International Journal of Francophone Studies - Volume 10, Issue 3, 2007

This article draws from recent research that makes an argument for studying literature from what David Chioni Moore calls the post-Soviet sphere under the rubric of postcolonial theory. It contends that conceiving of countries formerly under Soviet rule as having some characteristics in common with countries once under French colonial rule can yield productive results. It is quite possible that the concentration in literary studies on relations between the First and Third Worlds has left a void with respect to the Second World, at least with respect to francophone writers. We can begin to fill this void by studying texts in French by writers from places formerly under Soviet domination, and this article examines the fictional and theoretical works of Julia Kristeva, Agota Kristof, Milan Kundera, Andre Makine and Brina Svit. Their insights are used here to explore the extent to which intellectuals from small Central and Eastern European countries find themselves in a postcolonial position politically and linguistically similar to that of francophone scholars and writers from the Maghreb, sub-Saharan Africa or the Antilles.

This article explores the anticolonial and postcolonial thought of Haitian revolutionary leader Jean-Jacques Dessalines. Dessalines, like Malcolm X, whom Cornel West calls a prophet of Black rage, is part of a black Atlantic radical tradition. Dessaline's secretary Louis-Flix Boisrond Tonnerre has often been viewed as the author of some of Dessalines' documents, including the Haitian Declaration of Independence, but I argue that Dessalines' voice remains distinctive and that he and his secretaries should be viewed as authorial teams. Dessalines' vision is syncretic, incorporating African diasporan views of the spiritual world and nature into his decisively anticolonial political ideology. These texts challenge the anglophone identity of the black Atlantic, and invite reconsideration of the diverse beginnings of the postcolonial.

This 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 Rgime to the present. In each epoch of the French colonial empire, a theologico-political core governed the effects of censorship and of lingual reduction through the so-called gift of languages. If, according to the Code noir especially, a slave was mute or inaudible by definition, the French and Haitian Revolutions opened a new space for a black discourse in French. Such a lingual event, as well as the triumph of the Jacobinist conception of the national idiom, helps us to understand the uses and ruses of the Third Republic regarding the teaching of the French language in the colonies. Thus, a necessarily (post)colonial francophonie could name the process of bypassing the colonial order of speech and silence.

This article examines the transnational forms of cultural affiliation and Mediterranean margin-to-margin circuits of production with which l'Ecole d'Alger (here, Audisio and Camus) experimented in the 1930s, and highlights new theoretical perspectives appropriate to these practices. The authors' use of a mythicized Mediterranean as a unifying trope downplays national and religious differences to the benefit of a common utopian identity both cosmopolitan in nature and generative of a regional awareness which runs counter to dominant colonial segregationist discourses. Descendants of immigrants from throughout the Mediterranean, these writers occupy a unique positionality which enables them to open new spaces for identification and articulate anti-fascist stances as well as a limited critique of colonial practices. These writers' imaginative affiliations spell out a transnational position, which calls for regional areas of study to be considered autonomously. Attention to regional spaces would constructively displace analytical models where the theoretical existence of marginal spaces is but a by-product of their necessary relation to the metropole. The recognition of margin-to-margin relations leaves room for thories de la Relation in keeping with Glissant's paradigm, thereby showing how, in a global decentred paradigm, relational theories from the margins can provide viable alternative frameworks.

This 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 Afrique Noire, littrature rose, it ties his earliest literary work to these final narrative endeavours. In particular, Afrique Noire insists on two criteria for literary excellence: realism (meaning an acknowledgement of the crimes of colonialism) and popularity (meaning something accessible and read by the Cameroonian people). The problem, according to the author, is that Africans are largely illiterate and too poor to afford books; and France controls the editorial means of production. These combined factors make reconciling the two criteria of popularity and realism impossible. If a novel is popular (sells), which it can only do in France, it is because it does not realistically represent the crimes of colonialism. On the other hand, if the novel is realistic, no one will ever publish or distribute it. Thus, according to Beti, within the colonial and subsequent postcolonial context, the classical realist novel cannot achieve his stated goals. Mongo Beti's turn to crime fiction cunningly reconciles these otherwise contradictory criteria by turning to a popular genre particularly well equipped to speak of the conditions of his homeland.

This article deals with the relationship between music, rhythm and black Caribbean history 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 then argues that despite the importance of rhythm to this experience and to subsequent Caribbean cultural history, most critics and scholars have tended to neglect or ignore rhythm in their work. Drawing evidence from Daniel Maximin's novel L'Isol soleil (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 of Guadeloupean, Caribbean and broader black diasporic history seems to suggest an intimate bond between rhythm, music and Caribbean identity, a bond that Maximin implies has been continually strengthened, even as it has mutated, from the slavery period to the present. The article also considers some of the ways in which Maximin's work relates to that of douard Glissant, notably in terms of narrative structures, and in the authors' conceptions of history, memory and music. Finally, I suggest that Maximin's novel prefigures the current interest among historians of understanding the past through considering its auditory aspects.

Fanon, Beauvoir: two writers, two theorists, who embodied the battles that they fought decolonization and feminism. Although distinct, these two struggles are linked. They share a situatedness: the absolute otherness of women in relation to men and of the colonized in relation to the colonizer. They share a project: to change the 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's La Force des choses, which links French feminism to the project for decolonization. The international visibility of The Second Sex overshadowed Beauvoir's other political projects, notably, her significant role during the Algerian war of independence. The crucial place Fanon accorded to women in his theory of decolonization has been overlooked. In a re-reading of texts by Beauvoir and Fanon, this article explores how these struggles are interconnected at the moment of the Algerian war, and how, in the contemporary postcolonial context, Beauvoir and Fanon can both be read as postcolonial authors.

