où la femme ne fait pas quetricoter ou pleurer le soldat’ – mais où, pleinement engagée ‘au cœur ducombat’, elle est une ‘sœur’, qui réalise l’égalité entre les sexes:

La place de la femme dans la société algérienne est indiquée avec une

telle véhémence que l’on s’explique facilement le désarroi de l’occupant.

C’est que la société algérienne se révèle n’être pas cette société sans femme

que l’on avait si bien décrite. Côte à côte avec nous, nos sœurs bousculent

un peu plus le dispositif ennemi et liquident définitivement les vieilles

mystifications.14

Les textes de Fanon soulignent une continuité entre les luttes de libération,en les hiérarchisant toutefois. Avec la révolution nationale, s’opèrent deschangements structurels de la société algérienne, venant de l’engagementtotal des femmes dans la lutte, physiquement et idéologiquement, quiselon Fanon, découvre au mari ou au père de ‘nouvelles perspectives surles rapports entre sexes. Le militant découvre la militante’, écrit-il en note,‘et conjointement ils créent de nouvelles dimensions à la société algéri-enne’ (p. 43). La lutte, engageant hommes et femmes pour l’indépendance,conduira donc selon Fanon à une réévaluation et à une redistribution desrôles sexuels dans la société en mutation.15

Considérant l’évolution de la situation en Algérie en 1972, Simone deBeauvoir écrit dans Tout compte fait: ‘Fanon s’est bien trompé quand ilprédisait que grâce au rôle qu’elles ont joué pendant la guerre les femmesalgériennes échapperaient à l’oppression masculine. La politique extérieurede l’Algérie se veut “progressiste”: elle est anticolonialiste et anti-impérialiste.


12. Une certaine sévéritéde Fanon à l’égard dela femme avait déjàété relevée par GwenBergner, qui notaitdans son étude dePeau noire, masquesblancs, que Fanonjugeait beaucoupplus durement lasoumission dupersonnage du récitautobiographique deMayotte Capécia àl’idéologie raciste et àla volonté de seblanchir que lepersonnage du textede Veneuse. GwenBergner, ‘The Politicsof Admittance: FemaleSexual Agency,Miscegenation andthe Formation ofCommunity in FrantzFanon’, The UTSReview: CulturalStudies and NewWriting 1.1 (1995): 5–29.

13. ‘Fanon’s insistencethat the Algerianwoman’s Europeanimpersonation is “anauthentic birth in apure state” presumesnot that femininity is itself a culturalproduction of themasquerade but thatmasquerade is a natural function offemininity. It assumesthat if the Algerianwoman in her performances as“European” expertlydissimulates, she doesso naturally, without“that coefficient ofplay, of imitation”that characterizesWestern women. [. . .]“Algeria unveiled”dramatizes a form ofmimesis that takesmasquerade as itsobject; the politicalstrategy described ismore like that ofmiming masquerade. [. . .] Fanon’s strategyis to reconstruct thepossibility of agencythat colonialism


Mais à l’intérieur elle est nationaliste et réactionnaire. Rien n’indiquequ’elle doive avant bien longtemps changer de caractère’ (p. 562). Lesdébats récents en France sur la laïcité rappellent encore la vivacité et lapermanence des enjeux autour du voile.

Au moment où éclate le conflit pour l’indépendance, de nouvelles atti-tudes, de nouvelles conduites, apparaissent chez celles et ceux qui soutien-nent le peuple algérien. Par entière solidarité avec leur lutte, des Européensd’Algérie décident d’y prendre une part active: des Européennes se joignentaux porteuses de valises algériennes. La découverte de leur participationpar les autorités françaises au moment des arrestations fut, selon Fanon,‘l’une des dates de la Révolution Algérienne’ (‘L’Algérie se dévoile’, p. 44).Parmi ces femmes, une institutrice française, Jacqueline Guerroudj, mariéeà un instituteur musulman et membre avec lui de l’A.L.N., fut condamnéeà mort pour avoir remis une bombe à un révolutionnaire algérien. Untémoignage de moralité décisif, reçu en janvier 1958 de la part de Simonede Beauvoir, dont elle avait été l’élève à Rouen, lui permet d’obtenir unegrâce. Ainsi, à travers l’adhésion commune à l’idéal national algérien, desréseaux de soutien se mettent en place de part et d’autre de la Méditerranée.Au-delà des frontières politiques, ces engagements témoignent de l’appari-tion d’une solidarité transnationale: ‘Les limites historiques s’effritent etdisparaissent’ (p. 45).

En France, devant l’impuissance de la gauche, des démocrates anti-colonialistes se lancent dans l’action clandestine de soutien au F.L.N. Desréseaux sont créés, dont celui de Francis Jeanson, philosophe sartrien,collaborateur des Temps modernes, auteur de L’Algérie hors la loi. Ce futJeanson qui accueillit Fanon chez lui à Paris quand il en eut besoin, etce fut également grâce à lui, que le premier livre de Fanon, Peau noire,masques blancs, fut publié aux éditions du Seuil en 1952. Sartreet Beauvoir se solidarisent rapidement avec l’engagement de Jeanson.Lorsque les membres du ‘réseau Jeanson’, sont arrêtés et jugés pouratteinte à la sûreté de l’Etat par le tribunal militaire de Paris, Sartre (alorsau Brésil avec Beauvoir) fait lire au procès en septembre 60 une déposi-tion retentissante, où il déclare se ranger aux côtés des porteurs devalises. Au moment du procès paraît le Manifeste des 121, qui prône ledroit à l’insoumission dans la guerre d’Algérie. Parmi les premiers sig-nataires, Sartre et Beauvoir reçoivent en retour une haine passionnée del’opinion française, sont considérés comme des traîtres, et menacés d’em-prisonnement.16

Postcolonialisme de BeauvoirDès novembre 1954, la revue des Temps modernes ‘réclamai[t] l’indépen-dance pour le peuple algérien et estimai[t] qu’il s’incarnait dans le F.L.N.’17

Beauvoir était donc, dès le début du conflit, fermement opposée au main-tien violent de ‘l’Algérie française’. Devant la marche du monde en 54, elleespérait une ‘imminente décolonisation de toute la planète’. Trois ans plustard, elle comprit que ‘le gouvernement allait s’entêter dans cette guerre.L’Algérie obtiendrait son indépendance: mais dans longtemps’.18

Les pages du troisième volume de l’autobiographie beauvoirienne,La Force des choses, donnent à lire, dans leur déroulement quotidien, ledrame de l’Algérie, à la fois intime et collectif, qui bouleverse l’existence de

414 Annabelle Golay

vitiates, and he doesthis by locating “politics” in the space whereimitation exceedsidentification’. Diana Fuss, op. cit., p. 28–29.

14. Frantz Fanon, L’An Vde la Révolution algérienne, op. cit., p. 50.

15. Elleke Boehmer dansun paragrapheconsacré à Fanondans l’introductionde son récentouvrage, Stories ofWomen, écrit: ‘[. . .]woman to Fanonbecomes a subject ofhistory only throughher part in the nationalresistance. She isuniquely politicised bymeans of thisinvolvement, and,moreover, politicised inan “instinctive” way.[Fanon] writes,“Algerian society . . .renewed itself anddeveloped new valuesgoverning sexual relations”. Women didnot exercise a self-transforming agency inrelation to thesechanges’. EllekeBoehmer Stories ofWomen, Manchester:Manchester UniversityPress, 2005, p. 9.

16. Pour plus de détailssur la lettre de Sartre,la condamnation à lafois officielle, publiqueet de la presse, sereporter à La Force des choses, op. cit., p. 571–74.

17. Simone de Beauvoir,La Force des choses, op. cit., 1963, p. 340.

18. ibid., p. 387.


Beauvoir: ‘Ma propre situation dans mon pays, dans le monde, dans mesrapports à moi-même s’en trouva bouleversée’ (p. 387). La seconde partiedu texte, qui couvre les années 1952–63, est entièrement dominée par laguerre d’Algérie, à laquelle sont consacrées près de quatre cents pages, àl’exception du récit de voyage au Brésil en 1960, où la situation algérienne(bien que lui parvenant par échos réfractés) demeure pour elle un souci‘brûlant’ (p. 386). Il est frappant que, dans ces pages, le drame algériensoit vécu par Beauvoir sur un mode intime et personnel: ‘ça m’atteignait’,écrit-elle, puis: ‘j’ai vécu la guerre d’Algérie comme un drame personnel’(p. 389 et 681). L’écriture de soi et l’écriture de l’histoire se tissent ici enun seul et même geste d’écriture: la Force des choses constitue autant undocument exceptionnel sur la guerre d’Algérie, qu’un témoignage du sou-tien inconditionnel, en acte et en écriture, de Beauvoir au peuple algérienet à sa cause. Si la Seconde Guerre mondiale lui avait découvert son his-toricité, c’est véritablement au moment de la guerre d’Algérie que Beauvoirs’engage politiquement, et réalise une certaine indépendance politique etlittéraire à l’égard de Sartre (voir Julien Murphy, p. 277).

De 1954 à 1960, Beauvoir met en question dans l’écriture autobi-ographique son rôle en tant qu’intellectuelle, cherchant à s’engager d’unemanière qui lui soit propre: elle refuse le jeu de double qui consisterait àfaire la même chose que Sartre. A cet égard, il faut souligner qu’aumoment où Beauvoir s’engage pleinement et définitivement dans la lutteanticoloniale en 1960, c’est par le truchement de son engagement fémin-iste: en mai 60, l’avocate Gisèle Halimi sollicite son soutien pour alerter lesautorités et l’opinion publique sur le cas d’une jeune Algérienne, injuste-ment accusée de terrorisme: Djamila Boupacha, fut pendant deux moisemprisonnée par les parachutistes français, torturée et violée. Si la jeunefemme admit, dès son arrestation, qu’elle militait au côté des forces derésistance algérienne, elle nia en revanche toute implication dans unattentat à la bombe. De faux aveux lui furent arrachés sous la torture. Ala fois anticolonialiste et féministe, la lutte de Beauvoir en sa faveur répondà la double colonisation à la fois impérialiste et patriarcale, dont Djamilaest victime, et qui la place, pour reprendre le concept de Gayatri Spivak, ensituation de ‘subalterne’.19

En visite dans sa prison de Barberousse à Alger, Gisèle Halimi encour-age la jeune fille à déposer une plainte et à demander une enquête, quinécessite un ajournement du procès. Pour préparer sa défense devant letribunal algérien et tenter d’obtenir un transfert du dossier en France, ilest urgent d’obtenir un délai supplémentaire. Gisèle Halimi fait appel àBeauvoir: se chargerait-elle de le réclamer? Beauvoir porte aussitôt unpapier au Monde. Le journal émet des réticences avant la publication, etdemande que des modifications soient apportées au texte – pour lequelBeauvoir dit ‘s’être bornée ou presque à reproduire la relation de Djamila’.La direction du Monde la prie de remplacer le mot ‘vagin’ (employé parDjamila) par celui de ‘ventre’, et de substituer une périphrase à ‘Djamilaétait vierge’.20 Beauvoir refuse. Ces mots sont imprimés entre parenthèses.Le Monde du 2 juin est saisi à Alger pour son article.

La volonté de Beauvoir de reproduire le plus exactement possible larelation de Djamila, luttant pour que ses termes propres soient impriméstels quels, est une manière de relayer une parole étouffée, de rompre le


19. Gayatri Spivak, ‘Canthe Subaltern Speak?’in Bill Ashcroft,Gareth Griffiths andHelen Tiffin (eds), ThePost-colonial StudiesReader, London/NewYork: Routledge, 2002(first published 1995),p. 24–28.

20. ibid., p. 525.


silence et le mutisme imposés par le système colonial, ou plus exactement,par un système colonial concurremment sourd à la vérité et prêt à torturerpour entendre de faux aveux. En considérant le souci éthique et le respectabsolu de Beauvoir pour le témoignage de Djamila (il s’agit non pas de parlerpour, mais simplement de donner à entendre), on pourrait, à partir de laquestion de G. Spivak, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’, s’interroger sur l’ambiguïtéde la parole relayée, certes non autonome, mais ayant pu être entendue.

Pour donner plus de poids à la lutte en faveur de Djamila, Beauvoirsuggère la rédaction d’un livre comportant une relation complète de l’af-faire, qui constituerait à la fois un élément de lutte anticolonialiste dansl’immédiat, pour faire éclater la vérité, en même temps qu’un témoignagepour l’avenir. Gisèle Halimi se charge de l’écrire. Beauvoir le préface et leco-signe pour en partager la responsabilité pénale avec elle. Au moment dela parution, Beauvoir est directement menacée: la police refusant de laprotéger, ce sont des étudiants qui passent des nuits chez elle à veiller et àguetter; son immeuble est épargné.21

Le livre Djamila Boupacha (1961) reproduit l’éditorial au Monde deBeauvoir, dont un des points essentiels est la lumière faite sur ce que Beauvoirdénonce comme ‘l’aspect le plus scandaleux de cette scandaleuse affaire –le fait que les gens s’y étaient habitués’. Cette prise de conscience que ladémoralisation de la nation passe par l’habitude est traitée dans la Forcedes choses, où Beauvoir écrit:

Aujourd’hui, en ce sinistre mois de décembre 1961, comme beaucoup de

mes semblables, je souffre d’une sorte de tétanos de l’imagination [. . .] C’est

peut-être ça le fond de la démoralisation pour une nation: on s’y habitue.

Mais en 1957, les os brisés, les brûlures au visage, au sexe, les ongles

arrachés, les empalements, les cris, les convulsions, ça m’atteignait.22

Le jeu des temporalités de l’écriture autobiographique (Beauvoir relisant etretravaillant en 1961 un texte de 1957) révèle ici une tension entre lesenjeux propres à deux moments du conflit: en 1957, contre la conspira-tion du silence, contre la presse devenue entreprise de falsification, il s’agis-sait de faire connaître la vérité de la torture en Algérie; en 1961, c’estcontre le ‘tétanos de l’imagination’, contre l’habitude et la banalisation duscandale perpétué, qu’il faut résister. Si elle ne fut pas la première, en1960, à dénoncer l’insupportable vérité (avaient paru Sur la torture dePierre-Henri Simon, La Question d’Henri Alleg, et le recueil Les Rappeléstémoignent), Beauvoir s’investit entièrement pour libérer Djamila, et à tra-vers elle, toutes les victimes du colonialisme: femmes et individus opprimés.Pour amener les Français à assumer leur propre responsabilité dans uneguerre faite en leur nom (l’inertie est aussi une attitude politique), contrela torture érigée en système, elle mobilise tout son pouvoir social et intel-lectuel, pour lancer un appel public en faveur de la justice, de la liberté etde l’action morale.

Beauvoir crée, par ailleurs, un comité de soutien pour Djamila, préside denombreuses conférences de presse, répond aux interviews, conduit ladélégation devant les autorités françaises pour obtenir le dessaisissementdes tribunaux militaires algériens, le transfert du procès en France afinque la plainte de Djamila mène à des sanctions contre ses tortionnaires

416 Annabelle Golay

21. Voir La Force deschoses, op. cit., p. 641–42.

22. ibid., p. 387.


(la lutte continua jusqu’en 1962, où malgré le transfert obtenu, et l’iden-tification des coupables, la plainte de Djamila ne put aboutir: ‘pour ne pasporter atteinte au moral de l’armée’; elle fut libérée suite aux accordsd’Evian).

Beauvoir fut si ‘frappée’, selon son propre terme, par le contenu de l’en-trevue avec les officiels, qu’elle décide d’en témoigner dans la Force deschoses, bien que G. Halimi ait déjà pris en charge ce récit. Ce qui lafrappe si profondément, au cours des entretiens, c’est l’aveu paradoxal duMinistre de la justice face à la pratique de la torture, dont il possède à lafois une entière connaissance, mais qu’il est impuissant à contrôler. Mêmemauvaise foi de la part de M. Patin, président de la Commission deSauvegarde, qui se refuse pendant la rencontre à toute empathie, instal-lant une infranchissable distance entre soi et les autres. Pas de salut moralpar le dépassement vers autrui, pas de reconnaissance de la singularité deDjamila (selon Fanon, les femmes algériennes sont toujours perçues parl’Européen comme un ensemble homogène et indifférencié), dont il chercheà minimiser l’humiliation subie (elle n’en est pas morte . . . ):

On en revint à Djamila. ‘Que vous a-t-elle dit, exactement, à propos de la

bouteille?’ demanda-t-il à Gisèle Halimi d’un air légèrement égrillard. Elle le

lui dit, il hocha la tête: ‘C’est ça, c’est ça ! ‘ Il sourit finement: ‘J’avais craint

qu’on ne l’eût assise sur une bouteille, comme on faisait en Indochine avec

les Viets.’ (Qui ça, on, sinon les chers officiers aux mains pures?) ‘Alors les

intestins sont perforés et on meurt. Mais ça ne s’est pas passé ainsi.23

Vous prétendez qu’elle était vierge. Mais enfin, on a des photos d’elle,

prises dans sa chambre: elle est entre deux soldats de l’A.L.N., armes en

mains, et elle tient une mitraillette.’ Et alors? elle a toujours proclamé qu’elle

militait dans l’A.L.N.; ça ne met pas en cause sa virginité avons-nous dit.

‘Tout de même, pour une jeune fille, c’est plutôt scabreux’, répondit-il.24

La réaction de M. Patin est révélatrice de l’attitude générale de l’homme,du colon, du conquérant, face à la femme algérienne. Fanon écrit, à cetégard, dans ‘L’Algérie se dévoile’, que ‘confusément, l’Européen vit à unniveau fort complexe sa relation avec la femme algérienne’.25 En psychia-tre, Fanon souligne l’existence, dans l’imaginaire colonial, du fantasme duviol, du fantasme du voile ôté, de la conquête érotisée de la terre et de lafemme algériennes; étant à la fois conçue ‘comme support de la pénétra-tion occidentale dans la société autochtone’,26 et comme ce qui sous levoile résiste, faisant exister un monde dont il est exclu, voyant sans êtrevue et le frustrant de la non réciprocité de son regard, la femme algéri-enne, si elle apparaît dans un rêve du colonisateur à contenu érotique, feral’objet d’une ‘double défloration’: ‘le viol de la femme algérienne dans unrêve d’Européen est toujours précédé de la déchirure du voile.’27 Loin den’être qu’un élément du matériel onirique du colonisateur, le viol est laplus réelle violence faite aux corps des Algériennes, perpétuée, sue, tue,par les militaires et les autorités françaises.

Au cœur même de l’écriture autobiographique de Beauvoir: la honte.‘Je ne fus pas fière d’avoir à lui serrer la main’, écrit-elle du Ministre de lajustice. Par nécessité, par devoir peut-être, en tant qu’intellectuelle, en tantque Française, elle avoue l’inavouable attitude des dirigeants. La honte se


23. ibid., p. 529.

24. ibid.

25. Frantz Fanon, L’An Vde la Révolution algérienne, op. cit., p. 26.

26. ibid., p. 24.

27. ibid., p. 28.


révèle être un sentiment fondamental, qui sous-tend son geste d’écriture.Dans le remarquable Livre des hontes (2006), Jean-Pierre Martin analysele lien profond entre l’écriture et la honte, dont elle peut être le premiermoteur: la honte, ‘émotion particulièrement inavouable’, à la fois la plushistorique et la plus singulière – ‘alcool fort de la littérature’. Dans l’auto-biographie de Beauvoir, l’écriture de la honte devient, selon la formule deJ.-P. Martin, ‘face à face avec soi-même sous le regard de l’autre’,28 oùBeauvoir s’astreint à s’examiner, adoptant le point de vue d’autrui, etacceptant en ‘témoin inquiet de sa propre désubjectivation’, de se trans-former en objet de son regard et de son jugement: ‘J’avais besoin de monestime pour vivre et je me voyais avec les yeux des femmes vingt fois vio-lées, des hommes aux os brisés, des enfants fous: une Française.’29

S’écrivant comme l’autre en miroir, Beauvoir tend à assumer l’ambiguïté desa situation, qui fut de se voir elle-même à travers le regard des autres,comme complice de cette guerre qui lui fait horreur, tout en s’éprouvanten rupture par rapport à ces concitoyens, en dissidente par rapport à lapolitique colonialiste de la France:

Je ne supportais plus cette hypocrisie, cette indifférence, ce pays, ma propre

peau. Ces gens dans les rues, consentants ou étourdis, c’étaient des bour-

reaux d’Arabes: tous coupables. Et moi aussi. ‘Je suis française.’ Ces mots

m’écorchaient la gorge comme l’aveu d’une tare. Pour des millions d’hommes

et de femmes, de vieillards et d’enfants, j’étais la sœur des tortionnaires,

des incendiaires, des ratisseurs, des égorgeurs, des affameurs; je méritais leur

haine puisque je pouvais dormir, écrire, profiter d’une promenade ou d’un

livre: les seuls moments où je n’avais pas honte, c’étaient ceux où je ne le

pouvais pas [. . .]30

La honte: moteur du dire, moteur de l’écriture autobiographique deBeauvoir. Honte de soi, honte des autres, honte du colonialisme français,honte d’être Française, honte de ses origines bourgeoises, de ses privilèges, desa complicité avec la guerre. Dire sa honte, écrire sa honte, constitue pourBeauvoir le point de départ pour une morale solidaire et de la relation àl’autre. ‘Car la honte se présente aussi, pour l’homme occidental, comme unferment de solidarité’, écrit J.-P. Martin, qui rappelle la préface de Sartre auxDamnés de la terre: ‘Ayez le courage de lire Fanon: pour cette raison qu’il vousfera honte et que la honte, comme disait Marx, est un sentiment révolution-naire’.31 La capacité de Beauvoir de se mettre en question et à distance desoi, lui permet de puiser dans la connaissance des conditions authentiquesde son existence, la force de vivre et des raisons d’agir: il lui faut assumerl’ambiguïté fondamentale de sa condition, se défaire des lecta, rechercher unsens vrai de la réalité, défendre la liberté de tous et de chacun.

D’un point de vue philosophique et moral, il apparaît que la période dela guerre d’Algérie, où Beauvoir ressent plus vivement que jamais le para-doxe de sa condition (être dans le monde à la fois sujet et objet), constituepour elle une mise à l’épreuve concrète de la morale existentialiste,développée au lendemain de la Seconde Guerre mondiale dans son essaiphilosophique Pour une morale de l’ambiguïté (1947). La liberté, ‘conditionpremière de toute justification de l’existence’, et le rapport indissolubleentre soi et autrui, en constituent le fondement: ‘Se vouloir libre, c’est

418 Annabelle Golay

28. ibid., p. 10.

29. ibid., p. 391.

30. ibid., p. 406.

31. Jean-Pierre Martin,Le Livre des hontes, op.cit., p. 38. Citation deJ.-P. Martin de la préface de Sartre auxDamnés de la terrede Fanon, Paris:Maspero, 1961, p. 14.


aussi vouloir les autres libres’ 32 (voir la section ‘An Ethics of Intersubjectivity,’J. Murphy, pp. 280–85).

D’un point de vue littéraire, il semble qu’au moment du conflit algérien,Beauvoir ait trouvé dans l’écriture autobiographique une praxis où réalisersa propre liberté, un moyen de se révéler à elle-même, et de reprendre à soncompte l’Histoire et l’histoire de sa vie: ‘Ma vie a été en même temps le pro-duit et l’expression du monde dans lequel elle se déroulait et c’est pourquoij’ai pu, en la racontant, parler de tout autre chose que de moi’.33 La préférenceassumée de Beauvoir pour la littérature autobiographique est un choix fortrare au regard des nombreux détracteurs du genre, qui objectent qu’il neconstitue qu’une ‘littérature mineure’, un genre féminin: il serait ‘le degréle plus bas de la teneur littéraire, celui du reportage ou du témoignage sansapprêts’.34 Il faut toutefois mettre en lumière l’invention littéraire propre àBeauvoir, qui tient au fait que dans un même mouvement, l’écriture de soiest aussi écriture des autres: le destin d’une nation et d’une intellectuelle yest montré en un enlacement génial. Par ailleurs, le recours à l’autobiogra-phie, conçue comme ‘corps écrit’ (Béatrice Didier), constitue le genre littéraireprivilégié pour exprimer la pensée corporelle de la honte en relation auxsouffrances infligées au peuple algérien dans sa chair. D’autre part, cechoix générique, plutôt que celui de l’essai ou du roman, est particulière-ment signifiant, puisqu’il permet à Beauvoir de s’adresser directement etintimement à son lecteur, de le réunir avec le collectif, et de rétablir en lui cesens de la liaison à autrui, qui est à la fois le fondement de la morale et de laliberté.

La lecture critique que Beauvoir donne de la manière dont elle a vécuet s’est engagée pendant la guerre d’Algérie, indique dans l’autobiographiemême, des voies possibles pour une éthique postcoloniale. Le tour de forcede ce texte est d’avoir réalisé dans le moment de l’écriture, et avant que larévolution pour la libération ne soit accomplie, une proposition pour uneconduite morale postcoloniale.

