The Idiom of the Other : Three Francophone Writers of “The Fringe”
by Denise Egea-Kuehne, Department of Educational Theory, Policy and Practice, Louisiana State University, 123 Peabody Hall, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, USA

The European Legacy
Publisher : Routledge, part of the Taylor & Francis Group
Issue : Volume 11, Number 7 / December 2006
Pages : 775 - 784

Abstract :

This paper is based on the linguistic and cultural experiences of three francophone writers : Ahmadou Kourouma (Abidjan, Ivory Coast), Suzanne Dracius (Martinique), and Barry Jean Ancelet (Louisiana, United States). Their testimonies are discussed in the opening section. A reading of Jacques Derrida’s Monolingualism of the Other ; or, The Prosthesis of Origin, enables us to analyze the experiences of these three writers, “whose relation to the French language is as vexed and varied as Derrida’s own Algerian inheritance” (in the words of an anonymous reviewer). It leads, in the next section, to a discussion of the impossibility of absolute monolingualism demanded by “linguistic imperialism,” the multiplicity inherent in any language, and the violence of a language which claims to be unique, while serving some ideology or power. In the last part, I address the double interdict to which Derrida believes education must respond, and the double entitlement for which it is responsible.

Click on :

taylorandfrancis