New Directions in Francophone Studies: Diversity, Decolonisation, Queerness – serie

This book investigates cultural representations of the BUMIDOM (Bureau pour le developpement des migrations dans les departements d'outre-mer), a state-organised migration scheme which brought workers from Guadeloupe, Martinique, Reunion and French Guiana to mainland France between 1963 and 1982. It argues that the French government has not sufficiently commemorated the BUMIDOM through national frameworks such as museums and education systems. This would mean admitting that participants, who were French citizens, were treated as racialised migrants and second-class-citizens. Through a series of original case studies spanning life writing, novels, films, bande dessinee, children's fiction and music, the study demonstrates that it is cultural practitioners who, in the absence of adequate state representation, are undertaking this important memory work themselves. In a period in which Black identity is increasingly entering public debate in France, the book raises urgent questions about what it means to be a French citizen and a racial minority.

This book investigates cultural representations of the BUMIDOM (Bureau pour le développement des migrations dans les départements d’outre-mer), a state-organised migration scheme which brought workers from Guadeloupe, Martinique, Réunion and French Guiana to mainland France between 1963 and 1982. It argues that the French government has not sufficiently commemorated the BUMIDOM through national frameworks such as museums and education systems. This would mean admitting that participants, who were French citizens, were treated as racialised migrants and second-class-citizens. Through a series of original case studies spanning life writing, novels, films, bande dessinée, children’s fiction and music, the study demonstrates that it is cultural practitioners who, in the absence of adequate state representation, are undertaking this important memory work themselves. In a period in which Black identity is increasingly entering public debate in France, the book raises urgent questions about what it means to be a French citizen and a racial minority.

This edited volume sheds light on the unique capacity of the comics medium for redrawing histories and for exploring hidden, forbidden or imagined spaces. Studying a variety of texts from the French-speaking world, it considers how bandes dessinees (BD) and graphic novels can highlight environmental, gender, racial, religious, political and social questions. It also demonstrates how BD can offer readers new perspectives through formal experiment and through reworking and subverting dominant iconographies. The contributions in this volume showcase how the comic medium, through the combination of text and image, engages with notions of voice, power, bias and perspective, and can be used as a pedagogical tool and a form of resistance to discuss diversity, decolonisation, inclusion and social justice issues.