La rencontre Beauvoir-FanonLe texte de La Force des choses, qui vise son propre dépassement, ce textetendu, peut être reçu par le lecteur avec d’autant plus de force queBeauvoir y livre son cheminement dans son ensemble avec un souci con-stant de vérité, ne cherchant en rien à masquer ses propres contradictions,mais s’efforçant au contraire de les saisir dans le geste même de l’écriture.Beauvoir n’hésite pas pour décrire comment, en tant qu’intellectuelle, il luia été difficile dans un premier temps d’apprécier lucidement, par exemple,l’action clandestine de soutien au F.L.N. du réseau Jeanson.

Lorsque Beauvoir et Fanon se rencontrèrent à Rome pendant l’été 1961,ils se penchèrent de nouveau au cours de conversations qu’ils eurent, surles difficultés avec soi-même auxquelles l’intellectuel doit s’affronter pourpasser à l’action. Ces rencontres et ces conversations sont rapportées dansla Force des choses, où Beauvoir souligne chez Fanon la vivacité du conflitentre l’intellectuel et le révolutionnaire:

Partisan de la violence, elle lui faisait horreur; ses traits s’altéraient quand il

évoquait les mutilations infligées par les Belges aux Congolais, par les Portugais

aux Angolais – les lèvres percées et cadenassées, les visages aplatis à coup de


32. Simone de Beauvoir,Pour une morale del’ambiguïté, Paris:Gallimard, 2003(première édition1947), p. 103.

33. Simone de Beauvoir,Tout compte fait, Paris:Gallimard, 1972, pp.39–40.

34. Jacques Lecarme etEliane Lecarme-Tabone,L’Autobiographie,Paris: Armand Colin,2004, p. 7.


palmatorio – mais aussi quand il parlait de ces ‘contre-violences’ des Noirs et

des durs règlement de compte qu’avait impliqués la révolution algérienne. Il

attribuait ces répugnances à sa condition d’intellectuel: tout ce qu’il avait

écrit contre les intellectuels, il l’avait écrit contre lui-même.35

D’après Beauvoir, les origines de Fanon aggravaient ses conflits:

Dans sa jeunesse, il avait cru pouvoir surmonter, par sa culture et sa valeur,

la ségrégation raciale; il s’était voulu français: pendant la guerre, il avait

quitté la Martinique pour se battre. Faisant sa médecine à Lyon il avait com-

pris qu’aux yeux des Français un Noir restait toujours un Noir et il avait

agressivement assumé la couleur de sa peau.36

Mais quand Fanon fut nommé directeur de l’hôpital psychiatrique de Blida,en Algérie, en 1953, c’était l’intégration dont il avait rêvé. En intro-duisant dans ses services la ‘social-thérapie’, méthode de soin auxaliénés, basée sur la restauration de leurs référents culturels, Fanongagne la reconnaissance du personnel soignant (pour la plupart engagépolitiquement) et celle des militants de la région. De plus, ses positionsanticolonialistes étant peu à peu connues, Fanon est bientôt contacté parle mouvement ‘Amitiés algériennes’, qui lui demande de prendre encharge des maquisards souffrant de troubles psychiques. C’est ainsi, parla proximité entre psychiatrie et engagement politique, que Fanon s’engagedans la lutte.

Pendant un an, Fanon continue à servir la révolution sans abandonnerson poste à l’hôpital: il dispense des leçons aux révolutionnaires, leurapprend à contrôler leurs réactions au moment de déposer une bombe oude lancer une grenade, et à trouver quelle attitude psychologique ouphysique peut les aider à résister le mieux à la torture. Dans le mêmetemps, toutefois, il se doit de soigner des commissaires de police françaisqui ont trop ‘questionné’. Si au cours de cette année-là, Fanon s’était déjàsenti écartelé, ne voulant pas renoncer à un statut difficilement acquis,mais reconnaissant la cause des Algériens comme sienne, en 1956 la con-tradiction lui devient insupportable: dans une lettre ouverte à Lacoste,ministre-résident et gouverneur général de l’Algérie, il démissionne de sonposte, rompt avec la France et se déclare Algérien.

Ce choix de rupture totale – se choisir Algérien contre la France, con-tre le colonialismese double dans l’écriture de Fanon d’une exigence deremise en question intégrale de la situation coloniale. La résistanceextrême de son écriture oblige à s’interroger sur son statut littéraire: ungeste profondément militant dirigé contre I’idéologie colonialiste est àl’origine même du geste d’écriture de l’An V de la Révolution algérienne etdes Damnés de la terre, œuvres révolutionnaires, de combat, nationales.Dans cette mesure, on peut repenser l’œuvre de Fanon à la lumière duconcept de ‘stratégie ou de résistance postcoloniale’, que présente etdéveloppe Jean-Marc Moura, dans un article de 2001, paru dansLittérature postcoloniale et francophonie, et intitulé ‘Sur quelques apports etapories de la théorie postcoloniale pour le domaine francophone’. Le con-cept de stratégie ou de résistance postcoloniale renvoie, selon J.-M.Moura:

420 Annabelle Golay

35. ibid., p. 622.

36. ibid., p. 620.


[…] aux œuvres qui tentent de résister à l’idéologie coloniale, y compris

durant la période de colonisation. […] A cet égard, Aimé Césaire ou Léopold

Sédar Senghor sont des auteurs postcoloniaux au même titre qu’Edouard

Glissant ou Henri Lopès. C’est une situation d’écriture qui est considérée et

non plus seulement une position sur l’axe du temps.37

Cette conception du ‘postcolonial’ comme non exclusivement chronologique(le post-colonial se constituant nécessairement après le colonial), permetde le redéfinir en termes oppositionnels et critiques. Cette façon nonchronologique d’appréhender le postcolonial se retrouve également dansl’ouvrage d’Anne Donadey, Recasting Postcolonialism. Il faut noter à cet égardque la définition que propose Donadey du terme anticolonial, comme forte-ment marqué par une opposition binaire, correspond bien au manichéismeà l’œuvre dans les essais théoriques de Fanon (sur le manichéisme de Fanon,voir Anne McClintock, ‘No longer in a Future Heaven’, pp. 93–99).

Par ailleurs, la dimension radicale et l’urgence à l’œuvre chez Fanonsont à comprendre au regard de sa situation personnelle: il était atteintd’une leucémie, qui le condamnait, lui laissant un très bref sursis. Fanonest donc en lutte tant intimement que collectivement: lutte anticolonialisteauprès du peuple algérien avec lequel il fait corps, lutte contre le dérègle-ment physique de son propre corps. Au moment de sa rencontre avecBeauvoir et Sartre, il savait qu’il n’avait plus qu’un an à vivre (il mourraquelques mois plus tard, le 8 décembre 1961 dans une clinique près deWashington, aux Etats-Unis). Certains de ses textes avaient déjà été pub-liés par la revue des Temps modernes. Sartre et Beauvoir admiraient son tra-vail dans Peau noire, masques blancs et dans L’An V de la révolution algérienne.Il venait de rencontrer Claude Lanzmann à la conférence anticolonialistede Tunis où celui-ci représentait les Temps modernes, et lui demanda deremettre à Sartre le manuscrit des Damnés de la terre, pour qu’il le préface.Lanzmann et Fanon rejoignirent Beauvoir et Sartre à Rome (Fanonsouhaitait y soigner ses rhumatismes). Plusieurs jours de discussions inin-terrompues s’en suivirent avant le retour de Fanon à Tunis.

Dans la Force des choses, Beauvoir s’attache à souligner à la fois l’inten-sité humaine de la rencontre (terme qui revient souvent sous la plume deBeauvoir à l’égard de Fanon; à sa mort, elle écrit: ‘Sa mort pesait lourdparce qu’il l’avait chargée de toute l’intensité de sa vie’, p. 635), mais aussiles limites de leur entente. A un premier niveau, Fanon reprochait à Sartreet à Beauvoir une certaine forme de réserve ou d’économie de soi, qu’il nepouvait tolérer en raison du caractère doublement urgent de la situation:

Nous retrouvâmes Sartre pour déjeuner: la conversation dura jusqu’à 2

heures du matin; je la brisai le plus poliment possible, en expliquant que

Sartre avait besoin de sommeil. Fanon en fut outré: ‘Je déteste les gens qui

s’économisent’, dit-il à Lanzmann qu’il tint éveillé jusqu’à 8 heures du matin

[…] Fanon avait énormément de choses à dire à Sartre et de questions à lui

poser. ‘Je paierais vingt mille francs par jour pour parler avec Sartre du

matin au soir pendant quinze jours’, dit-il en riant à Lanzmann (p. 619).

Fanon leur reprochait, plus sérieusement et à un second niveau, le faitd’être français, et surtout, de ne pas suffisamment l’expier (Fanon n’avait


37. Jean-Marc Moura,‘Sur quelques apportset apories de lathéorie postcolonialepour le domaine francophone’, inLittératurepostcoloniale etfrancophonie, Paris:Champion, 2001, p. 151.


sans doute pas connaissance des écrits en cours de Beauvoir, motivés parla honte d’être française). Le reproche vise principalement Sartre dans lamesure où c’était lui (bien davantage que Beauvoir) qui, à ce moment-là,incarnait, pour Fanon et le reste du monde, l’action politique de soutien àtous les opprimés en guerre contre le colonialisme. C’est précisément enraison de la valeur et de la notoriété de l’engagement de Sartre, que Fanonavait souhaité la préface qu’il donna à son livre (qui reste un très beautexte, peut-être davantage lu et commenté au cours des années que lecorps de texte de Fanon). Pourtant, dans l’introduction de l’édition de2002 des Damnés de la terre, Alice Cherki met au jour un aspect importantde la réception du texte de Sartre par Fanon: d’après elle, Sartre s’éloignedu projet initial qu’il présente: d’abord, en l’adressant essentiellement auxEuropéens, tandis que Fanon s’adresse à tous vers un dépassement de la‘peur de l’autre’; ensuite, en radicalisant l’analyse de Fanon sur la vio-lence. Alice Cherki explique comment Fanon reçut cette préface: ‘Fanon,en lisant la préface de Sartre, ne fit aucun commentaire; il resta mêmecontrairement à son habitude, extrêmement silencieux. Néanmoins, ilécrivit à François Maspero qu’il espérait avoir, le moment venu, la possibilitéde s’expliquer.’38

Au-delà des divergences entre Fanon et Sartre (le dialogue semble par-fois impossible), il reste de la rencontre romaine, un magistral portrait deFanon, dressé par Beauvoir dans la Force des choses, et dont il faut soulignerla justesse et la sensibilité:

D’une intelligence aiguë, intensément vivant, doté d’un sombre humour, il

expliquait, bouffonnait, interpellait, imitait racontait: il rendait présent tout

ce qu’il évoquait.

Nos conversations furent toujours d’un extrême intérêt, grâce à la richesse

de son information, son pouvoir d’évocation, la rapidité et l’audace de sa

pensée. Par amitié, et aussi pour l’avenir de l’Algérie et de l’Afrique, nous

souhaitions que sa maladie lui accordât un long sursis. C’était quelqu’un

d’exceptionnel. Quand je serrais sa main fiévreuse, je croyais toucher la

passion qui le brûlait. Il communiquait ce feu; près de lui, la vie semblait une

aventure tragique, souvent horrible, mais d’un prix infini.39

De Beauvoir à Fanon, quelque chose est passé, le feu a été communiqué. Demême que Fanon est considéré aujourd’hui comme un auteur postcolonial,il faut relever une dimension comparable dans l’œuvre de Beauvoir, qui, trèstôt et radicalement, s’est opposée au système colonial, a posé la nécessitépour les femmes comme (pour les) individus colonisés, de transcender la con-dition de l’Autre imposée de l’extérieur par leurs oppresseurs, et a ouvert lesvoies d’une conduite morale pour un avenir postcolonial. Beauvoir suggèreainsi une dialectique qui va de la position de l’Autre à une position autre, àun avenir autre, qui est mouvement tendu vers l’avenir, engagement et liai-son aux autres. Chez Beauvoir et Fanon, se trouve une même volonté dedépassement, qui ressortit à une conception commune de la temporalité: àpartir de la conscience de la valeur du présent, il s’agit de retourner l’expéri-ence du négatif, pour s’arracher vers l’avenir (le titre du livre de Fanon, L’AnV de la révolution algérienne, manifeste ce projet). Dans Pour une morale de l’am-biguïté, Beauvoir écrit que ‘chacun doit mener sa lutte en liaison avec celle

422 Annabelle Golay

38. Alice Cherki, ‘Préfaceà l’édition de 2002’,in Les Damnés de laterre, op. cit., p. 11.

39. Simone de Beauvoir,La Force des choses, op.cit., p. 620 et 624respectivement.


des autres et en l’intégrant au dessein général’,40 ce qui souligne l’inter-dépendance et la solidarité de toutes les luttes de libération. L’oppressionayant plus d’un visage, si dans le contexte historique de la fin des années 50et du début des années 60, l’engagement féministe de Beauvoir semble sub-ordonné à la lutte pour la décolonisation, c’est d’une part que l’urgence de lasituation l’exigeait, et d’autre part, que la libération des nations coloniséesservait la lutte de libération des femmes (ce que défend Fanon dans ‘L’Algériese dévoile’): ‘First things first’, pourrait-on dire en reprenant la formule-titre de Kirsten Holst Petersen.’41 Les luttes de libération nationale et fémin-iste s’expriment dans le même moment de l’histoire, dans les mêmes termes,possèdent de nombreux enjeux communs, et sont donc extrêmement liéessans pour autant toutefois s’équivaloir. Nous voyons au terme de cette étudecomment une hiérarchie peut être établie entre elles, avec l’urgence historiquede l’une par rapport à l’autre exprimée chez Beauvoir, et la subordinationinclusive chez Fanon de la lutte pour la libération des femmes à travers lareconquête nationale.

ReferencesAshcroft, Bill (2002), ‘Feminism and Post-colonialism’, in Bill Ashcroft, Gareth

Griffiths and Helen Tiffin (eds), The Post-colonial Studies Reader, London/NewYork: Routledge (first published 1995), pp. 24–28.

—— (2002), ‘Feminism and post-colonialism’, in Bill Ashcroft et al. (eds), TheEmpires Writes Back, London/New York: Routledge, 2002 (first published1989), pp. 172–75.

Beauvoir (de), Simone (1963), La Force des choses, Paris: Gallimard.

—— (1972), Tout compte fait, Paris: Gallimard.

—— (2003), Pour une morale de l’ambiguïté, Paris: Gallimard.

—— (2005), Le Deuxième sexe, t.1, Paris: Gallimard.

—— (2005), Le Deuxième sexe, t.2, Paris: Gallimard.

Bergner, Gwen (1995), ‘Who Is That Masked Woman? or The Role of Gender inFanon’s’, Black Skin, White masks, PMLA, 110.1 (January 1995), pp. 78–85.

Boehmer, Elleke (2005), ‘Introduction’, Stories of Women, Manchester: ManchesterUniversity Press, pp. 1–21.

Cherki, Alice (2002), ‘Préface à l’édition de 2002’, in Les Damnés de la terre, Paris:Editions de la Découverte, pp. 5–15.

Doane, Mary Ann (1991), ‘Dark Continents: Epistemologies of Racial and SexualDifference in Psychoanalysis and the Cinema’, in Femmes Fatales: Feminism,Film Theory, Psychoanalysis, New York: Rootledge, pp. 209–48.

Donadey, Anne (2001), ‘Introduction: Recasting Postcolonialism’ in RecastingPostcolonialism: Women Writing Between Worlds, Portsmouth: Heimann,pp. xix–xxxv.

Fanon, Frantz (2001), L’An V de la Révolution algérienne, Paris: Editions laDécouverte et Syros, (première édition: Maspero 1960).

—— (2002), Les Damnés de la terre, Paris: Editions de la Découverte.

Fuss, Diana (1994), ‘Interior Colonies: Frantz Fanon and the Politics ofIdentification’, in Diacritics, 24: 2–3 (Summer-Fall 1994), pp. 20–42.

Holst Petersen, Kirsten (2002), ‘First Things First. Problems of a Feminist Approachto African Literature’, in The Post-colonial Studies Reader, London/New York:Routledge (first published 1995), pp. 251–54.


40. Simone de Beauvoir,Pour une morale del’ambiguïté, op. cit., p. 111.

41. Kirsten HolstPetersen, ‘First ThingFirst. Problems of aFeminist Approach to African Literature’,in The Post-colonialStudies Reader, BillAshcroft et al. (eds), op. cit., p. 251.


Lecarme, Jacques and Lecarme-Tabone, Eliane (2004), L’Autobiographie, Paris:Armand Colin.

Martin, Jean Pierre (2006), Le Livre des hontes, Paris: Seuil.

McClintock, Anne (1997), ‘No Longer in a Future Heaven: Gender, Race, andNationalism’, in Anne McClintock, Aamir Mufti and Ellena Shohat (eds),Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation, and Postcolonial Perspective, Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press, pp. 89–112.

Moi, Toril (1998), ‘Independent Women and Narrative of Liberation’, in ElizabethFallaize (ed.), Simone de Beauvoir: A Critical Reader, London, England: Routledge,pp. 72–92.

Moura, Jean-Marc (2001), ‘Sur quelques apports et apories de la théorie postcolo-niale pour le domaine francophone’ in Jean Bessière and Jean-Marc Moura(eds), Littérature postcoloniale et francophonie, Paris: Champion, pp. 151–202.

Mowitt, John (1992), ‘Algerian Nation: Fanon’s Fetish’, Cultural Critique, 22 (Fall),pp. 165–86.

Murphy, Julien (1995), ‘Beauvoir and the Algerian War: Toward a PostcolonialEthics’, in Margaret A. Simons (ed.), Feminist Interpretations of Simone deBeauvoir, University Park: Pennsylvania Sate University Press, pp. 263–97.

Paperman, Patricia (2006), Le Souci des autres: éthique et politique du care, sous ladirection de Patricia Paperman, Paris: Editions de l’école des hautes études ensciences sociales, 2006.

Sartre, Jean-Paul (2002), ‘Préface à l’édition de 1961’, in Les Damnés de la terre,Paris: Editions de la Découverte (première édition 1961), pp. 5–15.

Spivak, Gayatri (2002), ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ in Bill Ashcroft, GarethGriffiths and Helen Tiffin (eds), The Post-colonial Studies Reader, London/NewYork: Routledge (first published 1995), pp. 24–28.

Suggested citationGolay, A. (2007), ‘Féminisme et postcolonialisme: Beauvoir, Fanon et la guerre

d’Algérie’, International Journal of Francophone Studies 10: 3, pp. 407–424,doi: 10.1386/ijfs.10.3.407/1

Contributor detailsAnnabelle Golay is a Ph.D. candidate in French, specialist of the twentieth-centuryliterature. The title of her dissertation project is: ‘Les autobiographies de Simone deBeauvoir, témoignage capital d’un siècle’. She is preparing her Ph.D. in a ‘cotutelle’,which is an agreement that allows her to prepare a co-directed Ph.D. both at TulaneUniversity and at the University of Lyon 2 in France. Contact: Tulane University,French Department, 311 Newcomb Hall, New Orleans, La 70118.


424 Annabelle Golay


425

FORUM

International Journal of Francophone Studies Volume 10 Number 3 © 2007 Intellect Ltd

Forum. English Language. doi: 10.1386/ijfs.10.3.425/7

When French-Canadian literature freeditself from the tutelage of ParisDavid Parris Trinity College Dublin

AbstractSoon after the Second World War, a dispute broke out between a group of Frenchintellectuals and the Montréal-based publisher Robert Charbonneau. Charbonneau’sviews on the grievances of the French are brought together in: La France et nous.Around the same time, Charbonneau’s friend Berthelot Brunet wrote a Histoirede la littérature française in which he is critical of French culture. The two textsmark a break with France, a refusal of its hegemony, and at the same time theygive an idea of what was to be known as la littérature québécoise.

RésuméAu lendemain de la deuxième guerre mondiale, une querelle éclata entre un grouped’intellectuels français et l’éditeur montréalais Robert Charbonneau. Les réponsesde Charbonneau aux divers reproches formulés contre les Canadiens ont étéregroupées dans : La France et nous. Vers la même époque, un intellectuelet ami de Charbonneau, Berthelot Brunet a rédigé une l’Histoire de lalittérature française dans laquelle il adopte une attitude critique vis-à-vis dela culture française. Ces deux textes marquent une rupture avec la France, unrefus d’accepter sa domination, et en même temps, ils donnent une premièreébauche de la future littérature québécoise.

Two texts are the main source for this article: La France et nous – a collec-tion of articles published under this title by Robert Charbonneau (chartinga bitter dispute that broke out after the Second World War between Frenchintellectuals and Canadian publishers) – and l’Histoire de la littératurefrançaise by Berthelot Brunet, published only in 1970, long after his death,but certainly written round the time of the famous quarrel ostensibly overthe validity of French-Canadian culture, i.e. 1946–47. Strangely, the criti-cal apparatus in the appendix to La France et nous does not mention Brunetamong the lesser protagonists in the quarrel (only the French ones beingmentioned) (Charbonneau 1993: 105) and only one of his articles is men-tioned as being part of the polemic (Brunet 1947b: 4). But Brunet gets sixmentions in the text, and in the 1947 edition, a critique of his Histoire de lalittérature canadienne-française (Brunet 1946a) is included as an annex.1 So


KeywordsBrunet

Charbonneau

culture

France

French-Canadian

hegemony

literature

1. Brunet’s Histoire de laliterature canadienne-française, which,unlike his thenunpublished Histoirede la literaturefrançaise was knownat the time of the‘quarrel’ is not kindto French-Canadianliterature: In LaFrance et nousCharbonneau seemsto share Brunet’sview that contemporaryFrench-Canadian literature is best.Brunet’s history onlyfigures in a shortannex: ‘De toutes lesœuvres publiés avant1900, je neretiendrais que LesAnciens Canadiens,L’Histoire du Canadade F.X. Garneau,quelques pages deFréchette, des Contesde Pamphile Lemay,les Poésies de

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it is fair enough to assume there was a close working relationship betweenCharbonneau and Brunet.

In any case, these authors and the quarrel represent an importantmoment in the history of thought on French-Canadian and Quebec literature,and it will be argued that this moment marks a crucial turning point inthe literary history of Québec. Our aim is not to tell the story of the quarrel,which others have already done (see Marcotte 1986: 39–63).

When did French-Canadian literature ‘start’? We are aware of researchinto the creation of the literary institution in Quebec in the nineteenth cen-tury. Equally, we know that the early decades of this literature witnessed onlya modest production. Charbonneau does not seem sure where to set thedate: ‘Alors qu’il existe des littératures suisse, belge, suédoise, norvégienne,etc., jusqu’à 1920, il n’existe pas à proprement parler de littérature canadi-enne’ (Charbonneau 1993: 45). Elsewhere, in an interview, dating from thesame period Charbonneau declares: ‘Notre littérature [...] ne compte vrai-ment que depuis 1930’ (Charbonneau 1947b). Perhaps there is a subtle dis-tinction between ‘une littérature qui existe’ and ‘une littérature qui compte’.In any event, in La France et nous, we do not have the impression of a manproud of a pre-existing literary heritage, but rather of one who sees his liter-ature on the brink of a great expansion. In the ‘Discours prononcé auCongrès de la Société des Éditeurs canadiens’ he modestly claims: ‘Alorsqu’avant 1935 les écrivains d’imagination étaient rares, aujourd’hui, il fautplutôt conseiller aux jeunes de remettre leur ouvrage sur le métier,2 de seperfectionner. Parmi ces jeunes, plusieurs seront demain de grandsécrivains’ (Charbonneau 1947a: 62). This may be what Berthelot Brunetmeans in the first sentence of his Histoire de la littérature canadienne-française:‘L’histoire de la littérature canadienne-française offre cette singularité queses meilleurs écrivains se rencontrent à ses débuts et à la période contempo-raine: le prologue et l’épilogue ont plus d’importance que le corps de l’ou-vrage’ (Brunet 1947: 13). True, Charbonneau quotes names that haveremained famous in the annals of Québec literature: ‘un Saint-DenysGarneau, un Alain Grandbois, un Yves Thériault, un Roger Lemelin, un Léo-Paul Desrosiers, une Gabrielle Roy et autres’ (Charbonneau 1993: 36). Butlet us remind ourselves that at that time, Gabrielle Roy had only just pub-lished Bonheur d’occasion (1945) while Les Plouffe by Roger Lemelin (c1948)and Agaguk (c1958) by Yves Thériault had yet to appear (as far as I can tell,Charbonneau’s only indication of Thériault’s talent was Contes pour unhomme seul (1944) published by Charbonneau). So these are authors whosepotential Charbonneau, as a publisher, was able to gauge. The reason forwhich this polemic marks a turning point in the history of French-Canadian/Quebec literature has more to do with what was about to be thanwith what actually was. As already in the nineteenth century, French-Canadian literature was defined before coming into existence: here for onceessence does precede existence, and a programme for the literature had beenworked out before there were many works to fulfil it.

