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- Volume 13, Issue 3, 2011
International Journal of Francophone Studies - Volume 13, Issue 3-4, 2011
Volume 13, Issue 3-4, 2011
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Introduction: Mauritius in/and global culture: politics, literature, visual arts
Authors: Franoise Lionnet and Thomas C SpearIndependent since 1968, Mauritius is often cited as a unique example of peaceful and proud multiculturalism and multilingualism. Political scientists, sociologists and cultural critics have stressed the nation's enviable diversity and its cosmopolitan Creole culture. A British Crown colony between 1810 and 1968, Mauritius is part of the Commonwealth but remains strangely invisible in Anglophone postcolonial discourse. Even the 2004 Cambridge Companion to Postcolonial Literary Studies, which opens with a useful and detailed chronology of the relevant political, historical and literary events that took place between 1898 and 2003, makes no mention of this island-nation when listing the dates of independence for countries in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean. This collection of essays on contemporary Mauritius, its artists and writers seeks to establish an interdisciplinary critical conversation about historical and current dynamics, globalization and its gendered inequalities, visual and literary culture, creolization and cosmopolitanism. The volume brings to a bilingual public a small sample of the vitality of Mauritian artists active in many media.
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Between words and images: A comparative study of Barlen Pyamootoo's Bnars and its film adaptation
By Srilata RaviThis study investigates the relation between literature in French and emerging cinema in Mauritius. It will focus specifically on a comparative analysis between Pyamootoo's novel Bnars (1999) and its film adaptation (2005). It will first examine the themes of absence and immobility central to the novel and show how the film transposes these thematic considerations on to the big screen. Secondly, it will examine the imagined tale of the voyage to Banaras, the Indian city, which is embedded in the main narrative of the return voyage to the Mauritian village of Bnars. In the novel, this play between the real and the imagined narratives is a crucial strategy that breaks the linearity of a conventional travel narrative. The discussions will demonstrate how the film deals with this important textual feature. Finally, it will ask if Pyamootoo's filmic transformation of his novel reinforces cultural differences that are discreet and underplayed in the original text. The responses to these interconnected questions along with a reflection on the use of Mauritian Creole as the film's language will provide a set of crucial analyses to review the concepts of national, transnational and universal in the context of Mauritian literature and culture.
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La littrature mauricienne et les dbuts de la critique
More LessJean-Louis Joubert used to say that Mauritian literature has been around for a very long time, but remains in the shadows. The same can be said about the local critical discourse that emerged alongside Mauritian literature from its beginnings. The colonization of Mauritius in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was initially characterized by the absence of literature given that its inhabitants were struggling to clear and sow the land. In the nineteenth century, the colonial elites began to feel the need to enlighten the populace, to bring about a sense of belonging and to do so through the establishment of a literary heritage that would be recognized by the motherland (France) and by the other islands of the Indian Ocean. This patriotic objective was taken up by the first literary journals supported by literary groups which produced the journals. Those journals have played a predominant role in the rapid growth of Mauritian literature and its literary criticism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This local critical discourse, mainly by author-journalists, shows two trends: francotropisme and mauricianisme. It also played a major role in giving Mauritian literature its distinct identity.
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Narrations de l'altrit l'le Maurice
More LessUsing several twentieth-century Mauritian novels that stage the difficulties inherent in the island's social order and evoke the formation of possible new social links, this study focuses on the representation of otherness in the culture of the island. Literature has long served in Mauritius as an important locus for the definition and discussion of the nature and content of forms of sociality and what is termed here being-together. The works of the intellectual and social elite that were published in the pre-independence years, between 1920 and 1968, were crucial in the formation of values. Since the 1970s, new writings and the re-evaluation of history have challenged dominant interpretations by exposing race, ethnic and gender issues within national debates. The four literary texts discussed here underscore a more layered and plural vision of existing social conditions and the forms of togetherness they generate. These novels provide a key that allows for the decoding of a multiplicity of intersecting, juxtaposed or opposed worlds in which the representations of self and other are dialectically constructed and deconstructed, whether the other is close or distant and whether the fictional circumstances are those of rejection, fascination and/or appropriation. These fictional representations foreground the question of otherness, and the methodology used in this article consists in analyzing the mechanisms of negation of the other that play themselves out in the social contexts and the symbolic space of the literary narrative.
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Dfense et illustration d'un universel mauricien
More LessThis article analyses the representation of Creole culture in Mauritius, mainly in Ananda Devi's novels and in the movie, The Cathedral (2006), adapted from one of her short stories by Harrikrisna Anenden. It brings out the paradox in the use of the term Creole, which refers both to a precise ethnic community and to the language and culture of all Mauritians. The notion of rhythm is used here to understand the representation of two main components of this culture, sga dance and the Creole language. Rhythm organizes what is commonly perceived as chaotic, and the article focuses on the link between Creole culture and the capital city, Port Louis. This city is a privileged site where the creolization process occurs, with its dynamic tensions between cohesion and territorialization, understood as the slippages that mark the invisible borders of various ethnic communities. Devi's work foregrounds the question of becoming Creole in relation to the violent consequences of ethnic encounters and their transgressions. In ve de ses dcombres, a homoerotic relationship serves as metaphor for ethnic transgressions. It is a way of denouncing and countering the prohibitions against interethnic relationships on this plural island.
