Jason Herbeck. Architextual Authenticity: Constructing Literature and Literary Identity in the French Caribbean. Liverpool UP, 2017; 2020.

Review of Jason Herbeck. Architextual Authenticity: Constructing Literature and Literary Identity in the French Caribbean. Liverpool UP, 2017; 2020. x + 330 pp

A Phenomenology of Gede: Thinking with the Dead in Haiti

In the Haitian religious tradition of Vodou, Gede is the lwa, or spirit, concerned with the beginning of life and the passage into the afterlife, death and regeneration. Gede is often regarded as the spirit of the people in Haiti because he has a direct connection to every living being, everyone may call on Gede for protection. Gede’s appeal also resides in his freedom, his ability to transgress the borders that constrain the living and the dead. This course proposes a study of Haitian literature through the lens of Gede as authors transgress temporal, spatial, and linguistic boundaries to communicate with and through the dead. Taking a case-study approach to Haitian literature and history, you will engage in the study of real and mythical figures of the Haitian past to explore how writers and artists “perform” Gede’s work of communicating with and through the dead. This course aims to provide a longue durée approach to Haitian time (more than 500 years of history) and to expose you to the variety of genres Haitians have used to regenerate the presence of those who have passed

French #MeToo?: Francophone African and Caribbean Women's Writing in English Translation

Originally founded by Tarana Burke in 2006, the "Me Too Movement" seeks to help survivors of sexual violence, particularly women of color, "to help find pathways to healing" ("metoomvmt.org/about/). Then, in the fall of 2017, the #MeToo hashtag reverberated throughout the Internet, on the front pages of newspapers, and in the public square as women began to "out" their aggressors for the world to see. The impact of the of the movement and the hashtag has extended far beyond the virtual public square to affect elections, changes consumer choices, and sculpt new markets for storytelling with a focus on women and girls, including literature in translation. While France had its own #MeToo movement, the hashtag #BalanceTonPorc (roughly, "#OutYourPig"), stories by women writing in French has come to greatly shape the literary translation market in the United States. From 2008-2016, 221 titles by women were translated from French into English, but in the three years since the start of the "#MeToo era" there have been 130 new translations of women authors from French into English (Publisher's Weekly "Translation Database). In this course, students will read recent translations of French and Francophone women's writing in English to determine what the impact the politics of the "Me Too Movement" and the #MeToo era have had on the French translation market. The objectives for this course will be: 1) to consider how Afro-diasporic literature in translation responds to and shapes US debates on citizenship, class, diversity, gender and sexual identity, globalization, and race; 2) to consider how the US publishing industry markets, "packages," and manufactures literature in French to a US English readership, and 3) to determine whether the works in question correspond to the politics of the "Me Too Movement" or the "#MeToo era and if so, to what end

Translating the Francophone Caribbean: Centering Black Production, Decentering Translation Practices

In her article, “A Tree as a Record: On Translating Mahagony by Edouard Glissant,” translator Betsy Wing recounts how Martinican writer Edouard Glissant expressed his disinclination to respond to translators’ questions and justified his intention by saying, “I wrote it once, now it’s your turn to write it” (124). According to Glissant, translating and writing are similar in nature. The art of translation therefore does not lie in the process of translating words into another language but in the skill to compose a text anew, that is to say to develop unique ways of ‘writing’ and therefore to deconstruct the idea of translation as a simple act of transferal. As such, this article considers various translators who have ‘written’ Caribbean texts anew. It will specifically look at three works from Black French-speaking Caribbean authors which were all translated into English, namely Patrick Chamoiseau, L’esclave vieil homme et le molosse (1997) translated by Linda Coverdale as Slave Old Man (2019); Gisèle Pineau’s La Grande drive des esprits (1993) translated by J. Michael Dash as The Drifting of Spritis (1999); and Yanick Lahens’s Tante Résia et les Dieux (1994) translated by Betty Wilson as Aunt Résia and the Spirits and Other Stories (2010). Comparing these translations side by side offers several points of interest: First, it places the race and gender of the author at the core of the translation. Chamoiseau, a Black Martinican man, was translated by Coverdale, a white woman from the United States; Lahens, a Black Haitian woman, by Wilson, a Black Jamaican woman; Pineau, a Black Guadeloupean woman, by Dash, a Trinidadian man. How does the race, gender, or ethnic background of the translator influence the process of translating Black-authored texts? In what ways does it affect the translation of Black experiences? Secondly, we examine various approaches to translating Caribbean creoles into English. For example, Coverdale deliberately keeps the Martinican French in her translation to emphasize the musicality of the text and the voice of the author over transparency and understanding. Similarly to Coverdale, Wilson’s translation preserves the Haitian Creole, which bears traces of orality, while also indicating filiations between Haitian Creole and creoles spoken in the Anglophone Caribbean in footnotes. Dash, on the other hand, elects to substitute one creole with another, the Guadeloupean with the Jamaican, allowing the text “to shove the reader around, to [to make them] feel unbalanced” (Dash, 30:09). If the approaches diverge between the translators, each of them views translation as a way to render a foreign text accessible, while simultaneously unsettling the reader’s world. Overall, this comparative analysis of the translations of Black authors from the Francophone Caribbean seeks to highlight a plurality of translation approaches centering Black cultural production while destabilizing the idea of a uniform translation practice

The Covid-19 impact on fintech: now is the time to boost investment

Fintechs may be uniquely positioned to facilitate credit to businesses and monetary aid to individuals, write Markos Zachariadis, Pinar Ozcan, and Dize Dinçko

Le Devoir de Mémoire dans la Littérature d’Expression Francophone

« La mémoire est un droit » écrit Christiane Taubira dans sa contribution au débat ‘La Mémoire de l’esclavage et ses dérives’ en 2006 pour la revue philosophique Cités. Étant donné que la mémoire est un droit, qu’est-ce que l’on entend par mémoire ? La mémoire de qui et de quoi ? Pourquoi faut-il s’en souvenir ? Quel est le but de la mémoire ? Peut-on parler d’une mémoire collective ? Y-a-t-il un devoir de mémoire ? Taubira, elle-même, aborde l’histoire de l’esclavage et le devoir de mémoire, le devoir reconnaître la traite des esclaves en tant que crime primordial contre humanité qui fait partie de l’histoire collective occidentale. L’argumentaire que présente Taubira est axé sur l’histoire, évoquant un certain engagement de la part du citoyen. Cependant, au lieu d’appliquer cette notion du devoir de mémoire aux travaux des historiens, peut-on conceptualiser un devoir de mémoire dans la littérature

Beyond the Morality Tale of Humanitarianism: Epistolary Narration and Montage in Raoul Peck's Assistance mortelle

This article analyzes Raoul Peck's use of epistolary narration and montage in his 2012 documentary "Assistance mortelle" (Fatal Assistance), which delves into the immediate aftermath of the 2010 Haitian earthquake and the geopolitics of the recovery process