Andrée Viollis in Indochina: The Objective and Picturesque Truth about French Colonialism

Abstract

During the 1930s French literary representations of included texts as disparate as steamy colonial novels, sentimental novels about the plight of women and children, historical tracts about the French saving indigenous art and culture and occasionally, anti-colonial texts on the inhu manities of the French colonial regime. Still today, the French presence in remains an undigested and strangely nostalgized moment. Recent films and novels present conflicted visions of a colony1 whose identity con tinues to be shrouded in extremes of either romance or terror. As we turn back to a period (1931-1935) preceding decolonization when many books on appeared, other voices besides those of Andre Malraux or Claude Farrere may help understand us how the French could or did por tray Indochina. It is perhaps also time that we examine more closely the role of French women in the colonies. If they were witnesses to some of the more unpleasant aspects, as portrayed in many of Marguerite Duras' novels, could they not provide a new means of examining colonial history? French rhetoric about Indochina, perhaps even more than rhetoric about other colonies, repeatedly involved gendered constructions of national and ethnic identity (Edwards, 1998:109, 129). If is not portrayed as the beautiful but problematic concubine of the French republic and one examines, rather, the reality of women in Indochina, perhaps colonial his tory can take on new valences. Panivong Norindr writes that At issue is not simply the fictional or real existence of but, perhaps even more important, the question of how factual truths have been used and manipulated to construct an identity for Indochina (Norindr, 1996:2). If, as he puts it, is a French fantasy, where are women in this phantasmagorical construction? What can French women do, say or write about their role in the colonies? Locating strong early twentieth-century female voices in French liter ature, and particularly in narratives about and the colonies, is a challenge. Pierre Loti, Victor Segalen, Henri Michaux, Paul Nizan and many other well-known male travellers left their mark on the French lit erary canon, escaping the often pejorative qualification of travel writer.