Alternative Episteme: New practices in Francophone Films and Literatures

A special issue of Humanities (ISSN 2076-0787).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 January 2019) | Viewed by 3195

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Department of Afroamerican and African Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-0543, USA
Interests: philosophy, psychoanalysis, law and literature; French and francophone film and literature; LGBTQI; race

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Afroamerican and African Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-0543, USA
Interests: French and francophone studies; Caribbean literature, black diaspora; animal studies

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This special issue of Francophone Film and Literature aims to challenge practitioners in the field of Francophone Studies to think more imaginatively and inclusively about new lived experiences through a range of reading practices that take into account race, ethnicity, and gendered (as opposed to only feminist) contexts. This issue makes use of untapped historical archival records that link new practices to old ones in order to fundamentally reshape our present understanding of the world. We need to engage scholars of French and Francophone film and literature to formulate new tools for interpreting and accounting for a range of multiple identities and experiences, while also constantly rethinking decolonization. Papers are invited that will challenge western teleology, dominant discourses, and compartmentalization through alternative thinking and decolonial practices. Decolonizing the mind is no longer a movement in contrast to or in defense of a dominant discourse, it requires instead a practice that breaks altogether from old systems of order to create new ones.

This Issue is designed to be interdisciplinary in scope and will be useful as a contribution in both upper-level seminars and graduate courses in Animal Studies, French Studies/ Film and Literature, African Studies/Film and Literature, Gender and Women Studies, LGBTQI Studies, Race Studies, Theatre Studies, History, Critical Theory and Postcolonial Studies.

Prof. Frieda Ekotto
Prof. Bénédicte Boisseron
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • decolonial
  • race, gender
  • LGBT
  • posthuman
  • intersectionality
  • political activism

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

15 pages, 261 KiB  
Article
The Digital Griotte: Bessora’s Para/Textual Discourses on Identity Politics and Neocolonialism in Contemporary France
by Claire Mouflard
Humanities 2019, 8(1), 2; https://doi.org/10.3390/h8010002 - 1 Jan 2019
Viewed by 2832
Abstract
This article examines Bessora’s literary and digital criticism of postcolonial France, particularly in her first novel, 53 cm, and on her website, Tendre peau de vache. Bessora’s use of digital media in particular allows her to chronicle unofficial discourses on immigration, [...] Read more.
This article examines Bessora’s literary and digital criticism of postcolonial France, particularly in her first novel, 53 cm, and on her website, Tendre peau de vache. Bessora’s use of digital media in particular allows her to chronicle unofficial discourses on immigration, migration, and identity politics in France as alternative textual productions to her printed novels. Since there is a gap in academic studies regarding author websites and their contents, this study aims to start a conversation on the discursive function of an author’s digital textual productions. Following Jean Baudrillard’s theory in The Spirit of Terrorism according to which a terrorist act is successful when it distances itself from the real and exalts itself in the realm of the symbolic, this article argues that Bessora’s digital discourses on the post-Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack effectively denounce the disappearance of the real in French culture in favor of ideals such as the #jesuischarlie movement. From the publication of 53 cm in 1999 to her commentaries on France’s alienation of the lowest socio-economic class in Le Testament de Nicolas (2016), the self-proclaimed griotte’s print and digital productions complement each other and bring the reader closer to an understanding of institutional neocolonialist practices in France. Full article
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