ABSTRACTS

« Littérature-Monde » and « World Literature »: A Comparison in the Tracks of Colonialism

Fazia Aitel
(Claremont McKenna College)

"Littérature-Monde" and "World Literature": A Comparison in the Tracks of Colonialism

In this paper, I compare the Anglophone concept of "world literature" to its French equivalent namely, "la littérature-monde". While discussing the major differences between both concepts, I look at the specificities of Francophone literature with reference to texts by Alain Mabanckou and Boualem Sansal.

First I analyze elements which have been crucial to the development and boom of enthusiasm surrounding world literature in the Anglophone world. Importantly I pay special attention to the role of postcolonial theories and how they sometimes encounter resistance in the francophone world. This resistance is in part due to the state of colonial memory in France for France refuses to recognize its postcolonial status as we are continually reminded.

Second, I look at francophone writers who claim to have entered, or claim the right to enter, into a comfort zone where French is a world language like English and therefore belongs to those who possess and use it ("La langue appartient à ceux qui la possèdent et l'utilisent" claims Boualem Sansal). This position is legitimate and probably rings true to many. Indeed, the champion of "la littérature-monde" Alain Mabanckou declares that he considers Nigerian author Wole Soyinka a foreigner while Louis Ferdinand Céline is not because of the language in which they respectively write.

However, I also argue that writing in French today still carries much discomfort and to uncouple the French language from the French nation, to free francophone literature from the power of the French state is still a troubled work in progress. Pushing the reasoning further, I would argue that the position of "comfort" that some claim/appreciate/enjoy does not exist without a certain awkwardness and denial of alienation and this is true even for writers whose only language is French. Derrida's position towards French, which he deemed the only language he could call his own but still does not possess ("je n'ai qu'une langue et ce n'est pas la mienne"), buttresses my point here. Further one might deem all relationships to language as alienated since alienation is intrinsic to language itself (following Lacan and many others). I do not intend to discuss these positions in any serious detail in this paper, and these are somewhat extreme, but my point is to argue that writing in French brings constraints and is not a purely linguistic choice. It is actually the teasing out of this inadequacy, foreignness, and discomfort as found in texts by authors from formerly colonized countries which is the primary objective of this paper. From Mabanckou and Sansal we might extrapolate how these notions are really paradigms that run throughout francophone literature from its very inception, which was violent, to the present, and mark the major difference between "world literature" and "la literature-monde".