Recently, Gérard Bouchard has established a kind of typology of therelationship between what he calls ‘les pays neufs’ and the country fromwhich they spring, based on the need to reconcile a desire for a long memorywith the fact of having a short history. In some cases, according to him,the new country, springing from a former colony, seeks to enhance its cul-ture by clinging to the cultural values of the metropole: ‘Dans notre cas

426 David Parris

Nelligan’ says thereviewer. Despite theavailability today ofLes Meilleurs romansquébécois du XIXe siècle (ed. GillesDorion) it is unlikelymany colleagues ven-ture far beyond thetexts Charbonneaulists. Of Brunet’s bookthe reviewer writes:‘Presque tout sonlivre est rempli parles contemporains[...] Brunet travailledans le vif [...] Lesjugements ne sontpas définitifs. Ils nepeuvent pas l’être etne visent pas à l’être’(Charbonneau 1993:89). Clearly, bothmen saw French-Canadian literatureas a work inprogress.

2. Just as he alludes toDu Bellay, so hereclearly Charbonneauis thinking ofBoileau’s Art Poétique,ll 172/4: ‘Vingt foissur le métier remettezvotre ouvrage: /Polissez-le sans cesseet le repolissez;/Ajoutez quelquefois,et souvent effacez.’


(on retrouve un peu la même chose en Nouvelle-Zélande, au Canada etailleurs), la mémoire longue est construite en se coulant dans le tempslong de la tradition française, en faisant dériver une historicitécanadienne-française de la vieille historicité française’ (Bouchard1999: 49). Then comes a second stage, in which the cultural hege-mony of the other-country is rejected, as Gérard Bouchard continues:

Dans une phase initiale, elles [les cultures] ont reproduit la culture de la

mère patrie, dont elles étaient totalement dépendantes. Puis, peu à peu, elles

ont édifié une culture autonome, elles ont effectué leur décrochage. Dans le

cas du Québec, c’est assez remarquable, on observe plutôt deux allers et

retours: de la continuité à la rupture (du XVIIe siècle au milieu du XIXe siècle),

puis un retour à la continuité (jusqu’à la Seconde Guerre mondiale environ),

puis une autre volte-face vers la rupture.

(Bouchard 1999: 60)

This notion of a ‘double aller et retour’ is extremely illuminating, becauseit helps us to understand Charbonneau’s point of view, which was thatFrench-Canadian/Quebec literature had barely got off the ground, andalso the perspective of those who, nearer to us in time, are researching theearliest period of the colony. If the inhabitants of New-France eventuallytook the name of Canadiens, it was precisely in order to show they were nolonger the same as the French. On the other hand, after the Durhamreport and around the time of the British North America Act setting up afederal Canada, French identity was reaffirmed (with the generalization ofthe term canadien-français) through a whole raft of historical works, ofwhich Les Anciens Canadiens (Aubert de Gaspé 1863) is the apogee.

For Gérard Bouchard, the breaking point after which French identity isno longer in the ascendant comes in the 1940s. He maintains that the rel-ative sterility of colonial literature is a consequence of imitating modelsfrom the mother country in too servile a way: ‘C’est en grande partie cetteculture qu’on a diffusée dans les collèges classiques, dans la société. C’estcelle-là qui a imprégné nos romans, nos œuvres d’art. Et c’est ce qui faitqu’il n’y a pas vraiment eu de très grands romanciers avant les années1940 chez les Canadiens-français’ (Bouchard 1999: 122).

Charbonneau and Brunet may not be the instigators of this historicalprocess, but they are singularly well-placed and lucid observers of it, andCharbonneau, as a publisher and polemicist must certainly be seen asmore than just a bystander. Charbonneau is at pains to reiterate his admi-ration for France, but at the same time he claims for French Canada theright to have its own literature: ‘Au Canada, nous avons accepté, commeun dogme, la supériorité de la technique française sur toutes les autres.Pour avancer, il faut maintenant, sans cesser d’étudier les Français, éten-dre nos recherches à d’autres techniques et à d’autres œuvres’(Charbonneau 1993: 34). For Charbonneau, at a time when this kind ofconcept was not yet current and when the great European powers hadbarely begun to dismantle their empires, it was a colonial problem: ‘Lepremier pas d’une littérature vers l’autonomie consiste à répudier touteconception coloniale de la culture’ (Charbonneau 1993: 34). The litera-tures to which Charbonneau compares French-Canadian literature –those of French-speaking Switzerland, Belgium, Sweden, Norway, but

427When French-Canadian literature freed itself from the tutelage of Paris


also nineteenth-century Russia – are all of recent creation. In the case ofRussia, the flowering of the Slavic movement had placed it on an equal foot-ing with France. Throwing off the French yoke is necessary for two reasons:firstly, Charbonneau foresees that the fledgling French-Canadian literaturewill have an international influence: ‘Ayant un public qui débordait lescadres de la province de Québec, la jeune littérature, tout en s’appuyantsolidement sur le milieu canadien, tend à devenir universelle’ (Charbonneau1993: 43). He deplores the ignorance of the French with regard to all thathappens abroad, and does not believe the French will ever be a good publicfor French-Canada: ‘Ne nous faisons pas d’illusion. Le Français, saufquelques grandes et généreuses exceptions, est l’homme qui ne connaît pasles étrangers’ (Charbonneau 1993: 53). Not only is the young French-Canadian literature unlikely to find a faithful readership in France, it is alsounlikely to find good models there, because intellectual life there seems tohim sadly impoverished. According to Robert Charbonneau ‘la crise que tra-verse la France n’est pas seulement une crise politique, économique ouphysique, mais une crise spirituelle’ (Charbonneau 1993: 38).

Charbonneau mentions other literatures, because he hopes his litera-ture will be enriched through imitation. Has French literature itself notimitated? ‘Si les Français n’avaient subi d’influences que françaises, leurlittérature se serait rapidement appauvrie’ (Charbonneau 1993: 34).

Can Charbonneau fail to grasp that this is almost a direct quotationfrom Joachim Du Bellay who was encouraging the French to enrich theirliterature through imitation just after Jacques Cartier discovered Canada:‘Mais si Virgile et Ciceron se fussent contentez d’imiter ceux de leurlangue, qu’auroient les Latins outre Ennie ou Lucrece, outre Crasse ouAntoine?’ (Du Bellay, s.d.: 59).

Of course, Charbonneau sees the need for imitation, but even though hesays the French-Canadians should continue studying the French, he believesthat Europe in general and France in particular are going through a periodof crisis: ‘Pour nous, qui avons cessé de croire que l’Europe est le centre d’oùpartent toutes les impulsions artistiques, la crise du roman en France neprésage pas un affaiblissement de l’esprit de création dans le monde’(Charbonneau 1993: 57). The procès d’intention, which French intellectualsbrought against him, seems to him to be no more than a symptom of theintellectual malaise which makes France a poor model to follow.

From the outset, Charbonneau sees that the new French-Canadian lit-erature’s vocation is American: ‘Écrivains canadiens-français, nous devonsnous efforcer de découvrir notre signification américaine’ (Charbonneau1993: 34). The notion of américanité (Americanness) is often ambiguous:often today it is used to designate the expansion of narrative space toenglobe the whole North American continent. For Robert Charbonneau, itrather means the integration of French-Canadian literature into the‘ensemble’ of American literatures. Instead of being seen as a threat to cul-tural integrity, bilingualism is a potential source of enrichment: ‘Pourquoi,nous qui possédons deux langues, attendrions-nous, pour nous enrichir dela substance des écrivains américains ou anglais, qu’ils aient été traduits etassimilés par les Français?’ (Charbonneau 1993: 51). Let us note that he istalking about the propagation of ideas and the transmission of influences;the Americas are destined to become a coherent and autonomous cultural

428 David Parris


zone, so that ideas will no longer need to stop over in Paris before returningto spread in other parts of the New World (the ‘double aller et retour’).This openness to other cultures, to France, of course, but also to otherAmerican cultures, is the necessary condition for French-Canadian cul-ture to achieve a universal status: ‘Nos écrivains n’ont qu’à continuercomme ils ont commencé. Ils n’ont qu’à être canadiens et à chercher leurtechnique non dans un seul pays, ni à travers un seul pays, mais partout.À cette condition, ils garderont leur place dans la littérature universelle’(Charbonneau 1993: 65).

Brunet’s Histoire de la littérature française was by no means an influen-tial book: it was only published finally after Quebec literature had well andtruly come of age. It would be easy to see it as just an example of theauthor’s caustic wit. In fact, its approach is much more radical, and illus-trates the turning point French-Canadian culture had reached. For thefirst time, he takes a critical stance vis-à-vis French literature, standingwell back from it: he sees it as a foreign literature:

Les grands écrivains français de la France ne sont pas les grands écrivains

français de l’étranger, et les écrivains importants de l’Angleterre ne sont

pas les écrivains caractéristiques de l’Angleterre, pour la France. Un

Canadien peut donc se permettre ne fût-ce qu’à titre d’expérience

curieuse, d’affirmer ses préférences de Canadien, lorsqu’il lit les écrivains

français.

(Brunet 1970: 25)

Aragon had attacked Canadian publishers (several times, seemingly – LaFrance et nous quotes him at length from p. 58 to p. 61, and p. 65 to p. 69,and without going into the details of the ‘quarrel’, Charbonneau feltAragon despised French Canada, while French authors were very possiblyanxious to protect their commercial interests against potential rivals thathad sprung up during the war3), because they had dared to publish right-wing authors who were the object of purges in France at the time. SurelyBrunet is commenting on this situation when he writes: ‘Ce qui gêne leplus l’étranger, lorsqu’il regarde de haut et de loin la littérature française,c’est son aspect politique’ (Brunet 1970: 27).

Brunet’s criticism begins with the most essential, the least avoidablething, the very thing that ought to have been the bridge across the Atlanticlinking Quebec and France: the language:

Une autre raison qui rend l’étude des écrivains français assez difficile pour

l’étranger (il en est de même pour toutes les littératures sans doute, mais à

divers degrés), c’est que la littérature française a toujours usé d’une langue à

part. Qu’on songe au jargon des romans psychologiques, dont l’intelligent

Jacques Rivière a fait un usage intempérant dans Aimée. Qu’on pense au

jargon poétique, qui change cinq, six fois par siècle [...].

(Brunet 1970: 28)

Not for a moment does Brunet worry that the fault might lie with theoverseas reader; for him, the fault lies with the French and is inherent inthe language. Of course, we know that since, criticism of university jargon


3. Canadian publishinghouses had beenallowed to reprintEuropean copyrightmaterial during theGerman occupation,paying copyright at avery advantageousrate (The Patents,Designs, Copyright andTrade Marks(Emergency) Act1939).


has become one of the constants of Quebec literature, which has alsomade a special place for spoken varieties of French.

Brunet’s judgements on French literature are never the ones anaficionado would expect. Like Boileau, he starts with Villon ‘le premiergrand poète que nous présente l’histoire des letters françaises’ (p. 31) andworks his way through to Malraux, Saint-Exupéry and even Sartre(‘Sartre me semble le Huysmans de ce Balzac et de ce Zola que seraitMalraux [...]’ p. 224). For each great author of the canon – and it is hisattacks on the seventeenth century that seem most calculated to offendthe French – Brunet finds another author he prefers. But there is some-thing more important at work than a perverse sense of contradiction.Naturally, he hates classicism, and deplores Greek influence: ‘Les ambi-tions de Ronsard n’auraient été qu’un travers amusant, s’il n’avait admirél’antiquité avec excès. Ce fétichisme gâtera les lettres françaises, en feraparfois une littérature de traduction’ (Brunet 1970: 36).

Beneath the authors we know, Brunet always sees another, alwaysbetter, that we might have had if only his genius had not been pervertedby the pernicious influence of classicism: ‘Malherbe est donc un autreexemple du mal que les théories classiques ont fait à la poésie française.Je songe toujours au Racine que nous aurions eu, si Racine ne s’était pas pliéaux règles, s’il s’était abandonné au démon racinien’ (Brunet 1970: 53).Rare indeed are the classical authors (or rather, authors of the classicalperiod) of whom Brunet approves (Retz, Saint-Simon, Pascal, Saint-Evremond... perhaps Madame de Sévigné). Corneille fares no better thanRacine: ‘Pierre Corneille [est] l’un de ces nombreux classiques qui nepassent pas la frontière. Tous les peuples ont de ces classiques. Lesécrivains universels sont plus rares que les grands écrivains...’ (Brunet1970: 58). At roughly the same time as Charbonneau was predicting forFrench-Canadian literature a great future and a universal outreach, andwhen many French authors of the day were reminding French-Canadianauthors that their literature had only a secondary role to play within theFrench-speaking world, Brunet was busy proclaiming – unbeknownst tothem, it is true – that French literature is far from being as interesting toforeigners as the French might like to think, and that its principaladvantages – the language and the classical tradition – are an obstaclefor foreigners, even if these are francophones of the diaspora: ‘Lespoètes classiques français ne passent guère la frontière et c’est souventparce que l’étranger est sensible à leurs défauts plus que les Françaisqui ne leur trouvent que des qualités’ (Brunet 1970: 81). One mightcarry on producing quotations of this kind for a very long time.Although, in places, the Histoire de la littérature française may seem a littlethin, elsewhere, one is amazed at the breadth of Brunet’s knowledge. Hisvast erudition does not seem to have been much of a consolation tohim, though, and at the very moment Charbonneau was speaking ofa ‘crise spirituelle’ (Charbonneau 1993: 38) or of a ‘crise d’épuise-ment’ (Charbonneau 1993: 57) suggesting that ‘la crise du roman enFrance ne présage pas un affaiblissement de l’esprit de création dansle monde’ (Charbonneau 1993: 57), Brunet, who no doubt agreedwith him, was insinuating that perhaps French literature never hadbeen as good as people thought.

430 David Parris


If we attempt to draw together the conclusion of both authors, we mightsum up as follows:

• French-Canadian literature is about to ‘take off ’ in the immediate post-war period

• it will be a universal literature• provided it is firmly rooted in its North American contexts• and does not imitate French literature too slavishly • French literature is not a very good model• French-Canadian literature should find better models from within a

network of American cultures.

No doubt the founding text of Quebec literature is Refus global by Paul-Émile Borduas published in 1948. But when we read there: ‘Petit peuplequi malgré tout se multiplie dans la générosité de la chair sinon dans cellede l’esprit, au nord de l’immense Amérique au corps sémillant de lajeunesse au cœur d’or, mais à la morale simiesque, envoûtée par le pres-tige annihilant du souvenir des chefs-d’œuvre d’Europe, dédaigneuse desauthentiques créations de ses classes opprimées’ (Borduas 1977: 28) thesame themes of américanité and the need to find originality by casting offservile imitation of old Europe are only too clear. Borduas prefers tospeak ill of the mentality of the colony rather than of that of the mothercountry, and in so doing, gives a less cogent reason for the break thatthose advanced by Charbonneau and Brunet just two years earlier.Charbonneau and Brunet are not blind to the failings of French Canada asfar as literature is concerned: Charbonneau lists (with great foresight) thepromising young authors who are, for the most part, only on the point ofproving their talent, while Brunet’s Histoire de la littérature canadienne-française concentrates resolutely on the most recent authors. Both men seeFrance as a force to be reckoned with, but not as a very positive model. ForCharbonneau, France not only provides a bad model, but a bad public, andintegration in an American intellectual universe seems to hold out thepromise of greater acceptance, more equal exchanges and even of greatercommercial success. The French notion, which had often been expressedduring the quarrel, of Canada as a ‘cultural province of France’ is a colo-nial construct Charbonneau is anxious to reject, in favour of a model ofintellectual relations in which Canada will not be subject to the approvalof Paris. The literatures to which he seeks to compare French-Canadianliterature are not those hallowed by age, but those of new literatureswhose rise coincides in time with that of the nation state.

ReferencesAubert de Gaspé, Philippe (2006), Les Anciens canadiens, Quebec, Desbarats et

Derbishire, 1863: modern edition ViaMedias.

Borduas, Paul-Émile (1977), Refus global (original edition) Saint-Hilaire, Mithra-Mythe Editeur, c1948, here quoted from Montreal, Parti pris.

Bouchard, Gérard and Michel Lacombe (1999), Dialogue sur les pays neufs,Montreal: Boréal.

Brunet, Berthelot (1947), ‘M. Aragon “engage” la guerre contre les critiquescanadiens’, Le Canada, 44: 247, 25 janvier.



—— (1970a), (original edition) Histoire de la littérature canadienne-française,Montreal, éditions de l’Arbre, 1946 here quoted from Montreal, HMH.

—— (1970b), Histoire de la littérature française, Jean Dufresne (ed.), Montreal,HMH.

Charbonneau, Robert (1947a), La France et nous (original edition) Édition de l’Arbre,here quoted from Élisabeth Nardout-Lafarge (ed.), Montreal, BQ, 1993.

—— (1947b), ‘Robert Charbonneau croit en l’influence mondiale du Canada’(interview with Jean Luce), La Presse, 17 May 1947.

Lemelin, Roger (c1948), Les Plouffe, Quebec: Bélisle.

Marcotte, Gilles (1986), ‘Robert Charbonneau, la France, René Garneau et nous’,Écrits du Canada Français, 57, pp. 39–63.

Du Bellay (s.d.), La Défence et illustration de la langue française, Paris: Garnier.

Roy, Gabrielle (1976), Bonheur d’occasion, Montreal: Société des Éditions Pascal,1945 (Prix Fémina 1947): modern edition Editions du Boreal.

Thériault, Yves (1944), Contes pour un homme seul, Montreal: Éditions de l’’Arbe.

—— (c1958), Agaguk — roman esquimau, Quebec: B. Grasset.

Suggested citationParris, D. (2007), ‘When French-Canadian literature freed itself from the tutelage

of Paris’, International Journal of Francophone Studies 10: 3, pp. 425–432, doi: 10.1386/ijfs.10.3.425/7

Contributor detailsDavid Parris is Senior Lecturer in French in Trinity College Dublin and a Fellow ofTrinity College Dublin. Francophone literatures are his major interest, and he haspublished on C. F. Ramuz, various aspects of Quebec literature. His other interestsare minorities in literature (sexual and religious) and migrant literature. Contact:Department of French, Arts Building, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, 2, Ireland.E-mail: [email protected]

432 David Parris


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Forum. French Language. doi: 10.1386/ijfs.10.3.433/7

Post ou péricolonialisme: l’ étrange modèle québécois (notes)Lise Gauvin Université de Montréal

AbstractThese notes report on the title and text of a short paper given at a round tableorganized by CRILCQ (Centre de recherché interuniversitaire sur la littérature etla culture québécoise) at the conference of the American Council for QuebecStudies held in Quebec, 19 November 2004. The question of postcolonialism inQuebec had recently been examined by Vincent Desroches in a special dossier onQuebec and Postcolonialism in the journal Quebec Studies, no. 35, Spring-Summer 2003. However, all those taking part in the round table expressed acertain degree of reticence over the use of the concept in Québécois literature. Oneof them, Réjean Beaudoin, subsequently published his point of view in an articleentitled ‘Is Québécois literature postcolonial?’ His conclusion read: ‘Québécoisliterature can take on the ghosts of its dual colonialism. Putting it in the post-colonial ragbag is a desperate attempt to normalise it’ (L’Inconvénient, no. 24,February 2006). Also worth reading on the subject are Rachel Killick’s article,‘In the fold? Postcolonialism and Quebec’, Romance Studies, vol. 24, no. 3,November 2006, pp. 181–92, and the collection entitled Reconfigurations.Canadian Literature and Postcolonial Identities/Littératures canadienneset identités postcoloniales, edited by Marc Maufort and Franco Bellarsi,Bruxelles, Peter Lang, 2002.

RésuméCes quelques réflexions reprennent le titre et le texte d’une brève communicationdonnée dans le cadre d’une table ronde organisée par le CRILCQ (Centre derecherche interuniversitaire sur la littérature et la culture québécoise) à l’occasiondu Congrès de l’American Council for Québec Studies, Québec, 19 novembre2004. La question du postcolonialisme au Québec venait d’être examinée dans unnuméro spécial de la revue Québec Studies, sous la responsabilité de VincentDesroches, no 35, Spring-summer 2003, ‘Quebec and Postcolonial theory’.Cependant, les participants à la table ronde ont tous exprimé une certaine réti-cence face à l’utilisation du concept pour la littérature québécoise. L’un de ceux-ci, Réjean Beaudoin, a par la suite publié son point de vue dans un article intitulé‘La littérature québécoise est-elle postcoloniale?’ Sa conclusion se lit comme suit:‘La littérature québécoise peut assumer les fantômes de son double colonial-isme. La ranger dans le fourre-tout postcolonial, c’est vouloir la normaliser àtout prix.’ (L’Inconvénient, no 24, février 2006). On lira également sur le sujetl’article de Rachel Killick, ‘In the fold? Postcolonialisme and Quebec’, RomanceStudies, vol. 24, no, november 2006, p.181–192, ainsi que le collectif intitulé


Keywordspostcolonialisme

Québec

La Nouvelle-France

Péricolonialisme

Durham

IJFS_10.3_10_Forum2_Gauvin.qxd 11/6/07 4:14 PM Page 433

Reconfigurations. Canadian Literature and Postcolonial Identities/ Littératurescanadiennes et identités postcoloniales, sous la dir. de Marc Maufort et Francobellarsi, Bruxelles, Peter Lang, 2002.

Un certain flou entoure la notion de postcolonialisme. Comme le signaleStephen Slemon, on l’a utilisé tour à tour ‘comme un moyen d’ordonner unecritique des formes totalisantes de l’historicisme occidental, comme unmot-valise servant une conception rénovée de la « classe » comme unsous–ensemble à la fois du postmodernisme et du poststructuralisme, […]comme un nom pour le conservatisme autochtone dans les groupementsnationaux d’après les indépendances, […] comme l’inévitable soubassementd’un discours fragmenté et ambivalent du pouvoir colonialiste […]’1 Il y adans le mot post un implicite téléologique qui suppose un avant et un après,soit un système d’oppositions binaires orienté vers l’idée d’un point d’arrivéeou à tout le moins d’une stase dans le jeu des pouvoirs et le développementdes nations. Édouard Glissant, à qui je demandais de se situer par rapport aupostcolonialisme, m’a répondu ceci:

Je ne me sens pas un postcolonialiste parce que je suis dans une histoire qui ne

s’arrête pas. Il n’y a pas une histoire postcolonialiste de l’histoire de la Caraïbe,

et même des Amériques. Il y a un discontinuum qui pèse encore sur nous. Si

on appelle postcolonialisme le fait que l’on est dans une période où l’on peut

réfléchir sur un phénomène passé qui s’appellerait le colonialisme, je dis que ce

n’est pas vrai. Nous sommes encore en période colonialiste, mais c’est un colo-

nialisme qui a pris une autre forme. C’est un colonialisme de dominations des

grandes multinationales. Un pays colonisateur n’a plus besoin d’en occuper un

autre pour le coloniser. Il y a quelque chose de récapitulatif, de synthétique et

de conclusif dans le terme postcolonialisme que je récuse.2

Ces notions d’avant et d’après, suspectes en Histoire, le sont tout autant enlittérature. Pourtant, on ne saurait nier le fait de la colonisation aumoment de l’expansion des puissances européennes. Le mot, sinon lachose, a été utilisé au Québec à quelques moments stratégiques. Rappelonsbrièvement certains faits. La Nouvelle-France a été peuplée par desFrançais et a constitué ce que l’on appelle en anglais une ‘settler colonie’ou colonie de peuplement, donnant lieu à une culture particulière, commece fut le cas dans les pays du nouveau Monde. Les habitants de laNouvelle-France étaient des Européens coloniaux et colonisateurs qui nepouvaient véritablement se dire colonisés, sinon par l’autorité du pouvoircentral. Les véritables colonisés étaient alors les Amérindiens.

Sous le régime anglais, la situation est, bien entendu, fort différente,puisque les francophones deviennent des sujets britanniques que l’ontente par divers moyens d’assimiler. Rappelons les phrases tristementcélèbres de Durham:

Je n’entretiens aucun doute au sujet du caractère national qui doit être donné

au Bas-Canada; ce doit être celui de l’Empire britannique, celui de la majorité

de la population de l’Amérique britannique, celui de la grande race qui doit, à

une époque prochaine, être prédominante sur tout le continent de l’Amérique

du Nord. Sans opérer le changement ni trop rapidement ni trop rudement

434 Lise Gauvin

1. S. Slemon, ‘TheScramble for Post-colonialism’, in C. Tiffin and A. Lawson (eds), De-scribing Empire.Postcolonialism andTextuality, Londres,Routledge, 1994, pp.16-17. Traduction deJean–Marc Moura,dans Exotisme etlettres francophones,Paris, PUF,‘Écritures’, p. 193.

