Becoming French in School: Memories of School Life in Chemin D’école by Patrick Chamoiseau
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21512/lc.v18i1.11517Keywords:
Caribbean, Chemin-d’école, mission civilisatrice, memory, Patrick Chamoiseau, postcolonial studiesAbstract
The research explored the theme of ‘becoming French’ in the novel Chemin d'école by Patrick Chamoiseau. The novel offered a unique perspective on the complex issues of identity, language, and colonial legacy within the Caribbean educational context. The central focus of this research was to examine how the mission civilisatrice was implemented through the education system in the French colonies. The French mission civilisatrice aimed to ‘civilize’ the colonies, exerting influence over the lives of children within these territories. In this postcolonial narrative, Chamoiseau challenged the erasure of Creole culture and identity as children were molded into the French mold. His work underscored the tension between the native language and the French language, serving as a commentary on linguistic and cultural colonialism. Incorporating Frantz Fanon’s theoretical framework from “Black Skin, White Masks”, the research illuminated colonialism’s psychological and cultural impacts, revealing the enduring consequences of internalized racism and the complexities of ‘becoming French’ in a postcolonial context. A qualitative research design utilizing literary analysis was employed, involving systematic reading and coding of Chamoiseau’s novel. The findings of this research suggest that through its portrayal of the education system, language erasure, and cultural identity, the novel offers a poignant and thought-provoking narrative that illuminates the process of ‘becoming French’ in a postcolonial context, providing insights into the challenges and complexities faced by individuals subjected to the mission of French civilization.
Plum Analytics
References
Belrose, A. M. (2020). The literary diglossy in Patrick Chamoiseau: The case of his autobiographic romances Antan D’Enfance and Chemin D’École. Caligrama: Revista de Estudos Românicos, 25(3), 237-251. http://dx.doi.org/10.17851/2238-3824.25.3.237-251.
Bihan-Gallic, F. (2021). Globalisation and linguistic disturbance in New Caledonia. Language & Communication, 78, 54-64. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2021.02.003.
Bouacida, S. (2021). Childhood is “not a story to pass on”: Trauma and memory paradox in Toni Morrison’s God Help the Child. Jordan Journal of Modern Languages and Literatures, 13(3), 399-410. https://doi.org/10.47012/jjmll.13.3.2.
Boulahnane, S. (2018). French regime's francisation as a paracolonial policy: A critical study of language, identity and assimilation in French Morocco. AWEJ for Translation & Literary Studies, 2(3), 120-131. http://dx.doi.org/10.24093/awejtls/vol2no3.9.
Chamoiseau, P. (2016). Chemin-d’école. Paris: Éditions Gallimard.
Cogeanu, O. (2022). On the borders of race. MEΘEXIS Journal of Research in Values and Spirituality, 2(1), 29-36.
Colwill, E. (2023). Creole againts creolization. Theory & Event, 26(2), 283-317. https://doi.org/10.1353/tae.2023.0016.
Coquery-Vidrovitch, C. (2021). Access to higher education in French Africa South of the Sahara. Social Sciences, 10(5), 1-14. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci10050173.
Crowley, P. (2004). The etat civil: Post/colonial identities and genre. French Forum, 29(3), 79-94.
Duboc, A. P., & Ferraz, D. M. (2020). What’s behind a literacy war? A discursive and political analysis of the neoconservative Brazilian literacy policy. Journal of Multicultural Discourses, 15(4), 436-457. https://doi.org/10.1080/17447143.2020.1800714
Dupraz, Y. (2019). French and British colonial legacies in education: Evidence from the partition of Cameroon. The Journal of Economic History, 79(3), 628-668. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022050719000299.
El Kallab, T., & Terra, C. (2018). French colonial trade patterns and European settlements. Comparative Economic Studies, 60(3), 291-331. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41294-017-0040-6.
Fanon, F. (2008). Black skin, white masks (C. L. Markmann, Trans.). London: Pluto Press.
Fayolle, C. (2022). L’éducation coloniale au prisme de l’intersectionnalité (Antilles françaises, 1795-1830). Amnis. Revue d’études Des Sociétés et Cultures Contemporaines Europe/Amérique, 4. https://doi.org/10.4000/amnis.8088.
Genschow, K. (2021). Chemins de l’école: École, langue et décolonialité dans la littérature antillaise. Sociocriticism, 35(2), 1-23.
Hardwick, L. (2013). Childhood, autobiography and the francophone caribbean. Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press.
Harrison, N. (2019). Our civilising mission: The lessons of colonial education. Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvhrcxkm.10.
Hodieb, L. (2020). Multilingualism and language attitude the “Cameroonian Paradox”. Ideação, 22(2), 83-96. https://doi.org/10.48075/ri.v22i2.26055.
Johnson, E. L. (2013). “Envie Et Survie”: The paradox of postcolonial nostalgia in Patrick Chamoiseau’s chemin-d’école. Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, 17(4), 396-404. https://doi.org/10.1080/17409292.2013.817080.
Khawaja, M. (2021). Consequences and remedies of indigenous language loss in Canada. Societies, 11(3), 1-12. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc11030089.
