• 1 The original reads as follows: “frictions idéologiques et épistémologiques.”
• 2 “nationalisme étroit.”
• 3 “universalisme abstrait.”
• 4 “l’hypothèse du transcolonial rappelle que le politique passe par les langues, et passe entre les l (...)
• 5 “selon un système d’apartheid jalousement gardé” (46).
• 6 “l’argument civilisateur dans la doctrine coloniale de la langue française.”

2The foreword describes the “ideological and epistemological frictions”1 generated by the cross-linguistic and cross-disciplinary tensions evident in genuinely open postcolonial criticism. Focussing in particular on Anglophone and Francophone critical traditions, the editors underline the importance of different linguistic and intellectual histories, and of the ways in which these histories have played out in a post/colonial frame. Claire Joubert’s comprehensive overview chapter, with which the collection opens, underlines the linguistic, geographical and historical specificity of postcolonialism, reflecting on the ways in which an inaugural Indian subcontinental model has been slowly replaced by a Caribbeanization of the field (a tendency particularly evident in Michael Dash’s contribution, in which he outlines a critical practice centred on the Caribbean negotiating a path between a “narrow nationalism”2 and an “abstract universalism.”3 Joubert’s particular focus is on transcolonial approaches, and also on the increasing prevalence of plurinational co-colonialism. Reminding readers of the pitfalls of an approach to postcolonial subjects that privileges the discursive at the expense of the linguistic, she outlines an agenda to which subsequent contributors are invited to respond: “the hypothesis of the transcolonial reminds us that the political sphere filters through languages and between languages.”4 As an indication of approaches to postcolonialism that adopt such a genuinely internationalized and internationalist frame, Joubert cites the work of Robert Young – and in one of several contributions to the volume by scholars outside the Francophone academy, it is Young himself who decries the tendency of scholarship (and its institutional supports) to treat literature according to fixed linguistic divisions, “following a jealously guarded apartheid system.”5 His conception is of a postcolonial critical practice, open to marginalized voices, which not only challenges the reductive equation of a nation with a single language, but also acknowledges the constant interplay between linguistic traditions both within and beyond the nation. As such, Young calls for a decolonization of the assumptions underpinning scholarly practices that, at best, tend towards the linguistically mute, or at worst replicate the complicity of language and colonial ideology as visible here in Alice Goheneix-Polanski’s study of “the civilizing argument in the French language’s colonial doctrine.”6

• 7 “postcolonialismes francophones” (87).

3Central to the postcolonial comparatism towards which both Joubert and Young gesture is an awareness of differing scholarly paradigms and practices, and Jean-Marc Moura provides a study of what he calls the emergence of pluralized “Francophone postcolonialisms,”7 elements of a tripartite project linked to the globalization of literary history, the development of linguistically inclusive regional literary histories, and the elaboration of a more internationalized theory of literary criticism. Christine Lorre-Johnston provides an exemplary overview of the types of exchange that such an approach might imply. She presents a comprehensive survey of “whiteness studies,” tracking its emergence and evolution, and giving a detailed reflection of its impact in Canadian literary criticism. Her conclusions suggest that such a critical approach – developed in the light of the problematization of whiteness in the context of Anglophone and Francophone Canada – might be suggestive of new comparative practices, and would also permit fresh engagement with parts of the Francophone world itself (most notably perhaps the Caribbean).

• 8 “confrontation,” “comparution,” “commémoration.”

4The volume as a whole presents comparatism both within and beyond the Francosphere, demonstrating the potential of postcolonial approaches to illuminate intra-linguistic/intra-Francophone connections that have previously attracted little attention. For instance, through bringing together the biographies of Josephine Baker and Mayotte Capécia, in a co-authored closing chapter, Myriam Cottias and Madeleine Dobie deploy transcolonial comparatism to explore questions of race and gender. Concentrating on a specifically Francophone frame, Martin Mégevand takes a topic central to French history and culture – Terreur – and explores this in the light of Elleke Boehmer and Stephen Morton’s work on the subject of terror and the postcolonial. Adopting three axes (confrontation, appearance, commemoration)8 and focussing on the theatre, he reveals the ways in which a postcolonial approach to terror contributes considerably to understandings of genericity and poetics.

• 9 “une vision ‘postcoloniale’ voire globale qui pourrait fonder un ensemble plurilingue de ‘littératu (...)

6Le Postcolonial comparé is a highly suggestive volume, demonstrating the critical benefits of a continued prying open of the postcolonial field along translingual, transcultural and transcolonial lines. As the contributions to the volume make clear, such a manoeuvre depends not only on translation and an awareness of differing intellectual trajectories, but also on a willingness to understand and harness the creative frictions to which the foreword alludes. The potential outcome of such an approach is underlined by Moura: “a ‘postcolonial,’ possibly global vision which could be the basis of a plurilingual group of ‘literatures of the South,’ rising from historical considerations and not simply from a linguistic community.”9 The volume suggests that such an active dialogue, bridging intellectual, conceptual and linguistic divides, is becoming possible.