2. Entretien avec LiseGauvin, ‘Faire le guetdu monde’, Le Devoir,16 janvier 2001.


pour ne pas froisser les sentiments et ne pas sacrifier le bien-être de la généra-

tion actuelle, l’intention première et ferme du gouvernement britannique doit

à l’avenir consister à établir dans la province une population anglaise avec les

lois et la langue anglaises, et à ne confier le gouvernement de cette province

qu’à une Assemblée décidément anglaise. (Rapport Durham 1839)

Peu à peu les francophones retrouvent certains droits. Après l’expériencemalheureuse de l’Acte d’union, en 1840, qui constituait une régressionpar rapport au régime politique précédent et annulait la relative autonomiepolitique du Bas-Canada à majorité française, ils acceptent le compromishistorique qu’est la création de la Confédération canadienne, en 1867,alors formée de quatre provinces distinctes. C’est précisément la mêmeannée que le poète Octave Crémazie utilise le terme de ‘colonie’ pourdécrire la situation de l’écrivain canadien. Un siècle plus tard, en 1967, aumoment de l’Exposition universelle et de la très médiatisée visite duGénéral de Gaulle, les écrivains s’interrogent et ont recours à la notion decolonisation pour décrire leur situation. Ce sont ces deux moments quej’aimerais évoquer ici brièvement pour ensuite tenter de faire le point surla situation actuelle.

Voyons d’abord le texte de Crémazie, qui réfléchit aux conditions d’exis-tence d’une littérature de langue française hors de France:

Plus je réfléchis sur les destinées de la littérature canadienne, moins je lui

trouve de chances de laisser une trace dans l’histoire. Ce qui manque au

Canada, c’est d’avoir une langue à lui. Si nous parlions iroquois ou huron,

notre littérature vivrait. Malheureusement nous parlons et écrivons, d’une

assez piteuse façon, il est vrai, la langue de Bossuet et de Racine. Nous avons

beau dire et beau faire, nous ne serons toujours, au point de vue littéraire,

qu’une simple colonie; et quand bien même le Canada deviendrait un pays

indépendant et ferait briller son drapeau au soleil des nations, nous n’en

demeurerions pas moins de simples colons littéraires.3

La littérature canadienne naissante est alors désignée comme unelittérature de colonie. Bien que le Canada soit alors, ne l’oublions pas,une colonie anglaise, les seules références qui sont faites par Crémazie lesont à la littérature française et, plus loin dans le texte, à la littératureaméricaine et à Fenimore Cooper. Le premier modèle reste français, ‘lalangue de Racine et de Bossuet’ et l’auto-dépréciation dont témoigne cetexte est un indice explicite d’un complexe d’infériorité entretenu enversla mère-patrie, qu’il vaudrait mieux écrire l’amère-patrie. Le projet delittérature autarcique auquel semble adhérer Crémazie à la fin de sa let-tre n’est qu’un pis-aller, une sorte de résignation a posteriori. On remar-quera toutefois que le terme de ‘colonie’ est employé par Crémazie dansun sens purement littéraire et institutionnel, puisque politiquement leCanada n’est plus rattaché à la France. Alors lui-même exilé à Paris, lelibraire-éditeur de Québec décrit la situation des écrivains canadienscomme celle d’exilés de la France, à la fois par la langue et par lesmoyens de diffusion. L’expression littérature de colonie qu’il emploiene peut s’entendre au sens strict. Il s’agit plutôt d’une littératurepériphérique, dont le canon (les modèles) sont élaborés ailleurs, donc

435Post ou péricolonialisme: l’ étrange modèle québécois (notes)

3. Octave Crémazie, ‘À l’abbé Casgrain.Lettre du 29 janvier1967’, in Crémazie,Fides, ‘Classiquescanadiens’, Montréalet Paris, 1956.


une littérature qu’il serait plus juste de désigner comme déterritorialiséeou encore péricolonialiste.

Un siècle plus tard, de 1963 à 1968, les écrivains regroupés autour dela revue Parti pris font de nouveau appel à la notion de colonisation pourdécrire leur situation. Reprenant les analyses de Memmi et de Fanon, cesécrivains se disent colonisés culturellement, politiquement et économique-ment par la présence anglo-saxonne. Un numéro spécial, dirigé par PierreMaheu, dresse le ‘portrait du colonisé québécois’. Mais ce sont là, selonJacques Berque, ‘d’étranges colonisés’. Albert Memmi constatera de soncôté que les Québécois partagent certains traits avec les colonisés maispréfère employer le mot ‘dominé’ plutôt que ‘colonisé’. Le Québec, malgréson niveau de vie élevé, est selon lui doublement dépendant, à la fois à l’in-térieur même de l’ensemble canadien et, globalement, vis-à-vis des USA.‘En un sens, tout le Canada est virtuellement déjà une colonie des USA:seulement, si les Canadiens anglais sont quais consentants, les Canadiensfrançais s’y refusent’, constate-t-il. Il faut donc chercher les composantesde la dépendance québécoise, car toute domination est ‘relative’ et ‘spéci-fique’. 4 Quoi qu’il en soit des nuances à apporter à leur diagnostic, les par-tipristes s’engagent dans une entreprise de décolonisation qui les mène àfaire table rase d’un certain passé et à revoir les valeurs-refuges qui ontlongtemps servi d’affirmation culturelle. L’association langue et religion,fondements de l’idéologie de la survivance, sont alors contestées, maisaussi bien l’idéologie de rattrapage dans laquelle le Québec s’est engagéet une certaine forme d’élitisme fondée sur le mythe des compétencesindividuelles. Le mouvement suit les phases de la décolonisation identifiéespar Memmi, qui consistent à s’accepter et se vouloir comme négativitéd’abord, puis, dans un deuxième temps, à non seulement accepter ses rideset ses plaies, mais ‘à les proclamer belles’. D’où la revendication du joual –cette langue ‘punie’ parlée par le prolétariat montréalais - à la fois commeprovocation et protestation. ‘Du coup, exactement à l’inverse de l’accusa-tion colonialiste, le colonisé, sa culture, son pays, tout ce qui lui appar-tient, tout ce qui le représente, deviennent parfaite positivité.’5 Qu’on serappelle les Notes sur le non-poème et le poème de Gaston Miron, lesCantouques de Gérald Godin ou le Cassé de Jacques Renaud, qui transfor-ment le chant de la dépossession en véritables blues lyriques.

Est-ce à dire que cette entreprise de décolonisation est terminée? Que‘la bataille de décolonisation de la littérature québécoise a été gagnéedepuis 20 ans’, comme l’affirme Jacques Godbout6? Dans la mesure oùl’on ne pourrait parler de colonialisme proprement dit, on ne peut davan-tage parler de postcolonialisme. Cependant, l’on remarque dans l’ensemblede la littérature québécoise récente, des stratégies qui s’apparentent àcelles relevées dans les littératures postcoloniales.7 Que l’on songe à la nor-malisation de la langue populaire québécoise chez Michel Tremblay, auxjeux de langage de Réjean Ducharme, aux propositions multilingues deJacques Poulin ou à la mise à l’écart de la norme chez Francine Noël. Danschacun des cas il s’agit de prises de position et d’expériences langagièresassurant l’autonomie de la littérature québécoise par rapport à une cer-taine norme externe. Mais ces stratégies sont moins des stratégies de résis-tance et de contestation par rapport à l’institution littéraire française quedes stratégies de recentrement et de création de nouveaux canons littéraires.

436 Lise Gauvin

4. Albert Memmi, ‘LesCanadiens françaissont-ils des colonisés?’, entretien accordé àMontréal en 1967,repris dans L’hommedominé, Gallimard,198, pp. 86–94.

5. Albert Memmi,Portrait du colonisé(1966), Montréal,L’Étincelle, 1972, p. 124.

6. Jacques Godbout, ‘Le chevalier errant’,Actualité, 15.19,1990, p. 100.

7. Voir à ce sujet,notamment,Ashcroft, Griffiths etTiffin, auteurs de TheEmpire Writes Back,Theory And Practice InPost-colonialLiteratures, Routledge,London-New York,1989.


À ce titre, il me paraît hautement signifiant qu’un manifeste récent sur lalangue, Speak what, de l’auteur d’origine italienne Marco Micone, reprenneun texte classique de la décolonisation, Speak White, de Michèle Lalonde.8

Il ne s’agit plus de se situer par rapport à des modèles extérieurs mais parrapport aux modèles internes de la littérature québécoise.

La littérature québécoise affiche donc les signes d’une décolonisationréussie. Mais ne nous y trompons pas. Comme on ne pouvait parler de véri-table colonisation, ni par la France, ni par l’anglophonie un siècle plustard, il est difficile d’adopter le modèle postcolonialiste pour décrire sonfonctionnement actuel. Politiquement, la question reste toujours ensuspens. Culturellement, malgré l’autonomie évidente dont bénéficieactuellement la littérature québécoise d’un point de vue institutionnel, ilfaut toutefois avouer qu’elle dépend toujours, dans une certaine mesure,des réseaux de légitimation et de consécration français pour sa présencedans l’ensemble de la francophonie. Par ailleurs, et Glissant a parfaitementraison de le dire, la colonisation se fait de nos jours de façon beaucoup plussubtile, ou plus efficace, que par les moyens étatiques: on saura de façonplus précise dans quelques années la part qui revient, sur ce point, auxmultinationales. Aussi me semble-t-il que terme le plus adéquat pourdécrire l’étrange modèle québécois, sa complexité et son originalité, estcelui de péricolonialisme, car on indique par là que cette littérature restepériphérique dans l’ensemble de la francophonie, mais aussi par rapport àl’axe colonialiste ou postcolonialiste, comme à toute pensée dualiste quiferait l’économie des nombreux réseaux d’appartenances et d’influencesqui la traversent et en font la spécificité. Ce concept rejoint ce que RownaldSmith appelle le ‘side-by-sidedness’ Alors que ‘the classic postscolonialisttheory posits an apposition between the center and the margin, betweenthose with accumulated power and those without, between the seltlerand the indigene, between the colonist and the colonial official … this inve-stigation of new kinds of side-by-sidedness […] leads to the possibility ofsharing cultural experience rater than ‘resisting’ the imposition of alienforms of culture.’9 Au modèle des contre–discours qui caractérise les lit-tératures postscoloniales se superpose un discours de complicité /résistance(Slomon) ou si l’on préfère un discours de déplacement, comme s’il s’agissaitde faire un pas de côté, juste à côté et de tracer de nouvelles trajectoires. Onpeut représenter ce nouveau modèle sous forme de cercles disjoints et jusqu’àun certain point indépendants les uns des autres tout en étant reliés par despoints d’intersection et de croisements.

Cependant, si l’on considère les études postscoloniales, telles que les adéfinies récemment Jean-Marc Moura, comme « l’attention à la dimensionpragmatique de la littérature: l’intérêt pour le processus d’énonciation,pour les données situationnelles qui composent l’univers de discours desœuvres10 », on ne saurait nier leur pertinence pour l’étude de la littératurequébécoise, comme d’ailleurs pour l’ensemble des littératures d’expressionfrançaise. Une certaine critique littéraire a eu trop tendance, par le passé,à considérer les œuvres par référence à une World Literature mystifianteet mystifiée. La question qui se pose est alors celle-ci: a-t-on vraimentbesoin du postcolonialisme pour s’engager dans l’analyse pragmatique destextes? La pragmatique est une notion beaucoup plus vaste, et tout aussiefficace théoriquement, selon moi, que le postcolonialisme. Ses connivences

437Post ou péricolonialisme: l’ étrange modèle québécois (notes)

8. Marco Micone, SpeakWhat, suivi d’uneanalyse de L. Gauvin‘Un nouveau discourssur la langue’, Vlb éditeur, 2001.

9. Rowland Smith,Postcolonizing theCommonwealth, citépar Marie Vautier,‘Les pays du nouveaumonde et lecatholicismequébécois’, QuébecStudies, numéro citép. 15.

10. Jean-Marc Moura,Exotisme et lettresfrancophones, ouv.cité, p. 197.


avec la théorie postcoloniale, qui méritent à juste titre d’être soulignés, n’enprécisent que mieux la portée.

Pour revenir au mot ‘péricolonialisme’, je crois qu’il rend compte dufait que jamais au sens propre la littérature québécoise n’a été une littéra-ture coloniale, qu’elle a su côtoyer d’autres littératures sans se laisserassimiler par elles et créer ainsi une littérature-laboratoire dont les pointsd’intersection avec d’autres contextes sont nombreux mais qui n’a rien àenvier aux ensembles culturels institutionnellement mieux établis. D’oùl’étrange modèle québécois, un modèle voué à l’intranquillité créatrice.11

Suggested citationGauvin, L. (2007), ‘Post ou péricolonialisme: l’ étrange modèle québécois

(notes)’, International Journal of Francophone Studies 10: 3, pp. 433–438, doi: 10.1386/ ijfs.10.3.433/7

Contributor detailsLise Gauvin (born in Quebec), Professor at the Université de Montréal, is a writer,literary critic and essayist. She was head of the Département d’Études françaises(1999 à 2003). She has edited the review Études françaises (1994 to 2000). Shehas published widely on the Quebec and francophone literatures including thebooks, Parti pris littéraire (PUM, 1975), Écrivains contemporains du Québec (withGaston Miron, Seghers/l’hexagone/Typo, 1989/1998), L’écrivain francophone à lacroisée des langues (Karthala, 1997/2006, prix France-Québec), Langagement.L’écrivain et la langue au Québec (Boréal, 2000), Littératures mineures en languemajeure: Québec/Wallonie-Bruxelles (PIE-Peter Lang/ PUM, 2003). As an essayistand novelist she has published Chez Riopelle. Visites d’atelier (L’Hexagone, 2002) etArrêts sur images, nouvelles (L’Instant même, 2003) et Un automne à Paris,Montréal, Leméac, 2005. In 2004, her book La fabrique de la langue. De FrançoisRabelais à Réjean Ducharme (Seuil, ‘Points-essais’) was awarded the MentionSpéciale du Jury of the Grand Prix de la critique 2004 (PEN français). Her Lettresd’une autre ou ‘comment peut-on être québécois(s)’ (L’Hexagone/ Le CastorAstral 1984, Typo 1987) have now been reprinted in a sixth edition. Contact:Département des littératures de langue française, Université de Montréal, C.P.6128,Succ., entre–ville, Montréal H3C 3J7, Canada.E–mail: [email protected]

438 Lise Gauvin

11. L. Gauvin, ‘La littéra-ture québécoise: unelittérature de l’intran-quillité’, Paris, Le Français dans lemonde, janvier 2006,‘La francophonie enmarche’, no 343,janv-fév. 2006, pp.30–31.; Le Devoir, 26 avril 2006, page ‘Idées’.


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Book Reviews


Book Reviews. English Language. doi: 10.1386/ijfs.10.3.439/5

Shifting Frontiers of France and Francophonie,Yvette Rocheron and C. Rolfe (eds) (2004) Oxford: Peter Lang, 347 pp., ISBN 3-906768-31-7 (pbk), €57.10 £40.00Reviewed by Kamila Aitsiselmi (University of Bradford)

Cet ouvrage est le produit de la publication d’une sélection d’articles enanglais et en français, présentés à l’université de Leicester en septembre2000 lors d’une conférence organisée par l’ASMCF (the Association forthe Study of Modern and Contemporary France). Il est divisé en troisparties, chacune d’elles comprenant respectivement 5, 8 et 6 chapitres.

La première partie traite de la perception des questions d’identité, depouvoir et de statut national dans divers pays francophones, ainsi que deleur volonté d’élargir leurs horizons et de s’ouvrir au monde d’aujourd’hui,en s’appuyant sur un projet social global comprenant une synthèse d’élé-ments de sources identitaires différentes. Ces questions sont introduites parJ. Létourneau qui nous parle de l’avenir de la ‘petite’ collectivité québécoiseen se basant sur un ‘affirmationnisme pragmatique’ et non sur un ‘nation-alisme défensif ’.

Dans les DOM, nous explique M. Majumdar, la résurgence d’une con-science noire a engendré un désir de ‘réaffirmation’ de la compositionculturelle multiraciale de la société martiniquaise, où l’héritage françaisserait incorporé dans un contexte plus large d’échanges multirégionaux.

M.Benrabah, dans son chapitre sur la situation linguistique complexe del’Algérie, nous rappelle le long parcours des Algériens dans leur quête d’uneidentité stable mais qui reste encore délicate; et récemment, la volontépolitique ‘osée’ du président Bouteflika à reconnaître la réalité d’une com-posante francophone au sein d’une société algérienne qui, bien que marquéepar un processus d’arabisation épineux, reste ouverte sur le monde.

De même, au Maroc où l’impact de la culture française a été moins pro-fond qu’en Algérie, D. Marley nous explique comment le Français s’estmaintenu et connaît même un regain de popularité après un processusd’arabisation accéléré. La nouvelle Charte reconnaît aujourd’hui la possi-bilité de fonctionner dans plus d’une langue, car une ‘identité solitaire’risquerait d’isoler la société marocaine du monde occidental moderne.

Prise entre une identité socioculturelle volatile et le monde anglo-saxon, laRoumanie essaie de trouver un équilibre vis-à-vis d’un monde globalisé. Avecla renaissance du français et le soutien européen, la Roumanie, devenue unealliance économique de l’Est, a accès au monde moderne par la France entant que membre récent à part entière de la Francophonie. Ce dernierchapitre par G. Bowd clôt cette première partie qui traite de mutations


IJFS_10.3_11_rev.qxd 11/6/07 4:11 PM Page 439

politiques et culturelles auxquelles sont confrontés divers pays francophonesdevenus conscients de la mouvance des ‘frontières’.

Dans la deuxième partie l’accent est mis sur les relations conflictuellesentre différentes communautés dans la France d’après-guerre et sur laremise en question des frontières intercommunautaires. Dans le chapitrequi commence cette partie, J. Oswald nous apprend qu’une vision précoceet lucide du monde futur a mené Camus à conceptualiser la constructiond’une Europe nouvelle sur des bases de liberté, d’égalité et d’échangesinternationaux. Une grande idée restée sans écho dans une Europe dévastéepar les guerres où aucun pays n’était prêt à dépasser ses frontières.

Dans les autres chapitres, les auteurs se sont penchés sur les problèmesd’intégration des immigrés et ceux liés au racisme. C’est ainsi queR. Aissaoui s’est intéressé en particulier au Mouvement des TravailleursArabes pendant les années 70 en France, dans un effort d’établir un frontde solidarité multi-ethnique entre les Français et les immigrés pour luttercontre la discrimination raciale.

L’analyse du football français par G. Hare montre que celui-ci a permis deredorer le blason des Français et, par la même occasion, leur faire prendreconscience de la diversité sociale de la population ainsi que des nouvellesvaleurs d’intégration des immigrés, dont la plupart sont nés en France. Ceciest d’autant plus crucial que la culture nationale et identitaire est confrontéeà l’intégration européenne, et à la mondialisation, par lesquelles les fron-tières économiques ont dépassé l’espace hexagonal. Dans cet ordre d’idée,H. Naughton prend pour exemple la fusion d’entreprises nationales françaisepour illustrer les conséquences des pressions nationales et internationales.

Par ailleurs, les problèmes sociaux des minorités ethniques en Franceont donné naissance à une variété linguistique riche, ‘la tchatche’, quimarque essentiellement la solidarité, ainsi qu’une identité nouvelle com-mune aux jeunes de banlieue, au-delà des origines ethniques. En se basantsur l’analyse des aspects lexicaux de cette langue, J. Helcké relève ‘l’objec-tification’ des femmes dans le discours masculin.

Le domaine où la question de l’exclusion se pose de façon cruciale estcelui de l’éducation. Le système de Jules Ferry renforce-t-il ou affaiblit-il lesfrontières de l’exclusion? Dans son chapitre C. Humberstone analyse lemouvement des frontières sociales et culturelles qui est devenu de plus enplus impérieux depuis les années 70 à cause de l’origine culturelle desimmigrants. La question posée est de savoir si l’approche ZEP répond auxbesoins d’intégration actuels des communautés ethniques, et si elle peutêtre identifiée avec les approches multiculturelles que suivent d’autrespays européens.

Pour K. Chadwick, le dilemme entre cohésion nationale et populationmulticulturelle est posé de façon très critique au niveau des religions deFrance. D’un côté, il y a un effort de rencontre et de dialogue entre dif-férentes communautés religieuses, mais de l’autre, la laïcité est vue commeun facteur enrichissant de la vie moderne française. Et la République sesent agressée par les signes religieux ostentatoires.

Quant à G. Varro, l’analyse qu’elle fait sur les identités en contact mon-tre que l’entrechoc est causé par un certain degré de différence surtoutquand celle-ci est entretenue. Elle aboutit au fait que dans le nouvel ordre

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mondial, des termes comme ‘dominance’ ou ‘minorité’ qui ont encore unsens assez fort dans certains contextes doivent être redéfinis.

Dans la troisième partie, les auteurs se sont essentiellement intéressés àl’interprétation des idées ayant trait aux identités multiples qui carac-térisent des écrivains francophones. Tout d’abord, R. Chapman examine laculture de référence du Québécois, ‘l’enfant abandonné’, et nous la présentecomme étant la culture dominante de la ‘mère patrie’ dont la visite reste unrite de passage mais qui finit par être dépassé par une inévitable maturitéqui mène à la libération.

Ensuite, dans le roman africain, P. Corcoran nous explique que les lignesde démarcation des frontières ne sont plus géographiques, nationales, maissont plutôt liées à une appartenance culturelle selon le niveau de percep-tion de chaque individu. Ces nouvelles frontières montrent que politique etculture sont étroitement liées et que la position de l’auteur n’est ni radicale-ment anti-occidentale ni entièrement pro-africaine car la vérité ne peut êtretrouvée dans les limites d’un seul système.

Le thème du voyage et de l’exil sans frontières de l’intellectuel estabordé dans les chapitres suivants où la marginalité de l’intellectuel, quiest présentée comme étant l’essence même du rôle de l’intellectuel engagé,le mène au-delà des idées reçues et le met dans une position difficile. Saquête de la vérité se trouve justifiée dans un monde où existent encorel’injustice, l’intolérance et l’oppression.

H. Garnett s’est penchée sur la contribution à la littérature d’expressionfrançaise d’auteurs comme Kundera, Makine, et Julian. D’un côté, elle estsaluée du fait de la menace toujours présente et grandissante de l’anglais,mais de l’autre elle apparaît comme étant elle-même une menace car elleremet en question la ‘pureté’ du français soumis à des influences étrangères.Il apparaît aussi que leurs écrits sont intéressants grâce justement audépassement des limites imposées par l’Académie française. Leur marginal-ité est exprimée par le fait qu’ils sont les représentants d’une ‘écriture sansfrontières’, se trouvant eux-mêmes entre deux cultures.

Ce thème des frontières est élargi dans les deux derniers chapitres audomaine de l’art. Dans l’un, une esthétique nouvelle, plus réaliste estélaborée par A. Miller pour faire l’analyse du personnage central de labande dessinée, l’aventurier, dans un contexte post-colonial. A travers lui,l’auteur veut exprimer une volonté de dépasser le discours colonial et derompre avec les silences qui entourent par exemple la situation qui prévautau Tibet, ou celle de la Chine.

Dans l’autre, N. Fayard nous parle de la vision constamment renou-velée de Lavaudant sur le théâtre de Shakespeare. L’auteur nous montrecomment il ignore l’enseignement classique que l’on peut en tirer pour seconcentrer sur une esthétique hétérogène et diverse, dépassant ainsi lesfrontières entre les genres, les époques et les cultures, afin de faire ressortirla complexité et la diversité du monde d’aujourd’hui.

Par son caractère multidimensionnel et pluridisciplinaire, ce livre estintéressant à plus d’un titre car il s’adresse à un vaste public, aussi bienaux chercheurs ayant un intérêt dans les études francophones qu’à ceuxqui travaillent sur les problèmes d’identité et d’intégration autour duconcept de ‘frontière’ pris au sens large du terme.

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Frantz Fanon: A Portrait, Alice Cherki (2006)Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 255 pp., ISBN 978-0-8014-7308-1 (pbk), $24.95Reviewed by Charlotte Baker (NottinghamUniversity)

Of the many critical works on Fanon, Alice Cherki’s Frantz Fanon: APortrait is notable for its personal approach. Translated from the French byNadia Benabid, this powerful yet sympathetic biography written by Cherki,a student, friend and colleague of Fanon, gives great insight into the life ofthis very private, but influential intellectual. Clearly written and accessible,this biographical study will be of equal interest to those readers familiarwith Fanon and his work, and to those reading about him for the firsttime. Summaries at the beginning of each chapter are valuable for thoserequiring an overview, or wishing to search for more specific information.

Frantz Fanon: A Portrait follows Fanon’s life from his birth in Fort-de-France, Martinique in 1925, through to his death in 1961. Cherkidescribes Fanon’s childhood in Martinique and his first encounter withNorth Africa as a serviceman when he took part in the liberation ofFrance. He was later to return to France to pursue his education, studyingpsychiatry in Lyon and publishing his first book, Peau noire, masques blancsbefore being posted to Algeria as Chief Resident Physician at the psychiatrichospital in Blida-Joinville.

