Abstract
Presented in conjunction with a piece of creative prose writing by Emmanuelle Gallienne about marginalisation in contemporary Paris, this article pursues a close reading of Patrick Chamoiseau's award-winning novel Texaco in order to challenge some of the definitions and disciplinary assumptions operating in and around the fields of Postcolonial and French Studies. By measuring different critical discourses dealing with the syncretic and subversive qualities of Créole (Glissant and by extension Deleuze, but also Emily Apter) against the effects generated by Chamoiseau's vast and polyphonic novel, it engages with the need to extend the frame of analysis beyond implicit and explicit dichotomies opposing French and French literature to Creole and self-conscious, postmodern storytelling. It responds to Gayatri Spivak's assessment of where comparative literature and modern language studies need to direct their possibilities, and in so doing intends to offer a contextualised contribution to the development of new critical parameters for work in transnational French Studies.
