Alex Hughes. Encyclopedia of Contemporary French Culture

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France Info, France Culture, France Musique,

Radio Bleue and FIP. Radio France’s local sta-

tions cover all corners of the country, from Lille

(Fréquence Nord) to Bayonne (Pays Basque),

from Quimper (Bretagne Quest) to Bastia

(Corse Frequenza Mora).

In addition to the périphérique stations there

are a number of private national networks

which are more specialized: NRJ, Fun,

Nostalgie, Europe 2, Skyrock, Chérie FM, RFM,

M40, Metropolys-Maxximum, Super-Loustic,

Montmartre, Notre-Dame, Fourvière, TSF, RTL

2 and Radio Classique. These stations are tend-

ing to progress in terms of audience at the ex-

pense of the non-specialist stations.

Outside France, the largest number of

French speakers is to be found in Belgium

(about 4.5 million). Before World War II, ra-

dio broadcasting was in the hands of a private

company, INR (Institut National Belge de

Radiodiffusion)—founded in 1930, it ran two

stations, one broadcasting in Flemish and the

other in French. In 1945, the INR was granted

a monopoly of broadcasting and became a

state-owned concern. Following a period of

growing tension between the two main cultural

and linguistic groups in Belgium, a law cre-

ated two distinctive autonomous organizations

in 1960: RTBF (Radio-Télévision Belge de la

Communauté Française) for Walloon/French

speakers and BRT for Flemish speakers.

These two state-owned companies could not

originally carry advertising. During the 1970s

they were increasingly challenged by private

pirate radio stations and RTL. This led the

Belgian government to legalize private radio

at the local level. In 1987, BRT and RTBF were

allowed to take advertising. BRT runs four FM

stations; RTBF runs three FM stations and one

station on medium wave. Despite the spread

of television into virtually every Belgian home

in the 1980s, radio listening has increased (the

average of 2.5 hours a day in 1980 became

3.5 hours in 1990), even more than TV view-

ing (2 hours in 1980, 2.25 hours in 1990).

In Switzerland, where there are nearly 1.25

million French speakers, broadcasting has been

in the hands of the SRG (Schweizerische

Rundfunk Gesellschaft) since 1931, when it

was created by the Swiss Confederation as a

private company enjoying a monopoly of

broadcasting, controlled by the state. It is sub-

divided into three regional/linguistic organi-

zations: the RDRS (for German speakers), the

SSR (Société Suisse de Rediffusion et

Télévision) and RDSI (for Italian speakers).

French-language radio programmes are pro-

vided by Radio Suisse Romande (RSR), which

is based at Lausanne (40 avenue du Temple,

Case Postale 78, 1010 Lausanne). RSR runs

three stations: RSR-La Première, RSR-Espace

2 and RSR-Couleur 3. It is financed partly by

revenue produced by the licence fee and partly

by income from advertising. The latter is strictly

controlled: commercial breaks must not ex-

ceed 8 per cent of any single day’s broadcast-

ing. The SSR monopoly was broken for the

first time in 1979 by Radio 24, and further

concessions have been granted to a number of

local private radio stations since that time.

While managing reasonably well to hold

its own in the face of the ever-increasing popu-

larity of television, radio listening in

francophone Switzerland compares unfavour-

ably with the other two major linguistic areas

of the country. While Italian speakers average

156 minutes of listening per day, and German

speakers average 198, French speakers only

manage 133.

ALAN PEDLEY

Further reading

Albert, P. and Tudesq, A.-J. (1987) Histoire

de la radio- télévision, Paris: PUF (a con-

cise historical overview).

Boon, M., Ryst, A. and Vinay, C. (1990)

Lexique de l’audiovisuel, Paris: Dalloz

(general reference work).

Chevalier, P.-A. (1993) ‘Le Paysage médiatique

helvétique’, Swiss Embassy.

Debbasch, C. (1985) Radio et télévision en

Europe, Paris: Éditions du CNRS (a useful

survey of the European scene).

francophone radio: Europe

239

Études de radio-télévision, Brussels: RTB (an-

nual review, useful for updating European

context).

