Franklin Professor of French Studies and Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies, Patrick Saveau, recently published a volume titled “Reimagining North African immigration: Identities in flux in French literature, television and film.” Working as both editor and contributor, Professor Saveau takes the pulse of French post-coloniality, inviting the reader to explore the many different faces of French identity at the dawn of the twenty-first century. The book’s essays explore the challenges and hopes facing multicultural France today, in relation to the legacies of its colonial past.
The contributors invoke the transformative powers of literature, film and television, pleading for an honest and open recognition of the centrality of post-beur authors and directors on the French cultural scene, and of their vital role in overcoming monocultural norms. The various approaches - sociological, historical, political, literary, and cultural - celebrate recent films, television programs and literature produced by citizens of so-called "immigrant" and North African heritage, who use French as their language of choice.
Intersecting migration studies and diaspora studies, as well as film and literature studies, the various chapters throw fresh light on challenging works that deflate stereotypes regarding France's post-immigration population. They foreground themes such as urban culture and globalization, cultural metissage, racial diversity, transnationalism, mobility and connectedness across generational, social and racial divides, as well as the healing of historical trauma, the decloistering of memories through post-memory, and illiterature.
The contributors draw on a wide range of seminal literary and film authors, from Tahar Ben jelloun, Faïza Guène, Dalila Kerchouche, Mohamed Teriah, Samuel Zaoui, to Merzak Allouache, Yamina Benguigui, Rachid Djaidani, and Abdellatif Kechiche, while also revealing important new voices.