Corporeal Archipelagos: Writing the Body in Francophone Oceanian Women's Literature

223 Pages·2017·1.389 MB·English

by  Julia Frengs

i
Corporeal Archipelagos
After the Empire: The Francophone World
and Postcolonial France
Series Editor: Valérie K. Orlando, University of Maryland
Advisory Board
Robert Bernasconi, Memphis University; Claire H. Griffiths, University of Chester, UK;
Alec Hargreaves, Florida State University; Chima Korieh, Rowan University; Mildred
Mortimer, University of Colorado, Boulder; Obioma Nnaemeka, Indiana University;
Alison Rice, University of Notre Dame; Kamal Salhi, University of Leeds; Tracy D.
Sharpley-Whiting, Vanderbilt University; Nwachukwu Frank Ukadike, Tulane University
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Corporeal Archipelagos
Writing the Body in Francophone
Oceanian Women’s Literature
Julia L. Frengs
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Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Writing the Body in Oceania 1
1 The Instigation and Perpetuation of the Mythical
Oceanian Body 21
2 Sexual Violence, Trauma, and the Damaged Oceanian Body 57
3 Ecological Bodies: An Ecocritical Lens 93
4 Writing Institutionalized Bodies: Breaking Out of Confinement 121
5 To Speak or Not to Speak: Writing the Silent Body 151
Conclusion: Oceanian Literature, or the New Tattoo 187
Bibliography 195
Index 205
About the Author 211
v

Acknowledgments
This book builds on the doctoral dissertation research I completed at the
University of Maryland, College Park. I wish to thank the UMD School of
Arts and Humanities and the Department of French and Italian for the vari-
ous travel grants and dissertation completion funding that made the project
possible. I am especially indebted to Valérie K. Orlando, whose generosity
and willingness to read and provide invaluable feedback on my work has
extended well beyond her time spent as my dissertation advisor. To the mem-
bers of my dissertation committee, Andrea Marie Frisch, Caroline Eades,
Sarah Benharrech, and Sangeeta Ray, your commentary and suggestions have
provoked reflection and resulted in the strengthening of this work. Thank you.
I spent a considerable amount of time at the University of Hawai‘i at
Mānoa while writing this manuscript. The East-West Center, along with the
Department of Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics, sponsored several
conferences and supported the visits of Oceanian scholars and authors that
greatly informed my scholarship. I am grateful to my current institution, the
University of Nebraska–Lincoln, for providing a summer stipend facilitat-
ing a research trip to French Polynesia in May 2017, where I was able to
complete revisions of the manuscript. Thank you to Titaua Porcher-Wiart at
the Université de la Polynésie française for her aid in the organization of this
trip, and to Hinatea Remoissenet, who graciously hosted me in Tahiti, and to
her family and friends for their hospitality. I also wish to thank Chantal Spitz
for spending time with me in Huahine, and Ari’irau Richard-Vivi for being
willing to go out of her way to meet with me.
I am indebted to Helen Sturm at the University of Auckland, who provided
me with her unpublished honors and MA theses, translations of Gorodé’s
Graines de pin colonnaire and Tâdo, Tâdo, wéé! ou “No more baby.” I
am so very grateful to my colleague Jordan Stump at the University of
vii
viii Acknowledgments
Nebraska–Lincoln for his translation assistance on several excerpts from
the various works I analyze in this book. I am likewise indebted to the
anonymous peer reviewer for their translation assistance and suggestions for
improving the manuscript. Any decisions not to adhere to the recommenda-
tions of my colleagues and readers, and any errors, lapses, or infelicities are
my responsibility alone.
I wish to thank the organization Women in French, many of whose mem-
bers have provided precious mentorship, intellectual support, and feedback
on my articles and conference presentations since I joined in 2012.
Most of all, I would like to thank my wonderful, incredibly patient hus-
band, Matt, and my family for their unwavering support of my work.
Thank you to the journal Romance Notes for granting permission to reprint
portions of my article “Institutionalized Bodies and Emerging Literatures in
the Works of Déwé Gorodé and Claudine Jacques,” Romance Notes Volume
56.2 (2016), and to the journal Studies in Twentieth & Twenty-First Century
Literature for granting permission to reprint portions of my article “Antici-
patory Testimonies: Environmental Disaster in Claudine Jacques’s Fictional
Prophecies,” which appeared in Volume 39.2 (2015). I would especially like
to thank the anonymous peer reviewers for their suggestions that helped me
improve these essays, as well as this book. Segments from my essays “‘Com-
ment te dire la dualité entre l’une et l’autre moi-même’: The Double ‘je’
of Chantal T. Spitz’s Elles, terre d’enfance, roman à deux encres,” which
appeared in the volume Protean Selves: First-Person Voices in Twenty-First-
Century French and Francophone Narratives, edited by Adrienne Angelo
and Erika Fülop (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014) and “Narrating the
Unspeakable in New Caledonia: Sexual Violence, Narration, and Truth in the
Works of Claudine Jacques,” which appeared in the volume The Unspeak-
able: Representations of Trauma in Francophone Literature and Art, edited
by Névine El Nossery and Amy L. Hubbell (Cambridge Scholars Publishing,
2013) also appear in this book.
I thank Éditions L’Harmattan for granting permission to reprint quotations
from the novel Je reviendrai à Tahiti, by Ari’irau (Paris: L’Harmattan. Used
with permission © Editions L’Harmattan), and Au vent des îles for permis-
sion to reprint quotations from the novels Elles, Terre d’Enfance: Roman à
deux encres by Chantal T. Spitz, Tâdo, Tâdo, wéé ! ou « No More Baby » by
Déwé Gorodé, and Matamimi, ou La vie nous attend by Ari’irau. Thank you
to Huia Publishers for permission to reprint quotations from Chantal T. Spitz’s
Island of Shattered Dreams, translated by Jean Anderson. The Wreck, by
Déwé Gorodé, was first published in English by Little Island Press, Auckland,
New Zealand: thank you for granting permission to reprint quotations from
this translation. Finally, to Raylene Ramsay and Deborah Walker-Morrison,
Acknowledgments ix
thank you for your permission to reprint translations of Déwé Gorodé’s origi-
nal poetry published in the collection Sharing as Custom Provides.
A NOTE ON TRANSLATIONS
I have made an effort to use available English translations of works published
originally in French throughout this book. If published English translations
were available, I cite only the translations. In the absence of published
English versions, I have provided both the original French text and my own
translations.