Landam, G. (1986) Introduction à la

radiodiffusion Internationale, Paris: Davoze

(a good basic guide to international broad-

casting).

francophone television:

DOM-TOMs

Francophone television in the French overseas

departments and territories (DOM-TOMs)

comes from three main sources: the public sec-

tor company Société National de Radio et de

Télévision Française d’Outre-Mer (RFO),

which operates two channels; local private tel-

evision companies; and pay-TV on the Canal

Plus format.

In terms of audience share, the most impor-

tant broadcaster by far is RFO. This company

was originally established by the 1982 broad-

casting statute (the loi Fillioud) as a subsidi-

ary of the state broadcasting companies, Ra-

dio France and FR3, but was transformed into

a separate self-standing programme company

by the 1986 audiovisual statute (the loi

Léotard). RFO is funded primarily from li-

cence-fee income, supplemented by state grants

and advertising revenue. It has three zones of

transmission. The Atlantic zone comprises

Martinique, French Guiana, Guadeloupe and

St-Pierre-et-Miquelon; the Indian Ocean zone

consists of Reunion and Mayotte; and the Pa-

cific zone includes New Caledonia, Polynesia,

and Wallis and Futuna. Its first channel, RFO

1, broadcasts programmes from the schedules

of TF1, France Télévision and ARTE as well

as some locally produced output, especially

news. The second channel, RFO 2, transmits

the programme schedule of France 2. In the

early 1990s, thanks to developments in satel-

lite technology, the programme schedules of

both channels were lengthened and reception

improved. RFO’s audience share is upwards

of 70 per cent across the DOM-TOMs.

Having lost its long-standing monopoly,

however, RFO is facing increasing competition

for viewers with the establishment of new

sources of television programming. In the early

1990s, several local private television compa-

nies were licensed by the national regulatory

authority, the Conseil Supérieur de

l’Audiovisuel (Higher Audiovisual Council).

The most popular private television channels

in the DOM-TOMs include: Antenne Réunion,

whose main shareholder is the Bourbon sugar

company; Archipel 4 in Guadeloupe;

Télévision Caraïbe Internationale and Antilles

Télévision in Martinique; and Antenne Créole

Guyane. In addition, encrypted pay-TV chan-

nels, in which Havas DOM is a major share-

holder, have very quickly established them-

selves in the market. These include: Canal

Réunion, Canal Antilles in Guadeloupe and

Martinique, Canal Guyane, Canal Calédonie

and Canal Polynésie. Finally, there are assorted

pirate television stations, including Canal 10

and TV-Éclair in Guadeloupe and TV Freedom

in Reunion, broadcasting illegally to small but

often very faithful audiences.

There is little doubt that the pay-TV sta-

tions will attract enough subscribers to be a

viable commercial enterprise. In contrast, the

advertising-funded private channels face an

uncertain financial future as satellite and dig-

ital technology opens up the DOM-TOMs to

the output of foreign broadcasters. More wor-

ryingly for French policy-makers, if in the fu-

ture local viewers turn away in large numbers

from the output of RFO, then the high cost of

maintaining a separate public sector company

for small overseas audiences is bound to fea-

ture on the media policy agenda in metropoli-

tan France. In this case, the French state will

have to decide the extent to which it is pre-

pared to underwrite a publicly funded broad-

casting service in the DOM-TOMs to help

maintain its cultural and political presence

there.

RAYMOND KUHN

Further reading

Euromedia Research Group (1992) The Me-

dia in Western Europe, London: Sage (a

country-by-country study of Western Eu-

ropean media systems).

Siune, K. and Truetzschler, W (eds) (1992)

Dynamics of Media Politics, London: Sage

(thematic study of the media in Western

Europe).

francophone writing (fiction,

poetry): Belgium

Belgian writing is here defined as the collec-

tion of texts (novels, short stories and poetry)

