Long repressed following the collapse of empire, memories of the French colonial experience have recently gained unprecedented visibility. This interdisciplinary volume explores the multiple forms of this upsurge and the forces driving it in popular culture, scholarly research, and public commemorations.
As one of the most prominent voices from and about the French Caribbean, Gisele Pineau has garnered significant scholarly attention; however, this interest has culminated in precious few volumes devoted entirely to the author and her work. In response to this lack of in-depth critical attention, Reimagining Resistance in Gisele Pineau's Works brings together a range of perspectives from both sides of the Atlantic and across the Pacific to explore the unique ways in which Gisele Pineau's works redefine the concept of resistance, particularly as it relates to gender, race, history, and Antillean identity. As this volume ultimately demonstrates, resistance holds up a mirror to the political, economic, and cultural forces that have shaped the past, construct the present, and build the future. It argues that Pineau's characters open the narrative frame for reading them and move us beyond the categories of the wholly defiant or the inherently complicit. Above all, as they invite us to reimagine resistance, they expose our expectations and hopefully shift our understanding about what it means to rise and to fall in a world we seek to call our own.
This collection of essays investigates the fundamental role that the loss of colonial territories at the end of the Ancient Regime and post-World War II has played in shaping French memories and colonial discourses. In identifying loss and nostalgia as key tropes in cultural representations, these essays call for a re-evaluation of French colonialism as a discourse informed not just by narratives of conquest, but equally by its histories of defeat.
From its early focus on documentary film and nation building to its more recent spotlight on contemporary culture and feature filmmaking, Moroccan cinema has undergone tremendous change since the country's independence in 1956. In What Moroccan Cinema? A Historical and Critical Study, 1956-2006, Sandra Gayle Carter chronicles the changes in Moroccan laws, institutions, ancillary influences, individuals active in the field, representative films, and film culture during this fifty-year span. Focusing on Moroccan history and institutions relative to the cinema industry such as television, newspaper criticism, and Berber videomaking, What Moroccan Cinema? is an intriguing study of the ways in which three historical periods shaped the Moroccan cinema industry. Carter provides an insightful and thorough treatment of the cinema institution, discussing exhibition and distribution, censorship, and cinema clubs and caravans. Carter grounds her analysis by exploring representative films of each respective era. The groundbreaking analysis offered in What Moroccan Cinema? will prove especially valuable to those in film and Middle Eastern studies.
The narratives under consideration in Rainbow Colorsdepict the Mauritius's history of competing colonial forces, describe its intricate social geography of free and forced migrations, and portray the anxieties of mixed race persons and cultures in postcolonies. By conceptualizing literature as the overlapping space of ethnic-cultural realities, national and transnational identities, and a poetics of alterity, Rainbow Colors explores how different literary ethno-topographies of Mauritius are produced at this intersection.
Women Writing Nature addresses the question, "Do women write about nature differently?" In the process, the collection considers women's writings about the natural world in light of recent and current feminist and ecofeminist theory.
Women Writing Nature addresses the question, 'Do women write about nature differently?' In the process, the collection considers women's writings about the natural world in light of recent and current feminist and ecofeminist theory.
If space is important in the realm of imagination and a key theme in feminist theory, cross-cultural studies of social maps reveal that men and women's spatial experiences differ; women rarely control physical or social space directly. Positing the thesis that women's writing of Francophone Africa and the Caribbean offers important perspectives on the relationship of gender to space,Writing from the Hearth proposes close readings of Francophone women writers of Africa (Aoua KZita, Mariama B%, Ken Bugul, Calixthe Beyala, and Aminata Sow Fall) and the Caribbean (Marie Chauvet, Simon Schwarz-Bart, Maryse CondZ, and Edwidge Danticat). As critical readings of postcolonial African and Caribbean literature show that tropes of confinement appear frequently in female-authored texts_where home is often depicted as a place of alienation_this critical study examines ambiguities associated with domestic space as enclosure as it explores the relationship between the female protagonist and the inner and outer spaces of her world: domestic, imaginative, and public space. Writing from the Hearth probes the hypothesis that the female protagonist can move toward empowerment by entering public space from which she has been excluded by indigenous patriarchs and European colonizers and by establishing a new relationship to domestic space or securing a liberating alternative space within it. Flexible and multipurpose, alternative space is a place of possibilities that can function as a refuge for meditation, recollection, or fantasy, an antechamber for action, and a site of resistance and performance. Here, by telling the tale, writing the creative work, a woman can affirm her sense of self.