The confluence of Fanon and Cherki’s political and medical workbrought them together from the moment Fanon arrived in Algeria until hisdeath. Most importantly, Cherki had the opportunity of working closelywith Fanon from 1955 to 1961, during the critical years that bracketed hisinvolvement with the struggle for Algeria’s independence. In her portrait,Cherki explores the different influences on Fanon which made him the indi-vidual and the thinker he was, tracing Fanon’s life as a psychiatrist, thinkerand militant. However, she notes, it would be reductive to construe Fanonas any one thing – psychiatrist, militant, writer, Antillean, Algerian – forhis life was a journey that, with every passing year, moved him closer to anunderstanding of his relationship to others and to the world.

Fanon died of leukaemia at the age of just thirty-six. Cherki comments,‘To imagine the country, the context, the circumstance, and the personallife that would have been Fanon’s had he lived is to indulge in pure specu-lation’. However, she does comment in the final chapter of the study,‘Fanon Today’, that there would be two certainties. The first would be thatFanon would have resumed his psychiatric work because he valued hisrelationship to the mentally ill and he was driven to alleviate their alienation.Secondly, he would have continued to write and to ask questions.

After Fanon’s death, he and his work were relegated to a difficult pastas Algeria attempted to forget and France tried to repress its colonial past.Although in the early seventies Fanon’s work became the subject of a waveof biographies and critical essays, by the mid-seventies, despite continuedsales of his works, Fanon had fallen into oblivion. However, Cherki notesthat interest in Fanon’s work today is once again high, particularly inAfrica, black America and the Antilles. At a time when Fanon’s study of

442 Book Reviews


colonialism, alienation, racism and anticolonial revolt is taking on newmeaning, Cherki’s portrait provides a valuable overview of Fanon’s life andthe evolution of his thought.

Francophone Women Film Directors, Janis L. Pallister andRuth A. Hottell (2005)Madison: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 292 pp, ISBN 0-8386-4046-X (hbk), £40.50Reviewed by Martine Beugnet (Reader, University of Edinburgh)

Pallister and Hottell’s guide to Francophone Women Film Directors is dividedinto two sections: part one is a directory composed of entries on French-speaking women directors grouped by countries or broad regions of theworld. The second part gives prominence to film titles, organized by conceptsand themes.

The publication of this book raises one initial issue: Francophone WomenFilm Directors is meant as a follow-up to Pallister’s French-Speaking WomenFilm Directors, published in 1997. The foreword to the present book under-lines that is best ‘consulted in tandem with the 1997 guide’, and theauthors acknowledge that ‘by and large, only such filmmakers, films andcritiques as did not figure in that volume’ have been included in the 2005guide. Aside from the better established professionals and their work, how-ever, there is little way of finding out which directors and films are not listedhere but might appear in the original guide. Then again, a prominent directorlike the avant-garde film-maker Germaine Dulac for example, is onlymentioned in connection with some of her less known works; to find outabout her more renowned features, readers are referred to the 1997 book.One may thus wonder why the present guide is not introduced (on thecover preferably) as Volume 2 of an ongoing work of referencing, or, better,why the first volume was not used as a base and updated? But Pallister andHottell’s directory presents other problems, both in terms of the work ofclassification and as far as the quality and range of the information collatedis concerned.

A great deal of arbitrariness and inconsistency appears to prevail overthe choice and content of the book’s sorting categories. This may arguablybe justified on account of modish postmodern resistance to the limitationsof strict and consistent labelling, but is most likely to be felt as patentlyunprofessional or simply irritating. Apart from the topical quotes discreetlyplaced opposite the table of content, there is little attempt at establishing thereasoning behind the book’s very premise (francophone/women/filmmakers)and the way the directors and their films are further classified. It may bethat this was done in the 1997 volume, but in the face of the complexity ofthe continuing debate about the legitimacy of the term ‘woman director’ forinstance, the main argument presented by the authors – that ‘one cannotdeny that a number of the women filmmakers of France, Quebec and Belgiumhave become virtually as well known as many male directors’ (emphasis mine)seems rather inadequate’. Notwithstanding the fact that many women

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directors are indeed famous (that is, more so than many male directors),the issue of the legitimacy of the gendered categories dismissed by so manyof the women directors themselves is hardly addressed, the authors beingcontent with underlining that most directors tell their story from awoman’s point of view, without problematizing or questioning the terminology.The same imprecision, which also applies to the use of ‘French speaking’or ‘francophone’, becomes particularly puzzling where the geographicclassification is concerned. How to explain, for instance, that underCanada, separate entries are granted to Acadia, British Columbia andQuebec, while the directors of the entire African continent, whether fromsub-Saharan regions or from the Maghreb, are grouped together under thesingle denomination ‘Africa’? The declared focus on fiction film-makingcreates another inconsistency: according to the foreword, a guide to docu-mentary films is available, yet documentaries are occasionally discussedand even flagged through illustrations (see for instance the discussion andposter of Marie Mandy’s Filmer le désir, 2000, pp. 41–42).

Part 2 of the book offers a limited yet eclectic range of thematic cate-gories whose choice, mix and content appear equally perplexing. Rangingfrom ‘Eating Disorders’ to ‘(African) Economy’ to ‘Film History – PioneerFrancophone Directors’, these sections occasionally include screen writers,actresses and producers, as well as film titles by men and from non-French-speaking directors, men and women. Films by men are generally groupedseparately, save, confusingly, for a number of features by English-speakingmale directors (see for instance the entry for What’s Eating Gilbert Grapep. 226 or Becoming Colette p. 229), which appear in amongst the titles ofwomen’s works. Films by non-francophone women on the other hand, aresimply listed alongside those by French-speaking directors. While there is nodenying the potential usefulness of introducing a greater variety for compar-ative studies’ purposes, here, the selection of entries too often gives animpression of randomness. One may thus wonder about the scarcity ofexamples listed in some of the sections and indeed, the non-appearance offilms one would expect to read about: why add, for example, a section on‘Guilt’, if only to list a single, man-authored feature (and indeed, is ‘guilt’what best defines Karim Dridi’s Bye bye?)? The remarkably sparse section on‘Children’ (two entries – four with the ‘Battered Children’ section) is anothercase in point: Y aura-t-il de la neige à Noël?, Sandrine Veysset’s small budgetbut widely distributed and award-winning film on childhood and mater-nal love is not mentioned here, while surprisingly, Iranian directorMakhmalbaf ’s docu-drama about two little girls, The Apple, heads the sectionon ‘Battered Women’.

The actual content of individual entries also raises questions. Whilethe book cover advertises the entries as composed of ‘short criticalanalyses by Professors Pallister and Hottell’, in the foreword, the authorsinsist that they have, on the contrary, refrained from giving their views ina work not ‘intended to be a critique of films by women’. In fact, whileindividual entries consist primarily of extracts from basic Internet databases such as imdb and from festival programme notes (elements ofbiographies and synopsis), the bibliography proper remains highly ellip-tical. Notwithstanding the fact that this is precisely the kind of informa-tion one may find easily without a guide, and that such data cannot be

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substituted for more comprehensive critical approaches published injournals online or in print, in these times when the Internet is still in itsinfancy and web pages remain unstable events prone to disappearingwithout warning, few would actually attempt to type out the extendedaddresses provided in this directory, rather than ‘google’ the name ofthe film or director and do their own search. In other words, for most ofthe information provided to be readily usable, the guide to FrancophoneWomen Film Directors should be published online. Still, the directory doeshave the merit of listing a number of directors whose work has notreceived the exposure it deserves, and as such, in combination with someof part 2 entries, might suggest some areas of research, teaching andcomparative study.

Dark Side of the Light: Slavery and the French Enlightenment,Louis Sala-Molins, Translated and with an Introduction byJohn Conteh-Morgan (2006)Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, xxxvi + 176 pp.,ISBN 0-8166-4389-X, (pbk), $19.50Reviewed by James Campbell (University of Portsmouth)

On 10 May 2001, the French Parliament approved a law recognizing slav-ery as a crime against humanity. Five years later, on the same date, Franceheld its first national day of remembrance for the victims of slavery andthe slave trade. In a speech to mark the occasion, President Jacques Chiracdeclared that recognizing France’s role in slavery in the past was ‘key tonational cohesion’ in the present. Within this context, the publication forthe first time in English of Louis Sala-Molins’ Dark Side of the Light is partic-ularly timely. Originally published in 1992 as Les Misères des Lumières: Sousla raison, l’outrage, in three eloquent chapters, Sala-Molins demonstratesthe complicity in African slavery of the French Enlightenment andRevolution and argues that recognition of this complicity has been strik-ingly absent from France’s popular historical memory.

For Sala-Molins, slavery was ‘the crucial test case for the Enlightenment’(p. 8) and it was a test that in important respects the Enlightenment failed.When Condorcet, Voltaire and Montesquieu wrote of liberty and equality,they did not fully encompass the African slave within their supposedly uni-versalist rhetoric and nor did they unconditionally denounce slavery in theFrench colonies. On the contrary, in his Réflexions, Condorcet advocatedonly a phased and gradual process of emancipation in order to protect theproperty interests of the slaveholding class and to ensure minimal distur-bance to the public order.

A similarly ambivalent attitude towards slavery was evident in theDeclaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Not unlike the UnitedStates Constitution, which, though replete with the language of liberty andequality, supported a slave regime, the French Declaration did not explicitlyrefer to slavery by name. Yet, through this silence the Declaration implicitlyendorsed the existing slave regimes in the French colonies. Specifically, theDeclaration did nothing to undermine the Code noir, which was the legal

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basis of slavery in the francophone world and which denied to slaves thevery rights that the Declaration bestowed on French citizens.

Having explored these key Enlightenment and Revolutionary texts,Sala-Molins turns his attention in his final, and most engaging, chapter, tothe slave uprising in Saint-Domingue and the way in which that event wasremembered in France during the bicentennial celebrations of 1989. TheFrench interpretation of Haiti’s birth, Sala-Molins argues, is francocentricand ignores black historical agency. By portraying Toussaint L’Ouvertureas a product of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, historianshave both overstated the extent to which Enlightenment ideology wasopposed to slavery and neglected the distinctive features of the Africanslave experience that fuelled revolution in Saint-Domingue. According tothis interpretation, the Haitian Revolution was but one episode of theFrench Revolution, yet in Sala-Molins’ analysis it must at the very least beacknowledged that if the Enlightenment did inspire slaves such asToussaint L’Ouverture it did so only because they subverted its languageand ‘gave it a meaning it did not have’ (p. 124). This was a reality thatremained hidden in 1989 when, in the words of Sala-Molins’ final, damn-ing indictment of the bicentennial celebrations, France presented the viewthat without the Enlightenment, ‘the blacks were nothing; France madethem into human beings’ (p. 143). In so doing, the Republic ‘displayed itsarrogance, magnified its greatness…[and]…transformed its crimes into ablaze of glory’ (p. 143).

There has been no shortage of studies of the relationship between slav-ery and the European intellectual currents of the eighteenth century. DarkSide of the Light is far from the most comprehensive, but what distinguishesSala-Molins’ work is his polemical style and explicitly political purpose,characteristics that are especially evident in the extensive and at timespowerful passages in which he assumes the persona of an African slave.John Conteh-Morgan’s translation succeeds in conveying Sala-Molins’sense of moral conviction and the political significance of his work to theEnglish reader. Additionally, Conteh-Morgan’s excellent introduction pro-vides an insightful critique of the text and locates the book in the contextof the 1989 bicentennial celebrations.

Médias et milieux francophones, Michel Beauchamp andThierry Watine (eds) (2006)Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 300 pp.,ISBN 2-7637-8363-5 (pbk), CAN $40Reviewed by Caroline Caron (Concordia University)

Les multiples transformations contemporaines qui affectent les entreprisesde presse dans le contexte de globalisation des marchés et de l’économiemondiale modifient en profondeur l’espace public. Quelles sont les implica-tions pour les communautés et les médias francophones d’Amérique duNord, qui luttent pour leur survie linguistique et culturelle? Avec ses douzechapitres répartis en quatre sections, cet ouvrage collectif aborde plusieursaspects de la question, grâce à un éclairage sur les nouveaux défis engendrés

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par les paramètres structurels et conjoncturels du nouvel environnementmédiatique global.

Contrairement à ce que son titre pourrait laisser entendre, ce livren’aborde que les réalités du terrain géographique circonscrit par les fron-tières du Canada, ce qui, toutefois, n’enlève rien à sa pertinence scien-tifique. En effet, l’ouvrage offre un portrait du champ médiatiquefrancophone canadien, enrichi de réflexions et d’analyses qui actualisentles problématiques au cœur des courants du journalisme civique et dujournalisme de communication des années 1990. Ces analyses localesprennent acte des transformations politiques, économiques, sociales ettechnologiques auxquelles font face les entreprises de presse contempo-raines. Comme ces pressions sont à la fois locales et mondiales, c’est lapresse francophone mondiale qui se trouve interpellée par les problèmesexposés et analysés dans cette publication.

Les directeurs de l’ouvrage ont évité le piège de la surreprésentation ducas québécois, grâce à une judicieuse sélection de textes traitant plusieurscas hors Québec, c’est-à-dire en milieu où le français est une langueminoritaire. Le Manitoba, l’Ontario et l’Atlantique (surtout) bénéficientd’une bonne couverture, mais il faut tout de même mentionner que cer-tains territoires sont ignorés ou couverts avec moins de profondeur,comme la Colombie-Britannique et la Saskatchewan, qui abritent, ellesaussi, des communautés et des médias francophones. Le portrait est doncexhaustif, sans pouvoir être considéré complet.

Les directeurs de la publication ont privilégié trois axes d’analyse: 1) lapratique du journalisme en milieu minoritaire francophone, 2) les défisrégionaux de Radio-Canada, et 3) le rôle des hebdomadaires régionaux etdes médias communautaires au sein des communautés francophones.Beauchamp et Watine, tous deux professeurs au département d’informa-tion et de communication de l’Université Laval, ont rédigé une introduc-tion qui dresse un aperçu juste et concis du contenu de l’ouvrage, unequalité que les lecteurs et lectrices sauront sans doute apprécier aumoment d’entamer leur lecture.

Dans la première partie, cinq chapitres abordent des aspects rattachésau premier axe d’analyse, à savoir la pratique du journalisme en milieuminoritaire francophone. Un premier texte décrit le portrait du nouveaupaysage médiatique acadien au Nouveau-Brunswick, qui met en scène desacteurs dont les pouvoirs sont disproportionnés (Lord). Un second analysele rôle stratégique des médias dans la survivance du fait français auManitoba (Corriveau). Le troisième montre le rôle des sources institution-nelles francophones dans la promotion et la défense de la communautéfranco-ontarienne (Fabris et Beauchamp). La quatrième contribution con-siste en une étude de cas du traitement journalistique de la lutte menéepar les Franco-Ontariens, à la fin des années 1990, pour la survie del’Hôpital Montfort… une lutte sur fond de querelle linguistique. L’analyserévèle les positions éditoriales contrastées – voire les abstentions – qu’ontadoptées une vingtaine de journaux francophones (Lusignan). Enfin, lecinquième chapitre met en lumière les particularités de la pratique jour-nalistique en milieu francophone minoritaire, comme la proximité dessources et ses implications éthiques et professionnelles dans le quotidiendes praticiens et des praticiennes de l’information (Bernier).

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La deuxième partie de l’ouvrage réunit trois chapitres autour des défisrégionaux de la société d’État Radio-Canada. C’est qu’en vertu de la Loi surla radiodiffusion (1968) et de la Loi sur les langues officielles (1969), le ser-vice de radiodiffusion a l’obligation légale de diffuser, partout au pays, desémissions en anglais et en français. Les textes réunis dans cette sectionabordent donc le rôle de la société d’État auprès des communautés fran-cophones du Canada, mais aussi ses limites et ses ratés. En effet, lamanière dont ce mandat est réalisé n’a pas livré les résultats escomptés, cequi est une source importante de frustration, souvent plus accrue chez lesfrancophones hors Québec. Par exemple, il a été régulièrement reproché àRadio-Canada de ne pas accorder suffisamment d’importance à l’informa-tion de proximité et d’imposer une vision trop montréalaise (ou québé-coise), du fait français canadien. La section s’ouvre avec un chapitre quiidentifie les défis futurs de Radio-Canada grâce à une mise en perspectivedu rôle qu’a joué la société d’État dans le développement des commu-nautés francophones hors Québec depuis les années 1970 (Proulx). Lesecond chapitre illustre les défis actuels de Radio-Canada en recourant aucontraste qu’offrent les succès de médias communautaires mis sur piedafin de répondre aux besoins frustrés d’acteurs locaux (Boutin). Le dernierchapitre limite son champ d’investigation à l’Acadie et au Nouveau-Brunswick. Il porte sur les interrelations complexes entre Radio-Canada etcertains acteurs-clés du milieu culturel acadien, révélant comment lesintérêts divergents de ces acteurs placent la société d’État dans une posi-tion de double contrainte (Pâquet).

La troisième partie du volume contient deux textes sur le rôle des heb-domadaires régionaux et des médias communautaires dans un contexted’hyperconcurrence médiatique. Le premier révèle les stratégies à l’originedu succès de ‘petits joueurs médiatiques’ québécois (Lavigne). Le deuxièmeconstitue une étude de cas portant sur un mensuel dont la productionétait ambitieuse et coopérative, mais dont l’histoire n’aura pas duré un an.Le mensuel À Cause? produit au Lac Saint-Jean (Province de Québec), meten évidence les facteurs conjoncturels de nature politique dans la réussiteou l’échec des initiatives médiatiques locales à vocation communautaire(Proulx et Demers).

Enfin, la quatrième et dernière partie de l’ouvrage réunit deux textessous la catégorie ‘autres’. Elle permet de traiter d’aspects importants de laproblématique générale, que les chapitres précédents n’ont pas véritable-ment couverts. Ainsi, le rôle des technologies d’information et de commu-nication dans le développement des communautés francophones duCanada est abordé dans un texte qui soutient que celles-ci offrent de nou-velles options, tant du côté de la production que la diffusion, qui pour-raient s’avérer efficace, au plan stratégique, pour les entreprises de pressefrancophone hors Québec, dont les ressources financières sont limitées(Forgues). Le dernier texte présente des données statistiques sur les pra-tiques de consommation culturelle des Québécois et des Québécoises.L’auteur propose de classifier les pratiques culturelles et médiatiques émer-gentes de la population en deux catégories, les ‘classiques’ et ‘les nova-teurs’, un fait sociologique dont les entreprises médiatiques ne sauraientignorer l’existence dans leurs stratégies de production, de diffusion et decommercialisation (Garon).

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Les Nègres, Maurice Delafosse (2005 [originally published 1927])Paris: L’Harmattan, 77 pp., ISBN 2-7475-9375-4 (pbk), €12.20Reviewed by Tony Chafer (University of Portsmouth)

During the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the widely held assump-tion among French colonial policy-makers was that Africans did not have acivilization of their own. This belief underlay and served to justify the Frenchcolonial doctrine of the mission civilisatrice: if Africans had no civilization oftheir own, then it was the responsibility, indeed the duty, of the colonizer to‘civilize’ them by assimilating them to French culture. To be sure, this ambi-tion was never a realistic one, not least because metropolitan governments,and behind them the electorate, were not prepared to underwrite the cost ofsuch an ambitious programme. Yet the notion that Africans lacked a realcivilization of their own remained an enduring leitmotiv underpinningFrench colonial thinking well into the twentieth century.

The importance of Delafosse was that he was a distinguished member ofan early generation of colonial administrator-scholars, which includedsuch figures as François Clozel and Paul Marty, who undertook researchthat fundamentally challenged this perception. In 1912 he published a crit-ically acclaimed three-volume study of the peoples of the Western Sudan,Haut-Sénégal-Niger, in which he described in detail African societies andinstitutions. On the basis of this research, he put forward the notion thatAfricans had civilizations that differed from those of the West but that werein no way inferior. He subsequently went on to publish Les Noirs de l’Afrique(1921), L’Ame nègre (1923) and Les Civilisations négro-africaines (1925), allof which challenge widely held stereotypes about African barbarism. Thepresent work Les Nègres, published in 1927, represents a synthesis of hisearlier work on black African societies, in which the author seeks to dis-seminate to a wider, non-specialist public his ideas about African history. Inthis he was successful in some unexpected ways: for example, his ideas wereto exert a significant influence on the perception of African civilizations ofwriters belonging to the Négritude movement in inter-war Paris.

This reprint of Les Nègres is accompanied by a useful introduction byBernard Mouralis that usefully contextualizes it and explains its signifi-cance for the modern reader. Of particular interest is Mouralis’ analysis ofthe structure of the work. Mouralis points out that, before studyingAfrican civilizations, Delafosse first needed to demonstrate to his readerthat the Western stereotype of Africans lacking a civilization of their ownwas bred of ignorance. As an anthropologist he pleaded for a relativistapproach, in which the study of civilizations is based on the observation oftheir actual customs and practices. There then follow chapters on ‘le col-lectivisme des Nègres’, ‘la moralité des Nègres’ and ‘l’art nègre’, in whichhe describes the complex functioning of African societies before conclud-ing with a chapter on ‘La littérature nègre’. It is significant that Delafossechooses to conclude his work with a chapter on African writing, in whichhe explicitly challenges the traditional focus in studies of African literatureon orature.

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The work itself had become extremely difficult to obtain and thisreprint by L’Harmattan is therefore most welcome.

Where Are the Voices Coming From? Canadian Culture andthe Legacies of History, Carol Ann Howells (ed.) (2004)New York: Rodopi, 266 pp., ISBN 90-420-1623-X (hbk), €60 US$81Reviewed by Patrick Coleman (University of California, Los Angeles)

This book offers a series of paired essays on French and English-languageCanadian literature and film. Within Canada, this format enjoyed a briefpopularity a few decades ago, until it fell victim to two sorts of critique.One was political. For many québécois critics, the juxtaposition of fran-cophone and anglophone works by critics such as Philip Stratford (All thePolarities, 1986) seemed at best to create artificial parallels between litera-tures with very different trajectories; at worst, it was an unacceptableexercise in pan-Canadian nation-building at the expense of efforts to pro-mote Quebec’s own ‘national’ literature. The other problem was one ofmethod. The works were often selected on the basis of thematic similarity,and formal considerations were either neglected or defined in fairlyabstract terms designed to highlight contrast and complementarities.Understandably so, since if one limits the comparisons to works from a sin-gle country, even if they are in different languages, then one feels com-pelled to justify one’s choices in terms either of a grounding in shared localcircumstances or in terms of a higher dialectical unity. The difficulty ofmounting an effective reply to these critiques has led, with a few remark-able exceptions such as E.D. Blodgett’s Five-Part Invention (2003), to adecline in attempts to set works in the two official languages in direct dia-logue with each other.

With the advent of more sophisticated forms of cultural studies andwith the rise of a nuanced postcolonial consciousness, the time is certainlyripe for a renewal of comparative studies, and it would be interesting to seethis emerging first in criticism written outside Canada. Regrettably, thefive contributors to this book (two teach in England, two in Scotland andone in English Canada) do not seem to be aware of this history. Certainlythey do not reflect on the political complexities of organizing the book interms of parallel essays, even as the critical methods employed and refer-enced, particularly in the section devoted to literature, are often strikinglydifferent. Coral Ann Howells’ essays on the anglophone writers invokeHomi Bhabha and postcolonialism in their discussions of narrative forms,but none of this critical background appears in Peter Noble’s more tradi-tional discussions of the francophone writers. The chapters, each only tenpages in length, are also too short to accommodate the plot summaries theauthors felt were necessary as well as sustained critical engagement. The‘other voices’ of the title seem to be those of the characters in the storiesmore than those of the writers. The juxtapositions themselves are poten-tially very productive, however, and since even scholars in French andEnglish studies will often not be familiar with the texts in the other

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language, this section of the book is still worth perusing. It consists of fourchapters, ‘Stories of Wilderness and Settlement’ (on Alice Munro andGabrielle Roy), ‘History and its Secrets’ (Margaret Atwood and AnneHébert), ‘Maritime Gothic’ (Ann-Marie MacDonald and Antonine Maillet)and ‘History and Dispossession: First Nations Writers’ (Bernard Assiniwi andTomson Highway).

The section on film is more successful, especially in those essays whereplot summary is replaced by extended discussion of the conditions and con-straints of film production. Comparing the filmed version of novels with thebooks also provides an economical way of approaching key aspects of theinterrelationship between theme and form. Tony Simons’ essay on GillesCarle’s Maria Chapdelaine (1983) and David Hutchison’s on Atom Egoyan’sThe Sweet Hereafter (1997) are particularly good, and like the other essaysin this section differ from those on literature in that they do not shy awayfrom evaluating the degree to which the works succeed (or fail) to live up totheir premises. Perhaps this is because they are less concerned with the tes-timony of the fictional characters about their gendered or ethnic condition –how could one quarrel with it? – than with the craft of the artist in amedium one assumes to be compromised from the start.

