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Concerned with the ongoing coloniality within the form and interactions of international relations, this project examines the legacy of colonial mapping practices on contemporary geopolitics. Specifically, I investigate Sri Lankan tourist maps as subversive examples of the politics of vision implicated within the historical formation of island-space under colonial mapping practices (i.e. Portuguese, Dutch, and British), and the contemporary political implications of the island geography as the state, including exclusionary identity politics during the the civil war (1983-2009). Using a mix-analysis approach, including interviews, participatory mapping, and autoethnography, as well as feminist, postcolonial, and critical theoretical lenses, I argue that Sri Lankan tourist maps serve as examples of the historically developed and continued right to space, mobility, representation, and resources between the Global North and South in what I term "cosmopolitan geopolitics." As geopolitics can be identified as the relationship between territories and resources, cosmopolitan geopolitics is concerned with the power relations when such elements as culture, authenticity, history, and religion are marked in places, people, and experiences as valued resources within the international tourist economy, particularly in this project which connects the colonial histories of mapping, travel, and international relations. In order to address the imperial, masculine politics of vision this project is separated into two parts: the first is concerned with the ontology and colonial legacy the map (Chapters 1-3), the second with the politics of the map, including exclusionary politics of the nation state (Chapters 4-6). Chapter 1 investigates the politics of island space as represented on the tourist map, where the state serves as both a "treasure box" and "caged problem." Chapter 2 argues that the cartoon images and icons serve as a resource map for contemporary geopolitics, and Chapter 3 indicates that this map simultaneously acts an invitation to the cosmopolitan, with assumed access and hospitality. Examining the various ways that the exclusionary politics of the Sinhala-Buddhist state are implicated in the representations on the tourist map, Chapters 4-6 look at cultural tourist sites, natural or wildlife sites, and former war zones, respectively. Overall, this is an interdisciplinary examination between postcolonial studies, critical tourism studies, critical geography, and Sri Lankan studies that examines the continued politics of vision and access to space with both international and domestic political-economic implications. / Doctor of Philosophy / This project takes a critical examination of tourist maps, as a cultural artifact in what has been called “coloniality,” or the ongoing colonial relations in contemporary relationships between nation states. I suggest that my taking into account the colonial history and development of mapping practices, tourism, and international relations that tourist maps serve as material intersection to examine such relations. The island state of Sri Lanka is an ideal case study for this project, as not only does it intersect colonial relations between the Portuguese, Dutch, and British, but because after ending nearly 30-year ethnic-religious civil war the country is looking to expand its tourism industry. Therefore, I argue that an understanding of what I term “cosmopolitan geopolitics” helps us to account for the ways in which culture and religious experiences become resources in contemporary geopolitics within the international tourist economy. Using a mix-analysis approach of interviews, participatory mapping, autoethnography, and theoretical perspectives, I organize the project into two main parts. The first questions “what a map is,” and the second questions “who gets to map.” Overall, this interdisciplinary investigation pulls from postcolonial studies, critical tourism studies, critical geography, and Sri Lankan studies in order to question the continued narratives and representations within cultural commodification and travel.

