Books in the After the Empire: The Francophone World and Postcolonial France series

This volume explores the ways in which considerations of difference, especially colonialism, post-colonialism, and race, have shaped French culture and French studies in the modern era.

Organized by region, boasting an international roster of contributors, and including summaries of selected creative and critical works and a guide to selected terms and figures, Salhi's volume is an ideal introduction to French studies beyond the canon.

Two Novellas by YAE comprises two works by Youssouf Amine Elalamy, also known as YAE, translated from French into English for the first time. A Moroccan in New York tells the tale of a young man seeking to make sense of two cultures which seemingly could not be more opposite, yet, are on many levels, so much the same. Autobiographical, YAE's story is the compilation of the musings of a young man on a Fulbright grant in New York in the early 1990s. In particular, the work reveals multiple misconceptions and misunderstandings Americans have about Moroccans and, other foreigners. Sea Drinkers is a compelling story that reveals the hurdles faced by Moroccan emigrants who illegally try to cross the slim stretch of water in small boats between Morocco and Spain. The hundreds who attempt the dangerous crossing every year are known as the harraga, which in Arabic means 'the burners.' The Moroccans who embark must literally 'burn' the bridges of their lives (their identity papers and passports), in order to clandestinely infiltrate into the countries across the water. These characters tell the tales of those who become stateless and who, more often than not, die untimely deaths in the waters between two continents (a distance of less than fifteen miles).

With global promotion of la Francophonie, the relation between the different constituencies of the world's French-speaking regions needs to be reexamined and debated. This book questions ingrained assumptions, pointing out the complexity of a never-ending relationship between francophone communities after the Empire.

Rethinking Marriage in Francophone African and Caribbean Literatures analyzes novels and films that demonstrate how marriage affects Francophone African and Caribbean women in their respective societies. It argues that marriage serves as a catalyst for intense identity formation because it functions as a narrative intersection for a number of overlapping themes on gender and the body, class and economics, religion, interracial and intercultural identity and nation building. Marriage provides a narrative space for commentary on cultural practices presented in the works in question as the foundations of cultural identity.

History's Place explores nostalgia as one of the defining aspects of the relationship between France and North Africa. Dr. Seth Graebner argues that France's most important colony developed a historical consciousness through literature, and that post-colonial writers revised it while retaining its dominant effect. The North African city became a privileged place in the relationship between literacy and historical discourses in the colony. Graebner analyzes the importance of architecture and urbanism as markers of historical development, as the urban fabric and descriptions of it became signs of difference between metropole and colony. Discussing writers as diverse as Bertrand, Randau, and Kateb, this book examines how the changing Algerian city has remained the locus of a debate colored by various sorts of nostalgia. Graebner demonstrates that nostalgia was symptomatic of historical anxiety generated by colonial conditions, but with literary consequences for mainland France as well. History's Place is a comprehensive and valuable addition to the study of French literature and cultural studies.

Presents a study of the autobiographical writings of three Francophone writers from the Maghreb Assia Djebar, Hlne Cixous, and Abdelkbir Khatibi. This book presents alluding to music as a means of comprehending the writers' improvisational writing styles.

Migrant Revolutions: Haitian Literature, Globalization, and U.S. Imperialism interprets Haitian literature in a transnational context of anti-colonial_and anti-globalization_politics. Positing a materialist and historicized account of Haitian literary modernity, it traces the themes of slavery, labor migration, diaspora, and revolution in works by Jacques Roumain, Marie Chauvet, Edwidge Danticat, and others. Author Valerie Kaussen argues that the sociocultural effects of U.S. imperialism have renewed and expanded the relevance of the universal political ideals that informed Haitis eighteenth-century slave revolt and war of decolonization. Finally, Migrant Revolutions defines Haitian literary modernity as located at the forefront of the struggles against transnational empire and global colonialism.

This collection of essays investigates the fundamental role that the loss of colonial territories at the end of the Ancient Regime and post-World War II has played in shaping French memories and colonial discourses. In identifying loss and nostalgia as key tropes in cultural representations, these essays call for a re-evaluation of French colonialism as a discourse informed not just by narratives of conquest, but equally by its histories of defeat.