Patrick Chamoiseau: Espaces d’une écriture antillaise, Lorna Milne (2006)Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 226 pp., ISBN 90-420-2021-0 (pbk), €46Reviewed by Rachel Douglas (University of Liverpool)

As the first book-length work devoted entirely to Patrick Chamoiseau,Lorna Milne’s Patrick Chamoiseau: Espaces d’une écriture antillaise offers avaluable contribution to current scholarship on this much-studied author.At once, it serves as an excellent introduction for those unfamiliar withChamoiseau, and offers a number of important new perspectives for moreexperienced students and researchers of his work. Focusing in particularon four of Chamoiseau’s best-known novels, Chronique des sept misères(1986), Texaco (1992), L’Esclave vieil homme et le molosse (1997), Bibliquedes derniers gestes (2002) and his essay Écrire en pays dominé (1997), animpressive range of almost all his other writings is covered by Milne’s thor-ough, well-researched analysis. This spans Chamoiseau’s earliest playsand novels from the 1970s and 1980s, through his better-known novels,to his recent collaborations with illustrators, photographers and film-makers,as well as his autobiographical work. Milne is also able to chart importantdevelopments in his theoretical discourse by highlighting the key impor-tance of several little-known Chamoiseau texts in Internet form.

It is through the prism of different Antillean spaces figuring promi-nently in most Chamoiseau texts that Milne proposes new readings ofthe author’s work. Following an introductory overview of the importantrole played by space and spatial appropriation in Chamoiseau, eachchapter calls attention to a particular Antillean space: the slave ship’shold (Chapter 2); the marketplace (Chapter 3); the Creole dwelling place

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(Chapter 4) and the woods (Chapter 5). Grouped in this clear and logicalway, beginning with the originary Caribbean space of the slave ship carry-ing African slaves to the Caribbean, the chapters insist on the rich, complexand specifically Antillean symbolism in Chamoiseau’s textual representa-tions of each space.

Where Milne’s study is most innovative is in her demonstration of thelink between the initiating function of many of these spaces andChamoiseau’s strong preoccupation with the formation of a specificallyAntillean identity. In particular, she shows that the emblematic spaces rep-resent one of Chamoiseau’s most abstract and complex notions: the Lieu.According to Milne, ‘le Lieu représente une sorte de facteur communéventuel auquel tous les individus et toutes les cultures peuvent aspirer’(p. 94). Many of the prominent Antillean spaces, Milne argues convinc-ingly, actually perform the complex open, opaque and non-hierarchicalcultural relations, which are so characteristic of the Lieu. Like ÉdouardGlissant, Chamoiseau contrasts the concepts of the Lieu and the Territoire:for both writers, the Territoire is marked as the closed space of colonialdomination in direct contrast to the unenclosed openness of the Lieu. Onemajor strength of the book is that Milne is able to pinpoint whereChamoiseau’s key guiding concepts subtly nuance many of the ideas of hismaître à penser Glissant. Milne establishes that several Chamoiseaunotions, such as Mise-en-relations and Pierre-monde, incorporate overlap-ping currents in Glissant’s thought to do with Relation, Tout-Monde andChaos-Monde, and then use them slightly differently.

All of the emblematic Antillean spaces singled out by Milne are linkednot just to the formation of a shared Antillean cultural identity, but also tothe more individual identity of the writer. A highly original feature ofPatrick Chamoiseau: Espaces d’une écriture antillaise is the identification of amarked evolution in Chamoiseau’s representations of writing figures.Drawing on all parts of the author’s oeuvre, Milne is able to chart a pro-gression from Chamoiseau’s more hesitant representations in his earlywork of marqueurs de paroles (figures who are troubled by having to tran-scribe spoken words tentatively through the relatively fixed medium of thewritten word) to more self-assured figures who assume the role of thewriter most fully in his later work. In the last two chapters, Milne notesthat Chamoiseau sometimes recycles little bits of his own earlier work.Towards the end of the book, there are fascinating analyses of what is addedand what is left out in the course of these small-scale but significant rewrit-ings. The reworkings support Milne’s main conclusion that Chamoiseau’srepresentations of writers and writing develop, while the changes madealso enact the new aesthetic of déplacement perpétuel, towards which, Milneargues, Chamoiseau moves. Overall, this is an excellent book, which illu-minates some of the most complex aspects of Chamoiseau’s literary andtheoretical writing, and which will be an important landmark for allfuture research on this author.

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Reinterpreting the Haitian Revolution and its CulturalAftershocks, Martin Munro and Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw(eds) (2006)Jamaica/Barbados/Trinidad and Tobago: University of theWest Indies Press, 192 pp., ISBN 976-640-190-X (pbk), $30Reviewed by Rachel Douglas (University of Liverpool)

Reinterpreting the Haitian Revolution and its Cultural Aftershocks is an out-standing collection of essays based around the conference of the samename, which was held in June 2004 at the University of the West Indies,Trinidad. The broad range of the volume encompasses new approaches tothe Haitian Revolution’s key role in shaping the interrelated fields ofHaitian, Caribbean and world-wide history and politics, literature, art,anthropology, jazz, ideas of race and also numerous post-independencerepresentations of Toussaint Louverture. What binds this truly diversematerial together is a concern to indicate the extent to which the culturalrepercussions of Haiti’s revolution are palpable across these fields.

Beyond this truly comparative approach of the collection as a whole, theindividual essays contribute much originality to a number of debates ragingin the fields of Haitian, Caribbean and postcolonial studies today. Many ofthe contributors are among the most acclaimed scholars working in theseareas, most notably, J. Michael Dash, Mireille Rosello, Charles Forsdick andBridget Brereton, and their essays do not disappoint. Innovative interven-tions are made by all the authors of this volume: J. Michael Dash arguesthat the Haitian revolution was fought in the name of a universal ideal.According to Dash, this ‘Haitian revolutionary universalism’ supersededuniversal French values, and was therefore ‘both a foundational moment inFrench universalist thought and a point of origin for postcolonial societies’(p. 11). Martin Munro offers a new response to the critical commonplace oftalking about, after Glissant, the ‘historylessness’ of the Caribbean region interms of loss, emptiness and lack. In his radical rethinking of currentdebates, Munro elaborates the idea of a different Haitian historical narra-tive, one which takes into account the repercussions of the HaitianRevolution on both the individual and collective imaginations.

A particularly refreshing take on the impact of the Haitian Revolutionon contemporary Haitian literature is evident in the essays by ElizabethWalcott-Hackshaw and Mireille Rosello. Their essays consider work by theHaitian women writers Yanick Lahens and Edwidge Danticat, respectively,and as such stand out from the bulk of criticism on Haitian literature, thepredominant focus of which unfortunately continues to be on literaturewritten by Haitian men. An indicator of this marked imbalance is the factthat several recent international colloquia showcasing Haitian writers havenot included any of Haiti’s accomplished contemporary women writers.Even more innovative in Walcott-Hackshaw and Rosello’s approaches istheir decision to redefine the revolutionary in Haitian culture along thelines of a feminized narrative of Haitian history. This is less concerned withthe glorious rebellion leading up to 1804 than with the ‘revolutionary’ per-sonal experiences, which are interspersed with reflections on various events

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in Haiti’s twentieth-century history, and which call for a radical rethinkingof Haiti’s past, present and future, and the process of telling history itself.

It is the immense cultural impact of the Revolution beyond Haiti whichforms the main subject of the articles by Keith Cartwright, Bridget Breretonand Charles Forsdick. Cartwright explores the creolizing effect on the genesisof New Orleans jazz of voodoo rhythms brought by St Domingue refugees. Ameasure of the cultural aftershocks of the Revolution even in relatively distantTrinidad is given in Brereton’s analysis of nineteenth-century articles and let-ters in the Trinidadian press. ‘Haytian Fear’ narratives are, she shows, dis-seminated widely in these texts in which Haiti acts both as a metaphor and asource of propaganda for both sides of the slavery and abolition debates inTrinidad. Finally, Forsdick deals with the most mythologized character of theHaitian Revolution – Toussaint Louverture – of whom an immense variety ofrepresentations exist. Forsdick compares posthumous representations ofToussaint across a number of different twentieth-century concepts. Ending ona most thought-provoking note, Forsdick makes the crucial point that, partic-ularly given the impetus to cultural production of the 2004 bicentenary ofindependence, the mythologizing of Toussaint will inevitably evolve.

Nine scholarly chapters are framed by two short essays by RenéDepestre, one of Haiti’s foremost writers. Depestre’s contributions add tothe comparative bent of the whole collection because they juxtapose schol-arly and artistic responses to the bicentennial celebrations. In his closingpiece, Depestre puts into practice another example of the ever-renewedmythologization of the Toussaint figure: in a move which is decidedly pro-French foreign policy, Depestre envisions Toussaint straddling France andHaiti, and acting as a positive conduit between the two countries. As forhis opening piece, Depestre uses it to rubbish any theory of a worldwide‘white plot’ against Haiti. He sees the reinstatement of Aristide in 1994 asHaiti’s great missed opportunity for working with other countries throughthe United Nations and the Organization of American States. A decadelater in 2004, Depestre argues that the only way out of circular Haitianhistory is for all Haitians to stop thinking in racial terms, and to reach outto other countries in a ‘Declaration of Interdependence’.

Of course, Depestre’s proposed solution to Haiti’s current dire situationcan be expressed most explicitly as his piece is the sole non-scholarlyreflection by a creative writer in this collection. Nevertheless, a sense ofpressing urgency underlies most of the scholarly interventions in this col-lection too. Like Depestre, other contributors constantly refer to Haiti as ifit were stuck in an everlasting time warp of circular repetition. This image(a very common one in Haitian literature by the likes of Jacques StéphenAlexis, René Depestre, Emile Ollivier and Frankétienne) consistentlyprompts the authors and the editors of this volume to situate the useful-ness of their work. With Reinterpreting the Haitian Revolution and its CulturalAftershocks, the editors and authors have produced an invaluable collectivework, which goes a considerable way towards reassessing the multitude ofcultural implications of the Haitian Revolution on post-1804 art, litera-ture, history, politics, music and dance. It will be essential reading for any-one working on the cultural aspects, myths or history of the HaitianRevolution, and will be an extremely useful point of reference for thoseworking on Haitian, Caribbean and postcolonial studies more generally.

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After the Deluge: New Perspectives on the Intellectual and Cultural History of Postwar France, Julian Bourg (ed.)(2004)Lanham, Maryland, USA: Lexington Books, 426 pp, 1SBN 1-800-462-6420, hardback, $90Reviewed by David Drake (Institut d’études européennes, Paris VIII)

The title of this collection is an indirect reference to the epigram attributedto Louis XV’s mistress Madame de Pompadour. Here ‘the deluge’ refers tothe situation of French intellectuals and culture after the dark years of theOccupation, and to the extraordinary impact on Anglo-American acade-mia of French theory from the 1960s onwards. It might be thought thatthese two areas had been fairly extensively explored, but this interdiscipli-nary volume identifies post-war thinkers, debates and developments thathave been somewhat neglected and locates them firmly in their culturalcontexts. It complements other work in the fields of the history of intellec-tuals, intellectual history and cultural history; in so doing, it reminds usthat post-war French cultural and intellectual history is far richer thanis sometimes presumed, and confirms that it cannot be reduced to a fewcelebrated thinkers, a handful of theoretical concepts and to decidingwhether it would have been better to be wrong with Sartre than to beright with Aron.

The thirteen articles that comprise this collection are grouped intothree sections. The first, concerned with historicizing French intellectualculture, contains an article by Alan D. Schrift stressing the importance ofspecifically French institutions like the École normale supérieure in under-standing French thought and which also challenges ‘the orthodox view ofpost-war French philosophy as it has been conceived within the English-speaking philosophical community’ (p. 25). An article by William Galloisinvestigating the failure of theorists on the French Left to analyse thespecifically French model of capitalism is followed by Warren Breckman’stext on the transition from Marxism to post-Marxism. This draws on thework of the Argentine Ernesto Laclau, based in the United Kingdom andChantal Mouffe, a Belgian working in France, and accounts for the dif-ferent reactions in Britain and France to the crisis of Marxism in the early1970s.

The second section concentrates on intellectual actors, and among themore well-known we find an article by Lucia Bonfreschi on RaymondAron and the notions of ‘national’ and ‘supranational’ in his writings dur-ing the Fourth Republic, and another by Ethan Kleinberg challenging thewidespread belief that the young Emmanuel Levinas was a Talmudicscholar. There are also contributions on a number of figures on the Leftwhich are certainly informative, but Christophe Premat was perhaps beinga little overambitious in his attempt to assess the significance of threeGreek exiles, namely Cornelius Castoriadis, Kostas Axelos and KostasPapaioannou in twenty pages. Another article, by Stuart Eldon, is devotedsolely to Axelos, translator of Georg Lukács and Martin Heidegger, serieseditor at the Éditions de Minuit, and contributor to the left journal Argumentswhich he edited from 1961 until its demise a year later.

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David Berry’s article on the intellectual and political itinerary of DanielGuérin, one of the most fascinating and neglected left-wing figures of post-war France, deserves a special mention for its exemplary clarity and focus.One waits with impatience for the publication of the full-length biographyof Guérin on which Berry is currently engaged. In 1968, Guérin was a sig-natory of the first intellectuals’ statement of support for the students and1968 is central to an article by Ron Haas on the attempts of ‘cultural rev-olutionary’ Guy Hocquenghem to keep the spirit of 1968 alive.

The theme of the third section is ‘the interstices between culture andpolitics’ and opens with an article by Michael Scott Christofferson on theresponse of French intellectuals to the 1956 Hungarian Uprising whichfocuses on the Comité National des Écrivains, founded during the SecondWorld War, and the Comité Tibor Déry, set up to free imprisoned Hungarianintellectuals. This is followed by another three articles: Samuel Moyn’sexploration of the role of Jean-François Steiner’s Treblinka (1966) in PierreVidal-Naquet’s emergence as one of the main French commentators onthe Holocaust, Philippe Poirier’s historical narrative tracing the culturalpolicies pursued by French governments from 1981 to 2003 and MichelBehrent’s examination of the itineraries of philosopher and critic RégisDebray and political philosopher Marcel Gauchet, viewed through theprism of religion and republicanism.

This is an insightful collection of articles which opens with a usefuland thoughtful introduction by the editor and closes with an afterword byhistorian François Dosse; it is good to see contributions, not only fromwell-established figures, but also younger academics. The book shouldappeal to all those who are interested in the ideas, culture and intellectualactors of post-war France although the eclectic nature of the volumemeans it will appeal particularly to those who have some prior knowledgeof this area.

Eastern Voyages, Western Visions, French Writing andPainting of the Orient, Margaret Topping (ed.) (2004)Bern: Peter Lang, 395 pp., ISBN 978-3-03910-183-2 (pbk), €61.40 £43.00Reviewed by Hélène Gill (University of Westminster)

Francophone postcolonial studies is a discipline in the process of assertingand defining itself. After some fifteen years making inroads into French stud-ies Departments in the United States and the United Kingdom, it is now in aposition to challenge the hegemony of ‘metropolitan’ French Studies in allbut the most traditional institutions. This dynamic and healthy develop-ment, in many ways, has prompted a wave of self-reflecting edited volumesduring the past couple of years that have set out to establish the field andoutline its boundaries. Margaret Topping’s collection of critical essays onwriting and painting from the French colonial era belongs to this category. Itpresents the reader with a wide-ranging selection of articles on giants ofmainstream French literature known for their fascination for the East:Racine – with Bérénice and Bajazet (David Maskell), Nerval, Flaubert, Claudel

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(articles by Michel Brix, Adrianne Tooke and Akane Kawakami, respectively).The Editor contributes an intriguing essay on Proust and Persia, and there arepieces on less celebrated figures more typically associated with exoticism,travel, the Orient: Loti (Edward J. Hughes), Bouvier (Charles Forsdick), LéonWerth (Renaud Ferreira de Oliveira). The book ventures into theoretical andhistorical territory (Ceri Crossley on Orientalism and Historicism in Micheletand Quinet, Wes Williams on the Narrative Habits of the Journey East, Finn E.Sinclair on Conquering Constantinople). Sheila Mason adds a comparativetouch by disclosing affinities between Montesquieu’s Lettres Persanes and thewritings of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.

Again, this is far from the first collection of essays of its kind, but it standsout for compelling reasons. Firstly, the selection does not simply comprise arti-cles on literary and visual topics. It manages to turn a collective volume into asynthesis of the materials presented: A substantial Editor’s introductionmakes a genuine link between the diverse components and the whole, andgives it direction. The cogency of the collective work is bolstered, moreover, bya final contribution by Margaret Majumdar who provides an overarchingcomment on the gaze (‘Orientalism and the Problematic of Vision’).

But the reviewer must declare a special interest in the contributions oniconography. Barbara Wright’s piece on Eugène Fromentin, erudite as ever,emphasizes the gap between his immediate response to the light ofSouthern Algeria and later renditions executed in his studio. She raises thequestion of Fromentin as a ‘proto-impressionist’ (as opposed, one gathers,to a mere ‘orientalist’), but rightly notes that the impressionists were moredrawn to the mists and the urban scenes of the North than to the specta-cle of the primordial South. Another iconography perhaps not easilydefined as ‘orientalist’ (or as anything else) is the work of Gustave Moreau.Peter Cooke delves into the depths of la Civilisation Moréenne and traces theitinerary of the painter of Eastern images who thought the journey to theEast a waste of time: ‘in Moreau’s view, the artist cannot escape… hiscultural conditioning’ (p. 217). But the history painter haunted by‘l’amour pur de l’arabesque’ (p. 218) achieves an ‘archaizing stylisticexoticism’ which brings him close to the work of Gauguin. Cooke arguesthat ‘from a modern Saidian perspective… it might seem rather to be ahighly elaborate celebration of Western imperialism… Yet the ambiguityand the polysemy of Moreau’s paintings do not permit such simplistic andreductive readings’ (p. 233). Some remarks in Cooke’s piece on Moreau’sEast–West synthesis dovetail with the Editor’s reflections on Proust andPersia. The article raises the role played by an imagined clichéd East exem-plified by the ‘Persian’ church of Balbec in the evolution of the young nar-rator towards his aesthetic maturity.

As a result of such insights, the book innovates by stretching and evenquestioning familiar patterns of francophone postcolonial critique. Itemphasizes fresh and unorthodox ways to comment on colonial and/ororientalizing imagery and writing. Most articles avoid the reiteration ofwell-worn arguments and focus on original, unexpected angles. In a fieldwhich, despite its comparative novelty has sometimes resorted to repet-itive and stilted argument, this new publication brings the hope ofrenewed critical astuteness and a new edge to the whole area’s scholarlyapproaches.

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The Land without Shadows, Abdourahman A. Waberi(1994). Translated by Jeanne Garane, with a foreword byNuruddin Farah (2005)Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 128 pp., ISBN 0-8139-2507-X (hbk), $45Reviewed by Njeri Githire (University of Minnesota-Twin Cities)

Abdourahman A. Waberi’s first collection of short stories Le pays sansombre (1994) is a gripping portrait of Djibouti, the last French colony onthe African mainland, told in a narrative style that verges on social analysis,journalistic reporting, folktale, ethnography and short fiction. Honouredat its publication with the Grand prix de la Nouvelle francophone del’Académie Royale de Langue et de Littérature Française de Belgique –Fondation Henri Cornélus, Le pays sans ombre consists of seventeen shortstories in two parts that take the reader on a journey across this Red Seacountry, the smallest in the Horn of Africa, a journey through time andthrough the county’s struggles and resistance.

In both the first part, ‘Detour: Pages Torn from the Novel of theImagination’ comprising eight short stories, and the second part, ‘Return:Pages Torn from the Land without Shadows’, which consists of nine shortstories, Djibouti’s pre-colonial/colonial past and postcolonial reality interlaceand reflect upon one another, but follow no particular timeline or pattern.

Among the stories, ‘The Primal Ogress’ is a legendary account of the‘defeat (Jab) of the ogress (Bouti)’. In this definition of Djibouti (or moreprecisely ‘Jabouti’) ‘the narrator delves into past history and myth tounearth the cultural significance of the conquest of the city’s “cannibalgodmother”’ (p. 17). Other stories unfold as the sun beats down upon ‘aquiet little village … on the Djibouti-Addis Ababa line’ (p. 27), nomads-turned-slum-dwellers, khat-chewers ruminating in pursuit of ‘zombifica-tion’ … and offer glimpses into fragments of rural and urban life, of tragicvictories and quiet tragedies.

A total of fourteen epigraphs quoting Shakespeare, Evelyn Waugh,Victor Hugo, Paul Nizan, Nuruddin Farah, Assia Djebar, Samuel Beckett,Arthur Rimbaud, Louis Calaferte, Tchicaya U Tam’si, Kateb Yacine,Rachid Mimouni, Charles Baudelaire, Wole Soyinka head twelve of theshort stories, an exercise that can be read as Waberi’s attempt to engage inconversations between continents, cultures, centuries and genres. Thewriter’s concerns with identity and language are also revealed in ‘TheDasbiou Mystery’, in which a young cameleer and valorous warrior isstricken with a new tongue, which proves to be Martinican Creole. Indeed,with Waberi’s brilliant and subtle short stories, the reader shifts backand forth between scenes that could come from an Arabian Nights’ taleand contemporary reality, with its deeper implications and broaderconsequences.

Le pays sans ombre has been ably translated as The Land without Shadow(2005) by Jeanne Garane, with Waberi’s ‘close collaboration’. The transla-tion, which endeavours to be consistent with, and true to the original isaccompanied by a valuable and informative introduction that explains,among others, the work’s title, Waberi’s popularity and assured literary

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voice among the ‘New Generation’ of francophone African writers, as wellas cultural and historical elements that may be vital to fully understandthis magnificent blend of imagination, politics and history.

The Land without Shadow also incorporates a foreword by famous Somaliwriter Nuruddin Farah, as well as a short glossary, and a bibliography of‘Literary Works by Abdourahman A. Waberi’ and ‘Related Critical Works’.An engaging read and a fascinating peek inside a little-known corner of thefrancophone African world, this delightful collection will appeal to readersthe world over.

Assia Djebar: In Dialogue with Feminisms, Priscilla Ringrose (2006)Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 268 pp., ISBN 90-420-1739-2 (hbk), US$73Reviewed by Nicholas Harrison (King’s College London)

When Djebar has spoken about her ‘silence’ of the 1970s she has alwaysemphasized the importance of her experiences as a film-maker in thatdecade. Filming and recording Algerian women, Djebar came to feelmore strongly than ever the desire, perhaps the duty, to evoke women’slives, languages and perspectives. I have always wondered whetherDjebar has tended to underplay the importance to her of the new waveof feminist thought that emerged in Paris at that time; after all, Femmesd’Alger dans leur appartement of 1980, whose many voices are predomi-nantly female and are framed by Djebar’s remarks in the foreword andconcluding essay about her writing project and patriarchy, was pub-lished by des femmes, the Parisian feminist publishing house that hademerged from the MLF (Mouvement de libération des femmes) and that haspublished much of Cixous’s work (and one text by Kristeva). Djebar hasnoted that from the mid-70s she became aware of ‘un arabe des femmes’,‘une “langue des femmes” à usage parallèle, le plus souvent clandestin etocculte, par rapport à l’arabe ordinaire, celui de la communauté (pourne pas dire la “langue des hommes”)’ (Ces voix qui m’assiègent, Paris:Albin Michel, 1999: 36). Perhaps it is even possible to see in thoseremarks a tacit acknowledgement of the significance for her of the pub-lishing house that helped her reshape and relaunch her career, thoughthe fact that ‘des femmes’ is a common phrase and is uncapitalized(e.e.cummings/bell hooks-style) means that any such gesture is itself atmost ‘clandestine’.

Where these writers are concerned the question of influence remains,for me at least, an intriguing one (and elsewhere Djebar has occasionallyalluded to the work of Cixous and other ‘French’ feminists), but the ‘dia-logues’ examined in Priscilla Ringrose’s book are of a different order.Ringrose tells us that the book started life as an assessment of whetherDjebar was ‘a “good” or “bad” feminist’ (p. 7). She herself makes thatabandoned project sound misguided, but vestiges of it remain, and I wel-comed the sense of argumentative edge they gave the final chapter whereamong other things Ringrose criticizes Loin de Médine for failing to condemn

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polygyny. I am not sure I agree with the criticism, or that the right ques-tions are being raised when Ringrose asks whether Djebar manages to‘invent a “politically correct” Islam’ (pp. 33, 217), but the chapter also hasthe merit of engaging with other versions of feminism that are ‘Islamic’ insome sense, particularly in the work of Fatima Mernissi and Leila Ahmed.