produced by authors of Belgian origin, and has

been better known through famous figures

than through an easily identifiable label (such

as ‘Belgian literature’). While few would dare

propose a definition of what exactly consti-

tutes ‘Belgian literature of French expression’,

Belgian authors have in fact contributed to the

history of French literature: for example,

Maurice Maeterlinck (recipient of the Nobel

prize for literature in 1911), Émile Verhaeren,

Henri Michaux, Georges Simenon, Dominique

Rolin, Françoise Mallet-Joris, Pierre Mertens,

and the inevitable Tintin, whose adventures

scarcely need to be presented. For ideological

and political reasons, for want of institutional

or academic support (except a Royal Academy

of French Language and Literature, avoided

by new talents as a stifling institution), and

because Belgian publishers were never able to

compete with their established and prestigious

French neighbours, many Belgian authors have

chosen to live in France or to give up their Bel-

gian nationality altogether (Michaux became

French in 1955). When they choose to remain

in Belgium, Belgian novelists set their novels

either in France or behind closed doors with

no reference to location. Throughout the his-

tory of Belgian literature, the trend of exile to

Paris has been so consistent that there is in-

deed some truth in the adage that ‘One French

author out of two is Belgian.’ Since the 1980s,

however, the situation has changed. Thanks

to the combined efforts of Belgian publishers

(Labor), and to a proactive Ministry of Cul-

ture and Social Affairs represented by Marc

Quaghebeur (who is not only a diplomat but

also an author and critic), Belgian authors have

become visible on the international scene as

francophone writing (fiction, poetry): Belgium

242

specifically Belgian, though it is no longer felt

that such an identity requires a fixed defini-

tion outlining exactly what is Belgian and what

is not.

The post-1950 literary production remains

polymorphous. While many authors of the

first half of the century have set their own

work within a movement or have been ‘la-

belled’ according to French literary taxonomy

(naturalism for Camille Lemonnier, symbol-

ism for Georges Rodenbach, and Surrealism

for Paul Nougé and Christian Dotremont),

contemporary Belgian authors remain idiosyn-

cratic. The 1980s saw a tremendous develop-

ment as far as Belgian writers were concerned,

both with new voices and with writers who

had published before and who came back with

much-acclaimed novels.

In a deceptively classical style, Jacqueline

Harpman explored the abysses of history and

memory from La Mémoire trouble (Blurred

Memory) in 1987, and 1990’s La Fille

démantelée (The Dismantled Daughter), to

Moi qui n’ai pas connu les hommes (I Who

Have Not Known Men) from 1995, a claus-

trophobic novel set in a wasteland which ex-

plores life without memory, and her 1992 col-

lection of short stories, La Lucarne (Skylight),

in which she rewrote old myths, from the Vir-

gin Mary and Antigone to Joan of Arc.

One of the most prolific and acclaimed Bel-

gian authors, Dominique Rolin, who was

awarded the 1952 Femina prize for Le Souffle

(Breeze), explores love, family and their trag-

edies—from Les Marais (Swamps) of 1942,

Moi qui ne suis qu’amour (I Who Am Noth-

ing But Love) of 1948, 1960’s Le Lit (The Bed)

and Le For intérieur (Heart of Hearts) of

1962, novels influenced by the nouveau ro-

man, to 1992’s Deux Femmes un soir (Two

Women One Night), the subtle story of a

mother-daughter relationship in which their

points of view alternate.

In a much-debated novel (taken to court

for its allegedly irreverent comments on Bel-

gian monarchs Leopold III and Baudouin),

Pierre Mertens—the author of what had been

considered the ‘first modern Belgian novel’,

1974’s Les Bons Offices (The Good Services),

and recipient of the 1987 Médicis prize for his

Shadowlight (Les Éblouissements)—deals

with a popular Belgian theme, the interior

exile of the tourist, entwined with childhood

memories, in Une Paix royale (A Royal Peace).

In his 1995 novel, La Place du mort (The

Passenger Seat), Jean-Luc Outers also deals

with memory, but integrates it with a theme

central to the Belgian novel of French expres-

sion—language itself. In the same year, Louise

Lambrichs, whose Journal d’Hannah

(Hannah’s Diary) was elected best novel for

1993 by the French literary journal Lire,

analyses the dangers of history and memory

in Le Jeu du roman (The Game of the Novel).