From its early focus on documentary film and nation building to its more recent spotlight on contemporary culture and feature filmmaking, Moroccan cinema has undergone tremendous change since the country's independence in 1956. In What Moroccan Cinema? A Historical and Critical Study, 1956-2006, Sandra Gayle Carter chronicles the changes in Moroccan laws, institutions, ancillary influences, individuals active in the field, representative films, and film culture during this fifty-year span. Focusing on Moroccan history and institutions relative to the cinema industry such as television, newspaper criticism, and Berber videomaking, What Moroccan Cinema? is an intriguing study of the ways in which three historical periods shaped the Moroccan cinema industry. Carter provides an insightful and thorough treatment of the cinema institution, discussing exhibition and distribution, censorship, and cinema clubs and caravans. Carter grounds her analysis by exploring representative films of each respective era. The groundbreaking analysis offered in What Moroccan Cinema? will prove especially valuable to those in film and Middle Eastern studies.

The narratives under consideration in Rainbow Colorsdepict the Mauritius's history of competing colonial forces, describe its intricate social geography of free and forced migrations, and portray the anxieties of mixed race persons and cultures in postcolonies. By conceptualizing literature as the overlapping space of ethnic-cultural realities, national and transnational identities, and a poetics of alterity, Rainbow Colors explores how different literary ethno-topographies of Mauritius are produced at this intersection.

Women Writing Nature addresses the question, "Do women write about nature differently?" In the process, the collection considers women's writings about the natural world in light of recent and current feminist and ecofeminist theory.

Women Writing Nature addresses the question, 'Do women write about nature differently?' In the process, the collection considers women's writings about the natural world in light of recent and current feminist and ecofeminist theory.

If space is important in the realm of imagination and a key theme in feminist theory, cross-cultural studies of social maps reveal that men and women's spatial experiences differ; women rarely control physical or social space directly. Positing the thesis that women's writing of Francophone Africa and the Caribbean offers important perspectives on the relationship of gender to space,Writing from the Hearth proposes close readings of Francophone women writers of Africa (Aoua KZita, Mariama B%, Ken Bugul, Calixthe Beyala, and Aminata Sow Fall) and the Caribbean (Marie Chauvet, Simon Schwarz-Bart, Maryse CondZ, and Edwidge Danticat). As critical readings of postcolonial African and Caribbean literature show that tropes of confinement appear frequently in female-authored texts_where home is often depicted as a place of alienation_this critical study examines ambiguities associated with domestic space as enclosure as it explores the relationship between the female protagonist and the inner and outer spaces of her world: domestic, imaginative, and public space. Writing from the Hearth probes the hypothesis that the female protagonist can move toward empowerment by entering public space from which she has been excluded by indigenous patriarchs and European colonizers and by establishing a new relationship to domestic space or securing a liberating alternative space within it. Flexible and multipurpose, alternative space is a place of possibilities that can function as a refuge for meditation, recollection, or fantasy, an antechamber for action, and a site of resistance and performance. Here, by telling the tale, writing the creative work, a woman can affirm her sense of self.

After Multiculturalism: The Discourse on Race and the Dialectics of Liberty provides a unique critique of multiculturalist thought in social theory and public policy from an individualist perspective. Contemporary academic and policy discourse on race and racism in the United States is dominated by collectivist social theories that are founded on the idea that the only meaningful challenges to racism are those that foster collective social identities and seek to influence and direct the use of state power in the interest of particular racial and ethnic groups. Multiculturalism is the prevailing incarnation of anti-racist thought that informs and mediates political process and organizational life in the United States. The multicultural discourse on race has become tribalist, anti-western, anti-market, and statist. After Multiculturalism challenges the notion that collectivist and statist ideologies 'own' racism as an educational and public policy issue. Welsh demonstrates that individualist philosophies entail critiques of racism that follow directly from their anti-collectivist and anti-statist foundations. He argues that multiculturalism is unlikely to promote the types of social action and changes essential to overcoming racism and that the individualist and libertarian ideas discussed in the book make important contributions toward the realization of a world free of racial domination. To this end, the ideas of Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard, Benjamin, Benjamin Tucker, Lysander Spooner, Max Stirner and contemporary libertarian scholars are discussed to the lay the foundation for a critique of multiculturalism. The book explores the concepts of post-ethnicity and transracialism as individualist and libertarian expressions of a society 'after multiculturalism.' Welsh's discussions of transracialism and post-ethnicity constitute unique and important contributions to social thought. This book will hold great interest for scholars and students concerned with race, ethnicity, political theory, or individualist thought, as well as scholars and students of the history of ideas.