Empire of Language: Toward a Critique of (Post)colonial Expression

Notes

203 Notes Prologue 1. This war will for a long time be referred to as “the events” or, to use an expression found in Les parapluies de Cherbourg—a film contemporary with Le joli mai—“what’s happening in Algeria.” 2. The French word parlure, which has been translated here as “parlance,” refers in general to the sociolect of a given group of language users and has most often been used to describe turns of phrase and manners of speaking unique to francophone Quebec. The author develops his own unique understanding of this term throughout this book. [Translator’s note] 3. Part 3 of this book outlines the current state of hexagonal thought in relation to the resistance to “postcolonial studies” in France. 4. I speak of France, since Mudimbé and Glissant teach or taught in some of the most prestigious universities, and the reflections of Fanon are central for Homi Bhabha, one of the stars of “postcolonial studies” today. Since the writing of this book, the situation of postcolonial studies in French academia has changed significantly . Interestingly, literary scholars are still lagging behind. 5. See, for example, Daniel Lefeuvre, Pour en finir avec la repentance coloniale (Paris: Flammarion, 2006). 6. Many others have engaged in this effort, which in fact remains to be named; I would cite here, as a gesture of friendship, only the syncretism of Susan Buck-Morss (see Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History [Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009], 151) and Anthony Mangeon’s integrative (or integrated) history (La pensée noire et l’Occident: De la bibliothèque coloniale à Barack Obama [Cabris: Sulliver, 2010]). 7. I privilege this term at the core of the book for its historical,descriptive value. I am not unaware of its racial connotations, or of the negative meaning it sometimes carries. Yet I hope to indicate with this term the possibility of using words to surpass words. I will return to this problem at the end of chapter 4. 8. The French expression prendre la parole, which in everyday language means simply “to speak”or “to have the floor,”forms a central element of Dubreuil’s thesis about possession, dispossession, and language. It has been translated here most often as “to speak up,” which gives the sense of speech as an event that breaks with both silence and prescribed language; this translation lacks the full resonance found in the French. In other cases, I have given an overly literal translation (e.g., “to take the word”) in order to maintain the movement of a specific argument or point. [Translator ’s note] 9. I worked on the first version of this book from 2004 to 2008, the date of the original publication in French by Hermann. For the English translation,I revised and expanded the French text in March, April, and July 2011. 204 NOTES TO PAGES 14–18 Introduction to Part I 1. This phrase, a commonplace expression in French textbooks, has become emblematic of the way that French education has both constructed the object of history and interpellated the schoolchildren charged with memorizing it. [Translator’s note] 1. (Post)colonial Possessions 1. Most of this passage is translated and quoted in David Hacket Fischer, Champlain ’s Dream: The European Founding of North America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008),370–71,from which the current translation has borrowed,with slight modifications . All other translations of quoted material are mine,unless otherwise indicated. [Translator’s note] 2. It was even originally called L’Ile de la Prise de Possession (Island of the Taking of Possession), a name conferred in 1772 by Marion-Dufresne. 3. Léry finds in Aygnan the equivalent of the devil. André Thevet, a contemporary and personal enemy of Léry,gives a nearly identical description in Les singularitez de la France arctique (1558; Paris: Maisonneuve, 1878), chap. 25. 4. For a broad overview of the language of possession in the Spanish-speaking context, see Fernando Cervantes, The Devil in the New World: The Impact of Diabolism in New Spain (New Haven, CT:Yale University Press, 1997). For another overview of the connections between witchcraft, possession, or demons and colonial expansion , in the context of the first French colonial empire, see Doris Garraway, The Libertine Colony (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), chap. 3. Anthony Mangeon developed my hypothesis one step further, while incorporating it into his own scholarly perspective in La pensée noire et l’Occident: De la bibliothèque coloniale à Barack Obama (Cabris: Sulliver, 2010...