Fantasizing the past in order to rewrite the present: a study of La Diligence s’éloigne à l’aube by Mauritian novelist Marcelle Lagesse

Abstract

In 1958 Marcelle Lagesse publishes, with Éditions de l’Océan Indien, La Diligence s’éloigne à l’aube, a romanticized novel out of step with its times, characterized by an exaggeration and an amplification of reality. Fantasizing about colonial memory, it insists on a recovery of the past that contrasts with the revolutionary writings of the present. It also demonstrates a form of rejection of any avant-gardist notion, such as cultural and ethnic hybridization, while other authors focus on Creolism in their literary works, and champion ethnic cross-breeding. However, can one conclude that reactualization of old literary representations necessarily favours a form of static writing? And, conversely, does the safeguarding of the past inevitably involve the denial of a hybrid present? These questions are addressed here.