Passionate allegiances to competing theoretical camps have
stifled dialogue among today's literary critics, asserts Francoise
Lionnet. Discussing a number of postcolonial narratives by women
from a variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds, she offers a
comparative feminist approach that can provide common ground for
debates on such issues as multiculturalism, universalism, and
relativism.
Lionnet uses the concept of metissage, or cultural mixing, in
her readings of a rich array of Francophone and Anglophone texts by
Michelle Cliff from Jamaica, Suzanne Dracius-Pinalie from
Martinique, Ananda Devi from Mauritius, Maryse Conde and Myriam
Warner-Vieyra from Guadeloupe, Gayl Jones from the United States,
Bessie Head from Botswana, Nawal El Saadawi from Egypt, and Leila
Sebbar from Algeria and France. Focusing on themes of exile and
displacement and on narrative treatments of culturally sanctioned
excision, polygamy, and murder, Lionnet examines the psychological
and social mechanisms that allow individuals to negotiate
conflicting cultural influences. In her view, these writers reject
the opposition between self and other and base their
self-portrayals on a metissage of forms and influences.
Lionnet's perspective has much to offer critics and theorists,
whether they are interested in First or Third World contexts,
American or French critical perspectives, essentialist or
poststructuralist epistemologies."
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