1st Edition
Francophone Postcolonial Studies A critical introduction
This landmark text constitutes the first comprehensive overview of Francophone
Postcolonial Studies. Moving away from reductive geographical or linguistic surveys of the Francophone world, this collection of original essays provides a thematic discussion of the complex historical, political and cultural links between France and its former colonies. Providing a theoretical framework for postcolonial criticism of the field, it also aims to trigger a genuine dialogue between Francophone and Anglophone scholars of postcolonialism.
Part I provides a historical overview, from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, addressing issues of colonialism, slavery and exoticism. Part II looks at language issues and discusses France's belief in the universality of its language and culture and the postcolonial challenges to that view. Part III discusses issues of diversity and multiculturalism in contemporary Francophone cultures. Part IV concludes with an analysis of the French-language contribution to postcolonialism as well as an examination of Francophone postcolonial thought and culture in the principal areas of the French-speaking world.
Edited by two of the up-and-coming names in Francophone Postcolonial Studies, the collection includes contributions from an international team including some of the world's leading scholars in the field.
The Case for Francophone Postcolonial Studies
Section 1 Historical Perspectives: from slavery to decolonization
1. Seeds of Postcolonialism: black slavery and cultural difference to 1800
2. In Search of the Haitian Revolution
3.‘Of Whatever Color’: (dis)locating a place for the creole in nineteenth-century French literature
4. Revisiting Exoticism: from colonialism to postcolonialism
5. Empire on Film: from exoticism to cinéma colonial
6. The Camus-Sartre Debate and the Colonial Question in Algeria
7. Resistance, Submission and Oppositionality: national identity in French Canada
Section 2 Language and Identity in the Francophone World
8. ‘Francophonie’ and ‘Universalité’: evolution of two notions conjoined
9.‘Séparisianisme’, or internal colonialism
10.‘This Creole Culture, miraculously forged’: the contradictions of ‘créolité’.
11. Reading ‘Orality’ in French-Language Novels from Sub-Saharan Africa
Section 3 Postcolonial Axes: Nation and Globalization in Contemporary Francophone Cultures
12. Tactical Universalism and New Multiculturalist Claims in Postcolonial France
13. The Contribution of North and Sub-Saharan African Immigrant Minorities to the Redefinition of Contemporary French Culture
14. Immigration, Tourism and Postcolonial Reinventions of Travel
15. Frantz Fanon, Atlantic Theorist, or Decolonization and Nation State in Postcolonial Theory
Section 4 Postcolonial Thought and Culture in the Francophone World
16. ‘Faire peau neuve’—Césaire, Fanon, Memmi, Sartre and Senghor
17. Contesting Contexts: Francophone Thought and Anglophone Postcolonialism
18. Francophone Women Writers and Postcolonial Theory
19. Postcolonial Thought and Culture in Francophone North Africa
20. Beyond Tradition versus Modernity: Postcolonial Thought and Culture in Francophone Sub-Saharan Africa
21. Postcolonial Thought and the Francophone Caribbean
22. Resisting Colonialism? Gabrielle Roy and the cultural formation of Francophones in Manitoba
23. Colonial Undercurrents? The motif of the Mekong in Marguerite Duras’s ‘Indochinese’ texts
Bibliography
Index
Biography
Charles Forsdick is James Barrow Professor of French at the University of Liverpool.
David Murphy is Professor of Postcolonial Studies at the University of Stirling, Scotland.
