Memory must bring people together

Elie Wiesel, Buchenwald survivor and Nobel Laureate, spoke just moments ago during his visit to Buchenwald with Barack Obama and Angela Merkel.

After saying that it is enough - there has been enough visiting cemeteries and enough weeping, he continued:

“Memory must bring people together rather than set them apart. Memories heed not to sow anger in our hearts, but on the contrary a sense of solidarity with all those who lead us. What else can we do except invoke that memory so that people everywhere will say the twenty-first century is a century of new beginnings filled with promise and infinite hope and that time’s profound gratitude to all those who believe in our task wishes to improve the human condition. A great man, Camus, wrote at the end of his marvelous novel The Plague, ‘After all,’ he said, ‘after the tragedy, nevertheless there is more in the human being to celebrate than to denigrate.’ Even that can be found as truth, painful as it is, in Buchenwald.”

Dual, Doubled and Divided

I’m trying to finish this article on plural identities in Francophone women’s autobiographies and I’m stuck in thoughts of my fractured sense of self. Ever since Sorenne was born I have had a new appreciation for the women I’ve been reading for years: Cardinal, Cixous, Sebbar, among many others. This child came from me and for the first four and a half months was exclusively nourished by me. Reproduction simply works in that mind-boggling fashion. As much as she was or is a part of me, I feel completely independent from that child. She was her own person from the first time I felt her move in the womb. I never want to be a woman whose identity is caught up in the perceived success and failure of her child. That girl is so completely her own, and while we are deeply bonded (she’s a bit mommy crazy these days), she has her own identity.

I had an awkward moment yet again yesterday when a colleague said she has my eyes. I do not know how to react to these continual statements of, “Sorenne looks just like you,” from friends and strangers. Part of me doesn’t really see it, and the other part just doesn’t know how to react. Is this a complement? Poor girl. Maybe she doesn’t want to look like me. Still, she’s limited somewhat by my genes. Inescapably doubled, or at least divided, but mostly that feeling is driven by a severe lack of sleep.

Between Present and Past: Nostalgia in Francophone Literature

Call for Papers:
Between Present and Past: Nostalgia in Francophone Literature
41st Anniversary Convention, Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA)
April 7-11, 2010
Montreal, Quebec - Hilton Bonaventure

“Nostalgia tells it like it wasn’t,” according to David Lowenthal’s 1989 article, yet many are compelled to cling to their longing for the past. This is especially true for many French and Francophone authors who lived through the end of colonialism. While they may overtly deny their nostalgia, it is difficult to escape the compulsion to recreate the time before their exile. Authors such as Albert Camus, Marguerite Duras, and Marie Cardinal, among many others, cannot help but recreate their colonial homes even when they write from a postcolonial position. Rewriting the past can be therapeutic and obsessive. As Judith Butler explains in “The Pleasure of Repetition” (1990), repeating the past is a vain effort “to inhabit that past within the terms of the present and effect its fantasized reconstruction.” In an attempt to understand how nostalgia affects memory writing and how writing sustains nostalgia, this panel will examine the recreation of the past in French and Francophone postcolonial literature. Email Amy L. Hubbell (ahubbell@ksu.edu) with proposed abstracts of 300 words by September 30, 2009.

Please include with your abstract:
Name and Affiliation
Email address
Postal address
Telephone number
A/V requirements (if any; $10 handling fee)

Additional Conference Information:
The 41st Annual Convention will feature approximately 350 sessions, as well as dynamic speakers and cultural events. Details and the complete Call for Papers for the 2010 Convention will be posted in June: www.nemla.org.

Interested participants may submit abstracts to more than one NeMLA session; however panelists can only present one paper (panel or seminar). Convention participants may present a paper at a panel and also present at a creative session or participate in a roundtable.

Travel to Canada now requires a passport for U.S. citizens. Please get your passport application in early.

Leïla Sebbar: Entre exil et enracinement

"Pour moi, la question de l'exil continue à se poser. Elle se posera jusqu'à ce que je cesse d'écrire. J'écris dans l'exil, j'écris à partir de l'exil. Ce qui m'intéresse, ce sont tous ceux qui sont ou frappés par l'exil, ou qui ont fait le choix de l'exil. C'est ce que je traite dans tous mes livres."

- Leïla Sebbar, interview with Boniface Mongo-Mboussa

"Entre Exil Et Enracinement: Entretien Avec Leïla Sebbar." Notre Librairie: Revue des Littératures du Sud 165 (2007). p. 127.

In a 1987 interview with Ysabel Saïah, Marie Cardinal stated, “J’écris toujours le même livre dont l’empreinte est là-bas. La vie d’une femme vivant sur une terre ravagée par le conflit des humains.”

Is this repetition indicative of a psychological trauma, or is it just a typical impetus for writing?