Contact de cultures : cohabitation, confrontation, choc

Building on the broad meaning of the word “culture” and the ubiquity of cultural contact in contemporary societies, this article reflects on the representation of cultural contact in three French language novels: Pas Pleurer (2014) by Lydie Salvayre, Allah n’est pas obligé (2000) by Ahmadou Kurouma, and Hiver à Sokcho (2016) by Elisa Shua Dusapin. Salvayre, a renowned French writer whose mother tongue is Spanish, portrays the contact between French and Spanish cultures as a harmonious coexistence. The Ivorian novelist Kourouma, on the other hand, depicts cultural contact as a confrontation of two contrasting cultures: the central and seemingly superior French culture, and the peripheral and exotic Malinké culture. Marked by this biculturality, Kourouma makes no secret of his problematic relationship with the French language and culture and bases the structure of his novel on a confrontation of cultures. The Franco-Swiss author Elisa Shua Dusapin sees the contact between two different cultures, French and South Korean, as a devastating and threatening shock, which ultimately turns out to be enriching. The three authors reject both the hierarchisation of cultures and a black-and-white vision of the world. Their respective texts, imbued with a wide range of culturemes, are both pleasing and instructive: they transmit unconceptualized knowledge and thus justify the cultural and social significance of literature.