Textual Famadihana: Returning of Bones in Francophone Indian Ocean and Caribbean Narratives Restricted; Files Only

Abstract

“Textual Famadihana: Returning of Bones in Francophone Indian Ocean and Caribbean Narratives” investigates famadihana, an ancestral exhumation practice from Madagascar, which I employ metaphorically as a framework for analyzing multigeneric insular narratives of La Réunion, Tromelin, and Martinique, which I study alongside Madagascar. Using a minor transnational approach to connect these islands with a shared history of transoceanic migration, I analyze stories of unburials in contemporary fictions, poetry, and bande dessinée in which authors exhume the bodies of insurgents, revolutionaries, slaves, and maroons from the desecrated tombs of oblivion so as to transfer their remains into a new, textually constructed burial site. Through analyzing the care—à la Malagasy—given to dead bodies that each artist reconstructs, unburies, re-enshrouds, and buries anew in what I call récits mpamadika, that is, narratives performing a textual famadihana, my work reestablishes Madagascar’s occulted relevance in the field of postcolonial studies, and reevaluates the African island’s impact on the history and creolizations of the modern world. In so doing, I interrogate a number of texts that deal with graves (re)opening and body exhumation in a metaphorical and symbolic level. My contention is that the authors under consideration, namely Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo and Jean-Luc Raharimanana from Madagascar, Fabienne Kanor and Patrick Chamoiseau from Martinique, Boris Gamaleya from Reunion Island, and Sylvain Savoia from continental France, all share a penchant for textual famadihana, the concept that I theorize throughout this thesis. I analyze how this exhumation practice informs and structures their récits mpamadika. At the end of my study, it can arguably be put forward that they serve as legible graves or boky-fasanafrom which their authors exhume decomposing corpses violently defeated by past atrocities. I demonstrate how each artist engages with the Malagasy ritual textually to provide past and contemporary victims of the (neo)colonial system with a ritualized, aesthetic burial, the purpose of which, I argue, is to restore their lost human dignity. 

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION...................................................................................................................... 1 

CHAPTER 1 - TEXTUAL FAMADIHANA: Mitady ny Very, the Malagasy Way.................... 43

Hitady ny Very: J-J. Rabearivelo’s Postcolonial Legacies.................................................... 45

Re-Membering the Dead, Raharimanana’s Way.................................................................. 59

CHAPTER 2 - DÉCALITUDE FAMADIHANA: Retrieving Bones from the Hold................ 112

Re-Turning Women’s Corpses to Humus......................................................................... 120

Giving a New Face to the Hold......................................................................................... 135

CHAPTER 3 - MARRONNAGE FAMADIHANA: Transferring Bodies from Plantation to Fasan-drazana......166

L’esclave vieil homme et le molosse: Patrick Chamoiseau’s récit mpamadika.................. 177

Reconstructing a tanindrazanaon Bourbon in Vali pour une reine morte........................ 203

EPILOGUE ............................................................................................................................ 238

WORKS CITED..................................................................................................................... 246

GLOSSARY........................................................................................................................... 265

About this Dissertation

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School	Laney Graduate School
Department	French
Degree	Ph.D.
Submission	Dissertation
Language	English
Research Field	Literature, Romance African Studies Literature, Comparative
Mot-clé	famadihana madagascar caribbean indian ocean
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Valérie Loichot, Emory University
Committee Members	Elissa Marder, Emory University Emmanuel Bruno Jean-François, Pennsylvania State University Subha Xavier, Emory University

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