After Multiculturalism: The Discourse on Race and the Dialectics of Liberty provides a unique critique of multiculturalist thought in social theory and public policy from an individualist perspective. Contemporary academic and policy discourse on race and racism in the United States is dominated by collectivist social theories that are founded on the idea that the only meaningful challenges to racism are those that foster collective social identities and seek to influence and direct the use of state power in the interest of particular racial and ethnic groups. Multiculturalism is the prevailing incarnation of anti-racist thought that informs and mediates political process and organizational life in the United States. The multicultural discourse on race has become tribalist, anti-western, anti-market, and statist. After Multiculturalism challenges the notion that collectivist and statist ideologies 'own' racism as an educational and public policy issue. Welsh demonstrates that individualist philosophies entail critiques of racism that follow directly from their anti-collectivist and anti-statist foundations. He argues that multiculturalism is unlikely to promote the types of social action and changes essential to overcoming racism and that the individualist and libertarian ideas discussed in the book make important contributions toward the realization of a world free of racial domination. To this end, the ideas of Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard, Benjamin, Benjamin Tucker, Lysander Spooner, Max Stirner and contemporary libertarian scholars are discussed to the lay the foundation for a critique of multiculturalism. The book explores the concepts of post-ethnicity and transracialism as individualist and libertarian expressions of a society 'after multiculturalism.' Welsh's discussions of transracialism and post-ethnicity constitute unique and important contributions to social thought. This book will hold great interest for scholars and students concerned with race, ethnicity, political theory, or individualist thought, as well as scholars and students of the history of ideas.
Motivated by a desire to narrate and contextualize the deluge of "French theory," After the Deluege showcases recent work by today's brightest scholars of French intellectual history that historicizes key debates, figures, and turning points in the postwar era of French thought.
The only studies on North African caves have been published in French and examine primarily physical cave sites. My book discusses the literary cave as a metaphor for national identity and the homeland-patrie- in Francophone North African postcolonial literature and film focusing on the themes of folklore, war, Berber traditions, femininity, sexuality, and war. It offers new insights into Francophone postcolonial studies and folklore and fills a gap in postcolonial literary and cultural scholarship.
Through the study of Charles Testut's Le Vieux Salomon, a nineteenth-century southern Francophone antislavery novel, this book encourages a reassessment of the southern experience and of the canon of southern literature. Arguing for a southern literary identity strongly influenced by French socialist thought and colonial culture, Abel's book is an invaluable resource for Francophone scholars interested in race and colonial literature.
Breadfruit or Chestnut? examines gender construction comparatively across the fiction of contemporary writers of Guadeloupe and Martinique. In particular, it explores the construction of gender identity by six authors-three male and three female-who have never been brought together in a study of this issue.
Remnants of Empire in Algeria and Vietnam proposes a new approach to Francophone Studies through an examination of four specific Algerian and Vietnamese novels written in French by women. The connections between their works and shared colonial history lead us to a deeper understanding of postcolonial literature.
Migrant Revolutions: Haitian Literature, Globalization, and U.S. Imperialism interprets Haitian literature in a transnational context of anti-colonial_and anti-globalization_politics. Positing a materialist and historicized account of Haitian literary modernity, it traces the themes of slavery, labor migration, diaspora, and revolution in works by Jacques Roumain, Marie Chauvet, Edwidge Danticat, and others. Author Valerie Kaussen argues that the sociocultural effects of U.S. imperialism have renewed and expanded the relevance of the universal political ideals that informed Haitis eighteenth-century slave revolt and war of decolonization. Finally, Migrant Revolutions defines Haitian literary modernity as located at the forefront of the struggles against transnational empire and global colonialism.
