French and Francophone Literature Commons^™

Sans Hommes, On N’Est Pas Rien”: Defying Patriarchy And Reclaiming Voices In Les Rivières, Warisara E. Sawin

Vernacular: New Connections in Language, Literature, & Culture

This article explores Jennifer Solheim’s conceptualization of “the call to listen” in postcolonial Francophone cultural production, as she argues for the importance of engaging with and responding to immigrant and minority narratives within this cultural milieu. This article further explores the dynamic relationship between media consumption and artistic creation, specifically the innovative realms of “accented” and “intercultural” cinema that have emerged from the conditions of globalization and migration. The unique cinematic languages of these forms convey the intricate experiences of those living in exile or as part of post-migratory populations.

An in-depth analysis is presented on Mai Hua’s documentary Les …

Marvelous Ordinariness: Re-Engaging With Realism’S Social Function, Miranda Ochoa Natera

Comparative Literature M.A. Essays

Against Romanticism, European literary realism of the 19th century aimed to provide an objective representation of reality through mimesis that could capture the truth in an objective way. Yet, its positivist approach severely narrowed down the complexity of truth, reality, and the mundane by wrongfully drawing the universal from the particular. A new way of engaging with realist literature from any time period, called Marvelous Ordinariness, rearranges this triad in ways that expand our understanding of our own and other realities portrayed. Using Alejo Carpentier’s description of “lo real maravilloso,” Marvelous Ordinariness unfolds in three layers that resemble Carl Jung’s …

Le Rôle Des Médias Dans La "Crise Anglophone" Au Cameroun, Arrayán Chia Vanegas-Farrara

CISLA Senior Integrative Projects

This essay is about a country with twenty-six million people, including 1.5 million refugees and a lot of problems due to the Anglophone crisis. It gives an in-depth view on the complex yet vibrant multilingualism in Cameroon with over 240 ethnic groups and many languages. The economically disadvantaged parts of Cameroon are the Anglophone regions such as the North-West with poverty rates at 57% and the South-West at 21% respectively for the year 2019. The article reflects upon how colonial legacies have given rise to contemporary social uneasiness in Cameroon, mostly within Anglophone regions. Additionally, this article highlights how economic …

Death, Dreaming, And Diaspora: Achieving Orientation Through Afro-Spirituality, Liz Johnston, Jaime Elizabeth Johnston

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Enslavement, colonization, and the systems that uphold racial injustice were and still are a series of new, unfathomable, and challenging experiences that prompt individuals within the diaspora to seek orientation. How does a human cope with centuries of attempts at the systematic destruction of their humanity, culture, and identity? How can they reclaim that identity, especially when so much of it seems lost? I address these questions by utilizing texts from the expansive body of work regarding ethnographic-historical-religious studies on Afro-spiritual practices to better analyze instances in literature in the ongoing practice of diasporic orientation. In this project, I argue …

Entre Rêve Et Résignation – Références Intertextuelles Dans Les Chemins Qui Montent (1957) De Mouloud Feraoun, Inès Kremer

Journal of Amazigh Studies

Résumé :

Malgré la présence évidente et continue des références intertextuelles dans les romans de Mouloud Feraoun, celles-ci n’ont été que rarement étudiées. C’est notamment dans son troisième roman, Les chemins qui montent, que les renvois à la littérature orale de la Kabylie comme à l’œuvre romanesque et philosophique d’Albert Camus se prêtent particulièrement à une analyse approfondie. Ils révèlent la résignation profonde du protagoniste qui se refuse à la révolte métaphysique au sens camusien, révolte rendue impossible par la condition coloniale.

Mots clés : Feraoun, intertextualité, Camus, et littérature orale kabyle

Abstract:

Despite the importance of intertextual references …

The Extinction Race: Techniques Of The Human In Proust, Via Houellebecq, James Dutton

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article, “The Extinction Race: Techniques of the Human in Proust, via Houellebecq” James Dutton “reads” identity and race from the point of view of technics. Namely, he does so through the work of two nominally “Eurocentric” authors, Marcel Proust and Michel Houellebecq, observing how familial and racial resemblance is a living inscription of “lost time.” This inscription comes about through the technical means available to and constitutive of the categories which bind them. Thus, instead of furthering unfinishable racial distinctions which only serve to support discourses of racism, this article follows assertions made in the novels of …

Neither Invisible, Nor Silenced: The India-Maghreb Connections In Female-Authored Cinema, Chandra Balkaran

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“Third-World” women have long been excluded from center screen space, and positioned as stereotypical characters in liminal, coded spaces—such as harems, brothels, convents, ashrams, zawiyas or in domestic space. Yet, spatial organization is integral to the production of the social, not merely its result, and is fully implicated in both history and politics. Space is thus a crucial category of analysis in any cinema. My thesis examines how spaces, from the domestic to the virtual, socio-religio-cultural are reclaimed, redefined, and reformulated by women in politically engaged films made by Third-World women directors focused on women. Their struggles for space are …

