The present article examines the works of Chateaubriand (Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem) and Victor Hugo (Les Orientales and Bug-Jargal), focusing on what they reveal about Eastern and Caribbean “Otherness.” In other words, these two authors build a vision of the Other that can be positioned against postcolonialism, as the discourse they inscribe themselves in is characteristic of domination whose effects are a form of violence.

Key words: Postcolonial studies, French literature, sociology of literature, philosophy of literature.

For centuries, Western culture (mis)represented and appropriated the First Nations. Aboriginal peoples were regarded either as primitive, animal-like savages, or they were romanticised and eroticised in order to justify the Canadian policy of civilisation and assimilation of the natives into the monolithic “Britain of the North.” Even though since the time of the signing of the Multiculturalism Act, the concept of Canadian identity has been undergoing major changes embracing racial and cultural minorities, native people still have to fight for recognition and their rightful place in the Canadian discourses. The problem of misrepresentation of indigenous cultures has not been eradicated. This article focuses on the analysis of the potlatch ceremonies of the Kwakwaka’wakws. Using the postcolonial perspective and methodology, it explores both the past and the contemporary culture of potlatches. It also examines the colonial misconceptions of potlatch ceremonies and the current revival of the Kwakiutl potlatching. This postcolonial analysis shows the subversion of the colonial “truths” and looks at the revival of Kwakiutl culture as the aboriginal way of re-reading and re-writing of Canadian history, deconstructing conservative national mythologies and fighting for recognition by the Canadian discourse. The following analysis also reveals changing attitudes toward Kwakwaka’wakws’ potlatches and the evolution of opinions regarding this ceremony. The discussion is based mainly on selected published official government documents, books, life writing and information obtained from a personal interview gathered by the author during her research trip to British Columbia in March 2010 (Student Mobility grant obtained by the Canadian Studies Centre, University of Silesia).

Key words: the potlatch, Kwakwaka’wakws, Kwakiutls, First Nations.

The main goal of the present analysis is to show the formation of four characters’ identity in the colonial times. The analyzed novel is set in an Italian colony called Eritrea. There are four main characters: Carlo from Italy, Sellas from Eritrea, and their children Marianna and Gianfranco. They are all interpreted with reference to the three concepts related to the notion of belonging, namely, “I,” “we,” and “others.” The changes which take place in their personal and social identities are examined, as the characters form bonds with one another and with the society. They are examined as representing the following identity models: “individual identity,” “social identity,” “balanced identity” and “lack of identity.” These forms of identity, however, are never definitive because the shaping of identity is always a dynamic process, and thus every social or cultural context may require that identities be reformulated. The novel may be interpreted not only as the memoirs of the colonial times, but also as a tribute paid to the colonists, the colonised, and specifically to the Métis people who had to take up the challenge of redefining themselves. The author also encourages the reader to reflect on today’s nomadic, multiethnic, postmodern societies.

Key words: Italian postcolonialism, identity dilemmas, Italian literature of migration, Erminia Dell’Oro.

The aim of the present analysis is to discuss the francophony as a postcolonial concept, on the basis of the famous article “Pour une littérature-monde en français” whose authors consider the concept of the francophony as a form of colonial domination and are awaiting the birth of world literature in French. This paper explores these issues on the example of Raharimanana, a young writer from Madagascar.

Key words: The francophony, world literature in French, post colonialism, Raharimanana.

The aim of this article is to analyze Francophony as a myth which is, according to Roland Barthes, “depoliticized speech” turning “the complexity of human acts” into “the simplicity of essences.” In Barthes’ way of approaching myth, I will try to demystify (demythologize) deep ideological structures of the Francophone discourse of universal and humanist values which seem to have never been reexamined in the francophone world so far. Now, if these values are similar to those preached by La République, which keeps believing that it has a monopoly on them, one can say that Francophony, whether we like it or not, is a political act. And that is not only in the sense of polis, as a community speaking the same language and recognizing the same values, but also in the sense of realpolitik, which needs to be understood as the continuation of an imperialistic gesture overshadowed by the neo-republican discourse of equality.

Key words:  Francophony, Myth, Mythologies, French Republic, Multiculturalism, French Theory.

Albert Memmi, one of the forerunners of the postcolonial thought, perceived the Jewish condition as an emblem, even an archetype, of any dominated, oppressed, dispossessed condition. The highly specific consciousness of the colonised condition which the Jewish writer manifests seems to be shaped by the centuries-long communal experience, which exceeds the historical and political frames of postcolonialism sensu stricto, as the Jewish identity is stigmatised from its beginnings (conceived of as a narrative conveyed by the biblical tradition) by the experience of oppression and the threat of extermination or assimilation. These transhistorical factors determine to a large extent linguistic strategies typical for Jewish literature written in European (non-Jewish) languages. It is from this perspective that the present article discusses the role of the linguistic superconsciousness of Albert Cohen and Piotr Rawicz, two francophone Jewish writers, whose works — precursory to the postmodern condition — reveal identitarian, ethical and esthetic challenges related to the use of the language of the other in the creative process.

