Navigating language hierarchies in the Indian Ocean and the Caribbean: women, memory, communities

Since Creole languages first appeared in the French Empire, they have been marginalized in official spaces, which has not only led to the marginalization of Creole speakers, but also alienated Creole speakers from their languages. French language, religion, and culture were considered inherently superior. This view of the world, in which (perceived) proximity to Frenchness was synonymous with goodness, was established when colonial contact was made, and would not end with the formal end of the empire. I study works in which the quest for equilibrium of identities is carried out simultaneously through language and cultural practices and through the intergenerational transmission of these practices by older women who share how they have constructed their lives and influenced the communities around them.

I propose a new way to consider the relationship between Creole and French in literature by authors from former French colonies in the Indian Ocean and the Caribbean, taking into account both the historical relationship between the languages and authors’ personal navigation of the fraught language landscape around them: how do they relate to their languages, how does this manifest in their work, how does the languages’ conflict affect their work, and how do these questions touch other themes such as gender? I also bring together the Indian Ocean and the Caribbean, specifically Reunion, Mauritius, Martinique, and Guadeloupe because of the similarities in their histories with French colonialism, slavery, and eventual decolonization.