Autour des années 1930, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Aimé Césaire, Léon Gontran Damas et les autres lancent le mouvement de la Négritude. Leur lutte s’oriente vers une convocation poétique et une réappropriation de l’Afrique. En effet, après la prise en compte des valeurs africaines et leur mise en pratique, il faut donc penser et écrire à la manière africaine. Les créations littéraires issues de ce mouvement littéraire étaient donc essentiellement orientées vers l’Afrique, vers cet espace topographique connu et fixe. Dans cette revendication légitime, l’identité du sujet nègre est à rechercher en Afrique, la Négritude participe donc à une sorte de « fixité identitaire ». Les années 1990 voient l’émergence d’une nouvelle génération d’écrivains africains francophones qui, pour la plupart, vivent et mènent leurs activités littéraires en Europe (Bessora, Alain Mabanckou, Kossi Efoui, Calixte Béyala, etc.). Cette quatrième génération d’écrivains africains francophones lutte contre une sorte « d’assignation à résidence » et revendiquent une littérature ouverte sur le monde. À ce sujet, Bessora, comme beaucoup d’autres écrivains de sa génération, évolue en marge d’un espace géographique fermé, elle assume son appartenance à un monde qui abolit les frontières géographiques, esthétiques et même genrologiques. Bien qu’assumant ses origines africaines, Bessora coupe tout lien avec son espace géographique pour inventer et conquérir de nouveaux territoires. Dès lors, Bessora n’écrit plus l’Afrique dans une posture figée et afro-centrée, mais elle invite plutôt à la réalisation du « Tout-Monde » glissantien. / Around Around the 1930s, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Aimé Césaire, Léon Gontran Damas and others launched the Negritude movement. Their struggle is a poetic evocation and a reappropriation of Africa. Indeed, after the taking into account of African values and their implementation, one must think and write in the African way. The literary creations resulting from this literary movement were therefore essentially oriented towards Africa, towards this fixed and known topographic space. In this legitimate claim, the identity of the Negro subject is to be sought in Africa; Negritude is therefore involved in a kind of “fixed identity”. The 1990s saw the emergence of a new generation of francophone African writers who mostly live and conduct their literary activities in Europe (Bessora, Alain Mabanckou, Kossi Efoui, Calixte Béyala, etc.). This fourth generation of francophone African writers struggle against a kind of "house arrest" and advocate a literature open to the world. In this regard, Bessora, like many other writers of her generation, evolves on the fringe of a closed geographical space; she assumes membership in a world that abolishes geographic, aesthetic and even genrologicals frontiers. While not denying her African origins, Bessora cuts all ties with her geographical space in order to invent and conquer new territories. Consequently Bessora no longer writes about Africa from a frozen and African-centered position, but rather calls for the realization of “All-World” of Glissant.

Ce travail propose une interprétation de la pensée anticoloniale du psychiatre et philosophe politique martiniquais Frantz Fanon. Il se proposera de la comprendre comme une philosophie sociale de l’existence. Il s’agira, pour l’analyser, de replacer Fanon dans son époque, en contextualisant son œuvre par rapport à l’histoire du colonialisme moderne, notamment en Afrique, mais aussi de relire Fanon à la lumière de la pensée contemporaine aux fins de déceler ce qui, dans son œuvre, demeure actuel. Cette recherche se déploiera en deux temps. La première partie aura pour objectif de dévoiler les fondements racistes du colonialisme en en explorant les conséquences dans plusieurs domaines : droit et politique, notamment, mais aussi économie et psychiatrie. Le concept de « prise de vies », qui sera opposé à celui de « prises de terres » élaboré par Carl Schmitt, servira de fil conducteur à cette recherche. Il s’agira de soutenir que la disqualification de certains groupes humains seule rendit possible l’accaparement des territoires ultramarins. Ce sont les modalités de cette disqualification qu’explicitera ce premier moment. La seconde partie portera sur les modèles de résistance à cette domination dont Fanon propose une formulation inédite. On verra comment c’est par la répétition transformatrice de ce qui est que peut surgir la nouveauté dans l’histoire. Répétition dans la différence, fut-elle violente, qui constitue le cœur même de la pensée fanonienne. Ainsi la répétition africaine des nations européennes ; ainsi le panafricanisme qui seront finalement abordés. Il s’agira donc de dessiner les contours de l’« ontologie » existentielle et politique de Frantz Fanon. / This thesis offers an interpretation of Martiniquais political Philosopher and Psychiatrist Frantz Fanon. It proposes to understand his thinking as a social philosophy of existence. Analyzing it requires to put Fanon back in his time, by setting his work in its context, through modern colonialism history, especially in Africa, and by reading Fanon in light of contemporary thinking, in order to find what in his work remains up to date. This research will unfold in two parts. The first part will explore the very specificities of the colonial model of domination, which have been rather disregarded until these days. The second part will focus on the models of resistance to this domination, like revolutionary actions, to which Fanon gives an original expression. The racist bases of colonialism will be revealed through its numerous implications in Law and Politics, and also in Economy and Psychiatry. The concept of “life-appropriation”, while opposed to Carl Schmitt’s concept of “land-appropriation”, will be the vital lead of this research. The issue will be to maintain that disqualification of specific human groups alone made it possible to monopolize oversea territories. Modalities of this disqualification will be made explicit. The second part aims at showing how Fanon develops what could be named speculative politics, in response to colonial dehumanization. A thinking which objects are less concepts or ideas than actual historically localized power struggles.

