ABSTRACTS

Neither "Créolofrancophone" nor "Francopériphéricophone": Fabienne Kanor Untitled Tell(h)er

Sophie Saint-Just
(CUNY Graduate Center)

A novelist and filmmaker of Martinican-descent born and raised in France, Fabienne Kanor refuses to be conveniently inscribed within the French Caribbean Négritude-Antillanité-Créolité literary continuum. In "Sans titre," her tongue-in-cheek contribution to the manifesto Pour une littérature-monde, Kanor charts her cultural identity. Her text presented as a two-act play explores how works by French-speaking Western, African, and Caribbean authors have shaped her writing. Yet Kanor is essentially arguing that, as an author, she is entitled not only to remain "untitled" ("Sans titre") but also to define her work outside of the boundaries of existing Caribbean discourses, however seminal. Instead, Kanor opts for simply defining herself as a "diaspora seconde generation." This paper explores how Fabienne Kanor's version of littérature-monde exists on the halting mode of a diseuse that participates in and disrupts multiple discourses: literary (Hummus and D'eaux Douces) and cinematic (La noiraude), pan-Caribbean and afro-diasporic (Guy Deslauriers' and Derek Walcott's), and Euro-centric. Kanor's women-centered narratives simultaneously speak back to the metropole, interrogate previous generation of Caribbean male writers and filmmakers, and explore urban black French identity.