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- Volume 11, Issue 3, 2008
International Journal of Francophone Studies - Volume 11, Issue 3, 2008
Volume 11, Issue 3, 2008
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Introduction: departmentalization's continuing conundrum: locating the DOM-ROM between home and away
More LessThis collection of essays probes the resonances of the sixtieth anniversary of some of France's overseas colonies gaining accession to full integration into the metropole as dpartements. This event stands out in that it marks the only occasion in European colonial history where colonies on the verge of transformation were integrated into the political structure of the former colonial power. The compound issues undergirding the ongoing departmental relationship suggest a hierarchical structure still predicated on neocolonial patterns of domination and submission, centre and periphery. From ngritude through antillanit and crolit, the deployment of various discourses of resistance and identity has not foreclosed the large-scale displacement of French Caribbean subjects to France that followed departmentalization in 1946, resulting in new ethnic and community concentrations and a certain creolization of the metropole itself. It is the tensions arising from these intersections of integration, migration and difference that lead us to interrogate the ways in which this process of exchange produces an increasingly pluralized and, perhaps, polarized metropole and its problematization of French principles of universalism.
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Haiti and departmentalization: the spectral presence of Toussaint Louverture
More LessThe article explores the ways in which discussion of the departmentalized French Caribbean must take into account the wider history of the region, and in particular historical links between the former vieilles colonies, Guadeloupe, Martinique and Haiti. Studying the historical and ideological background to the departmentalization law of 1946, it suggests that Haiti serves as an inspiration for the structures on which it depends, but reveals at the same time the difficult relationship between equality and alterity it attempts to forge in the context of French Republicanism. The starting point is Glissant's observation, in Monsieur Toussaint, that the revolutionary leader risks being relegated to public silence; the article claims, however, that the presence of the Haitian revolution remains spectral. Central to the study is Csaire, both as author and politician, and the place of Haiti in his thought and work. Exploring a range of texts, including parliamentary speeches, material written for the centenary of the abolition of slavery (1948), and, most significantly, a 1960 essay on Toussaint Louverture, the article suggests that Haiti and its revolution played a key role in Csaire's initial championing of departmentalization as well as in his subsequent analysis of limitations of the 1946 law.
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Imaginaires de la dpartementalisation: les indpendances en miroir
More LessThis essay analyses the texts of Glissant and Confiant to explore the consequences of departementalization on the representation of Africa in the Antillean imagination. The patient and methodic exploration of Africa allows Glissant to produce a critical and complex perspective on Africa whereas Confiant, following up on the theorized indifference promoted by Crolit towards Africa, does not distance himself from a stereotypical representation of the continent. The departmentalization of the Antillean imagination, defined here as the assimilation of its discourse by the franco-centric gaze, is a consequence of the 1946 departmentalization of the Antilles.
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Memory as reparation? The politics of remembering slavery in France from abolition to the Loi Taubira (2001)
More LessThis article charts the parallel evolution of the memory of slavery and the political status of French people from the vieilles colonies in relation to the problem of justice and reparation in a post-slavery society. By examining legal texts and political discourse produced at three critical junctures in the history of France's overseas departments: the 1848 abolition, the 1946 law of departmentalization and the 1998 national commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in French territories, the author situates the current will to remember in the context of a history in which slavery has been, in the words of one prominent Caribbean writer, a crime without process. The aim is to demonstrate the ways in which both the official recollection and the forgetting of slavery have been instrumental to attempts on the part of the French state and of the framers of departmentalization to resolve or to displace the question of France's possible obligations legal, ethical, material and symbolic towards those it once enslaved, as the political status of these groups has changed over time. The French case is considered with respect to current theoretical debates around questions of memory, law and reparation of gross human rights violations.
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Relire La lzarde: Victoire et mlancolie de la dpartementalisation
More LessThis article examines the discourse surrounding departmentalization in Antillian literature through an analysis of Edouard Glissant's 1958 La lzarde (The Ripening). It argues that the final melancholy of the hero (and mouthpiece of the author), though ignored by Glissant's numerous critics, serves to nuance the positive representation of the victorious local elections in Martinique. Far from a minor detail, the postcolonial hero's melancholy, which stands in contrast to the collective elation following the election of the local representative (inspired by the real-life candidacy of Aim Csaire), proves upon closer examination to be an indispensable element of Glissant's commentary on the electoral period of 19456 in Martinique. La lzarde, the first novel by Glissant, who would become the greatest thinker of antillanit in the francophone context, when read in this light, thus becomes a unique reflection on the limits and paradoxes of the transition in 1946 from a colonial status to that of a department assimilated to France.