Key words: Jewish literature, linguistic superconsciousness, oppression, postmodern condition.

What characterizes Latin American literature starting from the 19th century, after gaining independence, is, without a doubt, the search for its own unique features. Scientists, thinkers, novelists and poets have been trying to provide Latin American people with the consciousness of their own identity, defined, in most cases, in terms contradictory to those used in Europe or the United States. The aim of this paper is to present how, in this context, Nicolás Guillén, an Afro-Caribbean poet, builds a concept of (Afro)Cubanism (or Americanism, as his theses apply to the entire region). Given the assumption that identity is a project of a reflexive character (Giddens), and that discourse determines the relation between power, knowledge and identity (Foucault), the paper analyzes the poetry of Nicolás Gullén in the light of various concepts from the field of cultural studies, including ethnic absolutism, creative geographies, transculturation/acculturation, ideology, hegemony and symbolic violence.

Key words: Nicolás Guillén — identity — (Afro)Cuban — cultural studies.

This paper analyses contemporary Spanish American novels whose plots are motivated by a private investigation into the mysteries that lead to collective memory. In the second half of the 20th Century many Latin American countries were being torn apart by civil wars, guerilla wars and dictatorships. The societies in these countries (Argentina, Chile, Bolivia and Central American countries) have not yet come to terms with their personal and collective wounds and crimes. Recent history has not yet been totally restored. The official versions of history have been distorted and the heroes of the novels analyzed here begin their private investigation of facts, which leads them to uncover not only the mysteries in the recent histories of their countries, but also the political affiliations of members of their own families. As these heroes are always
somehow involved with writing, their para-detective search turns out to be a struggle about a discursively and textually formed identity, as well as a negotiation of values between the public and the private, between official historiography and the memory of individuals and their families, between the traditional and postmodern sense of patriotism. This process illustrates that in some contemporary Latin American societies, conflicts between the accepted version of history and marginalized private memory correspond to the postcolonial model of identity problems.

Key words: Contemporary Spanish American novel, detective story, identity, postcolonial studies.

The narrator/writer of Gail Scott’s novel My Paris (1999) finds herself in an overdetermined urban space of contemporary Paris. The space, already multiply written and rich in cultural associations, is re-worked again in the fragmented “diary,” in which the narrator both echoes and contests her literary guides, primarily Gertrude Stein’s work and Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project. Her Paris emerges as a re-citation of the Paris inscribed in those and other texts, reconfigured from a perspective marked by temporal remove, which is stressed in the novel. Scott explores multiple, criss-crossing spaces of the city: those of architecture, culture, race, gender, nationality. While the text’s concern is to move to and fro “across comma of difference,” and to avoid binary oppositions without obliterating the all-important comma, it politicises its postmodern concerns. The article explores the postcolonial dimension of Scott’s novel, which, though not necessarily foregrounded, provides an important conceptual thread of the text. The narrator, a bilingual Québécoise, considers spaces of alterity and otherness of Paris, explicitly relating them to Canadian national experience. From this perspective the enticement and impossibility of the unitary construct of a nation symbolised by the republics of France and the United States are explored. The postcolonial reflection is closely related to the notion of a non-unitary, nomad subject that emerges from the novel.

Key words: Quebec novel in English, Gail Scott, postcolonial urban space, Paris in literature, postcolonial Canadian literature, experimental writing in Quebec.

The article aims to analyze L’Écrivain public and L’Enfant de sable by Tahar Ben Jelloun, focusing on the issue of hybrydity which is discussed from the postcolonial and postmodern perspective (Bhabha, De Toro). The analysis concentrates on the oriental tale which deconstructs the paradigm of the novel and the autobiography. However, the article also depicts that Tahar Ben Jelloun derives his ideas from the oral tradition so as to, similarly as Jorge Luis Borges, give his works an intertextual and intercultural dimension. Through the nomadic structure of the tale, which is present both in the novel and in the autobiography, the writer rejects the idea of a conservative and monolithic Moroccan society and opposes stereotypes.

Key words: Hybridity, tale, postmodern autobiography, Moroccan novel in French.

The present article reflects on theories of decolonization and the urgency of border, peripheral or third world countries to learn how to be; that is, to decolonize themselves of the internal colonialism that emerges with the rise of nation-states: one that only archives the resemantization of colonialism of power, and emphasizes the colonial difference. The paper also reflects upon the epistemic difference that, since the Boom, has marked the literary discourse, as it examines Renato Prada Oropeza’s novel, While the Night Falls, as a decolonizing text which narrates Hugo Banzer’s military coup in Bolivia.

Key words: Decolonization, learning how to be, difference, epistemic, memory.

