Preface

Preface Assia Djebar in L ’Amour, lafantasia, reflects on the ambivalence of writing and, particularly, writing in French. Evelyne Accad in her “ témoignage,” included in this issue, refers to the question of nonFrench authors having to write in French. The question has been debated among Africans and Caribbean writers as well: to mention only Abdelkebir Khatibi, Léon Laleau, Edouard Glissant, Raphaël Confiant, Franketienne, Léopold Senghor, and Aimé Césaire. But at the same time, this “langage de 1’Autre,” or this “ langage adverse,” as Djebar calls it, becomes the location from which her discourse emerges and the vehicle for the voices of women she wants to bring out of the palimpsest of Algerian history, in which their presence had been erased. The authors presented in this issue have appropriated the language of the Metropole that is the basis for their literary and artistic expression. They come from diverse geographical locations, cultural and racial origins: Africa and the Indian Ocean, Asia and Europe, North and Cen­ tral America. They are, all of them, bi- or multilingual, cultural “ métis,” and some of them are racially “ métissées.” What brings them together is what Abdul JanMohamed and David Lloyd define as “the task of minority discourse,” that is, “to describe and define the common denominators that link various minority cultures.” 1From this perspec­ tive, and without constructing a utopian sameness, writing in French has created for postcolonial women a common ground on which they can engage in dialogical encounter and intellectual intercourse. Through the use of the same language, they have brought about the “ éclatement des frontières” (Accad) and made possible a meeting of multiple subjec­ tivities and histories, different and yet similar. Calhixte Beyala and Werewere Liking are from the Cameroun, Ananda Devi is Mauritian of Indian descent, Farida Belgoul is a “ Beur,” Kim Lefèvre was born from a Vietnamese mother and a French father, Maryse Condé is from Guade­ loupe as is Simone Schwarz-Bart, France Théoret comes from Quebec, Evelyne Accad comes from Lebanon, born from a Lebanese father and a Swiss mother, and Assia Djebar is from Algeria. Their coming to writing and to French is marked by the legacy of a colonial experience and/or the policy of cultural assimilation. Their use of the French language is simul­ taneously empowerment and subversion: rather than telling the “master’s narrative,” they have inscribed in his language their own voices, lives, cultural experience and collective History through fiction and autoVOL . XXXIII, No. 2 5 L ’E s pr it C r éa te u r fiction. If a distinct focus emerges from each work, there are also inter­ twined motives and an intertextual play between their writings. The haunting questions of a woman’s voice, of memory and history, of exile and territorialization overlap. Françoise Lionnet’s article on “ Narration and the City,” which opens the issue, emphasizes the significance of the textual space as a place of territorialization and rootedness, contrasted with urban space, which is “often identified with a narrative of loss, despair, and marginality , especially for the female subject. . . .” Alec G. Hargreaves’ and Mireille Rosello’s articles, the former in general terms, the latter more specifically, present the “ Beur” generation predicament. “ Bi-cultural, bilingual, bi-national,” the “ Beurs” constantly move between different territories that include the public space of the school and French society, on the one hand, and the private space of the family, on the other. As for Kim Lefèvre, exiled since her childhood from the native space of her Vietnamese culture and, later, from her native country, writing engages her in a cathartic process of remembering and forgetting that, as Jack Yeager puts it, she textualizes in a space which becomes the place for a reconciliation with herself and her place of birth. Clarisse Zimra’s study of Simone Schwarz-Bart’s novels stresses also the heros’ cathartic quest for ancestry and genealogy which, like Lefèvre, leads the author to a return to the land of her African ancestors. Priska Degras’ analysis of Maryse Condé’s last two novels recasts the search for history so central among Caribbean writers. In digging deeply...