La madeleine en prime time : Proust et <i>Les Soprano</i>

Contemporary French and Francophone Studies · 2025-01-01

Funny world.

Contemporary French and Francophone Studies · 2023-01-01

La Fin des Carambar

Contemporary French and Francophone Studies · 2023-01-01

Two powerful, rich, white men face the sea in the port of Monaco. One is a businessman, the other his faithful lawyer. They have something of Dom Juan and Sganarelle and the world belongs to them. On the terrace of a restaurant, they talk to each other, maybe listen to each other, and listen to each other talk. But others listen to them and come to talk as well. That’s when the trouble begins.

Humor in French Postcolonial Literature and Culture: A Paradox?

Contemporary French and Francophone Studies · 2022 · 1 citations

• Sociology
• Aesthetics
• Humanities

From black face, sexist jokes, anti-Semitic caricatures to anti-Muslim cartoons, comedic discourses have targeted minority groups. The aim of my dissertation, however, is to demonstrate the ways in which minorities who have been targets of jokes, have in turn themselves become its creators, using humor as a medium to deal with complicated questions of identity. In this overview of my dissertation, I outline how a selection of Francophone Maghrebi, Caribbean and sub-Saharan African writers, graphic novelists and stand-up comedians repurpose colonial stereotypes. Of interest is not humor writ large, but comedic play whose hallmark is a sense of ambivalence—it deals with issues of gravity with a sense of levity; and it simultaneously coopts yet subverts colonial representations of alterity. I argue that such comedic play with official discourses allows these humorists not only to delegitimize simplistic Metropolitan representations of alterity, but also to furnish ludic alternatives in their place. By using humor in their creation, postcolonial humorists laugh at misery and play with images of cultural alterity without necessarily propagating them, instead reappropriating them in ways that more accurately reflect the contemporary diversity and heterogeneity of modern France.

Après Ulysse

2021 · 4 citations

• Humanities
• Humanities
• Philosophy

Après Ulysse, qu’« après » marque un temps ou un mouvement, on s’interroge. Que reste-t-il de l’étranger ? Après Ulysse, comment aujourd’hui comprendre l’étranger qui jamais – qu’on le veuille ou non – ne cessera de venir à nous ? La question, celle de l’hospitalité, est ici posée dans des imaginaires qui tournent autour de la Méditerranée, la traversent en tous sens, sur les traces parfois immatérielles de l’Odyssée qui en eux murmure, veille, affleure. C’est aussi une invitation à penser l’hospitalité sous ses allures politiques, où l’éthique en vient toujours à composer avec l’esthétique. On le verra dans des histoires d’écrivains et chez d’autres encore, moins poètes en apparence mais qui, linguiste comme Émile Benveniste ou philosophe comme Jacques Derrida, composent aussi avec la langue pour invoquer l’invité de jadis qui deviendra l’étranger ; et ce qu’aujourd’hui, pour demain, nous avons à lui offrir. Ce qu’aujourd’hui, pour demain, aussi, il fera de nous. Enfin, se dire « après Ulysse », c’est aussi se dire après un nom, rappeler que le nom de l’étranger, le nom qui toujours en dit trop et jamais assez, est à la fois l’écueil et la clef de l’accueil. Voilà ce que nous révèlent Albert Cohen, Albert Camus, Assia Djebar, mais aussi Edmond Jabès, pour penser l’hospitalité de la mer au désert, du livre à la lecture, entre parole et silence.

Notes on contributors

Manchester University Press eBooks · 2020

• Computer Science
• Computer Science
• Psychology

des Tutsi du Rwanda et aux terrorismes contemporain.

Barthes on the Beach

The Yearbook of Comparative Literature · 2019-08-01

In his essay “The Writer on Holiday” (“L’Écrivain en vacances”), published in Mythologies, Barthes seems to denounce the bourgeois sacralization of the “Writer” who, even on vacation, is incapable of not working. But, in reality here, Barthes isn’t referring to writers in general. He is talking about himself—and his own difficult (almost melancholic) relationship with laziness, which he has discussed in other autobiographical texts and interviews.

« Salauds de pauvres ! » (Du scandaleux <i>Barnabooth</i>)

Contemporary French and Francophone Studies · 2018-01-01

Is it scandalous to insult the poor? Some poets don't seem to care. From Baudelaire, who incited us to beat up the poor, to Larbaud who, via Barnabooth, his alter ego and spokesman, urged us to spit in their faces, insulting the poor echoes the predicaments of artistic creation. However, the controversy goes further. Larbaud pushes provocation to the limit by making a scene on the literary scene, setting up one of the most elaborate scams in the history of publishing. What is at stake, beyond the scandal, is the questioning of the bourgeois idea (for the bourgeois also get their share of insults) that a book belongs to its author, its publisher, or its audience. What is at stake in scandal, from the insult to morals to the morals of the scam, is the freedom of writing—risking getting ruined in the process.

Proust’s Singhalese Song (A Strange Little Story)

2017-07-05 · 1 citations

The Singhalese man may be irate because 'Negro' is a derogatory term— much more than 'Negre', which at the time of Marcel Proust was a taxonomic term referring to the 'black race' and was used in anthropology, ethnography, and art history. To a certain extent, Proust makes the perfect stranger the witness and the master of the authenticity of his text, a formidable guardian of the rapport between fiction and the world. As Proust's 'historiette' and Swann's little story of the 'beau mot' show, each word, each phrase may lead to a misstep. As part of a historical event, the Singhalese man inscribes universal Time and history within a text that incidentally offers no explicit chronology. In short, the two Singhalese exhibitions were the most successful exhibitions at the Jardin d'Acclimatation, the most spectacular— the beginning of exhibitions for pure entertainment.

Zoopoétique des animaux en littérature moderne de langue française

HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe) · 2017-01-01 · 2 citations

« Zoopoétique. Des animaux en littérature moderne de langue française » [Princeton University, 16-18 octobre 2014], André Benhaïm et Anne Simon dir., Revue des Sciences humaines, n° 328, décembre 2017