Postures francophones translingues

Abstract

The concept of literary posture, defined as “the unique way of occupying a ‘position’ in the literary field” (Meizoz 2007, 18), proves to be a valuable tool for observing the different strategies that translingual writers adopt in the French literary space, while facing some common constraints. Proposing the hypothesis of a correlation between translingual French writers’ posture and linguistic imaginary, this paper distinguishes four frequent configurations, admitting of course border zones and intersections: the “defector” posture, often correlated with the critique of the country of origin; the “facilitator” posture, by which the author poses as a mediator and often a translator between the culture of origin and French; the “wandering” posture, one of reciprocal questioning of the two linguistic and national spaces, that of origin and that of arrival; finally, the posture of the “uprooted,” including the refusal of a role of “ambassador” of the country of origin, advocating an “absolute” literature, free from any political constraint. The study of a few emblematic cases—Chahdortt Djavann, Simonetta Greggio, Michela Marzano, Velibor Čolić, Akira Mizubayashi—will also show that a posture can be constant or change over time and that reception plays an important role in the implementation of a postural strategy and its modifications.