Soon after the Second World War, a dispute broke out between a group of French intellectuals and the Montral-based publisher Robert Charbonneau. Charbonneau's views 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 Histoire de la littrature franaise in which he is critical of French culture. The two texts mark a break with France, a refusal of its hegemony, and at the same time they give an idea of what was to be known as la littrature qubcoise.

These notes report on the title and text of a short paper given at a round table organized by CRILCQ (Centre de recherch interuniversitaire sur la littrature et la culture qubcoise) at the conference of the American Council for Quebec Studies held in Quebec, 19 November 2004. The question of postcolonialism in Quebec had recently been examined by Vincent Desroches in a special dossier on Quebec and Postcolonialism in the journal Quebec Studies, no. 35, Spring-Summer 2003. However, all those taking part in the round table expressed a certain degree of reticence over the use of the concept in Qubcois literature. One of them, Rjean Beaudoin, subsequently published his point of view in an article entitled Is Qubcois literature postcolonial? His conclusion read: Qubcois literature can take on the ghosts of its dual colonialism. Putting it in the postcolonial ragbag is a desperate attempt to normalise it' (L'Inconvnient, 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. 18192, and the collection entitled Reconfigurations. Canadian Literature and Postcolonial Identities/Littratures canadiennes et identits postcoloniales, edited by Marc Maufort and Franco Bellarsi, Bruxelles, Peter Lang, 2002.

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 40.00

Frantz Fanon: A Portrait, Alice Cherki (2006) Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 255 pp., ISBN 978-0-8014-7308-1 (pbk), 24.95

Francophone Women Film Directors, Janis L. Pallister and Ruth A. Hottell (2005) Madison: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 292 pp, ISBN 0-8386-4046-X (hbk), 40.50

Dark Side of the Light: Slavery and the French Enlightenment, Louis Sala-Molins, Translated and with an Introduction by John Conteh-Morgan (2006) Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, xxxvi + 176 pp., ISBN 0-8166-4389-X, (pbk), 19.50

Mdias et milieux francophones, Michel Beauchamp and Thierry Watine (eds) (2006) Qubec: Les Presses de l'Universit Laval, 300 pp., ISBN 2-7637-8363-5 (pbk), CAN 40

Les Ngres, Maurice Delafosse (2005 [originally published 1927]) Paris: L'Harmattan, 77 pp., ISBN 2-7475-9375-4 (pbk), 12.20

Where Are the Voices Coming From? Canadian Culture and the Legacies of History, Carol Ann Howells (ed.) (2004) New York: Rodopi, 266 pp., ISBN 90-420-1623-X (hbk), 60 US81

Patrick Chamoiseau: Espaces d'une criture antillaise, Lorna Milne (2006) Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 226 pp., ISBN 90-420-2021-0 (pbk), 46

Reinterpreting the Haitian Revolution and its Cultural Aftershocks, Martin Munro and Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw (eds) (2006) Jamaica/Barbados/Trinidad and Tobago: University of the West Indies Press, 192 pp., ISBN 976-640-190-X (pbk), 30

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, 90

Eastern Voyages, Western Visions, French Writing and Painting of the Orient, Margaret Topping (ed.) (2004) Bern: Peter Lang, 395 pp., ISBN 978-3-03910-183-2 (pbk), 61.40 43.00

The Land without Shadows, Abdourahman A. Waberi (1994). Translated by Jeanne Garane, with a foreword by Nuruddin Farah (2005) Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 128 pp., ISBN 0-8139-2507-X (hbk), 45

Assia Djebar: In Dialogue with Feminisms, Priscilla Ringrose (2006) Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 268 pp., ISBN 90-420-1739-2 (hbk), US73

Contemporary French Cultures and Societies, Frdric Royall (ed.) (2004) Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 421 pp. ISBN 978-3-03910-074-3 (pbk), 31.40 22.00

La Francophonie une introduction critique, John Kristian Sanaker, Karin Holter and Ingse Skattum (2006) Oslo: Unipub forlag/Oslo Academic Press, 277 pp., ISBN 82-7477-220-2 (pbk), 30

Remnants of Empire in Algeria and Vietnam: Women, Words and War, Pamela A. Pears (2004) Lanham: Lexington Books, 163 pp., ISBN 0-7391-0831-X (hbk), 58.99

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/US68

Vocabulaire des tudes 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), 20

Voyage of Hope. Vietnamese Australian Women's Narratives, Nathalie Huynh Chau Nguyen (2005) Victoria, Australia: Common Ground, 207 pp., ISBN 186335591-X (pbk), US28.65, 21.29

Sex, Sailors and Colonies: Narratives of ambiguity in the works of Pierre Loti, Hlne de Burgh (2005) Bern, Berlin, Brussels, Frankfurt, New York, Oxford and Vienna: Peter Lang, 322 pp., ISBN 3-03910-601-5 (pbk), 37.90

L'tonnante 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 20

Les jeunes marocains et leurs langues, Jan Jaap de Ruiter (2006) Paris: L'Harmattan, 304 pp., ISBN 2-296-01329-5 (pbk), 25.50

L'Art Franais 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), 48