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Throughout the French empire, from the Atlantic and the Caribbean to West and North Africa, men, women, and children responded to enslavement, colonization, and oppression through acts of suicide. In The Suicide Archive, Doyle D. Calhoun charts a long history of suicidal resistance to French colonialism and neocolonialism, from the time of slavery to the Algerian War for Independence to the “Arab Spring.” Noting that suicide was either obscured in or occluded from French colonial archives, Calhoun turns to literature and film to show how aesthetic forms and narrative accounts can keep alive the silenced histories of suicide as a political language. Drawing on scientific texts, police files, and legal proceedings alongside contemporary African and Afro-Caribbean novels, film, and Senegalese oral history, Calhoun outlines how such aesthetic works rewrite histories of resistance and loss. Consequently, Calhoun offers a new way of writing about suicide, slavery, and coloniality in relation to literary history.
Price: $28.95
Pages: 344
Publisher: Duke University Press
Imprint: Duke University Press
Publication Date:
18 October 2024
Trim Size: 9.00 X 6.00 in
ISBN: 9781478030744
Format: Paperback
BISACs:
“Stunning. Doyle D. Calhoun’s The Suicide Archive brings together groundbreaking research, meticulous analysis, and, most importantly, a fully human approach to the most delicate of subjects.”—Christopher L. Miller, Frederick Clifford Ford Professor of African American Studies and French, Emeritus, Yale University
“The author-investigator skillfully draws the reader into an enthralling narrative, one in which the evidence and traces retrieved during forensic excursions into archives, images, words, and sounds gradually delineate the contours of The Suicide Archive. In doing so, Doyle D. Calhoun’s book offers an alternative historiography and an innovative reading of global literary history while engaging with art history, film, and performance.”—Dominic Thomas, Madeleine L. Letessier Professor of French, University of California, Los Angeles
"This original monograph attempts to connect silenced suicidal occurrences as resistance against oppression and unfair treatment in the French Empire. The volume is packed with information and at times repetitive, but still quite revealing.
Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty."—K. M. Kapanga, Choice
"This book is truly groundbreaking—it challenges paradigms, it resets the field, and it is a veritable tour de force."—Vlad Dima, Journal of the African Literature Association
"[A] complex approach characterizes Calhoun’s masterpiece, which appeals to a diverse audience, including scholars, researchers, and policymakers."—Abou-Bakar Mamah, H-Africa, H-Net Reviews
"The Suicide Archive is an incredible book project, one that would be highly useful for anyone interested in history, African studies, French studies, literature, and the archive."—Noah Goodwin, Mortality
"[A]n ambitious and rich analysis of the ‘suicide archive’ as an accumulation of traces, fragments, and, ultimately, aesthetic works which accumulate across the French Empire and its aftermaths."—Sophie Fuggle, French Studies
“The author-investigator skillfully draws the reader into an enthralling narrative, one in which the evidence and traces retrieved during forensic excursions into archives, images, words, and sounds gradually delineate the contours of The Suicide Archive. In doing so, Doyle D. Calhoun’s book offers an alternative historiography and an innovative reading of global literary history while engaging with art history, film, and performance.”—Dominic Thomas, Madeleine L. Letessier Professor of French, University of California, Los Angeles
"This original monograph attempts to connect silenced suicidal occurrences as resistance against oppression and unfair treatment in the French Empire. The volume is packed with information and at times repetitive, but still quite revealing.
Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty."—K. M. Kapanga, Choice
"This book is truly groundbreaking—it challenges paradigms, it resets the field, and it is a veritable tour de force."—Vlad Dima, Journal of the African Literature Association
"[A] complex approach characterizes Calhoun’s masterpiece, which appeals to a diverse audience, including scholars, researchers, and policymakers."—Abou-Bakar Mamah, H-Africa, H-Net Reviews
"The Suicide Archive is an incredible book project, one that would be highly useful for anyone interested in history, African studies, French studies, literature, and the archive."—Noah Goodwin, Mortality
"[A]n ambitious and rich analysis of the ‘suicide archive’ as an accumulation of traces, fragments, and, ultimately, aesthetic works which accumulate across the French Empire and its aftermaths."—Sophie Fuggle, French Studies
Doyle D. Calhoun is University Assistant Professor of Francophone Postcolonial Studies at the University of Cambridge.
Preface ix
Introduction. In Articulo Mortis 1
1. Choral Histories: Suicide and Slavery in the French Atlantic 39
2. Oral Archives: The “Talaatay Nder” Narrative in Wolof and French 77
3. Screen Memories: Ousmane Sembène’s Black Girl between Image, Icon, and Archive 113
4. Multiple Exposures: Geologies of Suicidal Resistance 161
5. Strange Bedfellows: On Suicide Bombing and Literature 201
Conclusion. The Suicide Archive: A Social Document 235
Acknowledgments 241
Notes 243
Bibliography 283
Index 315
Introduction. In Articulo Mortis 1
1. Choral Histories: Suicide and Slavery in the French Atlantic 39
2. Oral Archives: The “Talaatay Nder” Narrative in Wolof and French 77
3. Screen Memories: Ousmane Sembène’s Black Girl between Image, Icon, and Archive 113
4. Multiple Exposures: Geologies of Suicidal Resistance 161
5. Strange Bedfellows: On Suicide Bombing and Literature 201
Conclusion. The Suicide Archive: A Social Document 235
Acknowledgments 241
Notes 243
Bibliography 283
Index 315