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Perspectives from French West Indian Literature

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Perspectives from French West Indian Literature ON BEING WEST INDIAN IN POST-WAR METROPOLITAN FRANCE: PERSPECTIVES FROM FRENCH WEST INDIAN LITERATURE by ROSALIE DEMPSY MARSHALL A thesis submitted to The University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of French Studies University of Birmingham 2011 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. In memory of Gloria, Luddy, Dorcas and Harry Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor, Professor Jennifer Birkett, for her patience, encouragement, and good advice when these were sorely needed; and also Dr Conrad James, who helped to ease me into French West Indian writing at the beginning of my studies, and who supervised my research in Jennifer’s absence. I am grateful to my dear parents, who kept faith with me over several years, and gave me the time and space to pursue this piece of scholarship. Abstract Most research into contemporary French West Indian literature focuses on writing that stresses the significance of the plantation and urban cultures of the islands in the early to mid-twentieth century or, more recently, on the desire of some writers to explore broader trans-national influences or environments. Despite the prominence of migration in post- war French West Indian history, however, less has been said about the engagement of French West Indian literature with migration to metropolitan France. Although commentators have recently begun to discuss the work of a handful of writers in connection with migration to the métropole, this thesis offers a full-length analysis of the issue, bringing writers, texts and literary and cultural theories together with the cultural and sociological context of migration to metropolitan France. I comment on a variety of well-known authors and texts, while also presenting writers and writing that have frequently been neglected in other studies. I also consider the reasons for what I believe to be both the slow development of a literature of migration, as well as the low profile of this issue within Francophone literary studies. Part One, ‘French and West Indian: Historical and Sociological Contexts’, considers the broad context of migration, reflecting on how that context impacts on the West Indians and their descendants in the métropole. Part Two, ‘Theory and the French West Indian Diaspora’, looks at colonisation, postcolonial criticism, and the current scholarship devoted to them, as these concern the issues of migration and identity in sociological and literary terms. Part Three, ‘Patterns of Discourse: Reflections of the Métropole’, takes recurrent themes that have appeared in the works of a variety of less well-known writers, including writers of West Indian origin born in the métropole. In Part Four, ‘Siting the Métropole’, I examine three successful yet very different writers and consider their contributions to the literature of migration, in the light of the reflections made and the patterns uncovered earlier in this thesis. My conclusion unites the themes of inclusion and exclusion that this subject brings to the fore, and suggests potential literary and scholarly developments for the future. Table of Contents Page Introduction 1 Part I French and West Indian: 7 Historical and Sociological Contexts I.1 The Mission Civilisatrice and Departmentalisation 7 I.2 The BUMIDOM Era 23 I.3 Circulation, Assimilation and Alienation 38 Part II Theory and the French West Indian Diaspora 57 II.1 Césaire and Fanon before the Troisième Ile 58 II.2 Antillanité and Créolité: Any Place for the Diaspora? 88 II.3 Current scholarship: Tracking the Black in Black, Blanc, Beur 123 Part III Patterns of Discourse: Reflections of the Métropole 135 III.1 Displacement and Acclimatisation 136 III.2 Disillusionment and Hybridity 156 III.3 Where are the Négropolitains? 167 Part IV Three Writers: Siting the Métropole 178 IV.1 Maryse Condé: The Unprivileged Métropole 179 IV.2 Tony Delsham: The Unprivileged Writer 199 IV.3 Gisèle Pineau: Exile and Survival 222 Conclusion 240 Bibliography 244 Introduction This thesis examines how French West Indian writers have responded or have failed to respond to the history of post-war migration from the French West Indies to metropolitan France, both in their literary work, and in the theoretical structures that undergird this work. I study the existing literature of migration to see how it explores the interaction between West Indian migrants themselves, and their relationship to the wider environment, and I also pay attention to the social and historical background to colonisation and to migration, because this is of ongoing relevance in shaping the literary environment. Issues of reception and readership are raised insofar as they have an impact on what