rel="nofollow" href="http://www.congopage.com/Ecrire-sans-la-France-l-ecrivain-d">http://www.congopage.com/Ecrire‐sans‐la‐France‐l‐ecrivain‐d.21 Mabanckou, Alain. 2009. Black Bazar. Paris: Seuil.
22 Miano, Léonora. 2010. Blues pour Elise. Paris: Plon.
23 Miano, Léonora. 2013. La saison de l’ombre. Paris: Grasset.
24 Midiohouan, Guy Ossito. 2002. Ecrire en pays colonisé: Plaidoyer pour une nouvelle approche des rapports entre la littérature négro‐africaine d’expression française et le pouvoir colonial. Paris: L’Harmattan.
25 Miller, Christopher. 1990. Theories of Africans: Francophone Literature and Anthropology in Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
26 Miller, Christopher. 1998. Nationalists and Nomads: Essays on Francophone African Literature and Culture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
27 Moudileno, Lydie. 2006. Parades postcoloniales. La fabrication des identités dans le roman congolais. Paris: Karthala.
28 Mudimbe, Valentin. 1973. Entre les eaux. Paris: Présence Africaine.
29 Mudimbe, Valentin. 1988. The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy and the Order of Knowledge. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
30 Mujila, Fiston Mwanza. 2014. Tram 83. Paris: Editions Métailié.
31 Ngal, Georges. 1984. Giambatista Viko: ou, Le Viol du discours africain. Paris: Hatier.
32 Nganang, Patrice. 2004. “Ecrire sans la France.” Africultures, November 10, 2004. http://africultures.com/ecrire‐sans‐la‐france‐3610/.
33 Nganang, Patrice. 2007. Manifeste d’une nouvelle littérature africaine: pour une écriture préemptive. Paris: Homnisphères.
34 Nganang, Patrice. 2011. Mont Plaisant. Paris: Philippe Rey. Translated by Amy Baram Reid as Mount Pleasant (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016).
35 Oyono, Ferdinand. 1956. Une vie de boy. Paris: Julliard. Translated by John Reed as Houseboy (London: Heinemann, 1966).
36 “Pour une littérature‐monde en français.” 2007. Le Monde. March 15, 2007.
37 Selasi, Taiye. 2005. “Bye‐Bye Babar (Or: What is an Afropolitan?).” Lip. March 3, 2005. http://thelip.robertsharp.co.uk/?p=76.
38 Tcheuyap, Alexie. 2005. “Poverty, Cinema, and Politics: The Trouble with Images in Cameroon.” In Cinema and Social Discourse in Cameroon, edited by Alexie Tcheuyap. Bayreuth: Bayreuth African Studies. 1–20.
39 Teno, Jean‐Marie. 1992. Afrique, je te plumerai. Cameroon: Les films du Raphia.
40 Teno, Jean‐Marie. 2009. Lieux Saints. Cameroon/France: Les films du Raphia.
41 Thomas, Dominic. 2002. Nation‐Building, Propaganda, and Literature in Francophone Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Notes
1 1 Le Lay (2014, 11). All translations mine unless otherwise indicated.
2 2 For a contextualization of the emergence of engagement as a concept and its subsequent place in discussions of African literature, see Odile Cazenave and Patricia Célérier, “The Burden of Commitment,” in Cazenave and Célérier (2011).
3 3 Pierre‐Philippe Fraiture points out the novel’s reference to the political realities of Congo as well as its inspiration in widespread ideas of liberation theology (Fraiture 2013, 173–174).
4 4 Biyidi (1955, 133–140). Alexandre Biyidi is the birth name of Mongo Béti, which is a pseudonym.
5 5 The term Françafrique is frequently used to describe France’s neocolonial relationship with its former colonies, including acts of political intervention intended to protect French economic interests. See François Xavier‐Verschave, La Françafrique: Le plus long scandale de la République (Paris: Stock, 2003). For a probing treatment in comic form, see Grégory Jarry and Otto T., Petite histoire des colonies françaises: tome 4: La Françafrique (Poitiers: Editions FLBLB, 2011).
6 6 Tcheuyap (2005). Tcheuyap’s distinction brackets filmmakers like Claire Denis, who is French but spent much of her childhood in Cameroon. This is reflected in her choice of setting and subject matter in films such as Chocolat (1998) and White Material (2009).
4 Literature and Hybridity in Mauritius and Réunion
Anjali Prabhu
Île de France (today’s Mauritius) and Île Bourbon (Réunion island) occupy an important, if often still overlooked, place in colonial and African history and literature. Mauritius is 550 miles east of Madagascar and about 2,300 miles from the Cape of Good Hope. It is a small island that was traversed by Arabs before the Portuguese arrived as they made their way to India. But it was the Dutch, the French, and the British who would follow, with aspirations for trade in East India. Ships would halt at the islands after passing the Cape of Good Hope and then taking the inner, and more sheltered, route (between Madagascar and Africa) on their way to the Indies. Due to the relative safeness of Mauritius’ harbor compared to Réunion’s coast, Mauritius’ Port Louis became a coveted and contested port, “stella clavisque maris indici,” or the star and the key to the Indian Ocean.1 Of course, the Suez Canal, which opened in 1869, would change the island’s privileged position. As Britain and France became key players in the Indian Ocean and on the Indian subcontinent, Mauritius and Réunion were tossed between them. In 1810, Britain annexed Mauritius while leaving Réunion island to the French. By this time, a French India was a lost dream and France focused on its African strongholds, having no interest in disputing Mauritius or winning it back. There is no significant population on Mauritius with British ancestry because Britain never settled the island. The presence of a governor and other administrators who were posted there for limited periods sufficed to retain this strategic “French” island, where, nevertheless, ships docked and were replenished throughout its maritime history. It is for this reason that we see uninterrupted French colonial culture in Mauritius and Réunion, although British policies would radically change how the same culture developed in Mauritius through the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries.
Language and Literacy
Thus, Mauritius and Réunion island “are situated geographically and theoretically at the crossroads of the most consequential ruminations in recent postcolonial theory: they are crossed by the most vigorous sources of colonialism (French and British), have known both slavery and indenture, between them imply both a new nation as well as an overseas department, and have been marked by their crucial position
