Francophone Post Colonial Cultures

The recent rise of Francophone studies within French studies has created the need for a one-volume exploration of the range of expression in the French language following the colonial period. Francophone Post-Colonial Cultures collects discussions of literary texts and cultural identity from Europe, North Africa, the Caribbean, and South Asia--regions of the world that seem to have only the French language in common. Despite enormous differences among all the countries where French is spoken, Francophone literatures tend to deal with a similar spread of issues. This volume positions the study of the Francophone world and its cultures as a comparative project, in which post-colonial Francophone cultures and the specific alterity of these cultures emerge as inextricable from and essential to an understanding of modern France. Organized by region, boasting an international roster of contributors, and including summaries of selected creative and critical works and a guide to selected terms and figures, Francophone Post-Colonial Cultures is an ideal resource for scholars of French literature and advanced students looking to read beyond the French literary canon.

Ethnic minorities, principally from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and the surviving remnants of France's overseas empire, are increasingly visible in contemporary France. Post-Colonial Cultures in France edited by Alec Hargreaves and Mark McKinney is the first wide-ranging survey in English of the vibrant cultural practices now being forged by France's post-colonial minorities. The contributions in Post-Colonial Cultures in France cover both the ethnic diversity of minority groups and a variety of cultural forms ranging from literature and music to film and television. Using a diversity of critical and theoretical approaches from the disciplines of cultural studies, literary studies, migration studies, anthropology and history, Post-Colonial Cultures in France explores the globalization of cultures and international migration.

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.

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.

Organized by region, boasting an international roster of contributors, and including summaries of selected creative and critical works and a guide to selected terms and figures, Salhi's volume is an ideal introduction to French studies beyond the canon.

Post-Migratory Cultures in Postcolonial France offers a critical assessment of the ways in which French writers, filmmakers, musicians and other artists descended from immigrants from former colonial territories bring their specificity to bear on the bounds and applicability of French republicanism, “Frenchness” and national identity, and contemporary cultural production in France.

This book demonstrates how both postcolonial France and the Maghreb cultural identity, and memory are structured in large part through a dialogue with colonial history that impedes a confrontation with contemporary issues important to the present and future of those geographical territories. Cultural Memory and Colonial Haunting between France and the Maghreb represents a comprehensive and cohesive collection of scholarly chapters owing to the breadth and depth of knowledge regarding not only colonial and postcolonial vestiges and on-going relations between France and the Maghreb, but rather all aspects of the Francophone world, as well as mainstream, French contemporary literary studies and theory and the New Europe. Furthermore, this work is an important and refreshing contribution to the field of postcolonial Francophone studies as they relate to contemporary French society and popular culture. Readers will be equally impressed by the cogency and perspicacity of the author's many insightful observations and arguments, which will be of great interest to both specialists of French and Francophone cultural and literary studies. by a top-notch researcher and communicator who knows how to adeptly get his point across both clearly and effectively. The author is equally adept at drawing upon and incorporating into his research a body of critical and theoretical works to make his arguments that much more convincing and well grounded. As this study shows, the author has an excellent grasp of the crucial, cultural, historical, socio-political and literary themes and issues confronting both French and Francophone studies with respect to postcolonial discourse affecting cultural memories of the colonizer/colonized in both space and time. To the author's credit, this study poses some crucial questions and offers some possible, new theoretical and practical avenues to explore or investigate with regard to the dialectic of the Other, such as how the colonized can come to grasp with and fully define his or her own individual identity through the distorted mirror or prism of the collective and necessarily painful colonial experience. the complexities and problematics, the historical and cultural underpinnings, associated with the notion of occulted memories and, more importantly, the evolutive process or mechanism of forging identities. Drawing from the work of historian Pierre Nora, the author convincingly shows how France and the Maghreb are haunted by past, present and future memories or complexes, by colonial lieux de memoire or sites of memory, which perpetuate a polemical, mythical discourse and dialectic owing principally to an obsessive memorialization of colonial history. Such identifications with the colonial ultimately represent an overly deterministic, distorted, nostalgic collective vantage point. The author draws upon Michel Foucault's theory of synchronic anchoring, among other theorists and writers, to make a very compelling argument to account both historically and culturally for these memory and identity distortions or shifts. Possibly one of the most important contributions this book makes is its lucid and illuminating discussion of the pervasive use of haunting as a theoretical metaphor. Bhabha, Ian Chambers, Anne McClintock, and Robert Young, Michael O'Riley points to how these theorists' work can be read as a haunting identification with French colonial history This unique interpretation of Anglophone postcolonial theory provides a highly original and important contribution to Francophone postcolonial studies, but it also demonstrates how theories of postcolonial intervention are frequently formulated through the idea of an affective, haunting colonial aura. O'Riley argues that the theoretical and cultural tropes of haunting so widely employed as a lens through which postcolonial culture identifies with colonial history create an impasse of postcolonial identification. Haunted by the images and memories of colonial history, postcolonial culture forges of the colonial experience a mythical and unique point of identification that precludes identification with contemporary issues of a postcolonial nature such as globalization. common to postcolonial theory is frequently vitiated by the haunting, singular, and quasi-mythical place that colonial history occupies within it. Michael O'Riley's identification of the role that French colonial history places within these dynamics of postcolonial theory is significant and will be of great interest to scholars of the postcolonial. O'Riley's analyses and conclusions stress the need and urgency, as suggested in the works of authors of Maghrebian descent, such as Tahar Ben Jelloun, Leila Sebbar, Assia Djebar, and Azouz Begag, to surpass or transgress this overly static and confining dialectic to create what the author calls the emergence of a nuanced form of postcolonial memory which would, correspondingly, lead to renewed, healthier or more constructive and dynamic perspectives and understandings between former colonizer and colonized. examines how postcolonial figures demonstrate in different ways the obstacles and potential solutions to the imprisonment that colonial sites of memory often present to contemporary relations within and between France and the Maghreb. In other words, even though the author acknowledges that the road is laden with obstacles and pitfalls associated with recalling the past and looking to the future on the part of both French and Maghrebians, he makes the point that these surrogate memories are yet only beginning to be (re)written and their entire significance and impact to be understood and appreciated.

In considering cultural works from French-speaking North Africa and the Middle East all published or released in France from 1962-2011, Solheim’s study of listening across cultural genres will be of interest to any scholar curious about contemporary postcolonial France.