Carla Calargé – författare

Haiti has long played an important role in global perception of the western hemisphere, but ideas about Haiti often appear paradoxical. Is it a land of tyranny and oppression or a beacon of freedom as site of the world's only successful slave revolution? A bastion of devilish practices or a devoutly religious island? Does its status as the second independent nation in the hemisphere give it special lessons to teach about postcolonialism, or is its main lesson one of failure? Haiti and the Americas brings together an interdisciplinary group of essays to examine the influence of Haiti throughout the hemisphere, to contextualize the ways that Haiti has been represented over time, and to look at Haiti's own cultural expressions in order to think about alternative ways of imagining its culture and history. Thinking about Haiti requires breaking through a thick layer of stereotypes. Haiti is often represented as the region's nadir of poverty, of political dysfunction, and of savagery. Contemporary media coverage fits very easily into the narrative of Haiti as a dependent nation, unable to govern or even fend for itself, a site of lawlessness that is in need of more powerful neighbors to take control. Essayists in Haiti and the Americas present a fuller picture developing approaches that can account for the complexity of Haitian history and culture.

Liban. Mémoires fragmentées d’une guerre obsédante examine les œuvres d’artistes, d’écrivains et de cinéastes francophones qui tentent d’initier un travail d’anamnèse de la guerre « civile » qui a ravagé le Liban entre 1975 et 1990. Calargé postule que la production culturelle des années 2000-2015 tente de combler le vide généré par l’absence d’un récit national qui raconte l’histoire contemporaine du pays. L’ouvrage explore des questionnements en rapport avec la nécessité de l’anamnèse mais aussi de ses limites dans une situation marquée à la fois par des traumatismes collectifs, par une compétition de mémoires partisanes en conflit et par une volonté officielle d’étouffer le passé récent et d’en gommer les traces. In Liban. Mémoires fragmentées d’une guerre obsédante, Calargé focuses attention on the ways in which Francophone artists, writers, and filmmakers have revived the collective memory of the (un)civil war that ravaged Lebanon between 1975 and 1990. Their works both defy and critique the politics of forgetting that was actively pursued by the post-war leadership and attempt to fill a gaping void in the country’s national historical narrative. Nonetheless, such efforts are necessarily limited. They are limited by both the persistent feeling that the war is not (yet) over and by the limits of personal narratives in the absence of a national project that ensures and facilitates a collective memorialization of the war.