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Mapping territories of affective communities in the Indian Ocean
More LessThe preponderance of studies on shame during the past 30 years has coincided with a radical transformation in literary studies, particularly in the wake of an increasing volume of trauma literature. In a theoretical climate, plagued by the post phenomenon, following the historical atrocities of slavery, the Holocaust, colonization, apartheid and recurring genocides with which present day history contends, testimonial literature is singularly symptomatic of transnational human sufferings. Shifting away from the commonplace themes of ethnicity, religion and language, which tax the heterogeneous Mauritian society, Shenaz Patel, in Sensitive (2003), places at the centre of the narrative the verbal, physical and sexual abuses inflicted upon an 11-year-old girl. This article examines how the author illuminates the fundamental role that shame plays in structuring identity. It suggests a semantic shift in the vocabulary used to determine identities and configures new affective territories which connect humans from within.
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Figures fminines et construction identitaire dans les romans de Shenaz Patel
More LessThis article examines the representation and function of female characters in the fiction of Shenaz Patel, who belongs to the new generation of Mauritian writers. Three novels depicting recent social disruptions on the island are analyzed: Le Portrait Chamarel (2001), Sensitive (2003) and Le Silence des Chagos (2005). Each novel explores more or less explicitly a quest for identity. The identity may be both asserted and questioned as in Le Portrait Chamarel, denied and reclaimed as in Le Silence des Chagos or confused and uncertain as in Sensitive. This analysis of Patel's writing brings to light patterns of meaning and their symbolic and poetic images in particular, the significance of proper names and faces and the recurring link between voice and silence. The article shows how the female characters deal with the difficulties they encounter in their identity construction and the answers they devise: a utopia of multi-coloured insularity, a utopia in reverse or revolt and violence. These solutions and the critical approach used here show that ethical considerations are inseparable from questions of literary aesthetics.
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L'exprience de la violence dans le roman mauricien francophone de la nouvelle gnration
More LessFrancophone Mauritian literature has been occupied, for some years now, by the question of violence. A new generation of writers is engaged in redefining the poetics of insular space, from both an aesthetic and an ethical point of view, focusing on the violence that marks and mars postcolonial Mauritian society. This article discusses the poetics of this new writing as seen in the works of Nathacha Appanah-Mouriquand, Ananda Devi, Shenaz Patel and Carl de Souza. It addresses first the representation of violence and describes how this new writing deconstructs clichs as well as formulaic descriptions of the island, while providing more realistic descriptions of contemporary Mauritian society, with its episodes of violence that can sometimes be extreme. The article will then address the violence of writing itself, and the subversive aspects of language and of the novel in a contemporary literary context that is increasingly subject to ethical and aesthetic transgression.
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Malcolm de Chazal, pote et artiste intgral
More LessThis article presents one of the most important artists of Mauritius, Malcolm de Chazal, and explains why international criticism has up to now been unable to offer a fully comprehensive analysis of his work. The fact is that Chazal has made use of different media (aphorisms, metaphysical and political economy essays, theatre, painting, newspaper chronicles). Besides, a large number of his 57 books (54 during his lifetime) have been published in Mauritius and often printed in 100 copies only. For these reasons, no critic outside Mauritius has up to now done a thorough analysis of Chazal's work and most of them stick to the few books published in Paris or available in some libraries abroad (Bibliothque Nationale de France, United States Library of Congress, National Library of Australia). His work still remains to be discovered, and this article insists on a necessary holistic approach of the different media used. The author believes that Chazal wrote for the future rather than for the past.
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Malcolm de Chazal: De la rception la dception, ou comment devenir metteur mauricien
More LessMalcolm de Chazal (12 September, 1902 to 1 October, 1981) was educated in the United States at Louisiana State University. He returned to his island home in 1925 and remained there until his death. Chazal played an important role in French literary history when he sent his self-published Sens-Plastique II to a number of French writers, artists and intellectuals. This article contains a detailed description of Chazal's exchanges with Jean Paulhan, Georges Duhamel, Francis Ponge, Aim Patri and Jean Dubuffet in the period from 1947 to 1949. It relates the reception of his work in France and Chazal's subsequent disappointment when this interest was not sustained. The postWorld War II context of French literary life had bearing on his initial positive reception. The particularity of his frames of reference and the inability to assimilate him to literary movements in the French metropolitan context led to his disfavour. Chazal, undiscouraged, turned to Mauritius for his inspiration and continued to be highly productive for the next four decades. The episode is important for following generations of Mauritian writers because it brought Mauritius and the specificity of its literary tradition to the attention of the Francophone world. Moreover, Malcolm de Chazal's writings, especially Sens-Plastique, are canonical elements of the twentiethcentury French literature.
