Du bon et du mauvais usage du pseudonyme

Abstract

Amongst the migrant, marginal or marginalized literatures in French, the Beur literature, which became the literature de banlieue in the 21st century, represents a category which has to be put into perspective with this other category of migrant literatures called Francophone literatures. Both are peripheral, one comes from the former colonies; the other one comes from the cités. Between these two peripheral areas, outside and inside France, there is a continuity passed from generation to generation (the writers de banlieue are descendants of immigrants from the former colonies) connecting the colonial legacy with the social reality of the cités. Our purpose is to take Lila dit ça and J’ai peur in this context. They are two novels written in the 70s by mysterious Chimo, a writer that no one has ever seen. We analyze the paratext and the metatext of these novels to understand the fictional strategies that Chimo uses to play with the pseudonyms and to thwart some mechanisms of literary and cultural delegitimation implemented about Lila dit ça.

Keywords

• beur literature
• literature de banlieue
• pseudonym
• legitimation