File spoon-archives/postcolonial.archive/postcolonial_1999/postcolonial.9911, message 107


Date: Wed, 24 Nov 1999 20:49:53 +0000 (GMT)
From: Bram Dov Abramson <bram-AT-dojo.tao.ca>
Subject: Re: postcolonial-digest V2 #1068


> Of course, all such terms are highly problematic since they are ultimately
> based upon essentializing a linguistic identity as ethnic (i.e. I'm
> considered to be an Anglophone even though I live half or more of my daily
> life in French and much of my cultural identity is definitely rooted
> in Francophone Quebecois culture).

I don't know if that's true.  In Montreal, people tend to think of me as
Anglophone (English-first-language) and Jewish (ethnicity) and not
necessarily in that order (in fact there is usually a definite order and
it's interssting to see what it is when). The many anguished articles
bemoaning imbrication of non-Eng/Fr communities with the English language
suggest that lang / ethnicity aren't quite used in the same way.

otoh it's true that often "the Anglophone community" is used as a frame
by journalists and others trying to order (make sense of) the news.
But even they don't really believe the term makes all that much sense
used as such, I bet.

> I certainly don't know which is the most common usage in English, but in
> French I think of francophone as simply meaning "french-speaking" without it
> being the "native tongue."
> 
> In North Africa, for example, it is common to reffer to the Francophone and
> Arabophone press.

Interesting.  In Quebec it's usually a native-tongue thing in my
experience.  What originally had me wondering out loud, though, is what
it means to call a newspaper francophone: to my ear (mind), there is a
real difference between saying that and saying that the newspaper is
French-language.  (Although that does sound strange in English; maybe this
only works in French: un journal de langue francaise, referring to the
language in which the articles are written,  vs un journal francophone,
which sounds like it says something about the cultural and communal
orientation of the newspaper, cf David's point above.  Obviously those
two things are deeply related, but the second is saying much more than
the first.)  

> This debate about who and what is anglophone has a long and contentious
> history in the so-called anglophone caribbean by Hubert Devonish, Kamau
> Brathwaite, Merle Collins, & Carolyn Cooper, among many, many others. (see
> also the intro to _Brown et al., _Voiceprint_) It can't be reduced simply to
> a subject versus text, (particularly in creole societies--which are not an
> anomaly but the majority) and to say "it's definitional" begs the question
> as to who is defining it and where. Liz

Well, yes, obviously "creole societies" are the majority -- do non-creole
societies exist? can a "society" be anything but creole? -- and obviously
to say "it's definitional" raises (begs??) the question of who defines it,
where, how when, and so on.  I don't really understand how we can figure
out how these words are used, or what that implies, without discussing
them.

But to begin to answer "who and what is anglophone", one probably needs to
figure out what it would mean to be anglophone, ie what one means by
asking that question.  (as opposed to "who and what is tall", "who and
what is thirsty", and so on.)  That's what I mean by definitional: the
question I am throwing out is definitional -- when you say "who and what
is anglophone", why do you use that word (anglophone)?  And my own answer
is that when I hear anglophone I think subject, so if someone talks about
a text as anglophone, I can;t help but thinking that what's being talked
about goes beyond the language in which the words on the page (screen, ..)
appear.  

(that's what I meant about the newspapers)

> these terms need to be problemetized....
> the point of these terms are essentialization....ah, the Trudeau era...I
> remember it well....
> And of course, the language "police" are everywhere, even theory...
> 
> sitting here on the pacific rim, north of 48 this strikes me as a very
> Can'dj'n converstation...

yeah.  I mean, it depends: for me, it's even a very Montreal conversation,
in the sense that the way I understand these words has everything to do
with the very complex ways in which new (just met) people related to me
and I to them -- fitting into a social grid which is under a lot of strain
right now, in fact probably it is more accurate to talk of several
distinct social grids which are tightly layered, and which underlays any
discussion of the politics of ethnic relations in Montreal.  And
spiralling outwards, Quebec and CAnada, since they all pollute (in the
nicest possible sense) one another.

I think it has relevance for others in other contexts.  But what do I
know?

> but its an international and historic conversation, as Liz points out the
> creolization...of absolutely everything/one....

Definitely.  But acknowledging universal creolization (sounds like a
buzzword, not sure whose) is a starting point, not an end point: that
process happens differently everywhere, and happens through--as they
say--complex plays of power and configurations of resources
(economic, cultural, political, and on) butting up against one another.

Which leads us back to where we started, I guess, as these things tend to.

> its the complexities that we are wanting to know about...when the binaries
> are examined microscopically, specifically, where we live.....
> surely we can imagine ourselves more richly...and write more richly about
> ourselves.....

grin.  Sounds like a good starting point to me.

cheers
Bram
(living, I should add, in Washington DC.)


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