Métisse Stories and the Ambivalent Desire for Cultural Belonging

Abstract

The discourse of Empire imprisoned the métis (mixed-race male) and the métisse (mixed-race female) as inferior objects in the essentialised category of race. Mixed race individuals problematised the relation between the Self and the Other in colonised societies and their stories became inextricably intertwined with colonial histories of domination and exclusion. In the postcolonial era when the metis/métisse as object of gaze emerges as a liberated and a free speaking subject, alternative stories of mixed race experiences and new models of métissage (racial/cultural mixing) became available. In this study I examine critically the ways in which métissage and métisse subjectivities are expressed in postcolonial societies through a reading of three Francophone novels, whose main focus is “racial métissage” as experienced by women, and whose authors are all women of mixed-race. Specifically, I examine “Métisse Blanche” (White Métisse) (1989) by the Franco-Vietnamese writer Kim Lefèvre, “A l'autre bout de moi” (At the other end of myself) (1979) by the Mauritian Creole novelist Marie Thérèse Humbert, and “L'Etrangère” (The foreign woman) (1985) by the Vietnamese-Senegalese writer Anne Marie Niane.

Keywords:

• Mixed-race Identities
• Métissage
• Francophone
• Literature
• Gender

Notes

1. All translations from the selected French works are mine. I am quoting page numbers from the original texts.

2. Créolisation (Glissant 1989), and créolité (Bernabé et al. 1993) are also used in Francophone studies. It is beyond the scope of this paper to undertake a detailed discussion of all these concepts.

3. See Yeager (1993), Thuy-Pelaud (2002) and Ravi (2004) for other critical readings of Lefèvre's Metisse Blanche

4. In French “mer” means sea and “mère” means mother.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Srilata Ravi

Srilata Ravi received her Masters in French Literature and Civilisation from Jawarharlal Nehru University in 1981 and her PhD in French Literature from the University of Madras in 1991. She joined the European Studies Programme of the National University of Singapore in 1994 where she taught until December 2003 before taking up an appointment in French Studies at the University of Western Australia. Her research interests include Francophone literature, travel writing and post colonial theory and she is currently writing a book on ethnicity, culture and national identity in Mauritian literature in French