Études romanes de Brno (Jul 2013)
Masculinité et décolonisation dans Des hommes de Laurent Mauvignier
Abstract
The article is questioning concepts of masculinities in Laurent Mauvignier's novel Des hommes. The title can be read in a double context, On mankind and On men. We try to point out that both variants appear in the novel. First of all, we are eager to point out the links between gender and decolonization. As the colonies were a highly sexualized space where fetish, transgression and sexual deviance were possible, decolonization can be considered as a ritual castration. It is thus perfectly clear that de Gaulle with his new constitution in 1968 returned to a strong head of state, a man able to control the imaginary. The first part of our text Des hommes focuses on Feu-de-Bois a marginalized village-dweller, incapable of integrating into French society after his return from Algeria and Paris. Around his person a cruel portrait of the French countryside is being painted. The second part "De l'Algerie" emphases the collective experience of the Algerian war, Feu-de-Bois took part in. The Algerian war is being represented as a carnival of masculinities, an archaic form of combat "man against man". The third part "De la France" focuses on Feu-de-Bois and his missing integration into French rural society after he returns from Paris, where he decides to live after his return from Algeria. Feu-de-Bois can be considered as emblematic for a whole generation of mal Frenchmen born in the early 1940's, suffering from the war and from the end of the economic growth in the 1940's–1970's. The text therefore is also a text about a shift in the perception of masculinity in rural France.