The present article offers an analysis of Cristina Ali Farah’s novel, Madre piccola. Even though it is generally believed that postcolonial novels have only been written in English, Farah’s book can definitely be classified as such, as it examines the specificity of the Italian post-colonial period, as well as the situation of women and other minority groups. Madre piccola portrays the lives of four women living on the border of two cultures. The nomadic society presented in the text-marked by temporariness, moving from one place to another-is not perceived as “local” anymore, but is presented in a more global context. The title Madre piccola means “mother’s aunt” in the Somalian language, and is an example of a word-for-word translation. Importantly, the world of women and immigrants as depicted by Farah has not been known in Europe so far. That world is far more emancipated and modern than one could expect. Ali Farah’s writing tackles not only the nature-and preservation-of what is local, but also the development of the global culture.

Key words: Post-colonial Italian women’s literature, immigrants, nomadic society.

The article takes as its subject the possibility of perceiving women as constituting a distinct subgroup of the subaltern. Following a theoretical introduction to this concept, the article focuses on the practical application of the notion in Canadian literature, discussing the two major female-authored Canadian novels published in the 1970s, that is Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing and Margaret Laurence’s The Diviners. Although Atwood’s and Laurence’s novels highlight the influences of the opposite colonial centres, the postcolonial situations and reflections of the main female characters appear quite similar. Indeed, both Atwood’s narrator and Laurence’s Morag Gunn seem to be depicted as doubly colonised: as women, and as Canadians. However, there exists a possibility of reading the protagonists as occasionally acting from a position of superiority towards those subaltern to them, namely the Native population.

Key words: Canadian literature, feminism, postcolonialism, subalternity.

Throughout his life Moyano’s traveled between Buenos Aires, Córdoba, La Rioja, and Madrid, which had an unquestionable influence on the author’s oeuvre. His work is often divided into two periods: one before the great emigration to Madrid (when he focused on the differences between the capital and the rest of the country, concentrating on the poverty and misery of the margins), and one which introduces a profound reflection on a man forced to live in exile, where the two worlds he knows, the present and the past, blend together leaving him deeply confused. Moyano was a peripheral author, always on the margin, far from the capital and far from his country.

Key words: Daniel Moyano, exile, emigration, centre, periphery.

Postcolonial literature, which did not appear in Italy until the 1980s, started to flourish in that country in the early 1990s. Although it originated there and draws on Italian historic colonial experiences, it can be understood as a way of emphasising the linguistic and cultural separateness of Italian-speaking authors originating from former Italian colonies in Africa (i.e. Libya, Somalia and Ethiopia). It appears that a country like Italy, which has been deprived of its homogeneity and linguistic and cultural cohesion, is particularly susceptible to the absorption of traditions and languages from outside. Postcolonial literature, which at its very basic level is a hybrid, cannot be pushed into the framework of one convention or tradition. On the contrary, it fits well into the mainstream of non-canonical, avant-garde and expressionistic literature that has been present since Dante. Igiaba Scego, the author of Oltre Babilonia, published in 2008, belongs to the generation of young Italian writers of African origin. The article aims to analyse the novel in terms of writing techniques defined as expressionistic at the level of surface, typology of characters and linguistic and stylistic features.

Key words: Postcolonial literature, expressionism, episodic structure, neologism, language hybridism.

The analyzed texts are definitely challenging borders and limits, including those of immigration, that means the exploration of the marginalized aspects of life and marginalized elements of society. They put a great emphasis on the human as physical beings in a physical world, the human that try to live their lives in the meaningful and conscious way. They struggle against a world in which they are emarginated. The stories of the immigrants could be seen as the reconceptualization of the Italian society, its history that in this case refers to postcolonial consequences and the cultural constructs. The immigrants in Italy should no longer look for a pattern of life, they’d rather celebrate its specificity and try to be moral creatures, replacing stereotypes with their genuine experiences.

Key words: Challenging borders, limits, immigration, conscious life.

The combination of two traditional Malagasy genres, kabary and sovâ, to produce the monologue of a desperate father named “Za” — whose name signifies an intimate, familiar “Me” — engenders the narrative situated between two realities: the world of the living and the world of the dead. This intersection serves to describe the banally apocalyptic reality in which today’s Madagascar is immersed. Surrounded by characters drawn from legends and from his own previous works, Raharimanana — a novelist, poet and playwright who was born in 1967 and has lived for the past twenty years in France — begins a work of memory by confronting the emblematic shadows of Malagasy history. Everything is expressed through the author’s language, which, via lisping, reveals unsuspected meanings and imposes on words the mutilation that Raharimanana’s narrator had to endure. It also elicits images of injuries inflicted on the author’s father in 2002. Following in the path of Frankétienne and Sony Labou Tansi, the initial narrative denounces taboos, such as respect for ancestors. Garbled French becomes a neology appropriate for an analysis of the postcolonial reality as well as for defining the attitude of one who fervently refuses to adopt a monolithic approach towards it.

Key words: Madagascar, kabary, sovâ, postcolonial literature, memory.