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Travel literature in French colonial and postcolonial encounters

If, as Christophe Campos has suggested, we accept that the disciplinary coherence of French studies ‘‘cracked’’ in the 1960s, then the rapid emergence of Francophone postcolonial studies as a credible area of enquiry is the latest stage in this fragmentation of the field (94–98). The ‘‘postcolonial turn’’ that this reflects may thus be seen to continue an ongoing transformation: ‘‘Francophone literatures did not arrive alone’’, wrote Naomi Schor, ‘‘and did not arrive first’’ (164-5). The recognition, as legitimate objects of study, of cultural products emerging from French-speaking spaces outside France (or from communities of immigrant origin within France) nevertheless poses definitive questions regarding the range of referents that the ‘‘French’’ in French studies is permitted to denote. Disciplinary boundaries, traditionally understood according to the nation-state, are thus challenged at a time when the nation-state itself seems increasingly to be eroded by transnational forces. The current challenge for those of us active in this field is to negotiate the gap between ‘‘French’’ and ‘‘Francophone.’’ To maintain an opposition risks perpetuating former hierarchies (and the stark, often artificial divisions on which these depend); to elide such divisions risks conflating divergent socio-cultural contexts whilst eschewing persistent geopolitical inequalities. ‘‘The turn to the francophone,’’ claims Dominick LaCapra, ‘‘should in fact mean a turning of both the francophone and the metropolitan towards one another in order to elicit their tangled relations, their often lost opportunities, and their possibilities for the future’’ (225). It is to such a challenge, through the study of ‘‘travel literature,’’ that Siobhán Shilton has responded. Her thesis contributes to two areas whose influence within Arts and Humanities research remains substantial: studies in travel writing,