ABSTRACTS

Conversations with Michel Le Bris and Mohamed Razane

Laura Reeck
(Allegheny College)

Conversations with Michel Le Bris and Mohamed Razane





Only months after the publication of the "Pour une littérature monde" manifesto, 10 signatories released the "Collectif Qui fait la France" manifesto (September 2007): "Nous, fils de France, issus d'ici, lassés d'ignorance des nantis face à nos cris de détresse, nos appels à l'aide et nos lettres restées mortes, nous tournons aujourd'hui nos voix et nos plumes vers la nation en nous levant comme un seul homme, comme une seule encre." The authors of the Collectif  with the exception of Faïza Guène  all published first novels following the 2005 riots in a literary environment characterized by Alain Mabanckou on his blog: "Les émeutes des banlieues françaises ont précisément coïncidé avec la période des remises des prix littéraires, et les jeunes des cités auraient eu toutes les raisons d'être mécontents du palmarès. La littérature française persiste en effet à ignorer l'existence des banlieues défavorisées." This temporal coincidence of the October riots with the rentrée littéraire is indeed provocative; it defines the social death and literary void against which the members of the Collectif position themselves.





On the face of it, the "Pour une littérature monde" and "Collectif Qui fait la France?" signatories speak from different locations and the manifestos point in different directions -- the first outward toward what can broadly be seen as Edouard Glissant's Tout Monde, and the second inward toward borders and thresholds that continue to exist within France. But their concerns are not altogether different. Both evoke the embattled and sometimes incendiary relationship between the center and the periphery, whether between the metropolitan center and its French-speaking satellites (including many of France's former colonies) or between France's biggest cities and their banlieues défavorisées. Both denounce France's cultural imperialism and the strictures of the "place de Paris" (Razane). Together they call for a geopolitical decentering that would give rise to a new literary vocabulary in which the labels "Francophone author" and "écrivain de banlieue" would fall away.





In bringing together Michel Le Bris and Mohamed Razane, I want to explore further their ideas about the nature of the literature they promote as well as their views on authorship and the public intellectual. I hope to identify the particular circumstances (literary and social) that gave rise in 2007 to these two manifestos privileging "ex-centric" perspectives. Finally, I want to determine whether in the views of Le Bris and Razane their manifestos ultimately work together or against each other. Specifically, does the committed realism of the Collectif contradict the littérature monde? And, is it possible to "penser le monde" without detracting from the urgency felt in the local context of the banlieues défavorisées in France?