Eco-Critical Perspectives on Gisèle Pineau’s L’Espérance-macadam
Subject Area
French and Francophone Studies
Abstract
This paper proposes Guadeloupean writer Gisèle Pineau’s 1995 novel L’Espérance-macadam as a case-study for reading writing through the lens of feminist eco-criticism. Pineau’s book showcases writing practices that range from the mythological to the metaphorical, yet all are designed around the island’s ecological features. Moreover, the novel’s environmental subtext points to the material and social conditions that shape the experience of writing and gestures to the building blocks of a postcolonial consciousness. This paper’s concerns are thus epistemological, and it asks how feminist eco-criticism sheds light on the relations between nature, culture, and knowledge formation.
L’Espérance-maacadam highlights the links between nature, writing, and knowledge formation because it foregrounds distinct yet related evocations of writing that emerge from a focus on the environment. On the one hand, as an example of human consciousness and creativity, writing offers a primary example of the production of culture. Pineau situates this creative energy within the political, historical, and social contexts of colonialism in order to reclaim the history and forms of knowledge obscured by colonial domination. On the other hand, her illustrations of writing arise through events such as hurricanes and metaphors of a lost Eden, thereby pointing to the interdependence between the landscape and collective knowledge. Ultimately, then, the postcolonial ecological context in L’Espérance-macadam sheds light on the productive tensions between the colonial, postcolonial, and natural worlds because it denaturalizes the process of writing even as writing is informed by natural environmental phenomena.
Brief Bio Note
Lisa Connell is Assistant Professor of French at the University of West Georgia. Her research and teaching interests include postcolonial theory, Francophone women writers, and autobiography, with a focus on representations of colonial-era schooling. She has published on these and other subjects in the works of Maryse Condé, Assia Djebar, Gisèle Pineau and Annie Ernaux
Keywords
Pineau, Feminist eco-criticism, Postcolonial consciousness, Epistemiology
Location
Room 221
Presentation Year
2015
Start Date
3-26-2015 1:30 PM
End Date
3-26-2015 2:45 PM
Embargo
5-23-2017
Recommended Citation
Connell, Lisa, "Eco-Critical Perspectives on Gisèle Pineau’s L’Espérance-macadam" (2015). South East Coastal Conference on Languages & Literatures (SECCLL). 35.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/seccll/2015/2015/35
Eco-Critical Perspectives on Gisèle Pineau’s L’Espérance-macadam
Room 221
This paper proposes Guadeloupean writer Gisèle Pineau’s 1995 novel L’Espérance-macadam as a case-study for reading writing through the lens of feminist eco-criticism. Pineau’s book showcases writing practices that range from the mythological to the metaphorical, yet all are designed around the island’s ecological features. Moreover, the novel’s environmental subtext points to the material and social conditions that shape the experience of writing and gestures to the building blocks of a postcolonial consciousness. This paper’s concerns are thus epistemological, and it asks how feminist eco-criticism sheds light on the relations between nature, culture, and knowledge formation.
L’Espérance-maacadam highlights the links between nature, writing, and knowledge formation because it foregrounds distinct yet related evocations of writing that emerge from a focus on the environment. On the one hand, as an example of human consciousness and creativity, writing offers a primary example of the production of culture. Pineau situates this creative energy within the political, historical, and social contexts of colonialism in order to reclaim the history and forms of knowledge obscured by colonial domination. On the other hand, her illustrations of writing arise through events such as hurricanes and metaphors of a lost Eden, thereby pointing to the interdependence between the landscape and collective knowledge. Ultimately, then, the postcolonial ecological context in L’Espérance-macadam sheds light on the productive tensions between the colonial, postcolonial, and natural worlds because it denaturalizes the process of writing even as writing is informed by natural environmental phenomena.