is written, and on which writers and texts achieve the most exposure, marketability and success. Focusing in particular on the social reality of West Indian migrants in mainland France over the past sixty years creates context, but also highlights gaps of representation. French West Indian writers cannot be dealt with as a homogenous group. It will become apparent that there is a difference of context and content between the works of the most prominent writers and those who are marginalised or unknown. The sense is that class has a subtle and largely unacknowledged impact upon French West Indian literature, inevitably to the detriment of less privileged writers. This has repercussions for a literature of mass migration, where mass generally corresponds to a working-class diaspora rather than to the peripatetic lifestyle of a middle-class, intellectual elite. My contention is that migration to the métropole has been a problematic subject for French West Indian literature and that even when the subject is explored, it remains marginal. Metropolitan West Indians are routinely treated as though lost in a cultural limbo, both inauthentically ‘West Indian’ and inauthentically ‘French’. The ‘ongoing interstiality’ of French West Indian communities, who persist in defining themselves as ‘Martiniquan or Guadeloupean’1 does not speak of an emotional investment in belonging 1 H. Adlai Murdoch, ‘Placing Pointe-à-Pitre in Paris: diaspora and Francophone Caribbean postcolonial identity’, Journal of Romance Studies, 5: 3 (Winter 2005), p. 108. 1 to the metropolitan sphere, despite - or because of - the automatic legal belonging created by departmentalisation in 1946. A French West Indian literature of migration has been slow to develop, and in order to explore why, it will be necessary to consider the contexts surrounding migration, in particular the role of departmentalisation and metropolitan ideas of universality in creating a cleavage between West Indian and metropolitan understandings of what it means to be French. In order to explore these issues fully, this thesis considers relevant contributions from a wide variety of sourses. It includes canonical writers such as Aimé Césaire, Franzt Fanon, Edouard Glissant, Patrick Chamoiseau and Maryse Condé, and also includes works by less well known contributors such as Bertène Juminer’s Les Bâtards (1961) and Fabienne Kanor’s D’Eaux douces (2004). (Fabienne Kanor is of Martiniquan parentage.) It also highlights much more obscure writers, such as the Guadeloupeans Michelle Gargar (Le Clocher, 1999), Frankito (Pointe-à-Pitre – Paris, 2000), Raymond Procés (L’Habit de lumière, 2000) and Arlette Minatchy-Bogat (La Métisse caribéenne, 2004), the Martiniquan Louison Cazal (Le Clan des mutilés, 1988) and Didier Mandin (Banlieue Voltaire, 2006), who was born in Paris to Guadeloupean parents. The inclusion of the novelist Daniel Picouly, the mixed-race, Paris-born grandson of a Martiniquan, represents a challenge, since Picouly’s early life seems to have included little cultural connection with Martinique. However, he has increasingly been perceived as a man of colour, and in middle age he has drawn closer to his Martiniquan roots, spoken out against racism, and has been claimed by Martiniquans as one of their own. He belongs to the Martiniquan diaspora, and his life’s work has not been entirely oblivious of this fact. My research benefits from the contributions of a number of scholars who have begun to reflect on the literature of migration. Most have focused on the analysis of a small range of novels that have treated this subject. For example, Gisèle Pineau’s L’Exil selon Julia (1996) appears to have attracted the most commentary in articles and chapters in books. and this thesis considers the contributions of Priscilla Maunier, Michel Laronde, Françoise Mugnier and H. Adlai Murdoch, among others, as well as a number of Pineau’s interviewers who evidently see this novel as a representative text of the migration 2 experience.2 However, commentators who have considered the lack of a fully-fledged literature of migration are far fewer; Madeleleine Dobie’s work has been very useful to me in this respect, while Mary Gallagher’s exploration of French West Indian literature after 1950 has included helpful references to the representation of migration.3 When the French West Indies are referenced in this thesis it should be understood that I have in mind primarily the islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe. As in so many other studies, the literature of French Guiana, although not completely ignored, will be not play a prominent part here. Novels such as Jean-Charles Pamphile’s La Chaîne brisée (2002) and Juminer’s Les Bâtards, mentioned above, are discussed because they explore cultural and political issues that are shared with Martinique and Guadeloupe.
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