Ethnic Categorizations in Literature

Anglophone scholars have generally been more prepared than their French counterparts to openly recognize the ethnic and political issues raised by literatures arising from international migration. At a macro-level, this gap is reflected in the importance accorded in countries such as the United States and Britain to the concepts of “postcolonialism” and “multiculturalism”, which have generally been eschewed in France, where the linguistically-based notion of “francophonie” spans related ground but from a very different perspective. At a micro-level, the gap is typified by the growing importance accorded in the United States to categories such as African-American and Latino literatures, in contrast with the marginalization in France of categories such as “Beur” or “banlieue” literatures.