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This study interrogates how the French empire was imagined in three
literary representations of French colonialism: the conquest of
Tahiti, and the established colonial systems in Martinique and in
India. The study is the first in either English or French to
demonstrate that representations of power relations, as well as the
broader discourses with which they were linked, were as closely
concerned with probing the similarities and differences of rival
European colonial systems as they were with reinforcing their
imagined superiority over the colonized, and that such power
relations should not be conceptualized as a dualistic
categorization of 'colonizer' versus 'colonized'. In doing so, it
aims to go beyond examining the interaction between colonized and
colonizer, or between colonial centre and periphery, and to
interrogate instead the circulation of ideas and practices across
different sites of European colonialism, drawing attention to a
historical complexity which has been neglected in the necessary
race to recover voices previously occluded from academic analysis.
In exploring how the notion of the French empire overseas was
construed and how it was infused with meaning at three different
historical moments, 1784, 1835 and 1938, it demonstrates how
precarious the French empire was perceived to be, in terms of both
European rivalry and resistance from the colonized, and how the
rhetoric of a French colonisation douce was pitted against the
inscribed excesses of the more powerful British empire. Rather than
employing the sorts of recuperative agenda which focus on how the
colonized were elided (viz., Subaltern Studies) or on the writings
of the formerly colonized (viz., Francophone Studies), the study
concerns itself specifically with how French colonialism and
imperialism were perceived, and thus offers a further corrective to
any generalizations about European colonialism and imperialism.
More particularly, by examining how the representational strategy
of nostalgia is used in these texts, the study demonstrates how
perceived loss, and nostalgia for an imperial past, played a role
in dynamically shaping the French colonial enterprise across its
various manifestations.
France's Lost Empires brings together ten essays that collectively
investigate the historical, cultural, and political legacies of
French colonialism and, specifically, the endings of the French
empire(s). Combining analyses of three "lost" territories (Canada,
India, and Saint Dominigue) of the "first" French colonial empire,
that of the Ancien Regime, with investigations of the
decolonization of the "new" colonies of the "second" French
overseas empire (specifically in North Africa), the essays
presented here investigate the ways in whicih colonial loss has
been absorbed and narrativized within French culture and society,
and how nostalgia for that past has played a fundamental role in
shaping French colonial discourses and memories. Beginning with the
Haitian Revolution and its historicization during the 1820s and
ending with an examination of the "postcolonial" republic at the
end of the twentieth century, the chronological structure of the
volume serves to reveal the extent to which the memories of
territorial loss have been sustained throughout French colonial
history and remain evident in current metropolitan representations
and memories of empire. In analyzing the longevity of these tropes
of loss and nostalgia, and their importance in shaping France's
identity as a colonial power both during and after periods of
colonization, France's Lost Empires reveals a basic premise: it is
not simply successful conquest which creates a self-validating
colonial discourse; failure can do so too. Indeed, the pervasive
and tenacious nostalgia for past colonial glories, variously
identified by the contributors to this volume, suggests that, for
some, the emotional attachment to France's colonies has not waned
and remians today as it was in nineteenth-century France.
This study interrogates how the French empire was imagined in three
literary representations of French colonialism: the conquest of
Tahiti, and the established colonial systems in Martinique and in
India. The study is the first in either English or French to
demonstrate that representations of power relations, as well as the
broader discourses with which they were linked, were as closely
concerned with probing the similarities and differences of rival
European colonial systems as they were with reinforcing their
imagined superiority over the colonized, and that such power
relations should not be conceptualized as a dualistic
categorization of 'colonizer' versus 'colonized'. In doing so, it
aims to go beyond examining the interaction between colonized and
colonizer, or between colonial centre and periphery, and to
interrogate instead the circulation of ideas and practices across
different sites of European colonialism, drawing attention to a
historical complexity which has been neglected in the necessary
race to recover voices previously occluded from academic analysis.
In exploring how the notion of the French empire overseas was
construed and how it was infused with meaning at three different
historical moments, 1784, 1835 and 1938, it demonstrates how
precarious the French empire was perceived to be, in terms of both
European rivalry and resistance from the colonized, and how the
rhetoric of a French colonisation douce was pitted against the
inscribed excesses of the more powerful British empire. Rather than
employing the sorts of recuperative agenda which focus on how the
colonized were elided (viz., Subaltern Studies) or on the writings
of the formerly colonized (viz., Francophone Studies), the study
concerns itself specifically with how French colonialism and
imperialism were perceived, and thus offers a further corrective to
any generalizations about European colonialism and imperialism.
More particularly, by examining how the representational strategy
of nostalgia is used in these texts, the study demonstrates how
perceived loss, and nostalgia for an imperial past, played a role
in dynamically shaping the French colonial enterprise across its
various manifestations.
Examines metropolitan French-language representations of India from
the period between the recall of Dupleix to France to the Second
Treaty of Paris. This book explores what a European power,
territorially peripheral in India, thought of both India and the
administrative rule there of its rival, Britain.
Examines metropolitan French-language representations of India from
the period between the recall of Dupleix to France to the Second
Treaty of Paris. This book explores what a European power,
territorially peripheral in India, thought of both India and the
administrative rule there of its rival, Britain.
The end of the British Raj, and the creation of the two states of
India and Pakistan in August 1947, is a recognizable narrative
within British Anglophone culture and colonial history. In
contrast, the persistence of the five French trading posts, or
comptoirs, on the Indian subcontinent until 1954 remains largely
ignored by both French and British historians of French colonialism
and the popular culture of the Hexagone. In examining metropolitan
French-language representations of Indian decolonization, this book
demonstrates the importance of the British imperial loss in 1947 as
a reference point within French cultural production. The critical
investigation into the strategies of representation used
problematizes existing Anglophone theoretical models, by critics
such as Said, Bhabha and Spivak, for the analysis of colonial
discourse. It reveals that French-language representations of
Indian decolonization cannot be fully appreciated without engaging
methodologically with France's politically subordinate status in
India. The book thus challenges the commonly accepted binary
between colonizer and colonized, proposing in its place a
triangular model composed of the colonized (India), the 'subaltern'
colonizer (France), and the dominant colonizer (Britain). Through a
systematic critical evaluation of the range of texts (journalistic,
intellectual, political, and literary) produced in metropolitan
France by authors such as Romain Rolland, Jean Rous, Helene Cixous,
Catherine Clement and Marguerite Duras, the book challenges the
current postcolonial orthodoxy that the story of Indian
decolonization is solely an Anglophone space.
This title makes a persuasive case for a black Atlantic literary
renaissance and its impact on modernist studies. This study
stretches and challenges current canonical configurations of
modernism in two key ways: by considering the centrality of black
artists, writers and intellectuals as key actors and core presences
in the development of a modernist avant-garde; and by interrogating
'blackness' as an aesthetic and political category at critical
moments during the twentieth century. This is the first book-length
publication to explore the term 'Afromodernisms' and the first
study to address together the cognate fields of modernism and the
black Atlantic. It sets a new agenda for the study of blackness and
modernism. It includes specially commissioned contribution from
Tyler Stovall on Black Modernism and an Afterword from Demetrius
Eudell on 'What to the Negro is Modernism?' It identifies key
locations of modernism: Harlem, Paris, Haiti. It addresses the
question of gender, often overlooked in black Atlantic scholarship.
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