Duras and Indochina: Postcolonial Perspectives by Julia Walters

Abstract

526 Reviews approximating thehic et nunc ofZen meditation. Finally, the textenacts thevery 'art de vivre' which is at the core of the everyday. QUEEN MARY, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON ELZA ADAMOWICZ Duras andIndochina: Postcolonial Perspectives. By JULIA WALTERS.(Critical Studies inPostcolonial Literature and Culture, 2) Liverpool: Society forFrancophone Postcolonial Studies. 2006. 117 PP. ISBN 978-0-954I662-I-2. Appreciation ofDuras as a postcolonial writer isof fairlyrecent date. In France espe cially,Durassian studies have tended towards an ahistorical, mainly literaryapproach to her work. JuliaWalters, while not denying Duras's own postmodern suspicion of the referentialityof her writing, fully takes into account the socio-historico-cultural dimension of her ceuvre. The most innovative aspect ofDuras and Indochina is theattention paid toL'Empire fran_ais,Duras's firstco-authored book, one which she excluded fromher bibliogra phies and which critics have dutifully ignored.Walters first looks at this rejected, propagandist textwhere Duras and Philippe Roques not only adopt the viewpoint of the colonial establishment, but attempt tobolster France's self-confidence against Germany by flaunting the strengths of theFrench Empire. Looking at the threemajor works inwhich Duras revisits her country of origin, Walters then traces differentmotifs that she first identified in L'Empire franfais, such as the portrayal of the Indochinese countryside and Saigon with itscontrasted European and Chinese districts; her depiction of the indigenous population; the semi autobiographical character featured in these texts, and her lover. She analyses their transformations, situating them in relation to the social, political, and theoretical trends of the period. In Un barrage contre lePacifique Duras carries out a dual at tackon capitalism and colonialism. She exposes and denounces the realityof colonial exploitation and itscorruption, in amanner that shows her newly acquired Marxist critique of capitalist ideology. The indigenous population ishere portrayed as a kind of proletariat, a homogenized mass exploited by awhite bourgeois minority, making Un Barrage run the riskof being reinscribed ina dehumanizing colonial rhetoric that it is at pains to refute.By the timeDuras wrote L'Amant, Marxism was discredited, Indochina was viewed with nostalgia, and she had become involved with feminism and its emphasis on female jouissance and its creative energy.The colonial society of Saigon isnow mainly portrayed as a repressive, patriarchal system,whose function is to regulate female jouissance. The emphasis has moved from the angry depiction of class and racial inequality to thedenunciation of theoppression ofEuropean women. When Duras wrote L'Amant de laChine duNord, concerns in metropolitan France had moved on further,centring now on the issues of immigration,multi-ethnic cultural exchanges, and metissage. Again, Duras recasts her childhood in Indochina around these new interests,and inL'Amant de laChine duNord stress isplaced on themany ethnic encounters and cross-cultural exchanges. Walters points out the slippages and ambivalences that the adoption of thevarious viewpoints and shifts inperspective create inDuras's work. She notes some disturb ing constants too, such as the fact that the indigenous population always seems to be homogenized and stereotyped, even in the anticolonial Un Barrage. She empha sizes the fact-too often overlooked-that the lover isChinese, not Indochinese, and therefore isnot a colonized other, but belongs to another colonizing elite. She points out Duras's silence regarding theFranco-Indochinese and Vietnam wars, which is all themore striking in that she took part inprotests against theAlgerian war. Although it isnot themain aim of her book,Walters also refutes theneat categories and binary MLR, I02.2, 2007 527 oppositions thatpostcolonial theories have tended toelaborate todistinguish between colonial and postcolonial discourses. Walters's study is slim and masterfully controlled. The ideas are clearly exposed in a limpid prose and her style is extremely persuasive. It is a short study Iwould strongly recommend, easy enough to follow for undergraduate students and suf ficientlysearching and innovative forDurassian scholars. UNIVERSITY OF WALES SWANSEA CATHERINE RODGERS Frantz Fanon's 'Black Skin White Masks': New InterdisciplinaryEssays. Ed. byMAX SILVERMAN. (Texts inCulture) Manchester: Manchester University Press. 2006. I84 pp. /47.50. ISBN 978-o-7I90-6448-7. In the renewed flowof critical studies on Fanon, thisvolume is an assessment of the complexity and depth of his firstbook Black Skin White Masks. It clearly succeeds in thisproject. These essays overlap on several points but...