Fictions of Race in Contemporary French Literature

French Writers, White Writing

Étienne Achille, Oana Panaïté (Autoren)

Buch | Hardcover

208 Seiten

2024
Oxford University Press (Verlag)
978-0-19-889313-4 (ISBN)

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Contemporary French writers have embarked on various quests for new sources of thematic and formal inspiration which are increasingly tied to issues of postcolonial legacies. However, French literature has never been consistently examined through the lens of race, ethnicity, and its relation to (post)coloniality. Fictions of Race in Contemporary French Literature is the first scholarly study to engage with the figure of the White writer and explore the White literary gaze in contemporary France. The book highlights the inherent postcoloniality of White Hexagonal literature in a context marked by institutionalized colour-blindness, and offers a reflection on responsible writing in and about postcolonial France.

The book identifies a set of formal features, functions, and aesthetic dispositions which reveal the ways in which White writers grapple with postcolonial subjects. It focuses on seven case studies featuring texts by Marie Darrieussecq, Virginie Despentes, Annie Ernaux, Nicolas Fargues, Pierre Lemaitre, Édouard Louis, and Nicolas Mathieu. Achille and Panaïté argue that it is imperative to recast the enduring boundedness of race and empire as a matter of equal concern to White and non-White writers.

Étienne Achille is Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Villanova University. His publications include the monograph Mythologies postcoloniales. Pour une décolonisation du quotidien (2018, co-authored with L. Moudileno;) and the volume Postcolonial Realms of Memory. Sites and Symbols in Modern France (2020, co-edited with C. Forsdick and L. Moudileno). Oana Panaïté is Ruth N. Halls Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington. She is the author of Des littératures-mondes en français. Écritures singulières, poétiques transfrontalières dans la prose contemporaine (2012), The Colonial Fortune in Contemporary Fiction in French (2017), and Necrofiction and the Politics of Literary Memory (2022).

1: The Universal Invisibility of the French White Writer: Il faut beaucoup aimer les hommes by Marie Darrieussecq
2: Colonial Detail and Textual (Dys)Function: Au revoir là-haut by Pierre Lemaitre
3: The Postcolonial as Vanishing Point: Les Années by Annie Ernaux
4: Chaos and Convergence: Vernon Subutex by Virginie Despentes
5: Postcolonial Otobiography: Histoire de la violence by Édouard Louis
6: Authoring Postcolonial Normality: Leurs enfants après eux by Nicolas Mathieu
7: Calling Out the iNovel: Je ne suis pas une héroïne by Nicolas Fargues
Conclusion: The Kairos of White Writing. Building the Common Library of Literature in French

Erscheinungsdatum	05.04.2024
Verlagsort	Oxford
Sprache	englisch
Maße	165 x 240 mm
Gewicht	468 g
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
ISBN-10	0-19-889313-2 / 0198893132
ISBN-13	978-0-19-889313-4 / 9780198893134
Zustand	Neuware