The bulk of the book consists of the three encounters that Ringrosestages between L’Amour, la fantasia and Kristeva, Vaste est la prison andCixous, and Ombre sultane and Irigaray. Inevitably there is a degree ofarbitrariness about the pairing of theorist and text, and this structuremakes it difficult for Ringrose to develop an overarching argument orsense of momentum across the chapters. Individually the chapters nonethe-less draw attention to some interesting parallels and points of contactbetween the fictional and the theoretical works, at the same time offering,via key primary and secondary texts, summaries of the theories – some-thing students will find useful. Certain divergences are duly noted too, butI sometimes felt that they needed to be analyzed more deeply, particularlyin relation to psychoanalysis – so central a reference for all three theorists,much less so, it struck me as I read this book, for Djebar. For example,Ringrose writes:

Irigaray relates the fundamental rivalry between women to the mother and

daughter’s relation to the father. […] In Ombre sultane, the mother-daughter

rivalry can be transposed to the relationship between Isma and her mother-

in-law, both of whom are in competition for the desire of one man (p. 185).

At a point like this, as in discussions of polygyny or of Djebar’s relationshipto the mother/father tongue, I would have liked to hear more about thepossible challenges to psychoanalysis posed by family relationships notcorresponding to those prevalent in Freud’s Vienna or in modern Europemore generally. In her introduction Ringrose notes that she has tried toavoid establishing a hierarchical relationship between fiction and theory,but the relationship could have been more dialectical, allowing the fictionsto raise questions about the truth-claims of the theoretical texts.

The basic premise of the book, which takes it away from some of thestock themes of the postcolonial critics who have been Djebar’s principalcommentators, remains a welcome one. Productive lines of enquiry openup here, notably around Irigaray’s account of female subjectivity andaround the Kristevan semiotic, where Ringrose argues that ‘Djebar con-fronts her emotional autism with a dual appeal to the maternal’ (p. 69).The sense in which Djebar’s work constitutes a kind of écriture féminine inCixous’s sense is also explored suggestively, though Djebar is characteristi-cally more complex and tentative than her critics on this point. When, indiscussing the ‘alphabet berbère’, Djebar remarks, ‘Il y a en moi un ques-tionnement, mais par le rêve. Ce qui m’amène à …’ and Lise Gauvin jumpsin with ‘une littérature de femmes, une écriture des femmes?’, Djebarresponds: ‘Dans la société touareg, ce sont les femmes qui conserventl’écriture’. This seems to me to refocus discussion on the specific historicalmaterial with which Djebar is concerned and to avoid endorsing or chal-lenging Gauvin’s turn of phrase, rather than, as Ringrose puts it, confirm-ing Gauvin’s interpretation (pp. 124, 128). Without doubt Djebar must be

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seen as a feminist writer, but she is one who can note ironically that ‘enOccident, on aime pleurer sur les femmes arabes, ou musulmanes, ou …’(and I must say I felt uncomfortable with the description of contemporaryAlgeria as retreating ‘into a Dark Age of fundamentalism’ (p. 257)), andwho instructs herself, paradoxically, ‘vous ne direz pas “nous”, vous nevous cacherez pas, vous femme singulière, derrière la “Femme”; vous neserez jamais, ni au début ni à la fin, “porte-parole” ‘ (Ces voix, p. 263).

Contemporary French Cultures and Societies,Frédéric Royall (ed.) (2004)Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 421 pp. ISBN 978-3-03910-074-3 (pbk), €31.40 £ 22.00Reviewed by Aedín Ní Loingsigh (University of Edinburgh)

This collection of twenty essays and a substantial critical bibliographybrings together specialists working in diverse fields within the area ofFrench and francophone studies. By structuring the various chaptersaround four main categories – politics and society, the French language,the arts, francophone literatures – the editor has made a considerableeffort to represent a broad range of issues related to recent developmentsin French-speaking cultures and societies. The result is an eclecticassemblage of essays that covers a multiplicity of approaches and subjectmatter.

If anything does bring these disparate topics together it is the notion ofcultures and societies undergoing profound change due to the tensionscreated by the assertion of local cultures and traditions in the face of anall-pervasive globalization. From the essays on social, political and eco-nomic change in France, to discussion of the French media, the status ofthe French language in parts of the francophone world and developmentsin French-language cultural production, it is clear that many French-speaking societies are at a crossroads in terms of defining their identityboth for themselves and the international community.

Whilst most of the chapters cannot be faulted for the directness of theirapproach and the clarity with which they introduce the layperson to theirsubjects, it is the more sharply focused contributions that prevent thecollection from simply becoming an anthology of facts and figures. Ofparticular interest are Louis Chauvel’s insightful analysis of social changein France over the last two decades, Sarah Waters’s examination of theemergence of ‘new protest movements’ during the 1990s and Gavin Bowd’sanalysis of the changing role of the intellectual in French life. RogerDuclaud-Williams’s consideration of recent developments in French edu-cational policy admirably illustrates the consequences of the global versuslocal debate as France struggles to negotiate a path between its cherishedrepublican education system and the changes required by its place withinEurope and the wider world. This contribution finds an interesting echo inWilly Clijsters’ succinct discussion of motivating learners of French inFlemish-speaking Belgium where the dominance of Anglo-American cul-ture and the assertion of Flemish identity has led to a decline in the status

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of French. It is in the sections devoted to arts and cultures and francoph-one literatures, however, that the editor’s stated aim of raising awareness ofinterdisciplinary approaches in French and francophone studies is mosteffectively illustrated. Lucid and informative essays by Maeve McCusker,Mairéad Seery and Laurent Marie on recent Caribbean literature, Frenchpopular music and recent trends in French cinema respectively all situatethe question of cultural production within the context of internationalmarket trends. Catherine Khordoc’s analysis of ‘écriture migrante’ in Quebecis also a thought-provoking examination of the effects of global migrationon literary taxonomies and wider questions of national identity.

Ultimately, the strength of this collection is also its weakness and thediversity of material cannot hide the lack of focus suggested by the non-committal and somewhat misleading title. This absence of a coherentframework might have been remedied in the introduction had the editorpulled the collection’s many strands together in a more convincing manner.In addition, more systematic cross-referencing would have helped tostrengthen the interdisciplinary dimension by pointing to ways in whichthis approach might be encouraged or developed. As it is, the collectionsuggests not so much the intersection of different disciplines as their jux-taposition on parallel routes that indicate the potential for fascinating andilluminating convergence.

La Francophonie – une introduction critique, John KristianSanaker, Karin Holter and Ingse Skattum (2006)Oslo: Unipub forlag/Oslo Academic Press, 277 pp., ISBN 82-7477-220-2 (pbk), €30Reviewed by Margaret A. Majumdar (University of Portsmouth)

This book has been conceived as an introductory textbook to ‘Francophonie’for students wishing to extend their knowledge of French-speaking countriesand their literatures, outside France itself. The fact of its publication inFrench (though not without some typographical errors) testifies to the vital-ity of Francophone Studies in Norway. The areas covered correspond to theexpertise of the three authors, who are noted scholars at the universities ofBergen and Oslo. Thus, John Kristian Sanaker contributes the Introduction,a chapter on European French-speaking countries (Belgium, Luxembourg,Switzerland) and one on French-speaking North America. Karin Holter pro-vides a chapter on North Africa (Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco and Mauritania)and Ingse Skattum completes the volume with chapters on sub-SaharanAfrica and, finally, one on the Indian Ocean islands.

Given the authors’ interests, the volume does not purport to treat allthese areas in equal depth. Some chapters are much shorter than othersand the chapter on sub-Saharan Africa, for instance, is significantlylonger, though each follows the same pattern in their treatment of thecontent. Nor is the book intended to be totally comprehensive. There isnothing on the islands of the Pacific, for instance, and the French Caribbeanonly figures briefly within the chapter on sub-Saharan Africa, firstly in the

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context of the slave trade and then in connection with the cultural move-ment of Negritude. Indeed, Caribbean literature is explicitly treated aspart of ‘African literature’ in its origins, without any exploration of itsautonomous development.

As DOM or TOM, these territories are not part of the official institu-tional apparatus of La Francophonie, though this does not appear toexplain their absence here, given the authors’ declared intention toapproach the problematic definition of Francophonie on the basis of firstprinciples. In other words, they have opted to sidestep the organizational,political and ideological aspects of the institutional set-up of La Francophonie.They favour instead what they describe as a ‘realistic, sober’ approachthat takes as the fundamental object of their study the actual state of theFrench language in the world today. Thus, rather than engaging with theideological debates around the importance, universality, geo-political sta-tus, link to absolute, humanist values and so on, of the French languageand Francophonie, the main aim of this book is to show, in quite specificconcrete terms, how the language has spread to different parts of theglobe outside France, how it has developed within the framework of lin-guistic and educational policies, in different historical, geographical andpolitical contexts and in relationship to other languages, how the statusof the language varies depending on the country or region concerned, aswell as the degree of competence and fluency of the ‘French-speakers’concerned, how particular characteristic linguistic forms have survivedand variations come about, how it has become the vehicle of expressionfor specific literatures.

The strengths of the book lie in the way in which it goes beyond sim-plistic statistics regarding the spread of French in the world to tease outthe complexities of the actual state of the language, looking at the differentlevels at which it operates and the different functions it serves, whether asmother-tongue, working language, official language, ‘neutral’ language orother. It is also strong on the analysis of the different component parts ofthe francophone world and their specificities, such as, the special, differen-tiated characteristics of the relationship to the French language of theAcadians and the Franco-Ontarians, or those operating within each spe-cific African country.

Thus, as well as serving as a clearly written introductory textbook tostudents of francophone Europe, Africa and North America, with a rangeof references and signposts for further study, including a map of theFrench-speaking world, the book also has much to offer those who areinterested in the actual state of the French language in the world today, inthe real Francophonie and its specificities, rather than its representation inthe constructs of Francophonie, where, for all the rhetoric, the proportion oftrue, i.e. fully competent, French-speakers is actually in decline.

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Remnants of Empire in Algeria and Vietnam: Women, Wordsand War, Pamela A. Pears (2004)Lanham: Lexington Books, 163 pp., ISBN 0-7391-0831-X (hbk), £58.99Reviewed by Kate Marsh (University of Liverpool)

This concise monograph provides a timely contribution to the ever-growingacademic field of enquiry into ‘alternative texts’: in this case postcolonialtexts written by women in French that is not ‘franco-français’. UsingLionnet’s Postcolonial Representations: Women, Literature, Identity (1995) asa starting point, Pears examines the subjective possibilities of the postcolo-nial female by focussing on four novels: Yamin Mechakra’s La Grotte éclatée(1979), Ly Thu Ho’s Le Mirage de la Paix (1986), Malika Mokeddem’sL’Interdite (1993) and Kim Lefèvre’s Retour à la saison des pluies (1990).Adopting a comparative approach, which emphasizes the connectionsbetween two francophone literatures, Algerian and Vietnamese, Pears suc-cessfully demonstrates a possible framework for the exploration of theintersections of ‘French Studies’ and the ‘postcolonial’ while eschewingthe academic tendency to focus on geographically specific models of colo-nialism and postcolonialism (Algeria or Vietnam).

Opening with an introduction which displays an astute taxonomicwariness, Pears considers the political and cultural implications of theterm ‘francophone’ (as another act of colonial dominance) and of the term‘postcolonial’, defining her use of the latter as indicating ‘neither a statichistorical situation nor a particularly political one’ (p. 8). While acknowl-edging McClintock’s 1994 observation that ‘postcolonial’ can lead to a lin-ear reading of history, she stresses that in the four novels which sheconsiders ‘history is perceived in a linear fashion’ (p. 8). This notion con-tinues throughout the second chapter (Making the Link), where Pears pro-vides the reader with a detailed historical background to French colonialrule in Algeria and Indochine. She explores, for example, the impact whichDien Bien Phu (1954) and the withdrawal of the French from Indochinahad on both Algerian nationalists and literary writings, while providingevidence for her central contention that all four female writers under con-sideration demonstrate that the ‘postcolonial female subject has beencreated as a direct result of contact with the French’ (p. 53). The thirdchapter, comparing Yamin Mechakra’s La Grotte éclatée with Ly Thu Ho’sLe Mirage de la Paix, discusses the role that the respective wars of decolo-nization play in forming the postcolonial female subject. The final chapter(Postwar fragmentation), in contrast, considers how Mokeddem’sL’Interdite and Lefèvre’s Retour à la saison des pluies go beyond the creationof new paradigms for intercultural exchanges (as Lionnet asserts for thepostcolonial women authors whom she studies) to overcome, instead, thetrap of duality. Mokeddem’s female protagonist, Sultana, is an Algerianwoman whose authority and power cannot be undermined by westernconstructs of her, nor by unjust interpretations of her role within theAlgerian society, while Lefèvre in Retour creates a ‘third space’ which isbetween two countries: the France of her father and the Vietnam of hermother. Hybridity and dual identities are explored textually, but Pears

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maintains a strong historically contingent approach by stressing the his-torical ‘post-colonial’ situation of the authors: ‘The French colonial pres-ence in both Algeria and Vietnam created the situation in which thesewomen could not be accepted. They are representative of a second genera-tion of survivors of colonialism’ (p. 141).

These strengths notwithstanding, Pears’s argument is undermined bya certain ambivalence. While her comparative approach is salutary, anddemonstrates amply her closing assertion (before her ‘Afterword’) that apostcolonial female subject exists who is defined not by her nationality, butrather by historical events which occurred over a wide geographical area,her argument could have been strengthened by examining a younger gen-eration of Hexagone-based French female authors (Christine Angot andAmélie Nothomb to name but two). Although she does analyze the tech-nique of fragmentation as exploited by Duras and Sarraute (two popularauthors in the current canon of ‘French Studies’), and in her examinationof L’Interdite she convincingly shows how Mokeddem’s novel re-writesromantic and eroticized discourses of the Algerian woman and thus effec-tively deconstructs nineteenth-century Orientalism, a strictly dichotomizedview of the relationship between the literature of metropolitan France andthat of France’s former colonies remains (a dichotomy which she describesas the ‘differences between Francophone and French writing’ [sic.], p. 5).Pears’s comparative approach is a welcome one; however, a full investiga-tion into the intersections and interdependencies between women’s ‘post-colonial’ literature in the French language, regardless of the geographicsite of production (following the model explored by the historian LaurentDubois with reference to Haiti and ‘La République métisée’ (2000)), hasyet to be written.

The Child in French and Francophone Literature,Buford Norman (ed.) (2004)Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 208 pp., ISBN 90-420-1159-9 (pbk), €50/US$68 Reviewed by Zoë Norridge (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London)

Nearly 30% of the world’s 6.6 billion population are children. Such a mas-sive demographic group is understandably associated with a large body ofliterature in the form of both oral and written stories, poems and plays.The thirty-first volume in Rodopi’s French Literature Series, The Child inFrench and Francophone Literature, surveys a sample of this work written forand about children.

The French Literature Series is published in conjunction with the annualFrench Literature Conference, sponsored by the University of South Carolinain the United States. As such, thirteen of the fifteen essays in this collectionwere originally given as conference papers at a forum on the Child in March2003. Their scope is vast. Historically, the volume ranges from the OldFrench Enfances texts of the Middle Ages (Julie Baker) to the re-writing offairy tales in the twentieth century (Sandra Beckett). Thematically the

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spread is also enormous, encompassing topics from Rousseau’s letters aboutthe pedagogy of botany (Marc Olivier) to an exploration of the adolescence les-bienne in Brossard’s novel Le désert mauve (Nicole Côté).

One of the key insights the collection offers the general academicreader is an overview of the fabricated nature of the concept of childhood.Early in the introduction Daniela Di Cecco states: ‘childhood is a con-struct, contingent on social, cultural and historical factors’ (p. ix). Thisconstruction is seen later in the text in discussions of the changing agesat which young people are still accorded the status of child (p. 94) andthe way in which literature for young readers reflects the dominant aes-thetic and socio-cultural preoccupations of its time (p. 19). Lewis Seifert,in his analysis of the infantilization of the children’s stories argues thatadults consciously forged the link between fairy tales and the early yearsof life, creating specific roles for children as listeners and readers (p. 25).Mary Ekman’s essay then highlights how our understandings of thechanging perception of the child throughout history have coloured theacademic study of childhood literature from the medieval periodonwards (p. 109).

Although the collection clearly provides useful commentary on the his-tory of childhood, the editor, Burford Norman, has grouped the paperstogether by genre and theme. Predictably perhaps this means that the twoessays on francophone African writers, Henri Lopes and Marie-ClaireMatip, are placed side by side. Alioune Sow’s article on Lopes explores theexperience of l’enfance métisse in Lopes’ Le chercheur d’Afriques, focussing onissues of double cultural allegiance and complex identity formation. In thefollowing essay, Cheryl Toman then points out the importance of childrenin Cameroonian women’s writing with particular reference to Matip’sNgonda. Both these chapters cover familiar territory but make a usefulcontribution to a volume which would otherwise be almost exclusivelyfocussed on France, the only other francophone contribution beingClaire Le Brun’s article on philosophical questions in Québécoise children’sliterature.

What seems an extraordinary missed opportunity, given the ongoingglobal inequalities which so disproportionately affect the billion childrenworldwide living in poverty,1 is that no articles in this collection discuss thedenied childhoods of residents of the former French colonies, despite agrowing body of fiction on the topic. There are, however, papers focussingon literature that engages with the more sinister aspects of childhood inFrance. Eileen Hoft-March shows how in Perec’s W ou le souvenir d’enfance,childhood memories are eclipsed by the brutal interruption of the SecondWorld War and the Nazi concentration camps. Michael O’Riley also offersan insightful political commentary on narrative in post-Second World WarFrance with his study of La Bête est morte! a ‘cartoon album’ in the vein ofOrwell’s Animal Farm or Spiegelman’s Maus (p. 43). Shifting the focus backin time to the nineteenth century, Eglal Henein and Bénédicte Monicat alsocontribute essays looking at unhappy childhoods and infant mortality.

James Hamilton comments that ‘Archetypes such as that of the Childenjoy the capacity of drawing together the unconscious and the con-scious into a greater unity so as to restore order and meaning to life’(p. 158). Many of the contributors to The Child in French and Francophone

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1. The United NationsChildren’s Fund, The State of the World’sChildren: ChildhoodUnder Threat, 2004.


Literature appear to be doing just this: making sense of history throughthe examination of childhood products of the past. Ultimately, this projecttells us more about the identities of the adults writing for children than itdoes about the experiences of children themselves. As Jacqueline Rose,who is quoted in this volume, suggests:

Children’s fiction rests on the idea that there is a child who is simply there to

be addressed and that speaking to it might be simple. Children’s fiction sets

up a world in which the adult comes first (author, maker, giver) and the child

comes after (reader, product, receiver), but where neither of them enters the

space in between. […] Children’s fiction sets up the child as an outsider to its

own process, and then aims, unashamedly, to take the child in (p. 36).2

Rose’s comment alone shows the potentially complex and troubling linksbetween any study of children’s literature and research into postcolonialfrancophone studies.

This edited collection does not fully address some of the more contro-versial aspects of childhood (abuse, class, poverty) and there are gaps inthe genres covered and geographical spread, gaps that are perhapsinevitable in any collection of conference papers where the editors mustwork with material available at the time. On the whole though, this volumeprovides an approachable and enjoyable introduction to an eclectic rangeof literature written in French for and about children.

Vocabulaire des études francophones: Les concepts de base,Michel Beniamino and Lise Gauvin (eds) (2005)Limoges Presses universitaires des Limoges, 210 pp., ISBN 2-84287-364-5 (pbk), €20Reviewed by Dayna Oscherwitz (Southern Methodist University)

Michel Beniamino and Lise Gauvin’s Vocabulaire des études francophonesseeks to gather together in a single volume the major concepts andterms associated with francophone studies and to do so for a francophoneaudience. The project is an ambitious one for several reasons, mostnotably that francophone studies as a field lies as the intersection of variousother fields, including African studies and postcolonial studies, becausethe parameters of the field have not, to date, been well-defined, andfinally because in France at least, the existence of such a field is still notentirely recognized. The editors recognize the challenges of creatingsuch a work in their introduction, and while they do not claim toattempt to define the shape or scope of the field with the work, they doacknowledge it as an attempt to map the current shape of the field infrancophone studies.

Given the length of the work, its breadth is impressive. There areapproximately one hundred entries on topics as diverse as alterité, centre/périphérie, francophonie, intertextualité and traduction. As this brief samplingsuggests, the subjects of the entries range from fairly abstract and theoreti-cal, in entries such as décentrement and oraliture, to the concrete, in entries

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2. Originally fromJacqueline Rose(1984), The Case of Peter Pan, or, The Impossibility of Children’s Fiction.,London: Macmillan,1984pp. :1–2.


such as genre and ironie. In all cases, however, the organization andapproach to the subject are the same. The entry begins with a fairlystraightforward definition and attribution in such cases where that is rele-vant. This is followed by an analysis of the way the term is and has beenapplied in the field of francophone studies, including references to particularauthors or theorists and specific works. Each entry concludes with abibliography, which recommends specific texts for further reading. Thevolume also includes (at the back) a list of all entries included, which isuseful both in navigating the text and for introducing students to some ofthe key terms that are used in the field.

There are a number of entries in the work that are particularly note-worthy. The entry on francophonie, for example, which is one of the longerentries in the volume at approximately four pages, begins with a definitionof the term, specifically ‘l’ensemble de pays qui ont en usage la languefrançaise’ (p. 82). It then discusses the role of institutions in the formationand administration of the concept of francophonie, then passes to an analysisof the tension between the geo-political and cultural conceptions offrancophonie, and finally moves to a discussion of the relationship betweenthe concept of la francophonie, and other theoretical concepts, such ascentre-périphérie and postcolonialisme.

The entry on ‘nation’ is similarly concise and thorough. It contains asummary of the historical development of the concept of nation from theseventeenth century onwards as well as a discussion of the development ofthe literary treatment of the concept of nation in the works of scholarsranging from Aimé Césaire to Amadou Koné. The entry also discussesvariations in thinking on the nation in metropolitan France and in otherfrancophone regions.

The work succeeds in giving manageable, clear and fairly nuanceddefinitions of a number of key terms that are central to the field of fran-cophone studies and in directing a reader to many of the relevant scholarlyand literary works related to each term defined. It is less useful in establishingthe parameters of the field of francophone studies, or in drawing the reader’sattention to some of the issues that surround the field, such as the division,in some parts of the world, between French and francophone. Since it isdifficult to address these issues within the framework of the entries them-selves, a longer introduction might have been useful in addressing suchquestions, particularly since the volume is intended for a francophone audi-ence, and the field of francophone studies is arguably less well-establishedin the francophone world than in the anglophone one.

Although the work is aimed at students or scholars of francophonestudies in the francophone world, it might also be useful to instructors offrancophone studies in the anglophone world as well. The editors intendedthe volume for use in high schools and universities. In the francophoneworld, that audience seems appropriate. In the anglophone world, thebook would be better suited to advanced undergraduate students or moreprobably to graduate students of francophone studies.

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Voyage of Hope. Vietnamese Australian Women’s Narratives,Nathalie Huynh Chau Nguyen (2005)Victoria, Australia: Common Ground, 207 pp., ISBN 186335591-X (pbk), US$28.65, €21.29Reviewed by Siobhán Shilton (University of Bristol)

The collapse of South Vietnam on 30 April 1975 and the country’s reuni-fication under a communist regime triggered an exodus of historic propor-tions. Approximately two million Vietnamese fled their homeland andfound new homes overseas, primarily in the United States, Australia,Canada and France. Nathalie Huynh Chau Nguyen’s Voyage of Hope specif-ically explores the experiences and journeys of Vietnamese women whoarrived in Australia between 1975 and 1989. Presenting the oral narra-tives of twelve women from a wide cross-section of the Vietnamese com-munity in Australia, the book provides a nuanced examination of one ofthe largest and most visible diasporas of the late twentieth century. Thewomen (interviewed in 2004, as part of a project on ‘VietnameseWomen’s Stories’) comprise two generations of migrants to Australia, whorange in age from 26 to 70. They include ethnic Chinese and Catholics.They come from various regions in Vietnam, as well as diverse socio-economic contexts and professional backgrounds. Their stories, excerpts ofwhich are arranged to reflect the stages and central themes of their jour-neys, depict a wide range of experiences of escape by sea and life in arefugee camp, including the accounts of two women who left Vietnam asunaccompanied minors after the war. They recount memories of wartime,their stories spanning the period of 30 years from the end of Second WorldWar and the Japanese occupation (1945) through the Indochina War(1946–54, which brought 80 years of French colonization to an end) andthe Vietnam War (1959–75). They detail the unbearable conditions of lifeafter 1975, which motivated many women to embark on their dangerousjourney. Finally, they discuss their experiences of settlement in Australia,revealing the processes of ‘deskilling’ and retraining undergone by manyrefugees, as well as their perceptions of the way in which they have beenreceived by the host community, and the extent to which they definethemselves as Australian or Vietnamese.

