French Studies in Southern Africa - Volume 2006, Issue 36, January 2006

In this paper I will demonstrate that the South African vision of multiculturalism as it is expressed in the National Curriculum Statement is limited and that it is not preparing young South Africans for the twenty-first century. I will argue that to achieve a broader multiculturalism, the educational system needs to further French as a foreign language actively. Ten years ago, education was faced with the challenge of designing a curriculum that affirmed the diversity of South African cultures, religions, ethnic and racial groups while unifying people within this diversity. Policy was thus underpinned very firmly by the principles of multiculturalism. However, South African multiculturalism is inward-looking, it is "safrocentric". It does not prepare learners for the realities of a nation composed not only of a heterogeneous population of South Africans but which also comprises a growing number of immigrants. South African multiculturalism must be broadened to go beyond local cultural diversity to include world cultures. Education must open learners to the Other who is not only a South African of a different cultural group, but is of another nationality. I will argue that this discovery of the Other and of Otherness can best be made through the learning of foreign languages such as French.

Among the new generation of African women authors writing in French, Bessora occupies a very particular place. Daughter of "afropolitanism", she assumes her position in the literary field of African novel writing. Her third novel, Deux bébés et l'addition (2002) represents the ambivalence of her artistic project: while she is opposed to any form of determination (in particular racial and sexual), she herself succumbs to certain characterizations at the level of her writing, as she follows the path of her predecessors, in particular Mariama Bâ and Ken Bugul. An analytic study of Bessora's novel, and in particular of its main character, a male midwife, will indicate how this writer finds her own voice in this literary ancestry.

Quoique les films Jean de Florette et Manon des sources (1986) fussent très applaudis par la critique, L'Eau des collines, le roman en deux tomes, sur lequel les films sont basés, a attiré très peu d'attention. Cet article-ci répare une lacune dans le corps de la littérature existante en faisant l'analyse des représentations négligées du mal banal et du mal méphistophélique qui constituent une grande partie de l'intrigue de L'Eau des collines. L'article examine aussi les aspects religieux qu'on trouve à coté du sujet du mal et qui fournissent en part l'antidote contre ce mal. Ces idées sont considérées dans le contexte de l'avis de Pagnol à propos du rôle du christianisme dans la vie.

Our right and left hands each have specific abilities which are largely determined by the collective imagination, which in turn perpetuates certain preconceptions attached to the concept of right and the left in general. Thus it is accepted that the right side is more often right than not, and the left is more often wrong or faulty. This cultural predestination seems to be strong enough as to influence the way in which we relate to our hands and what we do with them. Unconcerned by this human predestination, the fictional character can deviate from the somehow strict pattern of our hand's assigned roles. This study explores how three French twentieth century writers assigned to each hand roles and abilities opposite to the accepted norm. Malraux, Camus and Vercors share a common tendency in setting their heroes in a conflicting relationship with their destiny, resulting in an attempt to overcome their submission to a fate more often fatal than not. Whether war, revolution or insurrection, the background of their action provides them with ideal opportunities to succeed in such reversal. Therefore the inversion of the preconceived ideas attached to the right and the left conventions, signifies the successful questioning of the fatality of the human condition: a right hand with a left hand's predestined role or the opposite, a left hand with a right hand's connoted abilities. The corpus of this study covers the fictional world of Malraux from Les Conquérants to L'Espoir, Camus La Peste and Le Silence de la Mer by Vercors. Further to their exploration of the possibilities of reversing the tole assigned to each hand, they applied the principle of inversion to their narrative techniques. What we imply here is the mechanism by which two points of view are combined to produce two different images of the same reality, one of them being the inverted reflection of the other. By putting both inversions in relation to each other, we propose to assign to the hand a symbolic function which not only serves the character whose hand it is, but also illustrates the relation between reality and narration.

