Publishing Africa in French

Abstract

Publishing Africa in French provides a critical analysis of the global dynamics and cultural and publishing history of French and African literature. It focuses on French readership and the French literary-political sphere, and engages with issues of authorial authenticity, literary value, and author autonomy. The study is built on careful documentations of the pre- and post-publication process, and explores the relentless interweaving of ideas expressed in literary form, their institutional contexts and underlying human relationships, and asks: Who writes about Africa and who is Africa written for? The book is split into two sections, ‘Institutions’ and ‘Mediations’. The first part of the book, ‘Institutions’, situates three institutions of particular significance, the publishing houses of Le Seuil and Présence Africaine, and the Association nationale des écrivains de la mer et de l’outre-mer. ‘Mediations’, the second section of the book, concludes with a consideration on how institutional structures work into or against the literary texture of selected publications, and examines readers’ reports and editorial revision; the use of pseudonyms; the development of named collections and the process of literary translation from English. Publishing Africa in French aims to bring book-historical principles to bear on a decisive period in French literary history and foregrounds the influencing factors on literary expression and its material impressions in the period of decolonization.