[BRIEF NOTE] Is la Francophonie cracking?
Mar. 25th, 2006 02:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldToday's Toronto Star reports that, finally, French condescension towards the non-French members of la Francophonie has finally caused some of them to crack.
La Francophonie started in the 1960s not so much as a French initiative as an initiative by la Francophonie's periphery, emerging from efforts by emergent Francophone nations to multilateralize their relationships, to cultivate relationships among Francophones which weren't necessarily dominated by France. The wider Francophone world has responded well to the initiative. France hasn't responded, it seems, by allowing these other Francophone cultures equal status with its own. This is a problem since, as Ethnologue confirms, the French language is a global language. The date is shortly coming when there will be more first-language speakers of French outside of France than inside, the bulk of these in Francophone Africa. Showing some grace to these future generations would be nice, never mind far-sighted.
Why do you write in French? The question asked this week at the Paris Book Fair to its francophone guest writers seemed innocent enough. After all, this year the fair had chosen to celebrate not one country but a common language shared by francophones from Montreal to Phnom Penh, from Lyon to Brazzaville, from Bucharest to Port-au-Prince. And so this question — why do you write in French — seemed innocent, if not totally justified.
But for Québécois writer Monique Proulx, it was not innocent. It was rude, paternalistic and insulting. Asking me why I write in French is like asking why women have breasts or if it hurts when they grow, she fired off in the Paris daily Libération.
Enough is enough, she went on. Can't you see that the way you relate to la Francophonie, with France on one side and all the other half-breeds and diluted by-products on the other, can't you see I repeat, as I lose my cool thanks to the three litres of maple syrup I shoot up every day while writing in my furry teepee and smoking spruce gum cannabis, can't you see you are perpetuating the same candid condescension that set fire to your cities and suburbs recently. Personally I can't take it any more ...
La Francophonie started in the 1960s not so much as a French initiative as an initiative by la Francophonie's periphery, emerging from efforts by emergent Francophone nations to multilateralize their relationships, to cultivate relationships among Francophones which weren't necessarily dominated by France. The wider Francophone world has responded well to the initiative. France hasn't responded, it seems, by allowing these other Francophone cultures equal status with its own. This is a problem since, as Ethnologue confirms, the French language is a global language. The date is shortly coming when there will be more first-language speakers of French outside of France than inside, the bulk of these in Francophone Africa. Showing some grace to these future generations would be nice, never mind far-sighted.
