Fellows

Jean JONASSAINT

Caribbean and Francophone Literatures, Syracuse University, USA

Fellowship : October 2013 to June 2014

Discipline(s) : Literature

Area(s) of expertise : Francophone and Caribean literature

Pays : Etats-Unis

At IAS-Nantes with the support of the Pays de la Loire Region

Research project: “Genetic edition of Dézafi and Les Affres d’un défi by Frankétienne”

Within the framework of the “Institut des Textes et Manuscrits Modernes” (CNRS/ ENS), and in collaboration with Professor Rafael Lucas (University of Bordeaux III), the purpose of this project is to produce a scholarly edition in one volume of two major novels, Dézafi (1975/2002) and Les Affres d’un défi (“the Torments of a Challenge”, 1979) by Frankétienne, whom, with more than forty books published, scholars widely view as “Haiti’s most important writer” (R.C. Archibold, The New York Times, 04/29/2011). The edition of these Haitian and French texts, regarded as key turning points in the Caribbean narrative tradition, will provide a critical apparatus explaining their genesis and significance, but also highlighting the differences between the Haitian and French narratives, and between the two Haitian versions of 1975 and 2002. The volume is to be published by CNRS Editions in its series ‘Planète libre’.

Biography

Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Syracuse University, Jean Jonassaint also taught at Duke University and the Université du Québec à Montréal, and gave lectures at École Normale Supérieure (ENS, Paris), Freie Universität (Berlin), Vrije Universiteit (Amsterdam), Carleton University (Ottawa), Georgetown University (Washington) and Northwestern University (Chicago).

He has published five books, of which Le Pouvoir des mots, les maux du pouvoir: des romanciers hatiens de l’exil (1986). Jean Jonassaint has edited or co-edited several works on Francophone and American literature: Nouvelles brésiliennes (Dérives, 1983), L’Amérique entre les langues (Études françaises, 1992- 1993) and a Special Issue on Frankétienne (The Journal of Haitian Studies, 2008).

He is interested in a practical epistemology, which to some extent implies an ethics of criticism and theory, mainly regarding the field of Caribbean Studies on which he just completed a book Contre Vulgate (des lieux dits Caraïbes). His growing interest in the questioning of traditional approaches to Francophone or Caribbean literatures leads him more recently to critical and genetic edition of texts. He is currently working on two scholarly editions: one of La Tragédie du Roi Christophe by Aimé Césaire; and another of Dézafi /Les Affres d’un défi by Frankétienne.

Major Publications

JONASSAINT, Jean. Des éditions génétiques haïtiennes : Pourquoi ? Pour qui ? Comment? Afrique-Caraïbe: Genesis, 2011, n°33, p. 79-91.

 

JONASSAINT, Jean. Le cinéma de Sembène Ousmane, une (double) contre-ethnographie. Ethnologies, 2009, p. 241-286.

 

JONASSAINT, Jean. Typo/Topo/Poéthique: sur Frankétienne. Paris : L’Harmattan, 2008, 374 pages.

 

JONASSAINT, Jean. Transnationalism, Multilingualism and Literature: the Challenge of Caribbean Studies. Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas, 2007, Vol. 40(1), p. 21-34.

 

JONASSAINT, Jean. Des Romans de tradition haïtienne: sur un récit tragique. Paris/Montréal : L’Harmattan/Cidihca, 2002, 365 p.