TRANSCULTURALITY and the FRANCOPHONE MOTHER Allison
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TRANSCULTURALITY AND THE FRANCOPHONE MOTHER Allison Spellman Connolly A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Romance Languages (French). Chapel Hill 2007 Approved by: Dominique Fisher Martine Antle Hassan Melehy Maria DeGuzman Roberta Ann Dunbar ©2007 Allison Spellman Connolly ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT ALLISON SPELLMAN CONNOLLY. Transculturality and the Francophone Mother (Under the direction of Dominique Fisher) This dissertation examines the representation of complex mother figures presented in Francophone literature. I focus my analysis on literature from three distinct Francophone regions: the French Caribbean, North Africa, and Quebec. Pluie et vent sur Télumée Miracle (1972) by Simone Schwarz-Bart and L’espérance-macadam (1995) and L’exil selon Julia (1996) by Gisèle Pineau put forth both positive and negative mother figures from Guadeloupe. La femme sans sépulture (2002) by Assia Djebar and Des rêves et des assassins (1995) by Malika Mokeddem depict the struggles of North African mothers and their children, both in Algeria and abroad. Finally, from Quebec, Ying Chen’s L’Ingratitude (1995) and Abla Farhoud’s Le bonheur à la queue glissante (2004) demonstrate the repressive patriarchal structure that inhibits mother figures and has lasting repercussions in the lives of their children. Close reading of these texts reveals the multiple roles mothers play in postcolonial contexts, including primary breadwinner, guardian of culture, and participant in a war of liberation. In examining mother figures within and across various Francophone regions, this dissertation uncovers the complexities of the maternal role in transcultural societies. Drawing links between women of different continents, cultural heritages, and religious traditions, the study examines problematic issues pertaining to mother figures in postcolonial contexts, including those linked to exile, gender, and symbolic violence. I argue that the seven novels chosen for this dissertation resuscitate women’s forgotten iii voices. Furthermore, while recognizing the powerful role held by mother figures in certain circumstances, I uncover the nuances of the maternal figure, which point to the distinct disadvantages she experiences in postcolonial, transcultural societies, including but not limited to language barriers, isolation and repression by the patriarchy. iv DEDICATION I dedicate this dissertation to Annette Sampon-Nicolas, who has been a great inspiration to me and who has held my hand in every stage of my education in the last decade. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Numerous people have helped me along my dissertation path, and I would like to recognize them. I have worked under the direction of Dominique Fisher for many years, and I am most grateful to her for her impressive knowledge of postcolonial literature and theory as well as her rigorous standards. The other members of my dissertation committee have also provided suggestions and guidance that have served to strengthen my scholarship. I would like to thank Frédérick Beaujeu-Dufour and Anne Faircloth for providing me with a lovely, tranquil space in which to reflect and write. Carol Mavor has given continual encouragement and moral support to me over the last year. My friends Ashlee Headrick, Briana Lewis, and Franck Dalmas have all helped at different stages of the writing and editing process. Arica James kept me fed in the last and most intense stage of the dissertation. My family has, of course, been supportive and understanding throughout the many years of my education. I thank them from the bottom of my heart: Barney Connolly, Sheila Spellman, B.J., Tricia, Jack, Grandma Mary Ellen and Grandma Rose Mary. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS…………………………………………………………….ix Chapter I. SITUATING THE POSTCOLONIAL……………..........………..………1 Post-colonial or Postcolonial?...………………………………………...…6 Postcolonial literary transformation in the Francophone world……......…8 Creoleness and identitarian cultural theory………………………………11 Carving feminine literary spaces……………………...…………………25 Transculturality: a new way of looking at cultures….……………....…..34 II. THE EVOLVING MOTHER FIGURE: FRENCH INFLUENCES AND TRANSCULTURAL PERSPECTIVES ..........…..44 Colette, de Beauvoir and the mother figures they create………...………50 Displacement and exile……………..……………………………………60 Transculturality and absence……………………………………………..74 The mother as a challenge to the patriarchy……………………….…….89 III. THE PLACE OF PLACE……….……………………………………….94 Maternal spaces: when the feminine meets the postcolonial….....…….100 Caribbean mothers: identity formation and the natural world……....…101 Mothering in a strange land………….