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Contemporary travel to Vietnam: Jean-Luc Coatalem's Suite indochinoise and Kim Lefevre's Retour a la saison des pluies.
- Source :
- Studies in Travel Writing; Dec2009, Vol. 13 Issue 4, p345-355, 11p
- Publication Year :
- 2009
-
Abstract
- Aiming to provide a practical illustration of Edward Said's theorisation of 'contrapuntal reading', this article will read Jean-Luc Coatalem's Suite indochinoise (1993) as a counterpoint to Kim Lefevre's Retour a la saison des pluies (1995). Both texts depict journeys from France to Vietnam. However, whilst Coatalem's narrative recounts his journey as a French tourist and travel writer, Lefevre's text represents her journey as a Franco-Vietnamese exile 'returning home'. Reading these texts 'contrapuntally' will enable a mutual illumination of discrepant, yet intertwined, European and non-European histories of French colonialism and the journeys on which this depended. It will show how the postcolonial journey of a Franco-Vietnamese female subject renegotiates the semantic field of travel at a particular historical moment, thus enabling a re-reading of contemporary travel literature in French, and foregrounding the possibility-for travellers habitually defined as 'French' or 'Francophone'-of reciprocal, non-hierarchical dialogue between specific, yet interconnected, cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Subjects :
- TRAVEL writing
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 13645145
- Volume :
- 13
- Issue :
- 4
- Database :
- Complementary Index
- Journal :
- Studies in Travel Writing
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 45222483
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1080/13645140903281838