Littérature-monde and Old/New Humanism

Summary

The littérature-monde movement, as it is elucidated in the 2007 volume Pour une littérature-monde, has at its heart the ambition to uncouple literature from the nation. Frustrated with the neo-colonial undertones of Francophonie, with the term's perpetuation of an imperialist conception of the benefits of French culture and language for the ‘natives’ of its supposedly inferior colonies and ex-colonies, Rouaud and Le Bris propose littérature-monde as a more liberating, all-encompassing term for the literature of diverse cultures throughout the world. The last vestige of French colonialism, Francophonie is described by Le Bris as ‘un espace sur lequel la France mère des arts, dépositaire de l'universel, dispenserait ses lumières’ (Le Bris, 2007: 45), and littérature-monde will sound the death knell of this essentially nationalist and ultimately reductive conception of literary production in French. Moreover, at the same time littérature-monde offers a challenge not only to the strict association of literature with the nation, but also to an excessive self-consciousness or ‘textualism’ detected in literature in French in the wake of post-structuralism and the nouveau roman. Littérature-monde refuses what is seen as an inward-looking preoccupation with language in order to embrace lived realities. If this two-pronged critique of Francophonie is carried out in the name of a celebration of plurality and diversity, however, it is striking that this plurality is couched in terms of a new humanism.