On the more experimental side, Eugène

Savitzkaya manipulates the French language

to translate the tragedy of the human condi-

tion and memory in a world inhabited by deca-

dence, decay and putrefaction—see Mongolie

plaine sale (Mongolia, dirty plain) from 1976,

La Disparition de maman (The Vanishing of

Mother) of 1982, Marin mon coeur (Marin,

My Beloved) from 1992, and En Vie (Alive)

published in 1995. Jean-Philippe Toussaint

explores the narrative possibilities of the frag-

ment in La Salle de bain (The Bathroom) and

Monsieur: A Novel (Monsieur), published in

1995 and 1996. The most famous writers of

the new generation include Pascal de Duve,

who explored the tragic ironies of modern life

in his 1990 novel (Izo), and the playful and

tragic possibilities of the French language in

his 1993 travel narrative Cargo Vie (Cargo

Life), before his death from AIDS at the age of

29. Amélie Nothomb has become the enfant

terrible of Belgian literature, a cultural phe-

nomenon, not only with her novels but also

with her interviews, in which she has created

herself into a myth (coming from a famous

family of Belgian diplomats and ministers, she

declares that she was an alcoholic between the

ages of 3 and 14 and that only anorexia saved

her from alcoholism). After her first novel,

Hygiène de l’assassin (Hygiene of the Mur-

derer), a thriller published in 1992 whose ac-

tion is the very act of writing, she published

Le Sabotage amoureux (Amorous Suicide), Les

Combustibles (Combustibles), and Les

francophone writing (fiction, poetry): Belgium

243

Catilinaires (Hate Speeches), which was hailed

by the popular French literary journal Lire as

the best novel for 1995. Amélie Nothomb’s

novels, usually based on the dialogue form, are

caustic and captivating domestic tragedies.

JEAN MAINIL

See also: comic strips/cartoonists; francophone

cinema: Belgium; francophone performing

arts: Belgium; literary prizes; publishing/

l’édition

Further reading

Biron, M. (1994) La Modernité belge, Brussels:

Éditions Labor (a theoretical analysis of what

led to, and constitutes, Belgian modernity).

Frickx, R. and Trousson, R. (eds) (1988)

Lettres françaises de Belgique: dictionnaire

des oeuvres, Paris: Gembloux (a four-vol-

ume dictionary of Belgian literature with

alphabetical entries by title with an index

by author: volume 1, the novel; volume 2,

poetry; an indispensable work of reference).

Quaghebeur, M. (1990) Lettres belges entre

absence et magie, Bruxelles: Éditions Labor

(on poetry).

francophone writing (fiction,

poetry): DOM-TOMs

In the Caribbean, the borders of nation-states

are incompatible with linguistic and literary

frontiers. By concentrating on the (strictly

speaking) French territories of Guadeloupe,

Martinique and French Guiana that officially

acquired the status of overseas departments

(départements d’outre-mer) in 1946, it is pos-

sible to delineate a thriving literary corpus. But

no common denominator is easily pinpointed,

because Caribbean literatures always question

the categories of literary genres, of national or

even post-colonial literatures, and invite us to

adopt a comparativist approach.

The French language is not a unifying ele-

ment: Haitian literature of French expression

is internationally acclaimed, while not all texts

emanating from the French islands are in

French: many poems, novels or folk-tales are

written in Creole by Hector Poullet and

Raphaël Confiant or collected by Ina Césaire.

Recent novels have explored the potential of

Creolized French: for example Patrick

Chamoiseau’s (1988) attempt at becoming a

marqueur de parole in Solibo Magnificent

(Solibo magnifique) and Daniel Maximin’s

1995 prose poem about a hurricane, Une Île

et une nuit (One Island and One Night).

Caribbean writings from départements

d’outre-mer are closely related to texts written

in other Caribbean islands (in Creole, French,

English, Spanish or Dutch), but also to the

Creole (though non-Caribbean) literatures of

the Indian Ocean (Mauritius and Reunion).

Moreover, many authors live and write far

from their native islands. Gisèle Pineau, who

wrote La Grande Dérive des esprits (The Great

Drift of the Spirits) and L’Espérance-Macadam

(Macadam-Hope), was born in Paris; Maryse

Condé has lived in Africa—see Segu (Ségou),

and Heremakhonon (1976)—in France and in

the United States. Always, Caribbean writings

redefine fiction and poetry because they bring

together literature and politics, history and

myths, storytelling and the written word.

