Rethinking Francophone Culture: Africa and the Caribbean between History and Theory

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, large areas of the world were controlled by the French colonial power. As a select few from the indigenous peoples in these areas were educated in colonial schools, it was inevitable that French thought and theory then developing there would influence them in disharmony. They would explore, reinvent, and sometimes apply it to seek the liberation of their people from colonial rule. This article is intended to analyze critical issues relating to Africa and the Caribbean as they rebound in the expression of their writing, and the discourses that have constructed models for interpretative approaches to theoretical frameworks for these writings. It seeks to highlight and rethink the most compelling, shared features of francophone postcolonial cultures and examines what these cultures have in common, and the ways our interests as researchers, citizens, and people with a general influence reflect a shared concern for the complex, postcolonial cultural diversity inherent in the francophone canon.