(Post)Colonial Discourse. Suzanne Mary Chester Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College

Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School 1991 Dominance, Marginality, and Subversion in French (Post)colonial Discourse. Suzanne Mary Chester Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses Recommended Citation Chester, Suzanne Mary, "Dominance, Marginality, and Subversion in French (Post)colonial Discourse." (1991). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 5173. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/5173 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand corner and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back of the book. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6" x 9" black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. University Microfilms International A Beil & Howell Information C om pany 300 North Z eeb Road, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 USA 313/761-4700 800/521-0600 Order Number 9207495 Dominance, marginality, and subversion in Erench (post) colonial discourse Chester, Suzanne Mary, Ph.D. The Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical Col., 1991 UMI 300 N. ZeebRd. Ann Arbor, MI 48106 DOMINANCE, MARGINALITY, AND SUBVERSION IN FRENCH (POST) COLONIAL DISCOURSE A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of French and Italian by Suzanne Chester B.A., University College Dublin, 1983 M.A., Louisiana State University, 1987 August 1991 Table of Contents Abstract........... iii Introduction ......................................... 1 Section 1: French Colonial Narratives Chapter 1. Writing the Subject: Exoticism/Eroticism in Marguerite Duras' L 'Amant and Un barrage contre le pacifigue.................................... 17 2. Centering the Subject: Marginality and Authority in Gide's L' Immoraliste............... 55 3. The Decentered Subject: Modernity and Colonialism in Le Vice-consul ................. 90 Section 2: Post-Colonial Fiction from North Africa 4. The Impossible Genre: Autobiography and the Post-Colonial Woman Writer ................... 128 5. Discourses of Power and Decolonization in Tahar ben Jelloun's L 'enfant de sable ............... 168 Conclusion ........................................... 194 Works Cited .......................................... 205 Vita ................................................. 212 ii Abstract This dissertation examines a selection of fictional texts by Marguerite Duras, Andre Gide, Assia Djebar and Tahar ben Jelloun. In my readings of these colonial and post colonial narratives, I explore the textual strategies which transform marginalized positions based on colonialism, gender, sexual orientation and class into positions of dominance. In Gide and Duras, for example, this is evident in their complicity with dominant ideologies of colonialism. By contrast, the second section of the dissertation focuses on the oppositional strategies in the work of Djebar and ben Jelloun, two post-colonial writers from North Africa. Here, I analyze the ways in which the factors of gender and colonialism affect the "identity" of the post-colonial subject. iii Introduction Introduction This dissertation will explore the relationship between positions of marginality and dominance, and the ways in which such positions are transformed, reinforced or subverted in fictional texts by Marguerite Duras, Andre Gide, Assia Djebar and Tahar ben Jelloun. All four writers lived, or live, in a colonial or post-colonial society, and their texts raise issues pertinent to the historical experience of colonialism from the perspective of both the colonizer and the colonized: Duras' early novel Un barrage contre le oacifique and her later work L 'Amant, for instance, are both set in French colonial Indochina and represent the experience of colonialism from the point of view of a young, lower-class French girl raised in the colonies. Similarly, Le Vice-consul takes place within the French and British diplomatic enclave of colonial India; Gide's narrative L'Immoraliste portrays French colonial North Africa from the perspective of a traveler from the metropole. By contrast, the Algerian Assia Djebar's L'Amour, la fantasia and Ombre sultane are concerned with the history of French colonial domination as experienced by the colonized North African population, and with the cultural, linguistic and political problems of the post-colonial period. Like Djebar, the Moroccan ben Jelloun is concerned with the effects of the imposition of the French language and culture on the colonized, and the consequent erosion of the identity of the Maghrebian peoples, issues which he explores in L'enfant de sable. While the texts of all four writers constitute different forms of colonial discourse--the narrative of French colonialism and/or its legacy in the post-colonial period--they are of particular interest to me in that they not only represent the disenfranchised position of the colonized and the dominant position of the colonizer, but they also explore other forms of oppression--or in some cases privilege--based on gender, class and sexual orientation. My concern, then, is to explore the tensions between these positions, and the ways in which marginalized subject-positions are transformed in writing through recourse to ideologies which valorize and support positions of strength. My dissertation also addresses questions concerning the relationship between autobiography and positions of marginality. Both Duras and Djebar themselves of this genre in their respective attempts to construct a position of strength for the sexual and/or cultural Other. While both Un barrage contre le pacifigue and L'Amant draw on many autobiographical aspects of Duras' life in French Indochina, Duras' use of the autobiographical "I" in L 'Amant enables the narrator to create a position of dominance which radically transforms the representation of the objectified female protagonist in Un barrage. Central to my reading of L 'Amant is the notion of the fictional, constructed character of autobiography, and the rhetorical strategies it deploys, as opposed to the traditional view that the genre offers a true representation of reality and lived experience. Likewise, Djebar's autobiography L'Amour, la fantasia is of interest to my project in as far as she makes use of certain textual strategies in order to contest and subvert the dominant narrative of French colonialism. Moreover, in exploring how Djebar's critique of the subjugation of women in Muslim society is central to the novelistic Ombre sultane, but peripheral to L 'Amour. I maintain that this shift in emphasis is necessitated by an Arabic woman-writer's incursion into the autobiographical genre, and by the colonial politics of women's emancipation. In this fashion, I suggest that the autobiographical act does not offer unproblematic access to the real but is itself constructed by language and by the events of history. The critical apparatus of my project combines a broad and varied range of theoretical approaches. For the most part, I draw on those elaborations of feminist, cultural and deconstuctive theory which I consider most productive for an understanding of the relations between language, 5 history and the body. As far as cultural theory is concerned, Edward Said's Orientalism has been particularly influential in shaping my reading of the relationship between the historical enterprise of European colonialism, and "Orientalism", which he defines as the hegemonic discourse of colonialist and imperialist domination produced by the West about its cultural Other. My conception of a hegemonic discourse, like that of Said, draws on Gramsci's notion of hegemony. In Marxism and Literature, Raymond Williams elaborates on this as follows: Hegemony is then not only the articulate upper level of "ideology", nor are its forms of control only those ordinarily seen as "manipulation" and "indoctrination". It is a whole body of practices

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