The Translingual Turn and French Literary Prize-winners: Mohamed Mbougar Sarr’s La plus secrète mémoire des hommes (2021)

Abstract

This article explores the complex relationship between the translingual turn and French literary prize-winners by focusing on a recent Goncourt laureate, Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, and his plurivocal poetics of translingualism in La plus secrète mémoire des hommes (2021). Through an examination of the text and its contexts, intertexts and paratexts, it demonstrates how the author draws on past, present and future representations of translingual lives and works to denounce the French literary system and undermine its monolingual perspectives and editorial judgements, such as plagiarism. It shows how the interconnected network of references to other Black and/or African literary prize-winners functions as a support for the author’s translingual poetics, with various voices emerging through biographèmes, letters, messages and journal entries in the text. In conclusion, it confirms the connections between the translingual turn and French literary prize-winners, tracing how translingualism was introduced in the early twentieth century, firmly established around the turn of the millennium, then reinforced and renewed by Mbougar Sarr’s writing and experiences in 2021 and beyond.