UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Physicians of the World: Postcolonial Women Writers Theorize Human Rights, Healing, and the World Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/23k4r15x Author de Mazancourt, Coralie Publication Date 2019 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Physicians of the World: Postcolonial Women Writers Theorize Human Rights, Healing, and the World A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in French and Francophone Studies by Coralie Seizilles de Mazancourt ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Physicians of the World: Postcolonial Women Writers Theorize Human Rights, Healing, and the World by Coralie Seizilles de Mazancourt Doctor of Philosophy in French and Francophone Studies University of California, Los Angeles, 2019 Professor Françoise Lionnet, Chair “Physicians of the World: Postcolonial Women Writers Theorize Human Rights, Healing, and the World” is an analysis of ideas of the world produced within literary writings by postcolonial women authors who set their stories in Haiti, Mauritius, and Saint Helena. This dissertation seeks to carve out a space for an alternative postcolonial optic by engaging with literary critics’ growing interest in an expanded notion of the world within literary studies. I argue that Yanick Lahens, Evelyne Trouillot, Edwidge Danticat, Shenaz Patel, and Yvette Christiansë are “physicians of the world” who theorize the world’s discontents resulting from the legacy of colonialism. The dissertation develops a hermeneutics of care; a mode of interpretation which teases out the ii aesthetic, formal, affective, and epistemological qualities of the texts that participate in discussing the ethics of representation and in articulating human rights. This interpretive framework allows me to show that these authors develop concrete notions of the “world” as an expanding community of ideas and beings with shared values. These writers posit that islands are “island worlds,” sites wherein a multiplicity of worlds interact, and sites that serve as a prism by means of which to challenge globalization. The authors overcome writer’s block, immigrant guilt, and repressed memories; by focusing on their writings’ engagement with both personal and collective national trauma I am able to articulate an approach to literature as a critical site of healing processes. I explore postcolonial healings: the solidarities, communities, and social bonds that repair the fabric of human community and put under tension the “Francophone” label. The authors share sensibilities outside of the framework of a common language, thus providing a context in which I define important forms of multilingual transcolonial agencies, namely, the material and textual practices they choose in order to resist various modes of colonization across time and space. iii The dissertation of Coralie Seizilles de Mazancourt is approved. Lia N. Brozgal Jennifer A. Sharpe Sara E. Melzer Françoise Lionnet, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2019 iv To my parents, Nathalie and Philippe de Mazancourt In memoriam, Dominique Bonleu v TABLE OF CONTENTS Dissertation Abstract ii Committee Page iv Dedication Page v Table of Contents vi Acknowledgments vii Vita/Biographical Sketch viii Introduction 1 The Diagnosis of the World in Yvette Christiansë’s Castaway 18 Demanding a Just World in Shenaz Patel’s Le silence des Chagos 60 Healing the World in Failles by Yanick Lahens, Create Dangerously by Edwidge Danticat, and La mémoire aux abois by Evelyne Trouillot 105 Afterword 151 Bibliography 154 vi Acknowledgements Françoise Lionnet, Lia Brozgal, Sara Melzer, and Jenny Sharpe: for your mentorship and for being my academic muses. Françoise Lionnet: for your passion, relational thinking, creativity, and immense generosity. Lia Brozgal: for your kindness, wit, thoroughness, support, and much valued guidance. Sara Melzer: for your warmth and for your nurturing and process driven approach to writing. Jenny Sharpe: for your stimulating and formative class and for reading. Martin Munro: for your expertise and encouragement and for your feedback. Nanar Khamo, Katy Chaffee, Natalia Konstantinovskaia, Patricia Wiley, Tzu-Chin Chen, Shanti Liverpool, Anne Le, Lizzie Collins, Thea Fronsman-Cecil, Rebecca Glasberg, Gina Lorenz, and Louise Brown: for your friendship and for being my academic sisters. Nanar: for working together, for the literary communion, and for the joy. Katy: for infusing brightness and critical theory into my daily life. UCLA, The French & Francophone Studies Department and Graduate Division at UCLA, Florida State University, the University of Toronto: for your support. Kerry Allen, Dominic