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Of beauty, cosmopolitanism, and history in postcolonial Runion
Authors: Anjali Prabhu and Adlai MurdochSparked off by the revocation of Miss France's crown after compromising photographs of her were found, this article traces how this incident resulted in the foregrounding of the beauty queen's Runionese identity and, with it, the history of her island and its relationship to France. Interrogating simplistic ideas of hybridity as mixing, and showing it to be tied to a politics of action and identity in Runion, this paper draws on previous work on hybridity and mtissage in Runion. The limits of beauty as a universal are questioned by drawing attention to the prevailing dominant male gaze as a precondition of such a universalizing principle, while at the same time cosmopolitanism is shown to be a worldview that seems untenable to those experiences that make up a certain Runionese reality identifiable today.
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Femmes, fminitude, fminisme: An afternoon with Suzanne Dracius
More LessSuzanne Dracius is one of Martinique's most prominent authors. In this interview she discusses her first novel L'autre qui danse and the complex personalities of its characters, the inspiration for her writing gained from being in Martinique and the importance of women's movements. She explains women's difficult positions in modern society and situates the root for many of the problems experienced today in the past, although she does not shy away from placing blame on today's men and women as well. Her mixed heritage, as well as the various cultures that influenced her upbringing, have clearly determined her literary style, and her feminist stance has led her to coin the neologism fminitude. Despite her sometimes tragic depiction of societal problems in Martinique and the metropole, Dracius remains optimistic and passionate about the role of women and the progression of women's rights.
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Book Reviews
Des Voix contre le silence, Anne Marie Miraglia (2005) Durham: Durham Modern Languages Series, 156 pp., ISBN 0-907310-60-5 (pbk), 14.50
Breadfruit or Chestnut? Gender Construction in the French Caribbean Novel, Bonnie Thomas (2006) Lanham, Boulder, New York, Toronto, Oxford: Lexington Books, 201 pp., ISBN 0-7391-1583-9 (hbk), $60.00
Josephine Baker in Art and Life: The Icon and the Image, Bennetta Jules-Rosette (2007) Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 368 pp., ISBN 9780252074127 (pbk), US$25
L'Illusion de l'altrit. tudes de littrature africaine, Bernard Mouralis (2007) Paris: ditions Honor Champion, coll. Bibliothque de Littrature Gnrale et Compare, dir. Jean Bessire, 784 pp., ISBN 978-2-7453-1483-3 (hbk), 125
Sheer Presence: The Veil in Manet's Paris, Marni Reva Kessler (2006) Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 215 pp., ISBN 0-8166-4782-8 (pbk), $22.50
Diplomates crivains du Canada, Jean-Franois de Raymond (2007) Brussels, Bern, Frankfurt, New York, Oxford, Vienna: Peter Lang, 164 pp., ISBN 978-90-5201-346-6 (pbk), SFR36, 14.90
Tunisie: Rve de partages, edited by Guy Dugas (2005) Lonrai: Omnibus, 1065 pp., ISBN 2-258-06679-4 (pbk), 23.75
Victims and Victimization in French and Francophone Literature, edited by Buford Norman (2005) Amsterdam: Rodopi, Francophone Literature Series, xii + 184 pp., ISBN: 9-0420-1615-9 (pbk), $54
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Volumes & issues
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Volume 26 (2023)
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Volume 25 (2022)
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Volume 24 (2021)
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Volume 23 (2020)
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Volume 22 (2019)
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Volume 21 (2018)
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Volume 20 (2017)
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Volume 19 (2016)
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Volume 18 (2015)
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Volume 17 (2014)
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Volume 16 (2013)
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Volume 15 (2012 - 2013)
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Volume 14 (2011)
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Volume 13 (2010 - 2011)
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Volume 12 (2009)
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Volume 11 (2008)
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Volume 10 (2007)
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Volume 9 (2006)
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Volume 8 (2005)
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Volume 7 (2004)
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Volume 6 (2003)
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Volume 5 (2003)
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Volume 4 (2001 - 2002)