La relation entre les hommes et la nature n’a cessé d’évoluer au cours des siècles. Un moment clé dans la pensée occidentale moderne est quand Descartes déclare dans Discours de la méthode (1637) qu’il faut nous « rendre maître et possesseur de la nature ». Ce positionnement spécifique de l’homme par rapport à la nature a eu des conséquences désastreuses qui nous ont menés à une crise écologique mondiale. Selon l’anthropologue Phillipe Descola, le dualisme cartésien serait une nouvelle perspective qui ne constituerait rien de naturel.Dans son livre Par-delà nature et culture, Descola explique comment la pensée occidentale moderne, qui a donné également naissance à un grand nombre de notions actuelles dans le domaine de l’écocritique, s’est forgée en opérant une différence ontologique entre nature et culture. Cette vision du monde particulière s’est exportée quand la pensée moderne s’est répandue partout dans le monde pendant la période coloniale où elle s’est vue confrontée à une multiplicité d’idées divergentes sur la nature et l’humanité qui, aux yeux de la plupart des peuples non européens, n’étaient pas antagonistes.

Argument

The relationship between humanity and nature is constantly evolving. A defining moment in Western thought at the dawn of the modern period, is Descartes’ declaration in Discourse on Method (1637) that it is Man’s destiny to become the “master and possessor of nature”. This specific positioning of humanity vis-à-vis nature has had disastrous consequences, resulting in a global ecological crisis. According to anthropologist Phillippe Descola, Cartesian dualism is a relatively new way of looking at the world, a perspective that is hardly natural at all. In his book Beyond Nature and Culture, Descola explains how Western thought, from which the majority of our current conceptions on ecocriticism itself derive, forged itself in no small part by sanctifying an ontological division between nature and culture. This particular vision of the world was then exported when modernist thinking spread out across the globe during the colonial period, where it was confronted with a plethora of diverse ideas on nature and humanity, a distinction which many non-European peoples would not make. 

The critical discourse that takes this modernist, Western ontology as its object is known as ecocriticism, an academic discipline that developed in the United States, where it has flourished nearly exclusively in English departments. In France, it isn’t until the 90s, with the leading voices of thinkers such as Michel Serres and Bruno Latour, that a viable French ecocriticism can be said to have come into existence. More recently, new voices, like those of Pierre Shoentjes and Alain Suberchicot, have contributed critical visions that attempt to decouple ecocriticism from its Anglophone roots, by adopting methodologies more consistent with French cultural specificity. That being said, there is a persistent lack of decentered ecocritical voices that focus on Francophone literature and culture. Deloughrey and Handley, in their introduction to Postcolonial Ecologies: Literatures of the Environment, point out that, “In sum, European Enlightenment knowledge, natural history, conservation policy, and the language of nature—the very systems of logic that we draw from today to speak of conservation and sustainability—are derived from a long history of the colonial exploitation of nature, as well as the assimilation of natural epistemologies from all over the globe”. 

Main themes

For this special issue of Alternative francophone, we encourage new reflections that address the question of the positioning of the natural environment vis-à-vis humanity in Francophone literature by engaging in new ecocritical approaches. Contributions may be based upon the following themes (but need not be limited to them) in the various literary genres of Francophone literature such as the novel, poetry, theater, children’s, literature, comic books: 

•  Colonial or postcolonial ecocriticism, decolonization and the environment
•  Pollution, Climate change, environmental justice, colonial/neocolonial extraction
•  Biopolitics and biopower
•  Ecofeminism
•  Non-European ontologies and/or epistemologies
•  Ecotopias, dystopias
•  Parasitism and/or posthumanism
•  Material ecocriticism
•  Animal Studies

Submission guidelines

Articles should be between 6,000 and 8,000 words and be emailed no later than January 1st, 2018 to James Boucher (james.boucher@rutgers.edu ), Cynthia Laborde (cynthia.laborde@uta.edu ), Sathya Rao (srao@ualberta.ca ) and Chris Reyns-Chikuma (reynschi@ualberta.ca ). Authors will be notified of the editorial committee’s decision by email within a period of 5 weeks or so. Articles should comply with the journal submission guidelines

(https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/af/index.php/af/about/submissions#authorGuidelines).

Comité éditorial

Éditeurs de la revue

• Justine Huet, University of Alberta, CANADA
• Alexis Nouss (Nuselovici), Université d'Aix-Marseille, FRANCE
• Sathya Rao, University of Alberta, CANADA
• C(h)ris Reyns-Chikuma, University of Alberta, CANADA

Assistants éditoriaux

• Marine Gheno, Université de l'Alberta, CANADA
• Sita Rao, Université de Toronto

Webmestre

• Sathya Rao, University of Alberta, CANADA

Comité d'évaluation

• Sylvie André, Université de la Polynésie Française, POLYNÉSIE FRANÇAISE
• Olivier Barlet, Fondateur d'Africultures, FRANCE
• André Bénit, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, ESPAGNE
• Franklin Benjamin, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Port au prince, HAÏTI
• Véronique Bonnet, Université Paris XIII, FRANCE
• Vincent Bruyère, Emory University, ÉTATS-UNIS
• Martine Cavanagh, University of Alberta/Campus Saint-Jean, CANADA
• Nicole Coté, Université de Sherbrooke, CANADA
• Ana Paula Coutinho Mendes, Université de Porto, PORTUGAL
• Esfandi Esfandiar, Université de Téhéran, IRAN, RÉPUBLIQUE ISLAMIQUE D'
• Bernadette Hoefer, Ohio State University, ÉTATS-UNIS
• Momar Kane, Université Toulouse II le Mirail, FRANCE
• Aurélia Klimkiewicz, Glendon College, CANADA
• Louise Ladouceur, University of Alberta - Campus st Jean, CANADA
• Djemaa Maazouzi, Université Charles-de-Gaulle - Lille 3
• Denise Merkle, Universite de Moncton, CANADA
• Marie-Annick Montout, Université d'Angers, FRANCE
• Ursula Moser, Université de Innsbruck, AUTRICHE
• Francoise Naudillon, Université Concordia, CANADA
• Corinne Noirot-Maguire, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, ÉTATS-UNIS
• Marie-José Nzengou-Tayo, University of the West Indies, JAMAÏQUE
• Jean Ouedraogo, SUNY Plattsburgh, ÉTATS-UNIS
• Yolaine Parisot, Université de Rennes II, FRANCE
• Natasa Raschi, Università degli Studi di Perugia, ITALIE
• C(h)ris Reyns-Chikuma, University of Alberta, CANADA
• Naoki Sakai, Cornell university, ÉTATS-UNIS
• Yanik Samzum, Présence et action culturelle, BELGIQUE
• Sherry Simon, Concordia University, CANADA
• Jon Solomon, Institute of Arts and Humanities, Shanghai Jiaotong University, CHINE
• Stéphanie Tsai, Université Tamkang, CHINE
• Kunio Tsunekawa, Université de Hitotsubashi, JAPON
• Eugenia Vilela, Université de Porto, PORTUGAL
• Jerry White, Dalhousie University, CANADA