Fictions of Childhood analyzes identity from the perspective of child/adolescent narrators and protagonists using the works of Nina Bouraoui, Linda Lê, and Gisèle Pineau. This theme is studied in French narratives that bring to the fore questions of the power imbalances in both the sociological context of the family and the larger geopolitical context of French colonialism.
In Packaging Post/Coloniality, Richard Watts breaks from convention and reads Francophone books by their covers, focusing on the package over the content. Watts looks at the ways that the 'paratext'-the covers, illustrations, promotional summaries, epigraphs, dedications, and prefaces or forewords that enclose the text-mediates creative works by writers from sub-Saharan Africa, the Maghreb, the Caribbean, and Southeast Asia whose place in the French literary institution was and remains a source of conflict. In order to be acceptable for French bookstore shelves, the novels, essays, and collections of poetry created in colonial territories were deemed to need explanation and sponsorship by an authority in the field. Watts finds the French mission civilisatrice, or 'civilizing mission,' manifest in prefaces, introductions, and dedications inserted in the books that appeared in the metropole during the height of French imperialism. In the postcolonial era, book packaging reveals a struggle to reverse the power dynamic: Francophone writers introduced each others' texts, yet books still appeared with covers promoting stereotypical images of the Francophone world. This fascinating journey through a particular cultural history of the book is a unique take on the quest for a literary identity. Watts concludes his study by looking at English mediations of Francophone works, with a chapter on reading and teaching Francophone literature in translation.
At the intersection of literary, cultural, and postcolonial studies, this volume looks at French perceptions of 'Indochina' as they are conveyed through a variety of media including cinema, literature, art, and historical or anthropological writings. The volume is long awaited, as France's memory of 'Indochina' is understudied compared to its relationship with its former colonies in West and North Africa. The book has contemporary urgency as the makeup of France's immigrant population changes and grows to include Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotioan populations.
Writing and Filming the Genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda: Dismembering and Remembering Traumatic History is an innovative work in Francophone and African studies that examines a wide range of responses to the 1994 genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda. From survivor testimonies, to novels by African authors, to films such as Hotel Rwanda and Sometimes in April, the arts of witnessing are varied, comprehensive, and compelling. Alexandre Dauge-Roth compares the specific potential and the limits of each medium to craft unique responses to the genocide and instill in us its haunting legacy. In the wake of genocide, urgent questions arise: How do survivors both claim their shared humanity and speak the radically personal and violent experience of their past? How do authors and filmmakers make inconceivable trauma accessible to a society that will always remain foreign to their experience? How are we transformed by the genocide through these various modes of listening, viewing, and reading?
The Star, the Cross, and the Crescent analyzes fiction, films, comics, autobiographical narratives, and essays by Francophone Arab writers whose Christian (Accad, Antaki, Chedid, Maalouf), Jewish (Albou, Cixous, El Maleh, Memmi), Muslim (Bachi, Benaissa, Benguigui, Ben Jelloun, Boudjedra, Boudjellal, Meddeb, Mimouni), and secular (Sebbar) backgrounds are emblematic of the diversity of the Francophone Arab world. It examines how these writers represent the intertwining of religion and politics against the backdrop of the current international political context and the resurgence of religion. Focusing on a series of disputes commonly framed in religious terms (with Islam as the common denominator for all: the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Lebanese and the Algerian civil wars, the affair of the Muslim headscarf in France, and 9/11), this book questions the effectiveness of the Francophone studies model in providing insights into the complexity of the Islamic Revival. The study concludes by unpacking the influence of politics on the translation of these works in the U.S. It brings heightened awareness to the modalities according to which a creative work can serve as a cultural mediator.
