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International audience; When used in India, the term Kala pani refers to the cellular jail in Port Blair, where the British colonisers sent a select category of freedom fighters. In the diaspora it refers to the transoceanic migration of indentured labour from India to plantation colonies across the globe from the mid-19th century onwards.This volume discusses the legacies of indenture in the Caribbean, Reunion, Mauritius, and Fiji, and how they still imbue our present. More importantly, it draws attention to India and raises new questions: doesn’t one need, at some stage, to wonder why this forgotten chapter of Indian history needs to be retrieved? How is it that this history is better known outside India than in India itself? What are the advantages of shining a torch onto a history that was made invisible? Why have the tribulations of the old diaspora been swept under the carpet at a time when the successes of the new diaspora have been foregrounded? What do we stand to gain from resurrecting these histories in the early 21st century and from shifting our perspectives?A key volume on Indian diaspora, modern history, indentured labour, and the legacy of indentureship, this co-edited collection of essays examines these questions largely through the frame of important works of literature and cinema, folk songs, and oral tales, making it an artistic enquiry of the past and of the present. It will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of world history, especially labour history, literature, postcolonial studies, cultural studies, diaspora studies, sociology and social anthropology, Indian Ocean studies, and South Asian studies.

(2021). Narrative Strategies and the Deconstruction of Lies. Caribbean Quarterly: Vol. 67, No. 1-2, pp. 18-37.

International audience

International audience

International audience; In this interview with Judith Misrahi-Barak and Nicole Thiara, Jayan K. Cherian discusses his work as an independent filmmaker in India and the USA, his artistic and political commitment, and the challenges he has faced with the Central Board of Film Certification in India after the release of his first feature film Papilio Buddha (2013), which focuses on Dalit land struggles in Kerala, and again with his second feature film KaBodyscapes (2016). The interview explores how holding a dual status as an American citizen and an Overseas Citizen of India makes his situation more complex because it offers him both the freedom and constraints of being a permanent outsider. The discussion of Papilio Buddha and its representation of the Dalit land struggle is the focus of the interview. He also speaks about his intended audience(s) and the way he works on location with his crews. Since Cherian is a poet and a writer as well as a filmmaker, he explains his choices for specific media, in the particular contexts in which he positions himself.

International audience; This collection of critical essays anchors itself in the Indian Ocean and explores the multiple ways dynamic exchanges have shaped this multilingual region of the world, from India to the Mascarene Islands to Southern Africa. Borders, edges and third spaces are revisited through the notion of the ecotone, a transitional zone between two ecosystems. If the term has primarily been used by biologists and ecologists, the metaphorical angle proves to be fruitful as it authorizes transdisciplinary approaches and empowers fresh perspectives. In French and in English, this volume aims to contribute to scholarship already published across various disciplinary fields and to participate in the development of Indoceanic studies. The authors of the volume rethink those ecotonal sites that are spaces of frictions as much as spaces of fusion.; Les essais critiques réunis dans ce volume prennent leur ancrage dans l’océan Indien et explorent les multiples façons dont la dynamique des échanges a formé cette région multilingue, de l’Inde aux Mascareignes et en Afrique australe. Frontières, lisières et tiers-espaces sont revisités à travers la notion d’écotone, une zone de transition entre deux écosystèmes. Si le terme a été surtout utilisé par les biologistes et les écologistes, l’angle métaphorique s’avère particulièrement fertile en ce qu’il autorise des approches transdisciplinaires et rend possibles des perspectives nouvelles. En anglais et en français, ce volume vise à enrichir la recherche déjà publiée dans plusieurs champs disciplinaires et à participer au développement des études indo-océaniques. Les auteurs du volume réexaminent ces écotones comme des espaces de frictions autant que des espaces de fusion.

