New Voices in Postcolonial Studies A collaborative multi-disciplinary network for PGRs in Postcolonial Studies

Description

This paper questions the mission, supposedly civilising, in the colonial period in the Africa Francophone and the development of this mission considerate “civilisational”. Therefore, the concern toward the French linguistic Policy took public dimension in 2007 through the “Manifesto” of 44 Francophone writers. They published a text in “Le Monde” criticising frontally the Francophone institutions as instruments encompassing an exclusive pact with the nation and promoting a positioning to advocate accusation neo-colonial and Imperial enterprise.
The discomfort of the Francophonie is related to the passive colonial of the French language in which the oppression should have been the rule. Thus, how to explain French language sustainability (maintenance) into the ex-colonies.
In the first approach, we will highlight the classical story of the Francophonie history and its appropriation by the ancient colonised. Additionally, we try to demonstrate how the mythistory tends to hide the sociolinguistic, political and economic conceptions to maintain the French language in detriment of the minority languages in Africa.
In the Organisation International of Francophonie (OIF), it is possible to resituate a unique version of the official history of the Francophonie with an absence of questioning. Two figures represent the historical impasse: Onésime Reclus and Léopold Sédar Senghor. This mythological narrative is partially historical which is qualified such a “mythohistorical ” based on colonial period (symbolised on Onésime Reclus) and postcolonial period ( which is represented on L. S. Senghor).

Keywords : Francophonie, French language, colonisation, Francophone elites, linguistic nationalism, appropriation.

Period	22 Jun 2022
Held at	New Voices in Postcolonial Studies, University of Leeds, United Kingdom