Cambodian Family Albums: Tian's "L'Année Du Lièvre", Angelica P. So

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This article explores how Franco-Cambodian cartoonist Tian’s graphic novel, L’année du lièvre [Year of the Rabbit], represents second-generation postmemory in the form of, what I call, a “Cambodian family album,” or a personal-collective archive. The album serves to convey to subsequent generations: 1) the history of the Cambodian genocide, 2) the collective memories of pre-1975 Cambodia preceding the Khmer Rouge takeover of Phnom Penh, and 3) the Cambodian humanitarian crisis and exodus of the 1970s-1990s. The conceptualization of the family album is derived from the literal translation, from Khmer into English, of the term “photo album” – “book designated for …

La Terreur Insidieuse : Une Relecture De La Logique De L'Esclavage Dans Ourika, Joslyn Gardner

Pomona Senior Theses

Slavery is commonly characterized by its exceptional violence. La Terreur insidieuse reveals how the physically brutal domination associated with slavery was transformed and reconfigured into a form of benevolence in the novel, Ourika, by Claire de Duras. It has generally been accepted by critics, such as Joan DeJean, Françoise Massardier-Kenney, and Adeline Koh that le Chevalier de B “saved Ourika from the terrible fate of slavery” (Massardier-Kenney 191). However, I argue that Ourika was not rescued from captivity, rather she experiences a benign form of domination, cruelty shrouded as love, which works to render her docile.

I first explore …

Une Rose Des Vents Politique: The Southern Winds Of Jean Genet’S Poetic Compass, Joanne Brueton

Artl@s Bulletin

Iconoclastic French dissident, Jean Genet, notoriously channelled his hatred of the West as a way to discover the South. This article reads Genet’s admiration for the Palestinians as more than just a foil to the imperialist hegemony of a French homeland he reviled; but as a relation of equality that debunks the oppression of North-South dialectics. Tackling Éric Marty and Ivan Jablonka’s accusations of anti-Semitism, as well as criticisms of Orientalism, I use Genet’s 1982 essay ‘Quatre heures à Chatila’ to argue that his Palestinian texts radically re-orient the political compass where the North constructs and reifies a one-dimensional South.

"If They Don't Tell You, The Hair Will": Hair Narrative In Contemporary Women's Writing, Darina Pugacheva

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The history of colonial and racial oppression made hair stories and testimonials fundamental to understanding hair as a unifying element particular for women of African descent in the post-slavery era. Seen as such, their hair narrations provide the first-person perspective of their life experiences while at the same time inviting a critical investigation of colonial and racial oppression. Contemporary women writers develop these types of narrations into a special language of hair that helps them tell a story that is not apparent or straightforward. This literary device that uses hair to uncover deeper social and political issues is bound up …

Qui Est Done « L'Homme De Barbès » ? Le Probleme Du « Nègre » De L'Écriture Migrante Dans Le Ventre De L'Atlantique De Fatou Diome, El Hadji Moustapha Diop

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This paper attempts to revisit the figure of "l'homme de Barbes" as a new form of invisible subalternity deeply inscribed within the texture of Fatou Diome's Le ventre de l'At/lntique, this landmark novel said to usher in a new era in migrant literature, at the intersection between the postcolonial and the transnational. In this respect, Diome's novel is indeed seminal, but from a geocritical perspective. Thus, I argue that the man of/from Barbès must be read as a figure greater than the sum of his narrative and discursive parts. Unlike the Parisian "black bazaar" tagged onto his persona, the "multiplicity …

The New White Moderate: Bearing Witness To The Differend Of Race, Ethan T. Ashley

Honors Theses

As Frantz Fanon demonstrates in his text, Black Skin, White Masks, Sartrean existentialism fails to account for differences in racialized existence. Quite simply, the notion that “existence precedes essence” is reversed in the case of the black subject; he/she is living in a world that has rendered the black subject subservient to a predetermined essence. Ultimately, the fact that the white subject exists and may freely determine his/her essence while the black subject may not further demonstrates this gap or a chasm between black and white subjects that calls for further examination. In the first chapter, I will use …

La Leçon De Ouologuem Ou Le Portrait De L'Artiste En « Pisse-Copie, Nègre D'Écrivains Célèbres », Désiré Nyela

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The transformation of the African griot/storyteller into a writer was built on the sacredness of his mission, animated by the flame of engagement, inspired by blackness. However, the irruption of Ouologuem into the literary scene brought about a Copernican revolution of sorts by paving the way for a parodic reversal in the conception of the writer. Indeed, Ouologuem's knowledge of the asperities of the literary system surrounding the African novelist leads him to deconstruct the sacred character of the writer's figure; a desecration that places the figure of the writer and the fictional characters of his novel on the same …