Politics and history, turbulent sites of con-

tested cultural reappropriation, constantly

mingle with fictional accounts. Many recent

novels write a Caribbean history of

(de)colonization. Writers denounce the silences

of official history—see Dany Bebel-Gisler’s

1985 biography of an unknown Guadeloupean

woman, Leonora: The Buried Story of

Guadeloupe (Léonore: l’histoire enfouie de la

Guadeloupe) or shatter persistent myths: re-

reading the tragic turning point of 1802 when

slavery was re-established by Napoleon after

having been abolished in 1794, André

Schwarz-Bart’s 1972 work La Mulâtresse soli-

tude, and Maximin’s Lone Sun (L’Isolé Soleil)

and Soufrières, ridicule the theory that Carib-

bean people cannot appreciate their freedom

because they never had to fight for it. Novels

also provide a Caribbean vision of recent

events: Raphaël Confiant’s 1988 text, Le Nègre

francophone writing (fiction, poetry): DOM-TOMs

244

et l’amiral (The Negro and the Admiral) adds

a lively Caribbean rendition of Vichy-led

Martinique to the few and often sketchy ac-

counts left by famous literary figures after their

short and unhappy stay in the island on their

way to the United States (see, for example, Lévi-

Strauss’s Tristes Tropiques).

Caribbean culture and the way in which it

is mediated through written and oral produc-

tions is often a controversial site of struggle

against neocolonial reflexes, as shown in

Bebel-Gisler’s Le Défi culturel guadeloupéen:

devenir ce que nous sommes (The

Guadeloupean Cultural Challenge: Becoming

Who We Are), published in 1989. Caribbean

writing has a long tradition of opposing the

racist stereotypes that have survived the hey-

day of colonial assimilationist policy.

Recent fiction has celebrated heroic nègres

marrons (maroons), trying to erase the popu-

lar image of runaway slaves as mythical vil-

lains invoked to scare children (see Édouard

Glissant’s Malemort). In recent fiction and

poetry, cultural marronnage (marooning) is a

conscious tactic of reappropriation, and nov-

elists choose to tap both African storytelling

traditions and the Western canon—see Simone

Schwarz-Bart’s Between Worlds (Ti-Jean

l’horizon) or The Bridge of Beyond (Pluie et

vent sur Télumée Miracle), and Condé’s re-

writing of Wuthering Heights, La Migration

des coeurs (Migrating Hearts).

What Frantz Fanon called lactification in

his 1952 publication, Black Skin White Masks

(the tragically alienated desire to mix black

blood with the milk of white sexual partners

in order to ‘save’ the race), is still recognizable

in derogatory Creole phrases referring to the

texture of black people’s skin or hair—see Julie

Lirus’s Identité antillaise (Caribbean Iden-

tity)—and denounced in Michèle Lacrosil’s or

Jacqueline Manicom’s stories. Most novels

published in the 1980s and 1990s, however,

welcome racial and cultural hybridity. While

they hardly present diversity as a cultural or

economic panacea, they move far beyond the

tenets of negritude, that focused on black iden-

tity and race, neglecting people of mixed-blood,

Indian and Chinese origins (see Aurore by the

writer and Communist leader of Indian ori-

gin, Ernest Moutoussamy). The universe de-

scribed in Joseph Zobel’s 1955 Black Shack

Alley is still present in collective memories but

the grandmother’s struggle to help her grand-

son infiltrate the white educational system is

far from recent novelists’ preoccupations:

Chamoiseau’s 1992 Goncourt prizewinning

Texaco retraces the history of quite contem-

porary urban developments.

In 1989, when three Martinican thinkers

published a lyrical manifesto to celebrate

créolité as a specific West Indian cultural iden-

tity, they did not hesitate to claim that West

Indian literature does not exist yet In Praise of

Creoleness (Éloge de la créolité). Readers may

have wondered if such a self-disparaging state-

ment was the result of lasting forms of cul-

tural alienation that Chamoiseau, Bernabé and

Confiant’s literary predecessors had already

virulently condemned: Aimé Césaire’s 1939

Return to My Native Land (Cahier d’un re-

tour au pays natal) predates World War II. But

the provocative suggestion may also be an in-

vitation to revise our conception of ‘literature’

in the West Indies. Glissant proposes ‘relation’

as a keyword in his Caribbean Discourse (Le

Discours antillais) of 1981, and in his 1990

text, Poétique de la Relation (Poetics of Rela-

tion). Playing on the French word ‘relation’

(meaning ‘relationship’, but also what is ‘re-

lated’ and what is ‘relayed’), he presents us with

cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural models.