Ce travail sur la coopération culturelle franco-algérienne concerne le développement des relations franco-algériennes après la guerre d'indépendance, de l'ancienne colonie française, de l'Algérie (1954-1962). Dans ce contexte, dans la première partie, les relations politiques et diplomatiques entre les gouvernements des deux pays, la coopération dans l'éducation, les relations culturelles franco-algériennes, aussi bien que les développements politiques et les décisions politiques cruciales qui ont affecté la relation entre les deux pays, sont examinées. Examiner les aspects divers de la coopération avec le nouvel Etat indépendant au niveau gouvernemental et, parallèlement, essayer d'interpréter les relations entre les peuples en tant qu' acteurs de la coopération, dans la deuxième partie du travail. Donc, les relations entre les deux peuples dans le domaine d'enseignement (éducation) sont examinées dans une certaine mesure, aussi bien que si et comment, matériellement et pratiquement, des professeurs, des syndicalistes, les membres d'organisations politiques et des syndicats, d'idéologie anti-impérialiste et révolutionnaire ou les non-révolutionnaires et humanistes, ont contribué à la réconciliation et "la guérison des cicatrices" engendrées par la guerre de 8 ans. De plus, dans la troisième partie de notre travail, les protagonistes de l'ère post-coloniale prennent la parole, pour éclairer leurs expériences de l'Algérie, sous un prisme subjectif et rétrospectif, qui nous permet de tirer des conclusions concrètes et essaye d'interpréter leurs activités et leurs expériences en posant des questions de recherche et choisissant des critères spécifiques. En conclusion, le travail essaye d'alimenter la recherche et le débat, s'étendre dans les sciences sociales, se pencher sur la coopération politique et culturelle des anciennes métropoles (pays coloniaux) avec leurs colonies et la contribution positive que les protagonistes d'histoire peuvent avoir, même dans un cadre micro-historique, en contradiction aux résonances négatives significatives causées par des conflits politiques et des crises. / This work on the Franco-Algerian cultural cooperation concerns the development of the franco-algerian relations after the war of independence, of the former french colony of Algeria (1954-1962). In this context, in the first part, the political and diplomatic relations between the governments of the two countries, the cooperation in the education, the franco-algerian cultural relations, as well as the political developments and crucial political decisions who affected the relationship between the two countries, are examined. Examining the various aspects of the cooperation with the new independent state at governmental level, in the mean time, the same is attempted to be done with the relations of peoples as actors of the cooperation, in the second part of the work. Therefore, the relations between the two peoples in the domain of education are examined in a very large extent, as well as whether and how, materially and practically, teachers, trade-unionists, members of political organizations and trade unions, of anti-imperialist and revolutionary ideology or non-revolutionary and humanitarian one, worked towards the reconciliation and the “healing of the wounds” opened by the 8-year war. In addition, in the third part of our work, the protagonists of the postcolonial era take the floor, in order to enlighten their experiences from Algeria, under a subjective and retrospective prism, which allows to draw conclusions and attempt to interpret their very activity with specific research questions and criteria. Concluding, the work tries to nurture the research and the debate, spread in social sciences, on the political and cultural cooperation of the former countries-Metropolis (colonial countries) with the countries-colonies and the positive contribution that the protagonists of history can have, even in a micro-historic framework, in contrast with the significant negative resonances caused by political conflicts and crises.

