Francoise Lionnet  (UCLA)
Lost in Transit? Haiti, Language, and the Visual

Using models rooted in poststructuralist theory (from psychoanalysis to film studies), many postcolonial thinkers have engaged with the question of visual representation and critiqued the distortions it imposes on "minor" identities. This paper will argue, contrary to these received approaches, that when film also privileges the aural/oral, it can communicate better than the written word the "authenticity" of these minor and resistant identities. My example is taken from a series of short stories by Dany Laferrière published in the volume La Chair du maître (1997) and focused on what might be termed "sexual tourism" in Haiti. These stories form the basis of a 2005 film, Vers le sud by the Laurent Cantet (Human Resources [1999], Time Out [2001]). Much more than a film "adaptation" of the written text, Cantet's film is a powerful statement about Haiti, poverty, political tyranny, and especially on "work" as alienated labor (a recurrent theme of all his films).

What are the interpretive and critical issues that arise from 1) the series of paired images and characters that Cantet uses to generate a new vision of Haiti; and 2) the circulation of words and images in a global cultural market that can exacerbate the traffic in desire between North and South, as well as between writers, filmmakers, and their audiences? After the film was released, Dany Laferrière re-issued a version of his earlier stories (this time under the same title as the new movie), thus capitalizing on this "visual" moment. What does this passage from one artistic medium to another mean and can this process be seen as the literal figuration of the themes developed in these works (triangulated desire, mimetic identifications, and tragic consequences)? Is Cantet a "postcolonial" filmmaker, and if so, how does contemporary French cinema allow us to think through the theoretical isues posed by postcolonial studies?