Similarly, In Praise of Creoleness invites us to

concentrate on the beautifully entangled web

of relationships created by our search for a

specific French West Indian literature; This web

or mosaic finds both thematic and structural

representation in novels such as Maryse

Condé’s Crossing the Mangrove (Traversée de

la mangrove) from 1989, an intriguingly poly-

phonic text where the voices of first-person

male and female narrators of different races

and social origins alternate from chapter to

chapter. The juxtaposition of separate Carib-

bean identities does not add up to a coherent

whole, but to a complex and sometimes frag-

mented mosaic, a symbol of the islands’ mul-

tiracial and multicultural society.

francophone writing (fiction, poetry): DOM-TOMs

245

MIREILLE ROSELLO

See also: decolonization; francophone popu-

lar music: DOM-TOMs; parties and move-

ments in francophone countries: DOM-TOMs

Further reading

Antoine, R. (1992) La Littérature franco-

antillaise: Haïti, Guadeloupe et Martinique,

Paris: Karthala (a history of the literature

produced in these islands from the begin-

ning of the colonial period to the present).

Boyce Davies, C. and Savory Fido, E. (eds)

(1990) Out of the Kumbla: Caribbean

Women and Literature, Trenton: Africa

World Press (a collection of interdiscipli-

nary articles by leading specialists of Car-

ibbean studies).

Burton, R. (1995) ‘West Indies’, in P.France

(ed.) The New Oxford Companion to Lit-

erature in French, Oxford: Clarendon Press

(a thorough, chronologically organized sur-

vey of Caribbean literature).

Chamoiseau, P. and Confiant, R. (eds) (1991)

Lettres créoles—tracées antillaises et

continentales de la littérature, 1635–1976,

Paris: Hatier.

francophone writing (fiction,

poetry): Indian Ocean

The principal islands—Madagascar, Mauri-

tius, Reunion and the Seychelles—all have a

literary output in French, but its status differs

as a result of their varied populations and con-

trasting colonial history. In all these areas,

French as a literary language is rivalled by lo-

cal languages such as Creole in Reunion, Mau-

ritius and the Seychelles, English and Indian

languages in Mauritius, and Malagasy lan-

guages in Madagascar. There is nevertheless a

well-established tradition of writing in French,

going back to the late eighteenth century in

the case of Reunion and the early nineteenth

century in Mauritius.

The postwar years have seen contrasting

developments of these latter two traditions.

Mauritian poetry has achieved French and in-

ternational consecration through the figures of

Malcolm de Chazal (1902–81), a visionary and

aphoristic poet much admired by André Breton

and Jean Paulhan; and Edouard Maunick (b.

1931), a poet of exile and multicultural island

identity and a figurehead of francophone liter-

ary circles in Paris. By contrast, the contem-

porary poets of Reunion have been more con-

cerned to establish and explore their Creole

identity, often by writing in Creole or incor-

porating Creolisms into their use of French.

The pioneer of the movement of créolie was

Jean Albany (1917–84), with his collection

Zamal of 1951—the title is the Creole word

for ‘marijuana’, symbolizing the poet’s heady

memories of his childhood on the island. Oth-

ers of a more conventional inspiration celebrate

Reunionnais decor and culture, such as the

archbishop Gilbert Aubry (b. 1942), in Rivages

d’Alizés (Trade-Wind Shores) of 1971, and

Hymne à la Créolie (Hymn to Creolia) of 1978;

or the long-exiled Jean-Henri Azéma (b. 1913)

in Olographe (Testament) of 1978. A more

militant poetry grew up in the 1970s, aware

of the heritage of slavery and contemporary

social inequalities, with the monumental epic

poem Vali pour une reine morte (Lament for a

Late Queen) of 1973 by Boris Gamaleya (b.

1930); and the populist and autonomist po-

etry of Alain Lorraine (b. 1946) in Tienbo le

rein (Let’s Stay as One) of 1975. More recent

militant poets, such as Carpanin Marimoutou

(b. 1956), have moved from French to Creole,

often publishing bilingual editions of their

poetry, such as Romans pou la mèr et la tèr

(Romance for the Sea and the Land) of 1995.

