Writing postcolonial France
Subtitle: haunting, literature, and the Maghreb
By: Fiona Barclay
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Lanham, MD
Language: eng
Number of pages: 152
ISBN-13: 9780739145036; 9780739145050
Subjects: History; Literature and history; History and criticism; Colonies in literature; Imperialism; Psychological aspects; Postcolonialism in literature; French fiction; Postcolonialism
Description: This book examines the way in which France has failed to come to terms with the end of its empire, and is now haunted by the legacy of its colonial relationship with North Africa. It examines the form assumed by the ghosts of the past in fiction from a range of genres (travel writing, detective fiction, life writing, historical fiction, women's writing) produced within metropolitan France, and assesses whether moments of haunting may in fact open up possibilities for a renewed relational structure of cultural memory. By viewing metropolitan France through the prism of its relationship with its former colonies in North Africa, the book maps the complexities of contemporary France, demonstrating an emerging postcoloniality within France itself. --
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction; title: The return of the colonial in Le Clézio, Bona and Sebbar; title: 17 October 1961: haunting in Kettane, Sebbar, Maspero and Daeninckx; title: Writing from Algeria: haunted narratives in Cardinal and Cixous; title: Abjection: the stranger within in Prévost and Bouraoui.