Everyday Belonging : Bertrand de Robillard’s L’Homme qui penche and Une interminable distraction au monde

Waters, J. (2018) Everyday Belonging : Bertrand de Robillard’s L’Homme qui penche and Une interminable distraction au monde. In: The Mauritian Novel: Fictions of Belonging. Contemporary French and Francophone Cultures, 56. Liverpool University Press, Liverpool, UK, pp. 139-167. ISBN 9781786941497 doi: 10.3828/mlo.v0i0.260

Abstract/Summary

Drawing on metropolitan theories of le quotidien, this chapter investigates Robillard’s Franco-Mauritian protagonists’ thwarted quests to find a place of belonging within the shared, public spaces of Mauritius and of Paris. It then plots their ultimate reconciliation with the mundane, everyday place of ‘home’ by means of strategic ‘pratiques de l’espace’ (Certeau) and through writing. In their focus on the minutiae of everyday life, Robillard’s unjustly neglected novels confound critical expectations of the nature of ‘post-colonial’ literature. Nonetheless, I argue, his novels could also be seen to depict Mauritius as a place in which only white, male, middle-class individuals have the luxury of entertaining such purportedly ‘everyday’ forms of belonging.

Additional Information	This is Chapter 4. The full book, entitled: 'The Mauritian Novel: Fictions of Belonging', is referenced on CentAUR here: http://centaur.reading.ac.uk/76132/.
Item Type	Book or Report Section
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/91432
Identification Number/DOI	10.3828/mlo.v0i0.260
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Arts, Humanities and Social Science > School of Literature and Languages > Languages and Cultures > French
Additional Information	This is Chapter 4. The full book, entitled: 'The Mauritian Novel: Fictions of Belonging', is referenced on CentAUR here: http://centaur.reading.ac.uk/76132/.
Publisher	Liverpool University Press
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