Volume 11 Issue 1&2
Cover Date : June 2008
DOM : départements à part entière ou entièrement à part ?

Authors : Suzanne Dracius
DOI : 10.1386/ijfs.11.1and2.229_7
click here International Journal of Francophone Studies

Abstract
The principal theme of this study is a set of French policies that emerged following the year 2000, marked, for us ‘Domiens’, in large part, by the lively national debate on slave history and on the role – unilaterally determined to be a positive one – of French colonization, culminating in a law, since repealed, that was baptized the ‘Law of Shame’, vaunting the so-called ‘positive aspects of colonization’. This debate saw Martinique, singular little department that it is, resolutely drawing a line of demarcation between itself and the rest of France. For it must be said : Antilleans who live in the hexagon are often assumed to be – and thus assimilated as – immigrants. The assimilation issue thus alive and rankling. But all this is the product not simply of policy, but of poetics as well. These issues raise grave questions with regard to the place of Antillean literary arts within the sacrosanct ambit of French Belles Lettres.