Figure De L'Écrivain Chez Sami Tchak. Déterminisrne, Fantasme Et Mythe, Vincent Simédoh

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article examines how the figure of the writer manifests himself in the postcolonial novel and the issues associated with all determinisms. Does a representation of oneself in a fictional space give one the possibility of being other than that which one is or is destined to be? Clearly a literary question, in the sense that it makes possibilities exist that are yet unavailable, it comes with few answers. It calls for further investigation to highlight the novelist's consciousness of the present, the writer's image that manifests itself in the novel in various forms by means of fantasies, the creation …

Rhetorique Du Soi Dans La Litterature Francophone Haïtienne Du Xxe Siècle. Manques Et Manquements?, Jasmine Narcisse

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Partant du constat de la précarité du genre autobiographique dans la littérature haïtienne, et des théories formelle (Lejeune), philosophique et historique (Price-Mars, Gusdorf, Fanon, Glissant…), psychanalytique et rhétorique (Fanon, Doubrovsky, Kristeva…) sur le genre lui-même ou traitant de l’identité et de l’individuation, je propose un cadre d’établissement d’un corpus haïtien de l’écriture de soi. Ce sera l’occasion d’analyser les mécanismes mis en place par ces textes pour dire le soi dans une société comme la société haïtienne où le JE est pris en otage par un NOUS lui-même lourdement « surdéterminé » par un legs historique paralysant et l’encombrement social …

Medicine Through Comics: Wheels Are Turning On The Road To Healing. Native Americans Through The Lens Of Francophone Graphic Novels., Nathalie C. Bléser

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

This work analyzes the evolution of the depiction of Native Americans in Francophone graphic novels from Belgium, Switzerland and France, from the 1930s to our present era. The axis around which the comics are organized is the Lakota Medicine Wheel, which, along with works by N.A. scholars, constitutes the basis of the theoretical framework. In this way, the work is guided by a truly multicultural and interethnic approach. The deliberate choice of a span of more than 80 years wishes to show how such depiction evolved and how its observation can bring healing from the mistreatment and misrepresentation experienced by …

Postcolonial Writing In France Before And Beyond The 2007 Littérature-Monde Manifesto, Myriam Louviot

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Postcolonial Writing in France before and beyond the 2007 Littérature-monde Manifesto" Myriam Louviot discusses the evolution of postcolonial writing in France. She argues that postcolonial writers often face great difficulty in achieving recognition as legitimate French authors. Louviot suggests that restrictive boundaries of categorization have started to become blurred but that it is still too early to rejoice, partly due to the continuing cultural ghettoization of many of these writers and the traditional differentiation of their work from French literature. Louviot discusses in detail the 2007 Pour une "littérature-monde" en français initiated by Michel Le Bris and …

Introduction To New Work On Immigration And Identity In Contemporary France, Québec, And Ireland, Dervila Cooke

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided for the introduction.

Thematic Bibliography To New Work On Immigration And Identity In Contemporary France, Québec, And Ireland, Dervila Cooke

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

How To Be A French Jew: Proust, Lazare, Glissant, Paul J. Fadoul

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In my dissertation I use Auerbach's insights developed in his Mimesis to demonstrate that in A la recherche, Proust captures the political and racial concerns of his times, proposing as a solution a heterogeneous French society where cultural, ethnic, and religious groups live together in mutual respect and understanding. In his novel, Proust echoes ideas developed by Bernard Lazare in Le Nationalisme Juif (1897) as well as in the literary output of the first French Jewish Renaissance (early1900’s to the mid1930’s). These authors responded to the portentous mix of Nationalist and anti-Semitic politics by urging the creation of a separate …

Transatlantic Surrealisms, Imagined Homelands, And The Poetry Of Paul Laraque, Maxine C. Anderson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Many theoretical treatments of Caribbean and Latin American surrealism(s), most notably Fredric Jameson and Alejo Carpentier’s foundational essays on magical realism, argue that the surrealism of the European metropole is a sophisticated avant-garde movement, in contrast to the blunt tool of Caribbean and Latin American surrealism which reaches back toward a precolonial past in order to bolster a nationalist project. Existing critical writing about Paul Laraque, a Haitian poet and surrealist identifies Laraque as Haitian first and foremost: as a political poet using surrealism solely in support of a nationalist project. This reading of Laraque’s work fails to reckon with …

Les Débuts Du Réalisateur Mathieu Kassovitz : Problèmes Sociaux Et Portrait Des Années 1990 Dans La Comédie Romantique Métisse Et Le Film De Banlieue La Haine., Joanna Merkel

