International Journal of Francophone Studies - Volume 6, Issue 3, 2003

Volcanism has shaped the natural and man-made landscapes of the Lesser Antilles but also remodelled their political and economic activities. This violent interaction has inspired literary authors to explore the role of volcanoes in providing an iconography of resistance. While Aimé Césaire finds inspiration in volcanoes as positive symbols of revolt, other authors, particularly women, tend to be more receptive to their dual identity as rebellious figures and indiscriminate killers. mornes also play a prominent role in the iconography of resistance. Their ruggedness mirror the invincible maroon as it emerged not so much from historical studies as from local folklore and literary portrayals. A gendered reading of mornes emerges as French Caribbean male authors tend to focus on the role they played in marooning while women writers are more aware of mornes as life-giving forces where rivers are born, herbal remedies grow and emotionally wounded characters find solace.

Given the injustices Acadia and French-speaking Acadians have suffered throughout the course of history at the hands of various groups, including the Quebecois, there is a somewhat bitter-sweet or ambivalent view of Quebec and the Quebecois, and, especially, of Montreal in Antonine Maillet's and Claude LeBouthillier's works. This often paradoxical portrait of Montreal is principally the result of its status, on one hand, as a cultural and literary centre, indeed even as a centre of attraction, second in importance as a French-speaking metropolis after Paris and, on the other hand, of its status as an all-assimilating milieu within the context and the whole of North American or Canadian francophony. In addition to specifying the characteristics upon which Montreal's paradoxical portrait is based, this study will seek to explain the possible reasons for such a portrait of Montreal, as well as of the ‘States’, in Maillet's and LeBouthillier's works by taking into account each author's particular writing style.

In Ousmane Sembène's novel and film, Xala, the winding currents of equivocal past, deplorable present, and contested future in relation to Africa intersect when a dramatic encounter occurs between two tricksters: El Hadji, the story's corrupt businessman, and a blind, unnamed street beggar who seeks revenge against him. Traits associated with two different types of tricksters of oral tradition may be discerned, respectively: the insatiable rogue on the one hand (El Hadji), and the avenger and culture hero on the other (the beggar). The invocation of oral narratives in creating modern literary works is a means by which African authors reinterpret and revalidate narrative resources that are part of their heritage. Contemporary writers have drawn on trickster figures of oral tradition partly to amplify the human qualities of their fictional characters, partly to draw on the insights about human nature that tricksters of folklore can offer, and partly to affirm the treasures of indigenous oral traditions.

Mimouni's novelistic discourse hovers between being and non-being, between ‘enonciation’ and ‘silence’, between sense and non-sense. It remains without conclusion, the problematisation of its referent being insurpassable. This is why it will be limited to an endless redundance, to the cries and delirium of its indeterminate repetition.

A repeated theme among anti-Amazigh propagandists is that the Amazigh identity was created by the French and that the Amazigh militants are traitors, working for the French. A common insult is to call the Amazigh ‘sons of the White Fathers’, referring to the missionary Roman Catholic priests that worked in the mountains of Kabylia under French colonialism. Certainly, French colonialism changed the dynamics of North Africa, particularly in Algeria, and the issue of identity has its roots in the divide-and-conquer strategy of the former colonialist power. But it was the Arab identity that was created due to this strategy, and the process was institutionalized under the post-independence regimes, which were influenced by the pan-Arabist ideology of the former Egyptian president, Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Abdelkader Djemaï, Camping Paris: Le Seuil, 2002, 124 pp.

Hugh Roberts, The Battlefield: Algeria 1988–2002. Studies in a Broken Polity London/New York: Verso, 2003, 402 pp.

This page shows a reference list of all the articles that have appeared in this volume of the journal.