In Madagascar, with the colonial imposi-

tion of education in French, a generation of

poets grew up who attempted to transpose

into French the forms and qualities of the in-

digenous Malagasy poetic tradition. Three of

these, Jean-Joseph Rabéarivelo (1903–37),

Jacques Rabémananjara (b. 1913) and Flavien

Ranaïvo (b. 1914), were made famous by their

inclusion in L.S.Senghor’s Anthologie de la

nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache (Anthology

francophone writing (fiction, poetry): Indian Ocean

246

of the New Negro and Malagasy poetry) in

1948. The pioneering Rabéarivelo committed

suicide in 1937, but the militant nationalist

Rabémananjara was to dominate the Mala-

gasy literary scene during the postwar years.

Imprisoned after the uprising of 1947,

Rabémananjara became a spokesman for the

aspirations of his country to independence and

worked closely with Alioune Diop on the re-

vue Présence africaine. His prison poetry

Antsa (Testament) of 1948, Rites millénaires

(Millennial Rites) of 1955 and Lamba in 1956

are among his most poignant celebrations of

the mystery and beauty of the decor and cus-

toms of his country. After independence in

1958, Rabémananjara became an influential

politician and government minister, but was

forced into exile by the coup d’état of 1972

which soon brought to power the Marxist re-

gime of Ratsiraka. The more discreet figure of

Ranaivo published L’Ombre et le vent

(Shadow and Wind) in 1947, Mes chansons

de toujours (The songs I always sing) in 1955,

and Le Retour au bercail (Return to the Fold)

in 1962, before he too was forced to settle in

France. The period of the People’s Republic

was not favourable to writing in French and

very few new poets in French have come to

prominence in the intervening years.

In both Mauritius and Reunion the first at-

tempts at novel writing date back to a nine-

teenth century more preoccupied with poets

and poetry, and it is often the case that novel-

ists are also famous as poets. In the postwar

years, the brothers Loys (1915–69) and André

Masson (b. 1921) impose a Mauritian pres-

ence in metropolitan French literature with an

impressively prolific production of novels.

Loys Masson left his native island in 1939,

never to return, but some of his best-known

novels, L’Étoile et la Clef (The Star and the

Key) of 1945 and Le Notaire des Noirs (Law-

yer to the blacks) of 1961, evoke episodes of

Mauritian society, and the mythical presence

of the island and the sea are recurrent motifs

in his fictions. His brother André remained in

Mauritius but none the less managed to pub-

lish several novels in the 1960s in Paris—Un

temps pour mourir (A Time to Die) in 1962,

1963’s Le Chemin de pierre ponce (The Pum-

ice-Stone Path) and Le Temps juste (A Just

Time) from 1966—which evoke metaphysical

doubts through the depiction of Mauritian

social problems such as racial prejudice. The

most notable defenders of the Mauritian novel

in recent years have often been exiles: Jean

Fanchette (b. 1932) with Alpha du Centaure

(The Alpha of the Centaur) in 1975; Marie-

Thérèse Humbert (b. 1940) with her autobio-

graphical novel A l’autre bout de moi (At the

Other End of Myself) in 1979; and the French

novelist Jean-Marie Le Clézio who rediscov-

ered his Mauritian identity with Le Chercheur

d’or (The Gold-Hunter) in 1985. The island

has at the same time experienced a revival of

literature in Creole, be it novels such as René

Asgarally’s Quand montagne prend difé…

(When the Mountain Catches Fire…) of 1977

or the poems of the dramatist Dev

Virahsawmy.

The mid-1970s in Reunion saw a renais-

sance of socially committed novels, often writ-

ten in Creole or a Creolized French, whose

subject matter was the lives of the poorest

members of Réunionnais society: the most

notable of these are Les Muselés (The Silenced)

of 1977 by Anne Cheynet (b. 1938), Daniel

Honoré’s Louis Redona of 1980, written in

Creole, and Quartier trois-lettres (Three-Let-

ter District) of 1980 by Axel Gauvin (b. 1944).