Thomas, Erin Brown, Amy Mulherin, and Mia Power: for your help. The cities of Tallahassee and Los Angeles: for your hospitality. Nathalie, Philippe, Emilien, et Stephen de Mazancourt, Claude et Daniel Bonleu, Jacques et Geneviève de Mazancourt : pour tout – bien avant, pendant, et après la thèse. Jess & Jones DePrest: for your positivity, for being my second family. Kevin & Lilly Arnold: for your love. Thank you. vii Vita/Biographical Sketch EDUCATION Expected June 2019 Ph.D., French and Francophone Studies, UCLA Dissertation "Physicians of the World: Postcolonial Women Writers Theorize Human Rights, Healing, and The World" advised by Distinguished Professor Françoise Lionnet March 2016 C. Phil., French and Francophone Studies, UCLA Summer 2015 Seminars with Galin Tihanov and Djelal Kadir, dir. David Damrosch, Institute for World Literature, Lisbon May 2012 M.A., French and Francophone Studies, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida May 2010 Licence de Lettres Modernes (Bachelor of Arts, French major), Université de Cergy-Pontoise, Val d’Oise, France June 2006 Bilingual OIB (French Baccalaureate with the International Option), Lycée International, St. Germain-en-Laye, France ACADEMIC EMPLOYMENT UCLA Teaching Fellow in French (Winter 2016-Spring 2018), Teaching Assistant in French (Fall 2013 – Fall 2015) FSU Teaching Assistant in French, (Fall 2010-Spring 2012) PUBLICATION “La littérature “beure” ou le mystère de la littérarité” (“‘Beur’ literature or the mystery of literariness”). Expressions Maghrébines, vol. 11, no 1, 2012. WORK IN PROGRESS "Healing the Memory of the Dictatorship in Evelyne Trouillot's La mémoire aux abois", paper proposal accepted to be part of a special issue on "The Care (Re)Turn in Contemporary French and Francophone Cultural Productions" in Etudes Francophones. viii PRESENTATIONS “Pour un cinéma dans le monde”, Round Table on “cinéma-monde” organized by Michael Gott and Denis Provencher, Contemporary French Civilization, Tucson, August 29-31, 2019 “Healing the Memory of the Dictatorship in Evelyne Trouillot’s La mémoire aux abois”, Graduate Center for Literary Research Interdisciplinary Conference, University of California, Santa Barbara, May 4, 2019 “The Island Worlds of Shenaz Patel and Yanick Lahens”, ACLA, Georgetown University, March 7-10, 2019 “Transcolonial Agencies in Yvette Christiansë’s Castaway and Shenaz Patel’s Le silence des Chagos”, SFPS Postgraduate Conference, UCLA, May 3-4, 2018 “Demanding Justice in Shenaz Patel’s The Silence of the Chagossians”, Going Global Conference, International Institute, UCLA, April 20, 2018 “Lindsey Collen’s Mutiny: a Utopian Dystopia”, Carolina Conference for Romance Studies, Chapel Hill, April 5-7, 2018 “The Ungraspable Other in Yvette Christiansë’s Castaway”, Graduate and Post Graduate Conference, Rutgers University, March 24, 2018 “Physicians of the World: Theorizations of the World, Human Rights and Healing by Postcolonial Women Authors”, Departments of French & Francophone, German, and Italian Studies Graduate Student Workshop, UCLA, January 25, 2018 “The Closed Eyelid: Plotting Human Rights in Shenaz Patel’s Le silence des Chagos”, Pacific Ancient and Modern Languages Association; Chaminade University of Honolulu, November 10- 12, 2017 “Le droit de savoir: Affective Knowledge in Shenaz Patel’s Le silence des Chagos”, French and Francophone Studies Graduate Student Conference, UCLA, October 12-13, 2017 “Shenaz Patel’s Le silence des Chagos: from the ‘Unworld’ to ‘World-Forming’”, “Africa and the New Networks of Cultural Mobility”, University of Toronto, October 5-7, 2017 LANGUAGES Native French speaker Native fluency in English Proficient in Spanish Reading knowledge of German ix Introduction The immigrant artist shares will all other artists the desire to interpret and possibly remake his or her own world. - Edwidge Danticat In the epigraph above, a quote from the collection of essays Create Dangerously, the writer Edwidge Danticat turns our attention toward the world-building potential of literature. The conceit of this dissertation is that writers – and more specifically five postcolonial women writers – produce ideas of the world in their literary texts. This work situates itself at the intersection of the fields of World Literature, postcolonial studies, and Francophone literature. I assemble an original corpus of works by five postcolonial women authors who set their stories on the islands of Haiti, Mauritius, and Saint Helena. I argue that these women - Yanick Lahens, Evelyne Trouillot, Edwidge Danticat, Shenaz Patel, and Yvette Christiansë - are “physicians of the world” who seek to understand the world’s discontents resulting from the legacies of slavery and