Cette thèse apporte un éclairage esthétique sur un ensemble de romans polyphoniques du canon francophone contemporain. Des formes de féminisme autour du prophète de l’islam dans Loin de Médine d'Assia Djebar aux formes de l’individualisme dans un village guadeloupéen dans Traversée de la mangrove de Maryse Condé en passant par les voix multiples de la créolité dans Solibo Magnifique de Patrick Chamoiseau, ces romans sont engagés dans des stratégies littéraires novatrices. Or les études postcoloniales ont laissé dans l'ombre le travail des formes qui est pourtant le mode opératoire de la pensée littéraire. Il faut donc remédier à ces lacunes par une analyse narratologique et stylistique des techniques de représentation du discours et de la pensée. En dégageant les formes et les enjeux de la relation fascinante qui se joue entre la parole de l’autre et les voix narratives, notre thèse apporte une contribution attendue dans les études francophones autant que dans les théories narratives.Trois pensées majeures nourrissent cette recherche : d’abord le concept de contrepoint d’Edward Saïd, envisagé dans sa dimension dialogique, ensuite la vision sociale du langage chez Voloshinov/Bakhtine qui préside aux développements sur le dialogisme, enfin l’approche politique de la littérature de Jacques Rancière, qui donne un tout nouvel éclairage aux désormais traditionnels bénéfices de l’« estrangement ». C’est ainsi sans quitter la zone ténue où se rencontrent formes esthétiques et formes sociales que ce travail traverse les débats les plus actuels des études francophones. / This dissertation casts an aesthetic light on a selection of polyphonic novels from the Francophone contemporary canon. From the forms of feminism around the prophet of islam in Far from Madina by Assia Djebar, to the multiple voices of Créolité in Solibo Magnificent by Patrick Chamoiseau, to the forms of individualism in a Guadeloupean village in Crossing the Mangrove by Maryse Condé, these novels are involved in innovative literary strategies. Nonetheless, postcolonial studies left in the shadow the work of forms that is yet the operatory mode of literary thought. To bridge this gap, we need a narratological and stylistic analysis of the techniques of representation of speech and thought. By disentangling the forms and the stakes of the fascinating relationship that is at work between the other’s speech and narrative voices, my dissertation brings a welcomed contribution to Francophone studies as well as to narrative studies.Three major thoughts foster this research: first the concept of counterpoint of Edward Said, seen in its dialogical dimension, the social approach to language in Voloshinov/Bakhtin, that presides to developments on dialogism, and the political approach to literature of Jacques Rancière, that casts a new light on now traditional benefits of “estrangement”. It is thus, without leaving the tenuous zone where esthetic forms meet social forms that my dissertation spans the most actual debates in Francophone studies.

Cette analyse a pour but de dénoncer les mythes créateurs du féminin et du masculin hérités des politiques culturelles sexuelles érigées au creuset de la rencontre coloniale. L’étude de A Married Woman (Manju Kapur), Babyji (Abha Dawesar), Indian Tango (Ananda Devi), trois romans présentant le lesbianisme comme une stratégie féministe d’émancipation, permet de mettre au jour diverses dynamiques discursives, d’exploiter le concept de représentation, et d’interroger les catégories préexistantes. Ces trois romans sont en effet écrits par des femmes participant à la culture indo-hindoue, et proposent des héroïnes à la similarité troublante : brahmines, habitant Delhi et insatisfaites de l’immobilisme liberticide de leur genre. Le préjudice hétéropatriarcal gaine les individus plaqués à l’intersection de leurs appartenances identitaires diverses et superposées : le genre, la culture, la sexualité… Le chemin de ces héroïnes suit ainsi une évolution interrogeant les inventions patriarcales de l’identité de la femme indo-hindoue. Au-delà de la dénonciation des dérives de son essentialisation, c’est sa transgression qui est éblouissante, parce qu’elle est sexuelle et lesbienne, engageant ainsi les possibilités d’une altérité, d’une alternative, d’un devenir différent. Ces textes questionnent alors la poésie et l’efficacité d’une esthétique lesbienne, la validité démiurge d’une utopie lesbienne, et le symbolisme d’un motif qui unit femmes de papier et autrices de chair au sein d’un positionnement récusant la subalternité implicite de catégories oppressives et obsolètes. En s’emparant de l’ipséité, ces narrations introduisent une poétique queer défiant déterminismes, cristallisations, normes et hiérarchies. Elles ouvrent à des possibilités radicales et multiples d’existences, de créations, signalant la matérialité de marginalités subversives qui problématisent la notion même d’individu, envisagée dans sa perspective