n French Studies in Southern Africa - Ce qu'il devint d'Ananda

Abstract

In postcolonial francophone literature, the interaction between oral literature (mainly through tales) and written literature (mainly through novels) goes well beyond recreating the past memory, which are the different types of literary traditions that francophone writers have encountered. Well-established writers from Central Africa and the French Antilles (such as Patrice Nganang, Alain Mabanckou or Patrice Chamoiseau) end up creating a type of hybrid literature, in which the catalyst often tends to be the animal, which is seen as an accelerator for the processes of hybridisation. But what happens when these processes are being described from a feminine point of view? In order to probe this question, we will analyze two novels by Mauritian writer Ananda Devi, in which the metamorphosis into an animal is prominently being played out: Moi, L'interdite and La vie de Joséphin le fou. One wonders if the transformation of a subaltern subject into an animal is not a transposition of Devi's own need to transform into a woman-writer, a process she only manages to achieve by distancing herself from her male mentors.