A Poetics of Solidarity in Francophone Independence Literatures

FAIN: FA-252195-17

Julie-Françoise Tolliver
University Of Houston (Houston, TX 77204-3067)

A book-length study of connections among global francophone writers and intellectuals.

During the independence period (1950 to 1980), francophone intellectuals from Quebec, Africa, and the Caribbean read each other and, animated by transnational solidarity, imagined alternatives to colonialist and neocolonialist formations. This project examines the affective bond that made this process possible, a poetics of solidarity that orients texts and the political imaginaries they elaborate. The “tongue ties” of francophone anticolonial intellectuals bound them together (they were connected through the French language) but also offered a set of linguistic and ideological constraints (their imaginaries were determined by the French language as it was, itself, shaped by francophone history and culture). In its investigation, this project disrupts the racial logic evinced by francophone literary studies in the US, tracing literal and figurative racial permeability on both sides of the French literary Atlantic.

Media Coverage

Two UH profs get humanities funding (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Alyson Ward
Publication: Houston Chronicle
Date: 12/20/2016
Abstract: Describes the NEH fellowships awarded to Rex Koontz and Julie Tolliver
URL: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/entertainment/books/article/Two-UH-profs-get-National-Endowment-for-the-10808482.php?t=02053ea8f4438d9cbb&cmpid=email-premium#photo-12073055

Review (Review)
Author(s): Isabelle Fournier
Publication: American Review of Canadian Studies
Date: 7/10/2021
URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/02722011.2021.1996928

Review (Review)
Author(s): Cameron Cook
Publication: Research in African Literature
Date: 7/10/2021
URL: 10.2979/reseafrilite.52.3.11

Associated Products

Tongue Ties: A Poetics of Solidarity in Independence Francophone Literature (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Tongue Ties: A Poetics of Solidarity in Independence Francophone Literature
Author: Julie-Françoise Tolliver
Abstract: This paper examines the transnational and transracial ties that linked French-language writers from Quebec, the Caribbean, and Africa from the mid 1950s to the mid 1970s. This period, during which independence was an essential concern in Africa and the Caribbean as well as in Quebec, nurtured solidarities defined by leftist politics and serious considerations of interregional, interracial, and interclass difference. The “tongue ties” of the paper’s title has a double meaning: while francophone anticolonial intellectuals were “tied” linguistically through their use of the French tongue, their connection was also constricted (tied) by the inherent qualities of a language itself shaped by varied francophone histories and cultures. Language was fashioned by and simultaneously fashioned these solidarities. Specifically, my paper will lay the groundwork for an examination of the ways texts worked with and through language in this period, arguing that the linguistic tropes that authors used to express unity in difference reveal both gaps and unexpected connections in the francophone political imaginary. The analytical abecedary of these tropes constitutes a “poetics of solidarity” that defines a foundational moment in French-language world literature.
Date: 04/01/2018
Primary URL: https://www.acla.org/
Primary URL Description: This is the URL for the association that hosted the conference.
Conference Name: American Comparative Literature Association Colloquium

“Siting images, citing worlds: Nouri Bouzid’s Bent familia and the Quebec connection” (Article)
Title: “Siting images, citing worlds: Nouri Bouzid’s Bent familia and the Quebec connection”
Author: Julie-Françoise Tolliver
Abstract: This paper examines two images from 1970s Québécois culture that appear fleetingly in Nouri Bouzid’s 1996 drama Bent Familia, analyzing the ways they inform the film’s off-screen referential space. By complicating the film’s otherwise straightforward “spectrum of geographical liberties” structured along old colonial lines, Quebec troubles the ostensible hierarchy separating France (and the West more generally) from its former colonies. Harking back to the hope associated with the era of independence, these two Québécois images nostalgically recall a moment when the Maghreb inspired desire for progressive change around the francophone world.
Year: 2018
Primary URL: https://online.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/abs/10.3828/cfc.2018.5
Primary URL Description: This URL should take you to the article online.
Access Model: Subscription only
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Contemporary French Civilization Vol. 43 No. 1 (April 2018)
Publisher: Liverpool University Press

The Quebec Connection: A Poetics of Solidarity in Global Francophone Literatures (Book)
Title: The Quebec Connection: A Poetics of Solidarity in Global Francophone Literatures
Author: Julie-Françoise Tolliver
Abstract: From the 1950s to the 1970s, the idea of independence inspired radical changes across the French-speaking world. In The Quebec Connection, Julie-Françoise Tolliver examines the links and parallels that writers from Quebec, the Caribbean, and Africa imagined to unite that world, illuminating the tropes they used to articulate solidarities across the race and class differences that marked their experience. Tolliver argues that the French tongue both enabled and delimited connections between these writers, restricting their potential with the language’s own imperial history. The literary map that emerges demonstrates the plurality of French-language literatures, going beyond the concept of a single, unitary francophone literature to appreciate the profuse range of imaginaries connected by solidary texts that hoped for transformative independence. Importantly, the book expands the "francophone" framework by connecting African and Caribbean literatures to Québécois literature, attending to their interactions while recognizing their particularities. The Quebec Connection’s analysis of transnational francophone solidarities radically alters the field of francophone studies by redressing the racial logic that isolates the northern province from what has come to be called the postcolonial world.
Year: 2020
Primary URL: https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/5403
Primary URL Description: Press announcement
Primary URL Description: Press announcement (forthcoming in December 2020)
Access Model: Cloth, paperback, ebook
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780813944890
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

Prizes

Helen Tartar First Book Subvention Award
Date: 3/18/2020
Organization: American Comparative Literature Association
Abstract: Tongue Ties: A Poetic of Solidarity in Francophone Independence Literatures is an original intervention that challenges the historical and racial logic of Francophone studies by introducing the complex solidarity relations between the Quebec independence movement and anticolonialism in African and Caribbean countries. It is a sophisticated examination of the idea of solidarity as a form of reading as well as of independence and anticolonialism as textually constructed concepts.

“Griffus ou non griffus”: Naming, baptism, and global racialized capitalism in Césaire’s La tragédie du roi Christophe (Article)
Title: “Griffus ou non griffus”: Naming, baptism, and global racialized capitalism in Césaire’s La tragédie du roi Christophe
Author: Julie-Françoise Tolliver
Abstract: This article extends scholarly analysis of race in imperial capitalism by examining the naming and baptism of formerly enslaved Black people in Aimé Césaire’s 1963 La tragédie du roi Christophe. King Christophe, the protagonist, attempts to give his people a foothold in a world system based on their exploitation by giving names – or griffes (meaning both “claws” and “signatures”) – to his aristocracy in order to bind them and their land to him. The article argues that Christophe resorts to tropes of naming and baptism as sacralizing gestures to establish power structures that will anchor his state against the flow of European-dominated capitalism. The term griffe, however, also refers to a person of mixed race; in a context where both whiteness and racial admixture are suspicious, the pun on griffe problematizes Christophe’s reliance on the power of naming. Christophe’s tragic fallacy is to trust language at the expense of other considerations.
Year: 2022
Primary URL: 10.1080/17449855.2022.2038240
Access Model: subscription only
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Journal of Postcolonial Writing
Publisher: Routledge

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