FREN 045F. La représentation /mémoire/ écopoétique de la plantation

Excessive human activity has been the dominant influence on the climate and the environmental conditions that we are experiencing across the globe. Colonialism (neocolonialism), capitalism, and racial/ethnic hierarchies will be at the center of our critique by asking what past and future modes of resistance might emerge to aid us in navigating our current impasse. This seminar engages with contemporary literature by francophone writers, poets, theorists, and artists who creatively reflect on the ways in which rising sea levels, deforestation, excessive oil drilling practices, and extreme shifting weather conditions occur in the wake of a string of relational ecological disasters. Topics included in this course range from the memory and afterlives of slavery on the postplantation to the aesthetics of ecological catastrophes (and renewal) represented through the emergence of a poetry and poetics that take an ecological stance toward the world. Selected works by Édouard Glissant, Maryse Condé, Patrick Chamoiseau, Simone Schwarz-Bart, Edwidge Danticat, Françoise Vergès, Yanick Lahens, Dany Laferrière, and Louis-Philippe Dalembert among others will be considered in this meditation on the Anthropocene/ Plantationocene. Course will be conducted in French.
Humanities.
1 credit.
Spring 2025. Smith.
Catalog chapter: Modern Languages and Literatures: French and Francophone Studies
Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/french-francophone-studies

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