Packaging Post/Coloniality

A further addition to Lexington's increasingly impressive 'After the Empire' series. . . . Watts challenges monolithic misrepresentations of the French Empire (and its discursive manifestations), exploring instead the historical (dis)continuities evident in an inclusively francophone postcoloniality. . . . By illustrating the ways in which the foreignness of francophone literature has been mediated for its various audiences, he offers a highly original study of that literature's complex genealogy. * Research in African Literatures *
The advent of reception theory has drawn attention to the conventions that govern the production of the literary text, the protocols which enable us to recognize such a text and facilitate access to it. Richard Watt provides in this book an illuminating discussion of these paratextual aspects of literature, which loom large in francophone literature, pointing us to the way in which the role of individuals such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Léopold Sédar Senghor has been determinant in the genesis and evolution of this literature. -- F. Abiola Irele, Harvard University
In this original and insightful examination of Francophone texts, Watts shows how this literature was essentially recontextualized by particular prefaces. This theorizing of the ideological use of the paratext to create new possibilities for interpretation and readership provides as much an insight into French cultural politics as an understanding of how Francophone literature came to be read. -- J. Michael Dash, New York University
Sometimes books need to be judged by their covers—wisely and with keen insight, as Richard Watts does in this original and dynamic study of the Francophone paratext. Cutting across the usual paths of criticism, digging deep into the colonial archive, Watts heightens our sensitivity to a whole range of marginal gestures whose importance turns out to be central. A surprising and rewarding book. -- Christopher L. Miller, Yale University