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Forum for Modern Language Studies Advance Access originally published online on February 26, 2009
Forum for Modern Language Studies 2009 45(2):144-150; doi:10.1093/fmls/cqp009
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© The Author (2009). Published by Oxford University Press for the Court of the University of St Andrews. All rights reserved. The University of St Andrews is a charity registered in Scotland: No. SC013532.

This article appears in the following Forum for Modern Language Studies issue: SPECIAL ISSUE: Global Francophone Africa [View the issue table of contents]

"The Song of the Migrating Bird": For a World Literature in French

(Translated from the French by Dominic Thomas)

Alain Mabanckou

Department of French and Francophone Studies
UCLA
Los Angeles, CA 90095
USA

mabanckou{at}humnet.ucla.edu

  Abstract

On 16 March 2007, the French daily newspaper Le monde published a manifesto entitled "Pour une ‘littérature-monde’ en français" [Manifesto for a World Literature in French]. Alain Mabanckou has been an outspoken member of the group of 44 authors who signed the Manifesto for a World Literature in French. His writings have addressed the ambiguous reactions to these debates because of the political overtones and French colonial history, but also because the exclusive understanding of literary creation in French has been brought into question, as indeed has the place of francophone literature in the broader corpus of works of French expression. In this article, Mabanckou explores the fundamental cultural and political questions that have informed this debate, asking what those who share the French language contribute to the world, and what challenges arise from having to question one's position through this tool that is the French language.

Key Words: world literature in French • francophonie • global identities • francophone literature

[Translator's note: The article presented here was first published as "Le chant de l'oiseau migrateur", in: Pour une littérature-monde, ed. M. Le Bris & J. Rouaud (Paris: Gallimard, 2007), pp. 55–65.]


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