hypermoderne. / This analysis aims at denouncing the original myths of the feminine and the masculine, inherited of the sexual cultural politics uprighted in the crucible of the colonial encounter. The study of A Married Woman (Manju Kapur), Babyji (Abha Dawesar), Indian Tango (Ananda Devi), three novels presenting lesbianism as a feminist strategy of emancipation, allows to excavate various discursive dynamics, to exploit the concept of representation, and to interrogate the preexisting categories. These three novels are indeed written by women belonging to the Indo-Hindu culture, and offer heroines with troubling similarities: Brahmines, Delhiites and dissatisfied with the repressions and inertia of their gender. The heteropatriarcal prejudice suffocates the individuals tackled at the intersection of their several and overlapping identity belongings: gender, culture, sexuality… These heroines’ paths hence follow an evolution interrogating the patriarchal inventions of the Indo-Hindu woman’s identity. Beyond the exposition and accusation of its essentialization’s deviations, it is its transgression which is dazzling, because it is sexual and lesbian, introducing the possibilities of an alterity, an alternative, a different becoming. These texts thus question the poetry and efficiency of a lesbian aesthetic, the demiurge validity of a lesbian utopia, and the symbolism of a pattern unifying the paper women and the women writers in a positioning rejecting the implicit subalternity of oppressive and obsolete categories. By getting a hold of ipseity, these narrations introduce a queer poetic defying determinisms, crystallizations, norms and hierarchies. They open to radical and multiple possibilities of living and creating, indicating the materiality of subversive marginalities which problematize the very notion of individual, envisioned in its hypermodern perspective.

Tour à tour gloires nationales, héros, pères fondateurs ou au contraire tyrans sanguinaires et sorciers malfaisants, les résistants africains à la colonisation ont souvent connu une grande fortune littéraire et suscitent la fascination collective.D'abord investies par la littérature orale africaine et par l'historiographie coloniale, ces figures émergent souvent au tournant des indépendances et font leur apparition sur la scène culturelle : romans, pièces de théâtre, ballets, films, chants s'attachent à réécrire l'histoire dite nationale des nouveaux Etats. Interroger les représentations en littérature et dans les arts de ces figures héroïques, c'est donc analyser l'écriture de l'histoire en acte, la mémoire collective et l'imaginaire commun en formation.Notre hypothèse est la suivante : les arts, et la littérature au premier plan, jouent un rôle prépondérant dans la création d'identités collectives. Il s'agit donc de vérifier de manière pragmatique la place du fait littéraire, et plus généralement artistique, dans la formation d'imaginaires collectifs, de lier littérature, histoire, société afin d'expérimenter que la littérature n'est pas qu'un « lieu de mémoire » sanctuarisé mais qu'elle participe activement à son élaboration. La littérature est alors liée au fait politique, au sens large de construction du vivre-ensemble dans et par les discours. / Great figures, national heroes, founding fathers or on the contrary tyrannical figures or witches, African resistants to colonisation often appear in literature and arts, and they possess a fascinating aura. Those heroes have emerged since the end of the nineteenth century in oral african literature and in the colonialist European literature. Then, they morphed into National heroes during the independence period and they still play a prominent role in today's African literature and in fictions more generally.The aim of my thesis is to analyse different kinds of updating those heroes, from 1890 to the contemporary world, in fictions and “texts” in its extensive meaning. This study is inspired by Certeau's approach to historical writing. Literature (theatre, poetry, novels...) but also other texts less valued by institutions or less studied as songs, ballets (in television or in theatres), school books (as history textbooks). The latter section requires fields research, as manuals cannot be found in France.Samori (Guinea Conakry), Sarraounia (Niger) and Nehanda (Zimbabwe) were converted from historical person into narrative characters, and as such they embody the memory of the colonization process, the fascinating values (with all connotations, whether positive or negative) of a group, and a collective imagination of history. Far from being a sanctuary dedicated to the preservation of memory and history, literature plays a major role in the construction of imaginative communities and in the elaboration of a common past. Literature, through such cultural heroes or “literary myths”, performs the critical function of encompassing as well as reshaping the lines of postcolonial memory.

