The Idiom of the Other: Three Francophone Writers of “The Fringe”

Abstract

This paper is based on the linguistic and cultural experiences of three francophone writers: Ahmadou Kourouma (Abidjan, Ivory Coast), Suzanne Dracius (Martinique), and Barry Jean Ancelet (Louisiana, United States). Their testimonies are discussed in the opening section. A reading of Jacques Derrida's Monolingualism of the Other; or, The Prosthesis of Origin, enables us to analyze the experiences of these three writers, “whose relation to the French language is as vexed and varied as Derrida's own Algerian inheritance” (in the words of an anonymous reviewer). It leads, in the next section, to a discussion of the impossibility of absolute monolingualism demanded by “linguistic imperialism,” the multiplicity inherent in any language, and the violence of a language which claims to be unique, while serving some ideology or power. In the last part, I address the double interdict to which Derrida believes education must respond, and the double entitlement for which it is responsible.

Notes

1.  Jacques Derrida, Monolingualism of the Other; or, The Prosthesis of Origin, trans. Patrick Mensah (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), 21; emphasis in the original. Originally published as Le monolinguisme de l’autre (Paris: Galilée, 1996). Subsequent references are from the English edition and are cited in the text.

2.  Created by Paul-Louis Mignon in 1975, today the Prix du Livre Inter is recognized as one of the highest honors in the world of literature. Created in 1926, the Prix Renaudot is one of five prestigious French literary awards. Its recipients include renowned authors among whom are Marcel Aymé, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Louis Aragon, Georges Pérec, Michel Butor, and Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio.

3.  De sueur, de sucre et de sang, in Le Serpent à plumes 15 ([1992], 35–38; [1995], 111–27), reprinted in Rue du Monte au Ciel (Fort-de-France: Desnel, 2003), 83–103; online on “île en île” (Paris: Didier, since February 1981). http://www.lehman.cuny.edu/ile.en.ile/paroles/dracius_sueur-sucre-sang.html; “La Virago,”in Diversité; la nouvelle francophone à travers le monde, ed. Valérie Budig-Markin and James Gaasch (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1995), 70–81; “La Montagne de feu,” in Diversité, 2nd ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), 64–76; Rue Monte au Ciel (Fort-de-France: Desnel, 2003).

4.  Amhadou Kourouma's, Suzanne Dracius's, and Barry Jean Ancelet's testimonies were taped at the annual conference of the American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL), Nashville, Tennessee, November 1997. Audio-recordings were transcribed and translated by Denise Egéa-Kuehne. Unpublished. No page numbers.

5.  Denise Egéa-Kuehne, “L’Enseignement du Français en Louisiane: Préserver un héritage, in Francophonies,” ed. Guy Clermont (Limoges: Presses Universitaires de Limoges (PULIM). (2006).

6.  CODOFIL: Conseil pour le Développement du français en Louisiane.

7.  Dracius reports the case of “one of the greatest writers from la Martinique who has published about five or six novels and short stories in Creole. And for years they covered the walls of his living room. Roaches left droppings all over them … . No one would buy them, no one could read them.”

8.  Kourouma sees the adaptation of French as possible on two levels. First, in the everyday language, people come from a diversity of ethnicities and cannot communicate in their native languages but must use a kind of French, an “Africanized” French, also called petit nègre, or “Moussa's French.” “It is this idea of the Africanization of French which enables us … in French, to build our internal little hut.” Next, in the literary language, which for Kourouma holds the greatest interest; he believes that an African author who has only French to express himself or herself in, needs another language to express “the totality of his or her character, with all that this character would have presented in the oral language.” It is not easy, and the African writers employ a number of methods; for example “they search in the French language the best suited word,” often the most archaic, they accumulate synonyms, or they use syntactic forms from the native language in which the word sequence is different.

9.  Richard R. Day, “ESL: A Factor in Linguistic Genocide?” in On TESOL’80: Building Bridges, ed. Janet Cameron Fisher, Mark A. Clarke, and Jacquelyn Schachter (Washington, D.C.: TESOL, 1981), 73–78, 78.

10.  Robert Phillipson, Linguistic Imperialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 93. Phillipson defines “linguistic imperialism” in these terms: “a theory belonging to the relations between dominant and dominated cultures, in particular the way learning English as a [second] language was promoted” (15).

11.  Abdelkebir Khatibi, quoted in Derrida, Monolingualism, 7–8.

12.  “Navajo children are taught in a foreign language: they are taught concepts which are foreign, they are taught values which are foreign, they are taught lifestyles which are foreign, and they are taught by human models which are foreign. The intention behind this kind of schooling is to mold the Navajo child (through speech, action, thought) to be like members of the predominant Anglo-Saxon mainstream culture. The apparent assumption seemingly being that people of other ethnic groups cannot be human unless they speak English, and behave according to the values of a capitalistic society based on competition and achievement. The children grow up in these schools with a sense of: confusion regarding the values, attitudes and behavior taught at home; loss of self identity and pride concerning their selfhood—their Navajo-ness; failure in classroom learning activities; loss of their own Navajo language … and loss of in-depth knowledge of their own Navajo culture.” Anita B. Pfeiffer, “Designing a Bilingual Curriculum,” in Proceedings of the First Inter-American Conference on Bilingual Education, ed. Rudolph C. Troike and Nancy Modiano (Arlington: Center for Applied Linguistics, 1975), 132–39, 133.

13.  Human Rights Council Resolution 2006/2. On Thursday 29 June 2006, the Human Rights Council adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and recommended its adoption by the General Assembly. http://www.ohchr.org/english/issues/indigenous/declaration.htm. See also the Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1994/2/Add.1 (1994), and the Proposed American Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, approved by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on February 26, 1997, at its 1333rd session, 95th regular session. http://www.cidh.org/Indigenous.htm

14.  Edouard Glissant, from La Martinique, then Director of the Center for French and Francophone Studies at Louisiana State University, organized, with David Wills, the colloquium in which Derrida first presented the text of Le monolinguisme de l’autre (April 23–25, 1992). The quotes which follow are from an unpublished paper presented at the conference as part of the “conversation” on Echoes from Elsewhere/Renvois d’Ailleurs. No page numbers.

15.  A vehicular language is the language of communication between communities of the same area speaking different languages; a vernacular language is the language used among people from the same community.

16.  A linguistic system reduced to a few rules and to the limited vocabulary of a specific field (e.g., business), born from the contact between different linguistic communities with no other means of communication (distinct from pidgins and creoles).