Unity is the form of all beauty.
—Augustine, Confessions IV
What is in this Open Issue of CF&FS?
In spite of the often stated “fragmentary” nature of our times, our “post-modernity” after the crumbling of grand narratives, readers of literature and writers of critical essays still remain programmed to a certain extent, still expecting a unifying theme for a collection of articles gathered under the same cover. However, for any journal, an “open issue” is, by definition, a bringing together of essays that are necessarily disparate, and challenge any attempt at a unifying view. For each and every Open Issue of CF&FS, the unifying element, the common denominator between all the articles gathered in any given Open Issue was at the very least that they address the large field of French and Francophone literature and culture. However, oddly enough, it’s often been the case that, despite the eclectic nature of the articles proposed in these issues, there was always and paradoxically an additional emerging common theme beyond their belonging to the same field, which then transformed the rogue nature of the Open Issue into a thematic unit after all.
This particular Open Issue seems to be the first one to remain true to form and nature, recalcitrant to our own editorial efforts at finding a thematic thread. A real Open Issue, as it were: interviews and articles addressing subjects ranging from Franco-Algerian and Caribbean literature and cinema, to the Holocaust, Fantasy, queer literature, autobiography, etc. A sign of the times, this inability of ours to find the proverbial thread? A field of French and Francophone studies that has lost any kind of center? A center that, another time could be located among other places in the international presence of “French theory” or, later, in Édouard Glissant’s “tout-monde” or in “créolité,” all presenting us in their very fragmented and hybrid quality with the paradoxical ability to contain, to find a common thread?
Whatever the answer, we willingly, and perhaps not for the last time, relinquish any attempt at providing readers of our annual Open Issue with any unifying theme.
The issue begins with two interviews. First, Houda Hamdi speaks with the renowned critic and specialist of Francophone Algerian literature, Charles Bonn. Bonn explains his tireless fascination for what he feels are the fundamental literary texts in the Algerian tradition, Kateb Yacine’s Nedjma, works by Mohammed Dib, Rachid Boudjedra, Nabile Farès.
In the second interview, Karin Schwerdtner speaks with writer Laurence Tardieu who explains how and why she shifted from fiction to autobiography: “Chaque livre est une expérience qui me permet de rentrer encore plus dans la vie, de trouver encore mieux ma place dans le monde.”
The interviews are followed by a patchwork of articles strikingly different in nature, form, and style. Rudyard Alcocer addresses the lack of clean water in Haiti through a comparative study of Jacques Roumain’s classic novel Gouverneurs de la rosée, published in 1947, and Patrick Shen’s 2012 documentary, La Source.
Priya Wadhera explores Georges Perec’s La Disparition, a lipogram without the letter “e,” referring to a lack of “eux” (lack of them). The absent “e” speaks to another absence: the victims of the Holocaust. Wadhera’s reading of Perec’s novel comes back to the unspeakable reality of concentration camps through an analysis of other lacks: food and memory.
Elisabeth Herbst Buzay reads the notions of resistance and opposition present in two fantasy series, Johan Heliot’s Faerie Stories and Pierre Pevel’s Le Paris des merveilles as a way to counteract the negative conservative connotation attached to Fantasy as a genre.
Nora Cottille-Foley examines the interplay of social microcosms, in two novels by Maylis de Kerangal, Corniche Kennedy and Naissance d’un pont.
Laurence Enjolras proposes that, beyond their utter differences, Philippe Garrel’s poetic film Les Amants réguliers and Rita Brantalou and Philippe Bruneau’s comic play, Sous les pavés la plage, the two works harbor one and the same intention.
Jocelyn Frelier analyzes the notion of chosen brotherhood in Abdellah Taïa’s epistolary novel, Celui qui est digne d’être aimé (2017), in which two young queer Moroccan boys redefine the notion of brotherhood as the unique and vital tie that unites their destiny.
With Pamela Genova we discover Marguerite Yourcenar’s fascination for the Japanese novelist (and body builder), Yukio Mishima.
Through her analysis of two recent films, Yamina Benguigui’s Aïcha and Olivier Baroux’s L’Italien, Ramona Mielusel proposes that there is a place in cinema for mutual understanding between the “Franco-French” and the “Franco-Muslim” population. Still in the area of cinema, Guillaume Robillard examines different figures of resistance represented in French Caribbean cinema: fighters, maroons, but also elements of music and dance.
Pierre Taminiaux proposes an analysis of Raoul Vaneigem's Traité de savoir-vivre à l’usage des jeunes générations, published in 1967. He sees in this seminal work, the impact and influence of orality and poetry on a conservative French society on the brink of its cultural revolution in May ’68.
In his study of Pierre Michon’s Vies minuscules, Gabriel Proulx formulates an oblique definition of what the word “contemporary” means to Michon; for Proulx, Michon is equipoised between the modern and the (ostensibly) anachronistic, and his writings, Vies minuscules in particular, constitute a “profane hagiography.”
The issue closes with Shereen Kakish’s article on Dany Laferrière’s Je suis un écrivain japonais, an appropriate “tout monde” title for the Haitian writer who declares: “L’écrivain haïtien doit être tout le monde à la fois.”
Welcome to our first recalcitrant Open Issue.
Editors
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Roger Célestin
Roger Célestin is Professor of French and Comparative Literature and chair of French and Francophone Studies at the University of Connecticut. He has written on travel literature, detective fiction, film, and translation, among other topics. He is the author of From Cannibals to Radicals. Figures and Limits of Exoticism (U of Minnesota P, 1996), co-editor (with Isabelle de Courtivron and Eliane DalMolin) of Beyond French Feminisms: Debates on Women, Politics, and Culture in France, 1980–2001 (Palgrave/St. Martin’s, 2002), and co-author (with Eliane DalMolin) of France From 1851 to the Present: Universalism in Crisis (Palgrave, 2007).
Eliane DalMolin is Professor of French at the University of Connecticut. She has published numerous articles on modern and contemporary poetry and on cinema and is the author of Cutting the Body: Representing Women in Baudelaire’s Poetry, Truffaut’s Cinema, and Freud’s Psychoanalysis (U of Michigan P, 2000), co-editor (with Roger Célestin and Isabelle de Courtivron) of Beyond French Feminisms: Debates on Women, Politics, and Culture in France, 1980–2001 (Palgrave/St. Martin’s, 2002), and co-author (with Roger Célestin) of France From 1851 to the Present: Universalism in Crisis (Palgrave, 2007).