Literary Depictions of Francophone Postcolonial Peripheries on the Brink

Postcolonial Francophone critic Françoise Vergès argues that islands constitute “margins,” “interval spaces” that must not be overlooked because their very location, “in between certain limits,” “evokes the possibility of action.” Recent works by distinguished authors of French literature depict islands as places of violence due to complicated relationships to France and an unbearable precariousness that stems from their perch on the far periphery of the peripheries of Europe. Gender and nation come to the forefront in explosive written creations that continually question where the boundaries of Europe lie today, and what migrations and mutations mean in the present.