…………………………………121 Man Ya: a liminal mother figure……………..………………………..123 The home as primary landscape…….………..…………………………128 vii Placeless spaces…………...……………………………………………134 IV: DEATH: AN EMOTIONAL EXILE……..……………………………………139 Mourning and bereavement………………………………………...…………..140 Phantoms, spirits, specters, and ghosts: “living” after death…………………..144 Spectral exile: la femme sans sépulture………………………………………..146 When escape becomes exile………………………………..…………………...151 A survivor’s exilic existence…………………...……………………………….157 V: CONCLUSION…………………………..…………………………………….165 WORKS CITED……………….……………………………………………………….171 viii ABBREVIATIONS PV Pluie et vent sur Télumée Miracle, Simone Schwarz-Bart ES L’Exil selon Julia, Gisèle Pineau EM L’espérance-macadam, Gisèle Pineau FS La Femme sans sépulture, Assia Djebar RA Des rêves et des assassins, Malika Mokeddem IG L’Ingratitude, Ying Chen BQ Le Bonheur a la queue glissante, Abla Farhoud ix CHAPTER 1 SITUATING THE POSTCOLONIAL The field of postcolonial studies traces its roots to the publication of Edward Said’s Orientalism. This monumental work has sparked numerous debates which continue more than twenty-five years after its publication. In this book, Said describes the notion of the Orient as a European discursive construction, dating to the post- Enlightenment period: “It is rather a distribution of geopolitical awareness into aesthetic, scholarly, economic, sociological, historical, and philological texts.”1 In placing themselves in opposition to the Oriental “Other,” Europeans seek and achieve domination. “Indeed, my real argument is that Orientalism is—and does not simply represent—a considerable dimension of modern political-intellectual culture, and as such has less to do with the Orient than it does with ‘our’ world” (12). Although Said never employs the term “postcolonial” in this landmark work, he forges a path for postcolonial studies in bringing attention to modes of representation at work in the notion of the “Other” and putting forth what Bill Ashcroft refers to as “post-colonial textual resistance.”2 Grounding his argument in Foucault’s notion of discourse,3 Said proposes that one examine Orientalism as a discursive formation.4 1 Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Random House, 1979) 12. 2 Bill Ashcroft, “Introduction,” The Post-colonial Studies Reader, eds. Bill Ashcroft et al. (New York: Routledge, 1995) 85. Postcolonial theorists such as Gayatri Spivak and Homi Bhabba have in large part built their academic careers as an elaboration on and response to Said’s propos as presented in Orientalism and later works such as Culture and Imperialism.5 Described as a feminist,6 Marxist, and deconstructionist, Spivak grew up in India and has spent much of her professional life in the United States. In an interview with Elizabeth Groz, she underscores “otherness” as she has experienced it: “It seems to me that if, as someone of Asian provenance working in the United States with a certain carte d’identité in Western Europe and Britain, I think I have been really pushed to the extreme of having to take stock and having to see exactly what it was that I was up to” (The Post-colonial Critic 16). Spivak’s “otherness” has forced her to continually define and justify herself in the academic world in which she has carved a place for herself. Her analyses also consider the position of subaltern voices.7 One of her best-known essays, “Can the Subaltern 3 According to Foucault, discourse is linked to both knowledge and power. Discourse on a specific topic is created at a key moment in history, by those who hold power, to enable discussion of that topic. Yet, Said does not elaborate on this. In his essay “Roads Taken and Not Taken,” Said makes reference to Foucault’s influence on his work: “In short he deals with texts as part of a system of cultural diffusion, rigidly controlled, tightly organized, difficult to penetrate. He argues that everything stated in a field like literary discourse or medical discourse is produced only with the most selective method, with litle regard for individual genius. I have argued that similar things take place when ‘other’ cultures and peoples are discussed. Each statement is therefore a material effort to incorporate a particular piece of reality as selectively as possible” (150). So although Said acknowledges Foucault’s influence, he never undertakes an in-depth discussion of Foucault’s theory in conjunction with his own. Edward W. Said, “Roads Taken and Not Taken in Contemporary Criticism,” The World, the Text, and the Critic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U Press, 1983) 140-57. 4 Said brings forth the issue of Orientalism as a Western discursive formation, but does not elaborate on this. Postcolonial theorists, including Spivak and Bhabha, further