La présente étude analyse les lignes de force et les structures thématiques d´une écriture hybride, conçue comme un réseau organisé de motifs récurrents et d´images obsédantes. Elle recense les traits pertinents de l´esthétique romanesque d´António Lobo Antunes. Cette esthétique se conçoit comme le lieu d´un travail linguistique préalable à la subversion de l´héritage idéologique et narratif du centre impérial, grâce à des procédés s´inspirant, entre autres, de la carnavalisation bakhtinienne. La thématique se conjugue ici à la psychanalyse pour aboutir au dévoilement d´un projet poétique postcolonial privilégiant les voix discordantes et les discours déviants des aliénés et des sans voix. / This study provides an analysis of the main thematic structures involved in a hybrid writing conceived as an organized network of recurring motifs and haunting images. It identifies relevant features of the aesthetics of António Lobo Antunes. The writer´s poetics is the place where the Portuguese language is subverted prior to .changes in the narrative and ideological colonial inheritance. Those disruptions are inspired, among other theories, by the Bakhtinian carnivalization. The thematics is combined in the study with psychoanalysis to unveil a postcolonial literary project which aims at highlighting conflicting views from alienated and voiceless people

In my dissertation project, I engage in a discursive analysis of whiteness to examine how it influences postcolonial modes of self-styling. Critical whiteness studies often focuses on representations of whiteness in the West as well as on whiteness as physical—as white bodies and white people. I focus on representations and functions of whiteness outside of the West, particularly in relation to issues of belonging and modes of postcolonial identification. I examine Anglophone African literary representations of whiteness from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries to query how whiteness both enables and undermines anticolonial consciousness. A central question I examine is, How does whiteness as a symbolic manifestation function to constitute postcolonial African identification? Scholarship on the topic of subjectivity and liberation needs to explicitly examine how whiteness intersects with key notions of modernity, such as race, class, progress, and self-determination. Through an examination of postcolonial African literary representations of whiteness, I aim to examine the aspirations, unpacked stereotypes, and fears that move us as readers and hail us as human subjects. Ultimately, through this work, I grapple with the question of identification, understood as the system of desires, judgments, images, and performances that constitute our experiences of being human. I begin by looking backward at the satirical play, “The Blinkards,” written in 1915 in the context of British colonization of the Gold Coast in West Africa (present-day Ghana), to develop an understanding of postcolonial identification that includes an examination of the artistic expression of a writer conceptualizing liberation through notions of cultural nationalism. I go on to examine a selection postcolonial African literatures to develop an understanding of how racialized socio-cultural realities constitute forms of self-hood in post-independence contexts. I hope to use my argument about representations of whiteness in African literatures to open up questions fundamental to contemporary theories of identification in postcolonial contexts, as well as to make a philosophical argument about the ethics of whiteness as it undergirds transnational modes of modernity. One main point I make in relation to postcolonial theories of subjectivity is that notions of identification are tied up in local, regional, and global circuits of capital and cultural production. In chapter 2, I look at an early (Grain of Wheat 1967) and recent novel (Wizard of the Crow 2006) by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (Kenya), who locates African postcolonial subjectivity as deeply embedded in local traditions, myths, and storytelling circuits. By fluidly mixing the contexts of the local, the national, and the global, Ngũgĩ astutely challenges naturalized conventions that position black identities and blackness as always inferior to whiteness. Ngũgĩ represents postcolonial consciousness as a space whose local relationships are deeply informed by global structures of race, economics, and politics. Situating African postcolonial identification within global circuits of migration, capitalism, and colonialism, Ngũgĩ engages the pervasive significance of whiteness through representations of sickness and desire, suggesting that postcolonial identification is performed through beliefs and practices that are situated within a global racial hierarchy. From there I go on to analyze a contemporary short story cycle by post-apartheid generation South African writer Siphiwo Mahala. Through his work, I continue to explore the issue of performative identification constituted through desire and aspirational notions in which whiteness works as a moving signifier of cultural and social capital. The main question I address in this chapter is, What is the meaning of whiteness in post-apartheid South Africa? Through this examination, I use my analysis of representations of whiteness to reflect on the politics of entanglement as a way to move beyond racialized and geographic modes of identification, to challenge conceptual boundaries that undergird modernity, and theoretical possibilities of a politics of entanglement in relation to broader issues of identification and belonging in postcolonial contexts.