Description
Book SynopsisAfter French colonial rule ended, Francophone authors began rewriting narratives from the colonial literary canon. Felisa Vergara Reynolds presents these textual revisions as figurative acts of cannibalism and examines how these literary cannibalizations critique colonialism and its legacy in each author's homeland.
Trade Review“Felisa Vergara Reynolds sheds an exciting light on Francophone literature. Her work brilliantly displays the common movement originated by authors who subvert the colonial lens by using its codes and transform them into the tools of its critique.”—Rokhaya Diallo, French journalist, writer, filmmaker, and activist for racial, gender, and religious equality
“Felisa Vergara Reynolds’s impressive postcolonial reading of the author as cannibal strategically locates literary rewriting as a political form of protest, resistance, and reappropriation. . . . From rewriting and reclaiming the historical record to the inscription of subjectivity through the privileging of formerly marginalized perspectives to reversing the power dynamic intrinsic to the Eurocentric gaze, Reynolds peels back the veil of colonial ‘camouflage’—with its histories of domination, exclusion, and misrepresentation—to denounce colonial authoritarianism and reveal a set of counternarratives that imbue the formerly colonized with agency and the right to self-representation.”—H. Adlai Murdoch, author of
Creolizing the Metropole: Migrant Caribbean Identities in Literature and FilmTable of ContentsList of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: “Almost the Same, but Not Quite” / “Almost the Same, but Not White”; or, The Author as Cannibal
1. Aimé Césaire’s
Une tempête, Cannibalizing Shakespeare’s
The Tempest; or, Who’s Laughing Now?
2. Boubacar Boris Diop’s
Le temps de Tamango, a Postmodern Cannibalization; or, Penetrating “Fortress Europe”
3. Assia Djebar’s
L’amour, la fantasia, a Historiographic Cannibalization; or, Dismantling/Decolonizing History
4. Maryse Condé’s
La migration des cœurs, Cannibalizing Emily Brontë’s
Wuthering Heights; or, a Sublime Phagocytosis
Conclusion: The Future of Literary Cannibalism; or, Addressing the Lingering Questions
Appendix: Interviews with Maryse Condé
Notes
References
Index