Nguyen’s commentary on selected extracts from the interviews sup-plies contextual detail necessary for an understanding of these personaland (in many cases) traumatic narratives in a wider narrative of conflict,displacement, immigration and diaspora. The interrelatedness of individ-ual and collective histories of the Vietnamese exodus is reflected by thepresentation – in a section towards the conclusion of the volume – of per-sonal photographs alongside official photographs from ‘The Archive ofVietnamese Boat People’ and ‘Project 30, the Vietnamese Community inAustralia – Victoria Chapter’. The final section of the book usefully pro-vides brief biographies of the women interviewed.

Voyage of Hope aims, through the transcription and (in most cases)translation of oral histories, to redress the perceived ‘silence’ of Vietnamesewomen in Australia. While Nguyen’s sensitive comparison of aspects oftheir stories demonstrates the heterogeneity of Vietnamese Australian

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women’s narratives, it equally highlights elements specific to the jour-neys of female refugees, such as the dangers of abduction and rape theyencountered at sea, or the impact of immigration on gender roles particu-lar to the traditional Vietnamese family. The stories recounted offer gen-dered, underrepresented histories of the Indochina War and the VietnamWar, providing counterpoints to official accounts, which have tended toprivilege the perspectives of male combatants and politicians. Additionally,these narratives contribute a new dimension to representations of theVietnamese diaspora, by foregrounding not only the sense of culturalalienation experienced as a result of displacement (a central theme in novelsof francophone Vietnamese writers) but also the journey itself. Nguyen’sbook enables a re-reading of narratives of the Vietnamese diaspora, and ofhistories of Vietnam, which acknowledges the impact of factors such asgender, ethnicity, class, age and generation on the experience of war andexodus. It will be of interest to scholars working in a variety of intercon-nected fields, including history, cultural studies, studies in travel writingand postcolonial studies.

Sex, Sailors and Colonies: Narratives of ambiguity in theworks of Pierre Loti, Hélène de Burgh (2005)Bern, Berlin, Brussels, Frankfurt, New York, Oxford andVienna: Peter Lang, 322 pp., ISBN 3-03910-601-5 (pbk), £37.90Reviewed by Peter Turberfield (Toho University, Japan)

What is most striking about the extensive criticism on Pierre Loti, both lit-erary and biographical, is the repeated assertion of his inconsistency, of thecontradictions to be found in his art and in his life. These perceived contra-dictions are often used as a way of undermining claims of his literary merit,and attacking him personally. Hélène de Burgh’s study takes a radically differentapproach. She carefully lists the many contradictions that can be found butsuggests that far from detracting from Loti’s work, they should instead beappreciated for the ambiguity and feeling of uncertainty that they bring to it.Rather than being viewed as a weakness they should be construed as astrength for the effect they have of subverting traditionally understoodOrientalist and colonialist conventions. She notes the reliance of exoticismon colonialism as a source for its subject matter and claims that Loti com-plicates this relationship by ‘locating his narratives at the nexus betweencolonial domination and exotic romance’. Loti thus drifts between colonialistand indigenous perspectives and consequently destabilizes our perceptionsof both positions. Her argument is based on a partial refutation of Said’scondemnation of Orientalist writing. She acknowledges Said’s main con-tention that representation of the Orient was a creation of western imagi-nation, but maintains that Loti differs from other Orientalist writers in thathe had a genuine interest in other cultures. She also asserts that ‘[U]nlikewriters who sought to uncover the Orient to the reader, Loti endeavoured topreserve the Orient by presenting a fantasy in lieu of the real.’ One of hermain points is that Loti’s Orient differs from the sexually exploitative

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norm, her contention being that his portrayal of oriental women is essen-tially non-sexual. She proposes Loti’s childhood friend Lucette as the modelof his oriental women and his brother Gustave as that of his various malecompanions. These models of sister/guide and brother/protector are inter-preted as displacing sexuality. She also shows how this reading becomesdoubly intriguing. As both Lucette and Gustave are dead, Loti in effectdesires the unobtainable. The desire that pervades his work thereforeinevitably remains unfulfilled and unfocused. Loti’s investigation intoharem life is given as an example of such ambiguity as far from confirmingthe sexual intrigue of nineteenth-century Orientalist imagination, he insteadreveals a rather mundane domestic space. This re-evaluation of the impor-tance of ambiguity in Loti’s work presents many intriguing new interpreta-tions and insights. It will, however, given its quite radical conclusions, besure to provoke debate. One point of contention might be that whilst Loti’ssympathy for and interest in other cultures may be undeniable, it is diffi-cult to see how his fantasized depiction of a pre-colonial Orient, fixed inthe past, differs from the Orientalist portrayals Said points to; of the Orientas ‘eternal, uniform, and incapable of defining itself ’. Another argumentcould be made over her claim that sexuality is unarticulated, being onlymetaphorically revealed. To illustrate this point she gives an insightfulanalysis of a scene from Aziyadé in which Loti spends the night adrift in hisboat, first with Aziyadé and then with his servant/friend Samuel. Sheshows how the ‘thick, clustered drops’ of morning dew on Aziyadé’s dressand later on the boat planks can be read as a metaphor for semen, implyingsexual intercourse with both characters. The scene is used to support herconclusion that whilst Loti’s work may be charged with sexual symbolismthis remains only implicit and ‘does not convert into action’. As de Burghherself acknowledges that homoeroticism in particular would have had tobe disguised, at the very least for the sake of ‘safe publication’, this conclu-sion does seem difficult to accept. However, these objections aside, deBurgh’s identification of ambiguity as a deliberately created effect is animportant one and presents an interesting new way of approaching Loti’swork. The thesis format and lack of proofreading are unfortunate weak-nesses, but the ideas presented do provide a provocative new perspectivethat suggests an overdue re-evaluation of long-accepted views.

L’étonnante aventure de la mission Barsac, Jules Verne (2005)Paris: L’Harmattan, 214 pp. and 229 pp., ISBN 2-7475-9602-8 and 2-7475-9603-6 (pbk), €19 and €20Reviewed by Kiera Vaclavik (Queen Mary, University of London)

The first text to appear in the Afrique au cœur des lettres series, this mostrecent publication of L’étonnante aventure de la mission Barsac coincidedwith the centenary of Verne’s death and bears all the hallmarks of hisVoyages extraordinaires: the combination of education and entertainment;the pre-eminence of technological invention; the sardonic verve of the nar-rator; the thirst for the unknown and the insurmountable determination

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of the central protagonists pitted against a mysterious opponent. But thistypically Vernien novel was in fact the work not of Jules, who had writtenonly five chapters at the time of his death, but of his son, Michel. The fivechapters appear at the end of the second volume of this edition, enabling acomparison between the two works which is undertaken by series editorJean-Pierre Orban in the ‘Avant-Propos’. Michel’s finished novel stands upextremely well in any such comparison with the opening chapters of his(now) illustrious father: weighed down by geographical and historicaldetail, the rather arid and plodding opening of Jules’ Voyage d’etudes isreplaced by an animated and engaging text with much more varied char-acterization and plot-lines. Michel retains the central notion of a journeyfrom the coast into the African interior undertaken by metropolitandéputés in order to assess whether the indigenous population is ready forand worthy of parliamentary representation, as well as introducing a pairof characters who join the expedition in search of information regarding afamily member. But rather than uncovering the worthiness or otherwise ofthe black population, the travellers instead discover the evil and despoticnature of a white (English)man: at the close of the first part of the novel,they are captured by the tyrannical Harry Killer and brought to Blackland,the dystopic city he has created in the heart of the desert with the assis-tance of a French engineer, Michel Camaret. Thus, as Antoine TshitunguKongolo rightly underlines in his presentation of the text, the novel’s ‘con-frontation du Bien et du Mal […] n’oppose pas l’Afrique et l’Europe en tantque telles’ (p. 17). Although by no means anti-colonialist – the representa-tion of the lazy, superstitious African population is, as Kongolo argues,very much in line with colonial discourse of the period - the text neverthe-less contains a certain critique of mercantile, technocratic, European ‘civil-isation’. Kongolo’s contextualization of the novel does not, however, takeinto account other literary works of the period, which, in a collection aim-ing to investigate the place of Africa in literary production, is somewhatregrettable. No more than cursory reference is made to Conrad’s Heart ofDarkness which Kongolo sees as being ‘aux antipodes’ to L’étonnante mis-sion (p. 21). Yet the journey from the coast into the African interior under-taken partly in search of information concerning a specific individual, andthe discovery of a deranged white man within its depths, aligns ratherthan separates the two works. Passing reference is made to MichelCamaret as ‘une préfiguration en quelque sorte du professeur Tournesol’(p. 17), but there is no mention of Hergé’s Tintin au Congo, in which thesense that the real danger in Africa comes from white, Anglo-Saxon civi-lization beyond, would later reappear. The novel itself is left to stand alone;editorial footnotes appearing only in the course of Jules Verne’s own fivechapters. However, the text is encumbered by a series of typographicalerrors which, it is hoped, will be avoided in subsequent volumes of whatpromises to be a stimulating and useful series.

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Les jeunes marocains et leurs langues, Jan Jaap de Ruiter (2006)Paris: L’Harmattan, 304 pp.,ISBN 2-296-01329-5 (pbk), €25.50Reviewed by Lauren Wagner (University College London)

In Les jeunes marocains et leurs langues Dr de Ruiter addresses persistentquestions about language use and attitudes in the multi-glossic context ofMorocco. The book summarizes results from a questionnaire delivered touniversity students between 2000 and 2003 that surveyed students’habits of language use and their attitudes about the languages in theirrepertoire: standard Arabic, dialectal Arabic, French and Tamazightdialects. De Ruiter frames this research in the context of the Arabization ofthe educational system in Morocco, hypothesizing that standard Arabicwill be the language more used by these students than French, althoughFrench still will have a strong presence. With regard to the dialectallanguages of Arabic and Tamazight, he hypothesizes that they will belooked on more positively by respondents in the wake of changes in publicpolicy towards them. The survey surpasses previous work by includingboth qualitative and quantitative measures on linguistic attitudes connectedto diglossic divisions among the languages in practical use in Morocco. Inall, de Ruiter provides a broad basis of data and statistics that will be essentialto scholars interested in this or in comparable situations.

The book begins with an overview of the linguistic situation current inMorocco at the time of study, along with a review of past investigations onlanguage use there. De Ruiter considers changes in the educational status ofdifferent languages, specifically French and standard Arabic, as well as theshifting official status of Tamazight dialects in the present moment frombeing banned to being government-supported. The next chapter discussesthe research methodology itself, outlining the objectives, hypotheses, popula-tion sample and the questionnaire design. In the three subsequent chapters,de Ruiter presents the data, first with a general overview of the surveyresults, then analysed by maternal language (either dialectal Arabic orTamazight) and finally sorted by gender. In the concluding chapter, de Ruiterrevisits the hypotheses introduced earlier and reconsiders some assertionsmade in previous research under the light of the present findings.

The main point of interest in this report lies in the construction of thesurvey itself. Divided into four parts, it begins with questions on therespondent’s background (gender, age, maternal language), then contin-ues to ask about the skill level obtained across the possible skills for eachlanguage. For example, respondents indicated their own level in reading,speaking, writing and understanding standard Arabic and French, as wellas their levels in speaking and understanding only for dialectal Arabic andTamazight. It is important to note that de Ruiter takes these auto-evaluationsas accurate indicators of skill level; he does not include skill evaluationtests of his own, nor does he qualify these responses as representative ofthe subjects’ own perceptions. The next group of questions addresses theuse of each of the languages in different contexts – oral and written, formaland informal. Lastly, to determine attitudes and perceptions, de Ruiter uses

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a two-part structure. First, he presents a set of thirteen propositions aboutthe languages, which the respondents can agree or disagree with at differentdegrees of magnitude. These propositions include primarily estimations onthe value and use of dialectal Arabic in different oral and written contexts,both inside and out of Morocco. Finally, the respondent has the opportu-nity to write his or her own thoughts about the beauty and importance ofstandard Arabic. A great majority of respondents completed this section,providing subjective comments that were coded according to their centralargument. The variety of information provided by this questionnaireenables de Ruiter to draw conclusions on a number of aspects of thelinguistic landscape of respondents, from their choices in media consump-tion to their associations of standard Arabic with religion as mentioned inthe comments section.

The majority of the book consists of the presentation of the question-naire results, followed by short analytical summaries. Herein lies its signif-icant fault: the reporting of data receives far more attention than thecontextualization or analysis of it. In that respect, this is a volume that willserve much more a reader who is searching for statistics than one whoseeks a detailed, comprehensive picture of the sociolinguistic situation inMorocco. The analyses that are provided include some potentially signifi-cant findings, particularly with regard to linkages between the maternallanguage variable and levels of skill mastery in standard Arabic andFrench. Notably, the data did not demonstrate many significant gender-based differences, a conclusion which challenges reports from elsewherein the Maghreb on the status of French and provides a point of embarka-tion for future investigation.

Given the wealth of data that this survey provides, this volume is certainto be an essential reference for study on the linguistic situation of theMaghreb. Read as a continuation of previous study in this region and onthis subject matter, de Ruiter has succeeded in closing gaps in informationwhile also opening new avenues of research. Perhaps the next step will bea sociolinguistic survey of Morocco that recognizes the significant portionof the population that is illiterate, and addresses the roles of the variouslanguages of Morocco from their perspectives. In anticipation of that, deRuiter’s book provides a solid empirical foundation for understanding thecurrent dynamics of language use in Morocco.

L’Art Français et Francophone depuis 1980. Contemporary French and Francophone Art,Michael Bishop and Christopher Elson (eds) (2005)Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 238 pp., ISBN 90-420-1657-4 (pbk), €48Reviewed by David Zerbib (University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)

Les vingt trois études rassemblées par Michael Bishop et Christopher Elsonà la suite d’un colloque international qui s’est tenu en 2001 à l’Universitéde Dalhousie (Canada), traitent de pratiques artistiques très diverses, allantde la peinture à la vidéo en passant par l’art sacré et l’installation in situ,

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et cite une cinquantaine d’artistes, plus ou moins célèbres, aussi différentsque Niki de Saint-Phalle ou Fabrice Hybert. Si différents que ne semble lesréunir qu’une langue commune. ‘Français’ et/ou ‘francophone’, l’art dontil est question émane d’une sphère linguistique bien identifiée mais ici unlangage se cherche pour aborder les œuvres.

Dans ce livre écrit majoritairement en Français (cinq essais sontrédigés en anglais), cette recherche d’un langage passe par la questioncentrale de l’écriture. Ceci à plusieurs niveaux: écriture comme uniquetechnique d’accès aux œuvres (absence d’illustrations dans l’ouvrage);écriture comme problématique (ainsi que l’exprime Nathalie Farrimonden se demandant comment écrire sur des œuvres sans en réduire la sin-gularité); et enfin écriture comme thématique (une dizaine des textestraite du rapport entre artistes et écrivains). Sans doute cette place del’écriture est-elle liée au cadre méthodologique des French Studies quistructure l’ensemble, même si tous les auteurs ne relèvent pas nécessaire-ment de ce champ académique (des notes biographiques auraient été àcet égard bienvenues).

Dans ce contexte académique les ‘différences’ relevés dans les œuvresdeviennent souvent des ‘différances’ (cf le texte de Bishop), et les ‘compara-isons’ des ‘comparutions’ par référence, respectivement, à Jacques Derridaet Michel Deguy qui représentent ici deux influences théoriques majeures.Mais c’est surtout le regard des écrivains qui est sollicité. Notamment celuide Michel Tournier, dans des textes sur la relation entre le romancier etdes photographes (textes d’Arlette Bouloumié ou Joëlle Cauville). Unemême perspective est suivie dans d’autres essais sur Bernard Noël et laphotographie ou sur Yves Bonnefoy et la peinture. Michael Brophy voitdans ce rapport entre peinture et littérature une même échappée des dis-cours analytiques au profit d’une certaine ‘corporalité’. Nicolas Goyerparle quant à lui d’une ‘plastique langagière’ du poète qui traduit lesopérations les plus ‘incarnationnelles’ de la peinture.

Ces interventions d’écrivains face à l’art médiatisent notre rapport auxœuvres non d’une manière didactique mais sur un mode ‘sympathique’d’accompagnement et de dialogue. Là se crée un entre-deux du lisible etdu visible. En un sens, ce lieu spécifique est comparable au travaild’artistes à la fois peintres et poètes, tel Hermenegilde Chiasson (cf le textede Elson). Aussi l’autorité de l’écrivain ne constitue-t-elle pas ici une véri-table limite esthétique. Il n’en va pas de même de la quasi-exclusivitéaccordée par lui à la peinture et à la photographie. ‘Les écrivains ontrenoncé à fréquenter les artistes’ écrit Philippe Dagen cité par LaurencePerrigault. Sorti de l’art ‘rétinien’ comme disait Duchamp (et en dehors del’art occidental, étant donné qu’il est peu fait mention de l’art francophoneafricain ou caraïbéen) cela tend à se vérifier dans ce volume.

Pour autant, L’art Français et francophone depuis 1980 s’intéresse aussi àun ‘contemporain’ qui n’est pas seulement contemporary c’est-à-dire coor-donné historiquement. Comme la traduction du titre semble le signaler enévitant cette désignation, ‘l’art contemporain’, en France, renvoie à des pra-tiques plastiques venues avec la supposée ‘fin de la peinture’ et qui per-turbent les classifications en termes de genre artistique ainsi que lesfrontières nationales et culturelles. Ces pratiques constituent l’autre polaritédu livre. Dès lors, ce ne sont plus des œuvres d’écrivains et de peintres qui se

475Book Reviews


rencontrent, ce sont des signes de natures différentes qui interfèrent entreeux et brouillent les significations dans une même œuvre. L’expérience duregard et de la lecture supplante alors celle de l’écriture et du geste créateur.

A cet égard, Marcel Duchamp, bien sûr, devient une pierre de toucheincontournable. Mais aussi Marcel Broodthaers dont l’héritage serait ‘sousestimé’ explique Anja Chavez. Les ‘stratégies référentielles’ du créateurd’un musée fictif en 1968 (son Musée d’art moderne) se retrouveraient chezChristian Boltanski et son travail sur la mémoire personnelle et collective,ainsi que chez Pierre Huygue et son questionnement sur l’information, lafiction et la réalité. Pour James Petterson, l’œuvre de Broodthaers offreune clé pour penser la ‘désautorisation’ et le retrait de l’artiste devant le rôlecréateur du public. Et d’illustrer ceci par le travail de trois artistes : InformationFiction Publicité (artiste devenu personne morale), Philippe Thomas etenfin Philippe Pareno qui exploite (dans No Ghost just a Shell, 2000) unpersonnage virtuel de manga, conçu comme ‘signe qui ne représente rien’.A travers Broodthaers cet affranchissement des signes renverrait à Mallarméplacé ‘à la source de l’art contemporain’.

Ainsi l’enjeu ne réside plus dans le rapport du scriptural au picturalmais dans le lien plus profond du signe et de la représentation. BéatriceVernier-Larochette rend compte des effets d’interférences ou de brouillagevolontaire et non plus d’accompagnement entre un texte et la matérialitéd’une sculpture, la réalité d’une photographie, la signification d’un monu-ment public. ‘Comment exprimer une chose sans passer par la représenta-tion?’ était déjà la question posée par le peintre abstrait Olivier Debré,explique Laure Michel. D’une certaine façon, une même rupture référen-tielle se retrouve dans les signes projetés par Felice Varini sur des espacesarchitecturaux (texte de Vittorio Frigerio). Pour Adelaide Russo, l’œuvrepolymorphe de Robert Cahen, serait l’exemple par excellence de cetteréflexion contemporaine sur le réseau des signes et la place qu’y tient lepublic comme partie prenante du système.

Ecrire sur l’art contemporain impose sans doute, comme le dit Anne-Marie Duguet à propos de l’oeuvre vidéo (citée par Shanna McGuire), laforme de l’ ‘essai inachevé, ouvert, éternellement réactualisable’. La plu-part des auteurs ici réunis tendent à adopter cette attitude. Ils préfèrent lesfigures du surgissement et des proliférations polysémiques à celles de l’an-crage et des origines fixes. Comme par exemple dans le travail de TitusCarmel et sa projection dans ‘l’avant du souvenir’; ou dans ‘l’insulte’ comme‘assaut’ dans les tableaux d’Aubanel; ou encore dans la métaphore commemouvement spatial plutôt qu’identité dans l’art d’Hervé Télémaque. Séparéesde la logique disparue des ‘mouvements artistiques’, des œuvres singulièresapparaissent ici très clairement. Reliées entre elles par un travail sur lessignes sortis des systèmes pré-codés de signification, dans ou après lapeinture, à travers ou au-delà de l’écriture.

476 Book Reviews


477IJFS 10 (3) 477 © Intellect Ltd 2007

Index Volume 10, IJFS

Benrabah, M., Language maintenance and spread: French in Algeria, pp. 193–215.

Chikhi, B., Un divan pour en finir avec l’absence ou le temps retrouvé dans la littératurealgérienne1, pp. 237–252.

Cumming, G., Promoting democracy in Cameroon: a revolutionary French approach?pp. 105–119.

Dubreuil, L., Don du français et parole (post)coloniale, pp. 345–358.

Forsdick, C., Situating Haiti: on some early nineteenth-century representations ofToussaint Louverture, pp. 17–34.

Gallagher, M., Genre and the self: some reflections on the poetics and politics of the‘fils de Césaire,’ pp. 51–66.

Gamble, H., The National Revolution in French West Africa: Dakar-Jeunes and theshaping of African opinion, pp. 85–103.

Gauvin, L., Post ou péricolonialisme: l’ étrange modèle québécois (notes),pp. 433–438.

Golay, A., Féminisme et postcolonialisme: Beauvoir, Fanon et la guerre d’Algérie,pp. 407–424.

Gontard, M., Francophonie et globalisation La question de l’interlecte, pp. 253–269.

Haddour, A. & Majumdar, M., Whither francophone studies? Launching thedebate, pp. 7–16.

Hargreaves, A., & Moura, J-M., Extending the boundaries of francophone postcolo-nial studies, pp. 307–311.

Higginson, P., A descent into crime: explaining Mongo Beti’s last two novels,pp. 377–391.

Jenson, D., Before Malcolm X, Dessalines: a ‘French’ tradition of black Atlantic radi-calism, pp. 329–344.

Kelly, D., ‘An Unfinished Death’: the legacy of Albert Camus and the work of textualmemory in contemporary European and Algerian literatures, pp. 217–235.

Kiwan, N., Equal opportunities and republican revival: post-migrant politics incontemporary France (2002–2005), pp. 157–172.

Laronde, M., ‘Effets d’Histoire’. Représenter l’Histoire coloniale forclose, pp. 139–155.

Laroussi, F., Unfinished business: Orientalism and Maghrebi literature in French,pp. 271–284.

Lecerf, E., Les voies tordues de l’émancipation, pp. 121–138.

Marshall, B., New Orleans, nodal point of the French Atlantic, pp. 35–50.

Migraine-George, T., Swiss Trash: l’Autre Suisse de Dunia Miralles, pp. 173–191.

Mortimer, M., Domestic matters: representations of home in the writings of MariamaBâ, Calixthe Beyala and Aminata Sow Fall, pp. 67–83.

Munro, M., Listening to Caribbean history: music and rhythm in Daniel Maximin’sL’Isolé soleil, pp. 393–405.

Parris, D., When French-Canadian literature freed itself from the tutelage of Paris,pp. 425–432.

Rice, A., Francophone postcolonialism from Eastern Europe, pp. 313–328.

Talbayev, E., Between nostalgia and desire: l’Ecole d’Alger’s transnational identifica-tions and the case for a Mediterranean relation, pp. 359–376.

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Francophone Studies

International Journal of Francophone Studies | Volume Ten N

umber Three

ISSN 1368-2679

10.3

www.intellectbooks.com

intellect

Volume Ten N

umber Three

intellect Journals | M

edia & Culture


Francophone Studies Volume 10 Number 3 – 2007

Editorial introduction

307–311 Extending the boundaries of francophone postcolonial studies Alec G. Hargreaves and Jean-Marc Moura

Articles

313–328 Francophone postcolonialism from Eastern Europe Alison Rice

329–344 Before Malcolm X, Dessalines: a ‘French’ tradition of black Atlantic radicalism Deborah Jenson

345–358 Don du français et parole (post) coloniale Laurent Dubreuil

359–376 Between nostalgia and desire: l’Ecole d’Alger’s transnational identifications and the case for a Mediterranean relation Edwige Tamalet Talbayev

377–391 A descent into crime: explaining Mongo Beti’s last two novels Pim Higginson

393–405 Listening to Caribbean history: music and rhythm in Daniel Maximin’s L’Isolé soleil Martin Munro

407–424 Féminisme et postcolonialisme: Beauvoir, Fanon et la guerre d’Algérie Annabelle Golay

Forum

425–432 When French-Canadian literature freed itself from the tutelage of Paris David Parris

433–438 Post ou péricolonialisme: l’ étrange modèle québécois (notes) Lise Gauvin

439–476 Book Reviews

477 Index

9 771368 267008

ISSN 1368-26791 0

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