Current Research
My research focuses more specifically on how contemporary discourses of travel are adapting themselves to postcolonial awareness. This allows me to question how the traveller's position helps us to understand the ways a "Western subject" is being built and negotiated outside a hegemonic form of representation. Two ways to achieve this is, firstly, to take into account travels that are not just taking place in the western "exotic" other by Westerners but also by travellers coming from other cultural contexts (Asia, Africa); secondly by using documents based on the way the traveller is being perceived.
Past Research
My first book Henri Michaux, J.M.G. Le Clézio - L'exil des mots. (Paris: Kimé, 1995), was analysing the question of identity and displacement in a contemporary context.
My second book Le Voyage en son miroir sur quelques tentatives de réinvention du voyage 20e siècle (Paris : Kimé, 2002) analysed the tacit ideologies found in contemporary travel discourses within the French and Francophone literature. I studied more specifically how contemporary discourses of travel have been, or not, adapting themselves to a post-colonial awareness. Using such author as Isabelle Eberarht, Jean Baudrillard, Francois Maspéro, I suggested that such awareness enables travel writers to practice and represent travel differently.
My third monograph was a analysis of Le Poisson-Scorpion by the Swiss author Nicolas Bouvier.
I have also edited the following books:
La Langue de l'autre, Co-edited with S.Bonnemason-Richard, N. Laporte, Pau, Presses Universitaires de Pau, 2009.
Nouvelles lectures de l'exotisme Co-edited with Elodie Laügt, The University of Nottingham, 2005.
Errances Urbaines. Editor for Special issue of Nottingham French Sudies, Volume 39, number I, Spring 2000.
List of publications :
"Littérature-Monde, or Redefining Exotic Literature?" in Transnational French Studies, Postcolonialism and Littérature-monde, Liverpool, University of Liverpool Press, 2010, pp. 195-209. 978-1-84631-483-4
"L'île perdue: entre invisibilité et nostalgie" in Le Clézio à la croisée des arts et des cultures, Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2010, pp. 75-91. 978-2-7535-1107-1
"Sans Soleil de Chris Marker et la parole de l'autre" in La Langue de l'autre, Actes du premier colloque Europe, (Co-edited with S.Bonnemason-Richard, N. Laporte) Pau, Presses Universitaires de Pau, 2009, pp. 107-116. 2-35311-014-2
"Elizabeth Vonarburg: pour une redéfinition du voyage spatio-temporel" in Redefining the Real, The Fantastic in Contemporary French and Francophone Women's Writing. Bern: Peter Lang, 2009, pp. 159-172. 978-3-03911-567-9
"La folie du lieu" in Aesthetics of Dislocation in French and Francophone Literature and Art. Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2009, pp.117-129.
"Chris Marker and the Ghost of the Image" in Haunting Presence, Ghosts in French Literature and Culture. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2009, pp. 106-115.
ISBN 978-0-7083-2181-2
"Le voyageur et la négociation de l'étrangeté" in Dérives et déviances, Paris: SEDES, 2005, pp. 93-102.
"Le Clézio et la parole cachée" in Lectures d'une Oeuvre J.-M.G. Le Clézio, edited
by S. Jollin-Bertocchi et B. Thibault. Nantes: editions du temps, 2004, pp. 119-132.
ISBN 2-84274-301-6
"Pour une poétique du voyage comme disparition" in Autour de Nicolas Bouvier edited by C. Albert, N. Laporte, J-Y Pouilloux. Genève : Zoé, 2002, 120-35.
ISBN 2-88182-446-3
"Henri Michaux" 6000 words entry for Dictionary of Literary Biography edited by J.F Leroux, Volume 258, Bruccoli Clark Layman Book, 2002. ISBN 0-7876-5252-0
"Antonin Artaud et la culture des Indiens Tarahumaras" in Colloque Littéraire international: Les écrivains de Marseille. (N. Nivelle/J-C Latil eds.) Marseille: Marseille : Editions Académie Europe XXI, 2001, pp.110-21.
"Segalen et l'espace blanc de la carte" in Victor Segalen: Reading Diversity, Lectures du divers, Glasgow University Press, 2000, 89-101. ISBN 0-85261-659-7
"Maryse Condé et le fantôme d'une communauté inopérante." Francophonie et identités culturelles. Paris: Editions Karthala, 1999, 213-226. ISBN 2-86537-929-9
Articles:
"Lenteur et étrangeté", in Lettres Modernes Minard, série Voyages contemporains, 2010, 11-32. 978-2-256-91157-6 (09/10)
"Escribir desde los Màrgenes." Letras Libres, Noviembre 2008. (Translation of the article "Écrire les marginalités".
"Le voyage et l'absence: Nicolas Bouvier et le Poisson-Scorpion" in Nouvelles Lectures de l'exotisme, University of Nottingham, 2005, 40-52.
"Henri Michaux: un voyage au pays des signes." Vives Lettres, n° 13, 2002.
"Héritage et archive de la marge." Critique, n° 646, mars 2001, 224-231.
"Un barbare en banlieue" in Nottingham French Sudies, Volume 39, number I, Spring 2000, 25-38.
"Écrire les marginalités." Magazine Littéraire (février 1998), 39-43.
"J.M.G. Le Clézio: between here and there, a displacement in memory." World Literature Today , 71.4 (Autumn 1997), 717-722.
"Mémoire, récit et contamination dans La Fée carabine de Daniel Pennac." L'Esprit Créateur, 37.3 (Fall 1997), 50-60.
"La carte postale ou l'impossible discours amoureux." Dalhousie French Studies, 22 (Spring-Summer 1992), 111-119.
"André Breton face au mythe de la femme-enfant." The French Quarterly, 39 (August 1992), 311-316.
"Le Passage ou l'architecture du devenir." Paroles Gelées, 10 (1992), 39-49.
Future Research
My next project is a theoretical study of the many forms of cultural exchanges and negotiations that take place between the traveller and his/her host within a postcolonial context. I will analyse texts in which the traveller does not have complete control over his representation and where he can no longer define himself through his spatial practices. The traveller and his host occupy shifting positions, and I use the figure of the "stranger" in order to analyse these positions. This project will use a wide range of literary and visual texts, from Flaubert's travel in Brittany to the visual log books created by Chris Marker in Sunless.