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International audience

International audience; Indo-Caribbean literature has been gaining momentum over the past thirty years, creating a body of literature that most often bypasses the traditional vertical and national power relations between the former colonizing centre and the former colonized periphery. One can think of such writers as Cyril and David Dabydeen, Mahadai Das, Ramabai Espinet, Peter Kempadoo, Arnold Itwaru, Harold Sonny Ladoo, Shani Mootoo, VS Naipaul, Raj Kumari Singh, Ryhaan Shah, Jan Shinebourne, among others, and more recently Gaiutra Bahadur. These writers have written a variety of fiction and non-fiction narratives (poems, novels, short stories, essays) that foreground the odysseys, tribulations and ordeals of the people who crossed the black waters in the 19th century. In this paper presentation I would like to focus on two narratives written by descendants of these indentured labourers: Ramabai Espinet’s novel The Swinging Bridge (2003) brings out the life of her great-grandmother Gainder who voyaged from Calcutta to Trinidad in 1879, and Gaiutra Bahadur’s essay Coolie Woman: an Odyssey of Indenture (2013) researches Sujaria’s journey from Calcutta to British Guiana in 1903. Taking a transnational and ‘transcolonial’ perspective is the only possible approach when dealing with Caribbean intersections in the Americas and beyond, in the transatlantic and indoceanic worlds. I will use what Shih and Lionnet in Minor Transnationalism (2005) call ‘transcolonial’ relations, which denote ‘the shared, though differentiated experience of colonialism and neocolonialism (by the same colonizer or by different colonizers), a site of trauma, constituting the shadowy side of the transnational’ (11). Bringing together The Swinging Bridge and Coolie Woman will enable a better understanding of the complex network of geographical and historical intersections, as well as generational and generic crossings. These narratives of two women writers who retrace the steps of their ancestors intersect in many subtle and varied ways. Not least because, in Cyril Dabydeen’s words in a review about Coolie Woman, they both endeavour to ‘foster awareness’ of their history. The translations Gainder and Sujaria performed from their native India to their adopted Trinidad and British Guiana find unsettling and complex echoes in the translations that are reconstructed and reimagined by Ramabai and Gaiutra from Canada and the USA. Listening to such echoes is indispensable in the present world.

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International audience; L’Inde est souvent présentée comme la plus grande démocratie au monde. Pourtant, c’est une société où les contrastes entre la réussite des classes supérieures et la situation des classes inférieures sont les plus criants. Cet article s’appuie sur The Lunchbox (2013) de Ritesh Batra : ce film de fiction offre un point de vue original sur la société indienne, bien différent de celui qui est souvent adopté. Il s’agit ici du monde socio-économique des employés de bureau effectuant en train leurs trajets journaliers entre Mumbai et ses banlieues éloignées, ainsi que du monde domestique des épouses et des mères au foyer. C’est surtout le réseau de relations dans lesquelles les individus sont pris qui est au centre du film. Sur le mode de la comédie et en utilisant des procédés narratifs spécifiques comme le genre épistolaire ou une structure temporelle non-linéaire, le film pose la question du verrouillage des vies individuelles dans une société de consommation de plus en plus dévorante. Comment s’émanciper des conditions matérielles, des liens familiaux et des coutumes sociales ? Comment créer de nouveaux espaces de liberté ?

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http://journals.sagepub.com/toc/jcla/0/0Numéro spécial papier publié en 2019; International audience

International audience

Although Caribbean literature has been considered a diasporic literature for many decades now, it is only over the past 15 years that it has been examined through the diasporic lens. In this essay I suggest that literary form, literary devices, and genres and rhetorics are essential in the constitution of diasporic agency. Diasporic distance is often negotiated through an apparently binary organization of narrative space and time. Citing novels and short stories by Dionne Brand, Myriam Chancy, Edwidge Danticat, Ramabai Espinet, Marie-Elena John and Gisele Pineau, I will try to show how the apparent duality of the split representation of time and space, the analeptic mode or the epistolary genre is actually more complex than one at first may think. Negotiating diasporic distance and loss, bridging the chasm, and reaching another realm also involves literary form. In the concrete construction of the narratives, multiple avenues towards self-empowerment and agency are explored, both expressing the d...

When speaking of the Caribbean, one often finds it difficult to reconcile the singular term used to refer to it and its linguistic, social, historical and aesthetic plurality. Even if the archipelago has shared similar experiences of traumatic transportation and indentureship, the specificities of each island have hindered the emergence of a shared Caribbean identity. Emphasis has been put on the extinction of the indigenous Amerindian peoples, but Amerindian resilience has not been granted sufficient scope. Only a few writers have chosen to imaginatively return to that Amerindian past that precedes the trauma of forced transportation – a past that has almost receded out of collective memory, dominated as it has been by the African dimension. In the wake of Wilson Harris, Pauline Melville is one of the writers who have been trying to gain access to a collective identity that might be termed ante-colonial. With reference to the work of Melville, Jan Carew and Cyril Dabydeen, this article reads the presence...