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Maurice, tiers monde de la bande dessine?
More LessKnown for its abundant literary production endowed with solid and well-established publishing houses, bestowed with a long tradition of caricatures and editorial cartoons, the island of Mauritius has, nevertheless, done little to recognize bandes dessines or BDs. This situation is not, however, the result of an absence of graphic or visual talent, for the country is teeming with painters and other artists. Rather, the main reason stems from the status of the BD in the country, undervalued by many and seen as destined for a young audience that is typically ignored by publishing houses.
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Mauritian cinema and global spectators
More LessThis introductory essay addresses the reception of The Cathedral (2006) by filmmaker Harrikrisna Anenden. It focuses on the way in which the visualized Creole culture translates and transmits a specific Mauritian way of life that appeals to a global spectatorship. The essay is followed by an interview with the director who speaks about the process of cinematic adaptation of the short story La Cathdrale (1977) by Ananda Devi. He explains the challenges he faced during the production of his first feature film in Mauritius.
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Book Reviews
France/China: Intercultural Imaginings, Alex Hughes (2007) London: Legenda. Research Monographs in French Studies 22. Modern Humanities Research Association and Maney Publishing, 116 pp., ISBN 978-1-904350-93-4 (hbk), 40Postcolonial Eyes: Intercontinental Travel in Francophone African Literature, Aedn N Loingsigh (2009) Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 216 pp., ISBN 978-1-84631-049-2 (hbk), 65Perspectives Critiques: L'oeuvre d'Hdi Bouraoui, Elizabeth Sabiston and Suzanne Crosta (eds) (2006) Ontario: Srie monographique en sciences humaines/Human Sciences Monograph Series, 415 pp., ISBN 978-0-88667-070-2, paperbackBreton, Andr, Martinique Snake Charmer, with text and illustrations by Andr Masson, translated by David W Seaman, and an Introduction by Franklin Rosemont (2008) Austin, Texas UP, 117 pp., ISBN: 978-0-292-71765-7, hardback, $19.95Native Sons: West African Veterans and France in the Twentieth Century, Gregory Mann (2007) Durham London: Duke University Press, 333 pp., ISBN 0-8223-3768-1 (pbk), $23.95Richesses: Francophone Songwriter Poets, edited and translated by Aidan Hayes (2008) Cork: Southword Editions, 128 pp., ISBN 978-I-905002-30-6 (hbk), 12Incidental Ethnographers: French Catholic Missions on the TonkinYunnan Frontier, 18801930, Studies in Christian Mission, 33, Jean Michaud (2007) Leiden and Boston: Brill, 279 pp., ISBN 978 9004 13996-1 (hbk), 104La langue franaise au Congo-Brazzaville. Manifestation de l'activit langagire des sujets parlants, Mfoutou, Jean-Alexis (2007) Paris: L'Harmattan. 540 pp., ISBN: 978-2-296-03348-1, Hardback, 42REDOUANE Najib (sous la direction), Clandestins dans le texte maghrbin de langue franaise (2008) Paris: L'Harmattan, coll. Autour du texte maghrbin, 258 pp., ISBN 978-2-296-06500-0, 23,50 la carte: Le roman qubcois (20002005), Gilles Dupuis and Klaus-Dieter Ertler (eds) (2007) Bern, Berlin, Brusses, Frankfurt on Main, New York, Vienna: Peter Lang, 493 pp., ISBN 978-3-631-55340-4, paperback, 49.50/ 37.10Between Languages and Cultures: Colonial and Postcolonial Readings of Gabrielle Roy, Rosemary Chapman (2009) Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 308 pp., ISBN 978-0-7735-3496-4 (hbk), 52.25Regards croiss sur le Canada et la France: Voyages et relations du XVIe au XXe sicle, Pierre Guillaume & Laurier Turgeon (eds) (2007) Paris, Qubec: ditions du Comit des travaux historiques et scientifiques, Presses de l'Universit Laval, 396 pp., ISBN 978-2-7355-0629-3/978-2-7637-8577-6, paperback, 30, Cdn$45.Vitalit littraire au Maroc. Autour des textes maghrbins, Najib Redouane (ed.) (2009) Paris: L'Harmattan, 367 pp., ISBN 978-2-296-08214-4 (pbk), 33.50Histoires inventes. La Reprsentation du pass et de l'histoire dans les littratures franaise et francophones, Elisabeth Arend, Dagmar Reichardt and Elke Richter (eds) (2008) Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 269 pp., ISBN 978-3-631-56966-5 (pbk), 29.40Rituals of Memory in Contemporary Arab Women's Writing, Brinda Mehta (2007) Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 303 pp., ISBN 0-8156-3135-4 (hbk), $45.00
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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)