Gauvin has continued to publish (in Paris)

novels with similar themes of social exclusion

and characteristics of formal experiment,

which he has subsequently republished in Re-

union in Creole: Faims d’enfance (Childhood

Hungers) of 1987 and L’Aimé (The Loved

One) from 1990. The implied questioning of

Réunionnais identity has been pursued through

historical novels about the island’s often som-

bre past by Jean-François Samlong (b. 1949),

such as Terre arrachée (Torn Earth) of 1982

and Madame Desbassayns of 1985, and by the

metropolitan Daniel Vaxelaire, in Chasseur de

Noirs (Slave Hunter) of 1982 and L’Affranchi

(The Freedman) of 1984. The last twenty years

have seen a period of considerable richness in

Reunionnais writing in both French and Cre-

ole, and this looks likely to continue.

francophone writing (fiction, poetry): Indian Ocean

247

The novel in French has not really estab-

lished itself as a genre for indigenous writers

in Madagascar; an exception to this general

rule is the recent output of short stories and

novels by Michèle Rakotoson (b. 1948), such

as Dadabe of 1984 and Le Bain des reliques

(The Bathing of the Relics) of 1988, which

evoke from a woman’s point of view the so-

cial problems of a people emerging from a

long period of repression. In general the short

story has shown more vitality as a genre, be-

ing easier to publish in local newspapers and

magazines and able to attract the attention of

a wider public through the competitions or-

ganized by Radio-France Internationale.

The smaller islands in the region—the Sey-

chelles, the Comores, Mayotte—have shown

the first signs of autonomous literary activity

during the last twenty years, with their first

novels and poetry written in French. In gen-

eral, however, it is the sustained vitality of the

literary output of Reunion and Mauritius

which remains the principal contribution of

the area to francophone culture, which can

arbitrarily be measured by the recognition by

Parisian publishing houses of figures such as

Malcolm de Chazal, Loys Masson, Marie-

Thérèse Humbert, Axel Gauvin or Jean-

François Samlong.

PETER HAWKINS

See also: francophone performing arts: Indian

Ocean; francophone popular music: DOM-

TOMs; parties and movements in

francophone countries: DOM-TOMs

Further reading

Joubert, J.-L. (1991) Littératures de l’Océan

Indien, Paris: EDICEF (essential reading).

francophone writing (fiction,

poetry): North Africa

All three Maghrebin countries (Morocco, Al-

geria and Tunisia) experienced French colo-

nial rule. Morocco and Tunisia gained their

independence in 1956, Algeria in 1962. Be-

cause of the French policy of assimilation and

the length of time (132 years) it was in con-

tact with the French language, Algeria has

produced more francophone writers than

Morocco or Tunisia. At first, Maghrebin peo-

ple refused to acknowledge as legitimate the

use of French as it was an imposed language,

but later accepted its usage, often appropriat-

ing it for their own ends. Thus French became

the language of anti-colonial struggle, particu-

larly through writing.

The first short story to appear in French in

1891 was La Vengeance du cheikh (The

Vengeance of the Sheikh) by the Algerian

M’hammed Ben Rahhal. However, this early

francophone writing was discarded by genera-

tions of Maghrebins as assimilationist and

over-friendly towards France

It was not until the 1950s that the Maghreb

witnessed the birth of a literature written in

French that was acknowledged by many as

being of quality. The representative writers of

this period are Albert Memmi, Driss Chraïbi,

Kateb Yacine and Mohammed Dib, among

others. The dynamic and powerful style of

these writers earned them the title of forefa-

thers of what is today known as ‘francophone

Maghrebin literature’.

The early 1950s writers, such as the Alge-

rian Mouloud Feraoun who published Le Fils

du pauvre (The Pauper’s Son) in 1950, and

the Moroccan Ahmed Sefrioui with his 1954

novel La Boîte à merveilles (The Box of Won-

ders), were labelled by their peers as ethno-

graphic writers because they provided the

reader with a colourful and exotic picture of

everyday life in the French colonies. Such

writing was essentially directed to a French

audience. It was regarded by Maghrebin crit-

ics as being politically disengaged, consider-

ing that the 1950s were, above all, a period of

political unrest throughout the Maghreb.

However, in the case of Feraoun, the critics

failed to recognize that through the autobio-

graphical narration and the humanist style of

The Pauper’s Son the writer does not simply

francophone writing (fiction, poetry): North Africa