Violence in Francophone African and Caribbean Women's Literature

Notes

Notes introduction 1. In “Geographies of Pain: Captive Bodies and Violent Acts in the Fictions of Myriam Warner-Vieyra, Gayl Jones, and Bessie Head,” Françoise Lionnet studies the reasons behind the use of violence such as murder by female protagonists. 2. All unattributed translations throughout this book are my own. When published translations from the French are used, page numbers from both versions are provided, starting with the original. 3. In this essay, Césaire exposes the contradiction in the so-called equation of colonization with civilization. He then proposes a new equation, colonization with thingification. 4. In her article “Fanon and the Role of Violence in Liberation: A Comparison with Gandhi and Mandela,” Gail M. Presbey shows how Gandhi’s nonviolence can be seen as feminine since it is usually women who are groomed to endure violence in silence. 1. exclusion as violence 1. Some of the critics I refer to in this study are Carole Boyce Davies, the author of books and numerous articles on women’s writings and the co-editor of two major collections of essays on African and Caribbean women writers: Out of the Kumbla (1991) and, with the collaboration of the leading African feminist Anne Adams Graves, Ngambika (1986); Irène D’Alméida, Francophone African Women Writers (1994); Odile Cazenave , Femmes rebelles: naissance d’un nouveau roman africain au féminin (1996); and Christopher Miller, Theories of Africans (1991). In the past few years, more book-length projects on Francophone female literatures have appeared, although most focus solely on African women writers. 2. In the essay “Remembering Fanon,” Bhabha summarizes his position on women of color and Fanon in a note at the end of the essay in which he states that “Fanon’s use of the word ‘man’ usually connotes a phenomenological quality of humanness, inclusive of man and woman 190 NOTES TO PAGES 23–41 and, for that very reason, ignores the question of gender difference.” I examine his position more closely later in this chapter. 3. There are additional examples of critics who have attempted to include women of color. Several essays address “L’Algérie se dévoile” in discussions on Maghrebian or Arab feminist issues. On the inclusion of black women, Rey Chow’s article “The Politics of Admittance: Female Sexual Agency, Miscegenation, and the Formation of Community in Frantz Fanon,” is by far the most useful, though she repeats some of the arguments regarding Fanon found in Doane’s or Bergner’s essays. 4. In “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse,” Bhabha defines “mimicry” within the colonial experience as “a representation of a difference that is itself a process of disavowal”; mimicry repeats rather than re-presents (128). The Algerian woman alternates between her veil and her European attire in order to accomplish a specific objective. She just plays her role and tries to convince either interested party that she is what they want her to become. 5. On the topic of object and subject, it is interesting to note the effect of the title’s translation from the original “L’Algérie se dévoile” to the English title “Algeria Unveiled.” The title in French points to the fact that Algeria (or the woman) is the subject of the action of unveiling, whereas the English title points to the objectification of Algeria (or the woman). 6. Here, Fanon is referring to the opposition originating from colonialism between the city and the up-country. The city is associated with civilization, and most of the city dwellers were the colonizers and a few African males who worked for them. The rural areas were associated with the uncivilized. Amina Mama has demonstrated in her essay “Sheroes and Villains: Conceptualizing Colonial and Contemporary Violence against Women in Africa” that women were not allowed to go to the city before the colonial mission needed to create a class of bourgeois women who might be suitable wives for “civilized” African men. 7. Fanon quotes from Michel Cournot, “Sur la Martinique,” Les Temps Modernes, Février 1950. 8. Loving v. Commonwealth of Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, 87 S. Ct. 1817, 1967. 9. As an example, the female protagonist in Ken Buguls’ Le baobab fou asks the following question: “Pourquoi n’avoir pas prévu la réaction de la femme noire au colonialisme” (113). Phrased by a woman experiencing a nervous breakdown because of colonial and postcolonial trauma, the [3.137.218.215] Project...