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International audience

International audience

Many writers started their professional lives in very diverse fields before embracing writing, or on the contrary have turned away from writing. The present volume seeks to explore the complex relationship between that ‘other life’ and writing. The aim is to determine whether a writer’s ‘other life’ appears in, influences or even shapes his/her work, and to what extent. What is the part of gestation and that of rupture? A diversity of writers is examined: Patrick Chamoiseau, J. M. Coetzee, Jan J. Dominique, Janet Frame, Amitav Ghosh, L. K. Johnson, Wilson Harris, Dany Laferrière, Yannick Lahens, NourbeSe Philip, Emmelie Prophète, Arundhati Roy, Edward Said, but also Bartolomé de las Casas and E. L. Grant Watson.Unpublished autobiographical essays and a poem are included, especially written for the volume by Marie-Célie Agnant, Cyril Dabydeen and Fred D’Aguiar., De nombreux écrivains ont débuté leur vie professionnelle dans des domaines très divers avant d’embrasser l’écriture, ou au contraire de s’en éloigner. Ce volume cherche à explorer la relation complexe entre cette « autre vie » et l’écriture. L’objectif est de déterminer si l’« autre vie » d’un écrivain figure dans son œuvre, l’influence voire la façonne, et si tel est le cas, dans quelle mesure. Quelle est la part de la gestation et celle de la rupture ? Est examinée l’œuvre d’écrivains aussi différents que Patrick Chamoiseau, J. M. Coetzee, Jan J. Dominique, Janet Frame, Amitav Ghosh, L. K. Johnson, Wilson Harris, Dany Laferrière, Yannick Lahens, NourbeSe Philip, Emmelie Prophète, Arundhati Roy, Edward Said, mais aussi Bartolomé de las Casas et E. L. Grant Watson.Deux essais autobiographiques et un poème inédits sont inclus, spécialement écrits pour le volume par Marie-Célie Agnant, Cyril Dabydeen et Fred D’Aguiar.

International audience; Dans le cadre de la série « Diasporas, Cultures de la mobilité, ‘Race’ », ce deuxième volume se propose de compléter les études sur le sujet au travers de regards croisés et interdisciplinaires sur la condition diasporique. Les thèmes du corps, de la mémoire et de l’intime se tissent tout au long du recueil afin d’en révéler et d’en transmettre toute la complexité. Dans le même ordre d’idées, l’impact de la déterritorialisation, inhérent aux phénomènes de migration et relocalisation, est une autre optique majeure dans ce recueil d’essais. Les auteurs s’intéressent aux procédés mémoriels individuels et collectifs internes à l’évolution des communautés de diasporas, par d’étonnantes comparaisons entre diverses régions du monde, états et zones linguistiques. La teneur intellectuelle, la portée critique et la singularité de ce nouveau volume d’essais se reflètent aussi dans les origines géographiques variées de ses contributeurs.

International audience; Continuing the series on Diasporas, Cultures of Mobilities, 'Race', this second volume extends existing scholarship by exploring a range of multidisciplinary perspectives on the diasporic condition. Embodiment, memory and intimacy form three core themes through which the complexities of diasporic experiences are revealed and transmitted. Closely aligned to these concerns, the impact of de-territorialisation, inherent in the processes of migration and re-settlement, forms a strong thread throughout the collected essays. Authors engage with individual and collective memorial processes embedded in the evolution of diasporic communities, exploring striking comparisons between diverse regions, states, cultures and linguistic zones. The intellectual and critical scope covered by this original collection of new essays is further reflected in the varied geographical origins of the contributors themselves.; Dans le cadre de la série " Diasporas, Cultures de la mobilité, 'Race' ", ce deuxième volume se propose de compléter les études sur le sujet au travers de regards croisés et interdisciplinaires sur la condition diasporique. Les thèmes du corps, de la mémoire et de l'intime se tissent tout au long du recueil afin d'en révéler et d'en transmettre toute la complexité. Dans le même ordre d'idées, l'impact de la déterritorialisation, inhérent aux phénomènes de migration et relocalisation, est une autre optique majeure dans ce recueil d'essais. Les auteurs s'intéressent aux procédés mémoriels individuels et collectifs internes à l'évolution des communautés de diasporas, par d'étonnantes comparaisons entre diverses régions du monde, états et zones linguistiques. La teneur intellectuelle, la portée critique et la singularité de ce nouveau volume d'essais se reflètent aussi dans les origines géographiques variées de ses contributeurs.

International audience

International audience

International audience; Ce volume est un état des lieux de l’évolution du concept de diaspora depuis l’avènement des études diasporiques dans les années quatre-vingt-dix, et plus particulièrement, de son questionnement face à d’autres concepts : transnationalisme, cosmopolitisme et créolisation. Il décrit les discontinuités de l’expérience diasporique, mais également les négociations en cours. Fort de l’apport des études transatlantiques, de genre et de la théorie queer, il rend compte de l’infléchissement théorique lorsque le sexe est pris en compte ou que le genre se trouble. Alliant théorie et analyse de cas, recouvrant des diasporas aussi diverses que la diaspora africaine, caribéenne, palestinienne, de l’Asie du sud et du sud-est, le déplacement des Roms, les espaces de l’Océan indien, l’Afrique du Sud et la Nouvelle-Zélande, il promeut un autre modèle diasporique : multidirectionnel, pluriel et global. Il trouve dans la littérature et dans le cinéma des outils pour penser « l’extrême diversité » et les contradictions de notre mondialisation