Writerly Identities in Beur Fiction and Beyond explores the Beur/banlieue literary and cultural field from its beginnings in the 1980s to the present. It examines a set of postcolonial Bildungsroman novels by Azouz Begag, Farida Belghoul, Le la Sebbar, Sa d Mohamed, Rachid Dja dani, and Mohamed Razane. In these novels, the central characters are authors who struggle to find self-identity and a place in the world through writing and authorship. The book thus explores the different ways all these novels relate the process of 'becoming' to the process of writing. Neither is straightforward as the author-characters struggle to put their lives into words, settle upon a genre of writing, and adopt an authorial persona. Each chapter of Writerly Identities in Beur Fiction and Beyond focuses on a given author's own relationship to writing before assessing his or her use of the author-character as a proxy. In so doing, the study as a whole explores a set of literary questions (genre, textual authority, reception) and engages them against the backdrop of socio-cultural challenges facing contemporary French society. These include debates on education, cultural literacy, diversity and equal opportunity, and the banlieue environment. Finally, it argues in relation to the authors and novels in question for the particular relevance of 'rooted and vernacular' cosmopolitanism, which suggests both that exploration of the world must begin at home and that stories are crucial for such explorations.
The Other Hybrid Archipelago presents the postcolonial literatures of the Francophone Indian Ocean islands to an Anglophone audience. The islands of Madagascar, Mauritius, Reunion, the Comoros, and the Seychelles form a region that has a particular cultural identity because of the varied mixture of populations that have settled there and the dominant influence of French colonialism. This survey concentrates on the period since the Second World War, when most of the islands achieved independence, except for Reunion and Mayotte, which maintain a regional status within the French Republic. The postcolonial approach suggests certain recurrent themes and preoccupations of the islands' cultures and an appropriate way to define their recent cultural production, while taking account of the burden of their colonial past. The rich cocktail of cultural and linguistic influences surveyed is situated in relation to the contemporary political and social context of the islands and their marginal status within the global economy.
A striking number of hysterical or insane female characters populate Francophone women's writing. To discover why, Orlando reads novels from a variety of cultures, teasing out key elements of Francophone identity struggles.
Miller synthesizes Karen Horney's model of submission, aggression and withdrawal, Jean Baker Miller's concept of relational being, Julia Kristeva's idea of psychic space, and Kelly Oliver's notions on social support to advance a penetrating analysis of the fiction of Paule Constant.
'Rewriting' in the context of critical work on Caribbean literature has tended to be used to discuss revisionism from a variety of postcolonial perspectives, such as 'rewriting history' or 'rewriting canonical texts.' By shifting the focus to how Caribbean writers return to their own works in order to rework them, this book offers theoretical considerations to postcolonial studies on 'literariness' in relation to the near-obsessive degree of rewriting to which Caribbean writers have subjected their own literary texts. Focusing specifically on FrankZtienne, this book offers an overview of how the defining aesthetic and thematic components of FrankZtienne's major works have emerged over the course of his forty-year writing career. It reveals the marked development of key notions guiding his literary creation since the 1960s, and demonstrates that rewriting illustrates the central aesthetic of the Spiral which has always shaped his Iuvre. It is, the book argues, the constantly moving form of the Spiral which FrankZtienne explores through his constant reworking of his previously written texts. FrankZtienne and Rewriting negotiates between the literary and material ends of the burgeoning field of postcolonial studies, arguing that literary characteristics in FrankZtienne connect with changing political, social, economic, and cultural circumstances in the Haiti he rewrites.
Presents a study of five writers from lands formerly or currently ruled by France (Algeria, Cambodia, Guiana, Madagascar, and Mali) and an interrogation of the relevance of postcolonial theory, criticism and studies to these writers. This work places the writers against the background of postcolonial studies.
Long repressed following the collapse of empire, memories of the French colonial experience have recently gained unprecedented visibility. This interdisciplinary volume explores the multiple forms of this upsurge and the forces driving it in popular culture, scholarly research, and public commemorations.
Twentieth-century French philosopher Simone Weil's complete writings on colonialism are collected and translated into English in this volume.
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