Srilata Ravi  (University of Western Australia)
Drifting Pauls and Wandering Virginias : French settler identities in Mauritian literatures

Critics have argued that the ambivalent positioning of 'creole pioneer'/'settler' identity needs to be addressed with greater perspicacity and contextualized in geo-political space. (Slemon, 1990; Lawson 1995). This paper will discuss how French settler/French creole/Franco- Mauritian identites are articluated in the context of Indian ocean islands cultures.

L'Isle de France was a French 'settlement colony' till 1810 when it became a British 'colony of occupation'. The smooth political transition resulted in the maintenance of French economic, cultural and linguistic institutions on the island leaving only the administrative and judicial systems in the hands of the British. The abolition of slavery and the arrival of thousands of indentured labourers from India and Madagascar as well as free Chinese immigrants changed the demographic pattern of the island. However, the continuing importance of the sugarcane industry (mostly owned by French settlers) ensured the economic significance of the tiny French settler community. The exploration of the French creole/ Franco- Mauritian subject, isolated culturally from the British, consciously separated from his/her racially subordinate Asian and African 'others' and never a 'political reality' for the metropolitan French, is a compelling exercice in as much as it 'unsettles' the notion of a discrete settler 'self'.

The paper will look closely at the works of Charoux (Ameenah , 1935); Marcelle Lagesse (La Diligence s'éloigne à l'aube, 1959; Le Vingt Floreal au matin, 1960); Berthe du Pavillon (Piment Rouge, 1972); Le Clezio (Le Voyage à Rodrigues, 1986), and Alain de Breton (Emmenez-moi aux iles, 1986) . It will lay particular emphasis on the way in which the myth of the 'bons blancs' generated by Bernardin de Saint Pierre's (1788) protagonists Paul et Virginie has created a problematic point of reference for the French creole/Franco-Mauritian caught between the capitalist trappings of a colonial plantation economy and cultural alienation from the ruling British. The paper will argue that French settler postcolonialism in Mauritius is allegoricaly narrated as 'a writing back' (to borrow an expression used to describe writings of ex-colonized peoples) to Saint Pierre's pastoral tragedy. The finality of the original tragedy is founded, on one hand, on the irreversibility of cultural corruption caused by contact with metropolitan France, and on the other, on the sacrifice of young Paul and Virginia as a triumph of natural virtue. It would appear that the French Creole/Franco-Mauritian settler identity, in contrast, is articulated as a recurring exilic movement between the contingent physical reality of a pure island culture (what the novelist Marcel Cabon describes as mauricianté) and a distant metropolitan dream (what literary historian, Jean-Louis Joubert labels francotropisme). In this otherwise irresolvable errance, the trope of 'shipwreck', which in Saint Pierre's story brings tragic closure by destroying the valuable treasure (Virginia), becomes appropriated as an auspicious symbol of mystery on which the discovery of a valuable treasure (potential resolution of French Creole identity) is predicated. To narrate 'settler identity', then, is to be in a state of perpetual yearning, in Le Clezio's words, 'recommencer la possibilité du secret, du mystère' (Voyage à Rodrigues, 1986).