Ontological exiles and returns: memory and mourning in 21st century Francophone literatures and film
Embargo Date
2027-03-17
OA Version
Citation
Abstract
This dissertation examines the role of 21st-century Francophone transnational fictional literature and films in constructive processes of decolonial remembrance that mobilize occulted stories and histories of exiles and returns. The corpus represents de facto exiles and returns, as well as ontological exiles resulting from the transgenerational repercussions of diasporic traumas like the Atlantic slave trade, colonialism, the Shoah, and the world wars. I analyze how such decolonial texts foster a necessary rewriting of history, memory, trauma, and literature that promotes remedial reflection, global alliance, and collective action. This work is divided into three sections: Exiles and Returns, Memorial Excavation, Mourning and Remembrance, and Looking Forward in Retrospect. Contemporary decolonial theoretical texts from Achille Mbembe, Françoise Vergès, and Malcolm Ferdinand, and the memory work of Marianne Hirsch, Michael Rothberg, and Debarati Sanyal, provide contextual support. I first explore how authors Marie-Célie Agnant, Dany Laferrière, and Fatou Diome, and director Mati Diop create a reciprocal yet distinctive poetics of nostalgia and loss that circumnavigates temporal and spatial boundaries to promote healing and reconciliation. In Section II, the work of Louis-Philippe Dalembert, Alice Zeniter, Boualem Sansal, and Abdourahman Waberi informs the personal and collective excavation of trauma and transmission as catalysts to solidarity and justice. The final section draws upon the representation of interspecies, interracial, and decolonial feminist alliances in Bessora and David Diop’s fiction as impactful movements against modern coloniality and ecocidal crises issued from the epoch of slavery and beyond. Finally, recent works by filmmaker Raoul Peck and author Mohamed Mbougar Sarr emphasize the productive, collaborative force of creative work to flesh out “true” history and commemorate the past. The unique memorial cartographies intrinsic to these works of literature and film constitute crucial therapeutic efforts to confront collective traumas and potentiate a more just and equitable future.
Description
2024
License
Attribution 4.0 International