Lmustapha, M. M. (2023). The colonial heritage: The French language and the question of education in Morocco today. The Maghreb Review, 48(1), 100-115. https://doi.org/10.1353/tmr.2023.0007.
Luce, O. H. (2022). Shaping the future elite: A comparative analysis of French policy relating to student international mobility from Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco until decolonisation. Journal of Migration History, 8(1), 1-27. https://doi.org/10.1163/23519924-08010002.
Majumdar, M. A. (2007). French discourses of empire. In Postcoloniality: The French Dimension (1st ed., pp. 1-32). New York & Oxford: Berghahn Books.
Maravall, L. (2019). The impact of a ‘colonizing river’: Colonial railways and the indigenous population in French Algeria at the turn of the century. Economic History of Developing Regions, 34(1), 16-47. https://doi.org/10.1080/20780389.2019.1581059.
Massantini, L. (2020). Affective scaffolds of nostalgia. Philosophical Inquiries, 8(2), 47-70. https://doi.org/10.4454/philinq.v8i2.255.
Matasci, D. (2021). Réformer l’Empire: Éducation de base et développement en Afrique coloniale française (1945-1956). Paedagogica Historica, 57(3), 228-245. https://doi.org/10.1080/00309230.2020.1793209.
McElroy, D. R. (2020). Superstitions: A handbook of folklore, myths, and legends from around the World. New York, USA: Wellfleet Press.
Mills, C., & Lefrançois, B. A. (2018). Child as metaphor: Colonialism, psy-governance, and epistemicide. World Futures, 74(7-8), 503-524. https://doi.org/10.1080/02604027.2018.1485438.
Mohamed, N. (2020). First language loss and negative attitudes towards Dhivehi among young Maldivians: Is the English‐first educational policy to blame? TESOL Quarterly, 54(3), 743-772. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.591.
Morris, M. (2016). Postcolonia; curriculum concepts. Counterpoints, 499, 209-246.
Muhammad, T. K., & Al Jubory, H. K. H. (2022). The status of education in Lebanon under the French colonialism 1920-1943. Journal of Tikrit University for Humanities, 29(8), 1920-1943. http://dx.doi.org/10.25130/jtuh.29.8.2.2022.11.
Nicholas, P. (2021). Coercing the delta. The French grammar of control in the African landscape of colonial Louisiana, 1699-1732. Global Environment, 14(3), 535-563. https://doi.org/10.3197/ge.2021.140305.
Ouma, C. E. W. (2020). Childhood in contemporary diasporic African literature. Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.
Oyedemi, T. D. (2021). Postcolonial casualties: ‘Born-frees’ and decolonisation in South Africa. Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 39(2), 214-229. https://doi.org/10.1080/02589001.2020.1864305.
Parvulescu, A., & Boatcă, M. (2023). Creolization as method. The Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, 10(1), 121-127. https://doi.org/10.1017/pli.2022.34.
Rouabah, S. (2022). Multilingualism in Algeria: Educational policies, language practices and challenges. Journal of the Britih Academy, 10(S4), 21-40. https://doi.org/10.5871/jba/010s4.021.
Salhi, Z. S. (2019). Occidentalism: Literary representations of the maghrebi experience of the East-West encounter. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press. https://doi.org/doi:10.1515/9780748645817-005.
Shehata, A. K. (2022). The "Demonic Other” and the colonial figures in Kipling’s the white man’s burden and Taher’s sunset oasis: A comparative study. International Journal of Language and Literary Studies, 4(4), 12-26. https://doi.org/ 10.36892/ijlls.v4i4.1066.
Spolsky, B. (2018). Language policy in French colonies and after independence. Current Issues in Language Planning, 19(3), 231-315. https://doi.org/10.1080/14664208.2018.1444948.
Swanson, L. (2020). Magical thinking in Chamoiseau’s Chemin-d’école: From quimbois to the mission civilisatrice. Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism, 24(3, 63), 16-30. https://doi.org/10.1215/07990537-8749746.
Thermes, C. (2023). Patrick Chamoiseau: ‘Guerrier de l’imaginaire’ en langue française. Jangada: Crítica: Literatura, Artes, 10(20), 243-257. https://doi.org/10.35921/jangada.v1i20.436.
Ulysse, G. M., & Masaeed, K. A. (2021). The influence of socio-economic status, age, gender, and level of literacy on language attitudes: The case of Haitian Gonâviens. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages, 36(2), 227-263. https://doi.org/10.1075/jpcl.00075.uly.
Wang, R. (2023). An analysis of the influence of French colonization on the Vietnamese education system. Interdisciplinary Humanities and Communication Studies, 1(1), 1-5. https://doi.org/10.61173/aj42qn74.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2024 Arifah Arum Candra Hayuningsih
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
a. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License - Share Alike that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
b. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal.
c. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.
USER RIGHTS
All articles published Open Access will be immediately and permanently free for everyone to read and download. We are continuously working with our author communities to select the best choice of license options, currently being defined for this journal as follows: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC BY-SA)
