LES FRONTIÈRES RACIALISÉES DE LA LITTÉRATURE FRANÇAISE

French literature, francophone literature – what hides behind this differentiation that appears to be so obvious? By proving the existence of a color line, which serves to govern an unequal literary order, Sarah Burnautzki explores the symbolic violence of racialization in the French literary space.

Starting with the challenge of literary categorizations posed by Marie NDiaye and Yambo Ouologuem’s texts and certain key moments which until now have remained barely visible, this research unveils traces of the contentious negotiations of a literariness perceived as ‘African’ or ‘universal’. By linking together the interpretation of literary texts and questions from the sociology of literature, this study sheds light on the way in which certain works by Yambo Ouologuem and Marie NDiaye take part in, at times subversively, at times complicitly, a literary space dominated by racialized power relations. This work thus represents a considerable enrichment of our understanding of these two authors.

A groundbreaking and ambitious study with methodically articulated reasoning, The racialized borders of French literature. Racial profiling and strategies of passing inaugurates an important field of investigation in French literary studies.

Sarah Burnautzki has a PhD in French literature and Social Anthropology from the University of Heidelberg and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the department of Romance Philology at the University of Mannheim.

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