Le Silence de la mer by Vercors is a short novel initially published in secret in 1942 by the famous underground publishing-house Les Editions de Minuit, while France, defeated in 1940, was under German occupation. The story is set during during WW II in rural France. An old man living with his niece is requested to provide accommodation for a German officer. Upon taking residence in the house, the well-mannered officer soon discovers that his hosts remain defiantly silent. Yet a love story develops between the young man and the girl via their body language. This study argues that the novel's enduring success is due to its exceptional literary qualities, which allow for layered messages to be conveyed in intricate ways unlikely to have been understood by the majority of readers at the time. Under the scrutiny of literary analysis the narrative fabric of the novel reveals its sophisticated weaving. The novel is interpreted as a pictogram proposing the hypothesis that what is said is not what is meant. Below the most accessible meaning of the story line, which seems at first to be at odds with the tragic predicament of occupied France, lies the true meaning of the book. Vercors' resistance to the national humiliation reveals the danger of the Nazi's strategy of politeness, which was aimed at coercing the French people into collaboration.

L'admiration sans faille que Klaus Mann voua à André Gide s'est manifestée par le grand nombre de textes qu'il consacra à cet auteur. Bien que leur relation soit unilatérale et que Gide réponde sans enthousiasme aux nombreuses avances de Mann, Il demeura une influence importante voire un modèle dans la vie de celui-ci. Cet article examine leurs intérêts communs en fonction de leur amour partagé des voyages, leur positionnement en tant que marginaux et leur orientation sexuelle partagée comme base des perceptions de Mann sur l'Afrique du Nord dans ses récits de voyage et ses autobiographies, qui sont en grande partie formés par les expériences de Gide et ses observations sur l'Afrique du Nord.

An analysis of Henri Lopes' novels reveals a traditional African society that is characterized by a penchant for superstition. Most of the events experienced or simply described by the characters refer to a materialistic world that seems to be governed by practices of the occult. The integration of supernatural power into daily activities is striking. Supernatural force is considered capable of allowing humanity to control destiny and change fate at will. On the other hand, this supremacy over the universe gives a human being the power to harm or destroy any person he dislikes, as the power is neutral and obeys the will of its possessor. Lopes' work also emphasizes the integration of such supernatural power by the postcolonial African leadership into the management of State affairs. The immortality of the human soul and its potential to live both in this concrete world and beyond are also under scrutiny.

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However, the author distances himself from these traditional beliefs and raises a different voice: the new African era should not be bound to a tradition of superstition. The new generation of Africans in the novels are depicted as modernist and revolutionary as they rise up against a perception of the world based on occultism. Lopes' work plays what is obviously a deliberate role in this demystification process.

In his film, Touki Bouki, or the Voyage of the Hyena, the Senegalese film maker Djibril Diop Mambety portrays himself as well as many young Africans, who, even in post independence times, are torn between the desire to go to France, with the attraction of Paris, and attachment to their roots. They are inescapably enmeshed within a vicious circle, torn between the desire to escape the depressing life in their country (with the attraction of the Other and consequent assimilation) and their national allegiance and desire to establish their identity. The article analyses this revolutionary film and the filmic techniques employed by Mambety to express his alienation and frustration: a fragmented structure, prolepses, analepses, ellipses, the montage, striking visual images, the sound track, etc. It also examines the impact of this film on the artist's life.

Cet essai qui se lit d'une traite est un voyage qui mène au coeur même de la création littéraire chez Georges Bataille. Celle-ci se présente comme un dialogue avec des oeuvres que l'auteur du Bleu du ciel aurait lues en cachette. Jean-Louis Cornille part de l'évidence: Bataille était avant tout un bibliothécaire, qui faisait des emprunts, clairement inventoriés par le fonctionnaire lui-même. Mais il empruntait également, de façon plus sournoise, d'autres ouvrages, français et étrangers, et il y empruntait, les traces se dévoilant dans sa propre oeuvre; et c'est, pour Cornille, le commencement d'un parcours intertextuel et autotextuel, parsemé de coïncidences.

Quoiqu'il nous reste une centaine de chansons de geste datant des XIIe et XIIIe siécles, une seule est vraiment connue et traduite en anglais: La Chanson de Roland, qui appartient au cycle de Charlemagne. Après vingt ans d'efforts, mais aussi de bonheur et de satisfaction, Elsabe Einhorn nous offre sa belle traduction en anglais et en prose de dix-sept chansons du Cycle de Guillaume d'Orange, parmi les plus importantes.

Depuis la fin du XXe siècle, et le début des années 2000, on assiste à un incontestable regain d'intérêt pour les idées et les représentations coloniales.