Vernacular: New Connections in Language, Literature, & Culture

Le cinéma de la décennie des années 90 est marqué par les débuts du réalisateur engagé Mathieu Kassovitz, avec en l’espace de deux ans deux films sortis sur les écrans, Métisse et La haine. Avec des problématiques centrées autour du multiculturalisme français et des tensions entre communautés, ces œuvres sont à cet égard ancrées dans l’actualité alors que la France subit depuis plus de trente ans une période de crise identitaire, où elle s’interroge sur la pérennité de son modèle d’intégration. En donnant voix aux marginalisés, Kassovitz renverse les dynamiques habituelles de pouvoir et permet de donner une plus …

Treasure Hunt Without A Map: Archival Research At The University Of Pennsylvania, Meghan Strong

English and Creative Writing Independent Study Projects

Under the supervision of Meredith Goldsmith in the English Department, I spent this semester developing archival research projects for lower level students in the humanities. My project corresponded with the aims of the Council for Undergraduate Research, which works to develop undergraduate research skills throughout the disciplines. The Kislak Center is a nearby resource that has the potential to provide students with opportunities to develop crucial research skills while discovering little pieces of history that are hidden away in the archives. The final exercises presented here focus on the subjects of Walt Whitman, Marian Anderson, and Michel de Montaigne.

Le Jeune Dreams Of Moose: Altered States Among The Montagnais In The Jesuit Relations Of 1634, Drew Lopenzina

English Faculty Publications

This article explores ruptures of colonial representation in the 1634 contribution of Paul Le Jeune to the Jesuit Relations, particularly in regard to Le Jeune’s intense antipathy to the faith Native Americans placed in dreams and dream interpretation. Native peoples had highly ritualized frameworks for interpreting dreams that stood in stark opposition to the expressed evangelical agendas of the Jesuits. The Montagnais, with whom Le Jeune wintered in 1633–34, used dreams to speak to manitous, who would assist them in finding game and other endeavors. Dreaming itself, with its claims to prophetic vision, was a phenomenon that threatened to override …

Partir Marron: Un Parcours Sémantique À Travers Les Trous De La Mémoire Collective Haïtienne, Lucie Carmel Paul

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The word "marron " represents both a totality, and a specificity. Totalizing, the term refers to the slave who fled from the plantation, against the colonial order, that is, the fugitive slave. Specific, in the Haitian lexicography, it stands for a shifty and cunning individual, particularily a " Woule m debò "1. One has to recognize that there is a double meaning associated with the word, and at the same time, the syntagmatic locution "partir marron " reflects the individual's dependency on phenomenology. The moment of crisis is one of an explosion, through which one can only be …

Albert Camus And The Anticolonials: Why Camus Would Not Play The Zero Sum Game, James D. Le Sueur

Department of History: Faculty Publications

In 1994, I returned from Paris to Hyde Park just in time to catch a lecture about Albert Camus that an esteemed colleague, the late Tony Judt, was giving at the University of Chicago. I was much younger then, eager to engage in debate, and I had just spent most of the past two years turning over the recently opened pages of Camus’ private papers in Paris and trolling through the private papers of other prominent French intellectuals, as well as newly declassified state archives for what was to become my first book, Uncivil War.2 I had also done dozens …

Banlieues, Perspective Spatiale : Déterritorialisation Et Subjectivité Radicale Dans Banlieue Noire Et En Attendant Que Le Bus Explose De Thomté Ryam, Étienne-Marie Lassi

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article studies the social process of the production of the banlieue as a space with a practical function and identifies some of the social itineraries that the young inhabitants of this marginal place can opt for. Using the concepts of territoriality and spatiality, it demonstrates that in Thomté Ryam’s novels, the banlieue is simultaneously a physical space and a social construct that works like a protection from the political power and a dominant public opinion portrayed as the forces of destiny.

Les Écrivains Vietnamiens Francophones Aux Frontières Incertaines, Pham Van Quang

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The Vietnamese Francophone literature began to take shape so early in the late nineteenth century. It develops later in the periods that followed. However, we wonder if this literature is currently in autonomous fi eld. Using the sociology of literature as a point of departure, we would like to dedicate this study to take into account the world of Vietnamese writers, in particular examining how they enter the literary field. Also, before highlighting the concepts of geographic and literary boundaries directly related to Vietnamese writers, we focus our attention on the educational and professional category they occupy. These elements affect …

Spivak After Marx After Derrida, Philip Leonard

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Spivak is often viewed as an unequivocally deconstructive theorist, and she frequently reinforces this impression by proclaiming her allegiance to Derrida's ideas. Recent comments by her suggest, however, that there are limits to her deconstructive convictions. This essay considers some of Spivak's debts to Derrida's work, though it is primarily concerned with those occasions when she states her misgivings about his ability to understand postcoloniality, global power, and resistance movements. Reading Marx more accurately would, she insists, have allowed Derrida both to grasp capitalism's complex logic and to consider the effects of subaltern interventions upon capitalism's global authority. Such an …