ABSTRACTS

Where is la littérature-monde?

Jeanne Garane
(University of South Carolina)

In declaring the arrival of a "littérature-monde" that would at once lay Francophonie to its final rest and divorce the French language from the French nation, the signers of the manifesto "Pour une littérature-monde," and more specifically Michel Le Bris in his introduction to the volume of essays also entitled Pour une littérature-monde (Gallimard, 2007) cite Salman Rushdie's description of transcultural/transnational writers as "translated" men. Indeed, Le Bris relies heavily on the example of "immigrant" writers in Great Britain as literary precursors to the current "littérature-monde" to the exclusion of any mention of "immigrant" or "beur" writers in France during the same period (1980s'). This paper will examine the implications of such an omission while also investigating the uses of Rushdie's translation metaphor as a means to further deconstructing the borders between "national" literatures and "world literature." In its examination of la littérature-monde this paper thus draws on contemporary translation studies and its connections to postcolonial theory.