In recent years, the concept of “World Literature” has become an important paradigm for literary institutions. Above all, the question of a World Literature in French emerged in 2007 with the < Manifeste pour une litterature-monde en francais > (Manifesto for a World Literature in French) signed by forty-four Francophone writers, and published in the French newspaper Le Monde. Since then, arguments for or against World Literature have reexamined current literary theoretical frameworks to deconstruct the legacies of cultural imperialism and to address the constrictive “labels” of peripheral canons. In regards to these debates, my research investigates the benefits, as well as the challenges, of bringing modern literatures together to shed light on the work of less-internationally prominent writers. Through a critical examination of the presence of nation in contemporary world literature – such as markers of linguistic, narrative, and cultural particularities (in Gayatri Spivak’s sense) – I seek to assess the need for as well as the limits of the current compartmentalization of World Literature (separated either by region or by language) in institutions. My analysis focuses on the representation of social ills – in parallel with the implications of globalization – in contemporary literatures in relation to our modern societies.
The first four chapters of my dissertation rely on a comparative approach to the work of French, Sub-Saharan African, American, and Canadian writers. In these chapters, I examine recent realist iterations of the issues of identity, race, sexuality, despair, and alienation in novels by Michel Houellebecq (Les Particules elementaires, 1998; Plateforme, 2001), Ken Bugul (Le Baobab fou, 1982; Riwan ou le chemin de sable, 1999), Fatou Diome (Le Ventre de l’Atlantique, 2003), Alain Mabanckou (Black Bazar, 2009), Jhumpa Lahiri (The Namesake, 2003), and Jacques Poulin (Volkswagen Blues, 1984; Chat sauvage, 1998; L’anglais n’est pas une langue magique, 2009). Chapter 5 addresses the arguments against World Literature, specifically the concept of “Untranslatables,” to foreground the linguistic and cultural value of modern translation. Here, I put Frank Wynne’s English translation of Houellebecq’s Les Particules elementaires into dialogue with the original French edition, using translation methodology sources to study excerpts of the translated version from a stylistic perspective. I then isolate cultural concepts appearing in specific passages – such as the use of humor – and analyze these signifiers as they appear in both languages.
Overall, my dissertation strives to provide an interdisciplinary approach: in addition to linguistics, translation studies and those of postcolonial, post-migration and diaspora studies, I have found it necessary to draw upon the fields of sociology, psychology and psychoanalysis to elaborate my arguments.
While visions of a literature without borders undoubtedly partake of a utopian component, this dissertation gives parameters to determine the stakes for the future of a World Literature which, I suggest, will be mapped out somewhere between already-established institutional structures and a new literary order, one that is more inclusive and yet aware of the threats of mono-ideological aesthetics contouring today’s global capitalist world.