St. Vigier, Fiction Confronting the Past: History, Memory, and Spacetime in Contemporary Oceanian Literary Fiction - Francophone and Oral Literatures

French Literature Reviews - 2026

St. Vigier, Fiction Confronting the Past: History, Memory, and Spacetime in Contemporary Oceanian Literary Fiction
Francophone and Oral Literatures

Stéphanie Vigier, Fiction Confronting the Past: History, Memory, and Spacetime in Contemporary Oceanian Literary Fiction

Limoges: PULIM, coll. "Francophonies", 2012.

326 p.

EAN 9782842875541.

Price 27EUR

The colonial legacy and the challenges of globalization prompt contemporary Oceanian societies to reexamine their relationship with the past. Consequently, the representation of history plays a prominent role in Oceanian fictional narratives.

The place of history within fiction engages humanity's connection to the past as well as the interplay between history and memory. Furthermore, it involves the very conceptualization of time and space that shapes our representations of history and memory, highlighting the distinctiveness of the Oceanian approach to these concepts.

This book endeavors to outline the figures of the past and of history within fictional narratives, examining how they are structured and the perspective from which they are staged. In doing so, it reveals how fictional narratives constitute what is accepted as history and redefine its boundaries.

However, as the work of Paul Ricoeur suggests, fiction does not pose the most compelling questions regarding humanity's relationship with time and history merely when it explicitly references the past.

Consequently, this study also examines how Oceanian narratives interrogate the very concept of history. They bring into play the meaning of history by questioning the modalities of human agency, specifically the freedom or determinism that characterizes it. They configure a unique experience of spacetime and, in doing so, lay the foundations for an Oceanian conception of history.

Fictional narratives nevertheless elaborate various models of history: some emphasize its destructive nature by contrasting a harmonious, timeless representation of the "ancient world" with a painful and alienating entry into contemporary history. Others choose to explore an Oceanian relationship with spacetime rooted in the living continuity of relations between past, present, and future. They portray an original and dynamic historicity that restores initiative to the Oceanian subject, enabling them to appropriate exogenous contributions without abandoning their unique ethics and identity—inherited from their ancestors and continually updated in response to changing circumstances.

Table of Contents

Part One: Fiction Confronting the Past
Chapter I: Figures of History

1. Modes of representing the historical past
2. Narrative compositions and generic stakes
3. The generic identity of narratives and its implications

Chapter II: Perspectives on the Past

1. The assertion of an Oceanian viewpoint
2. Scenographies
3. Polyphonic compositions

Chapter III: History and Fiction

1. Fictional utterance, historical utterance
2. Function and stakes of historical references in Oceanian fiction
3. The construction of history

Part Two: Models of History

Chapter IV: Acting in Time

1. The rehabilitation of Oceanian historical responsibility
2. Acting within history, between freedom and determinism

Chapter V: Narrative, History, and Temporality

1. Politics and poetics of time
2. A poetics of discontinuity
3. Restoring meaning to history
4. Figures and experiences of time

Chapter VI: Oceanian Spaces and History

1. Places, space, history

2. Oceanian spacetimes

Chapter VII: Models of History

1. Political readings
2. Against history: sacred eternity
3. The narrative of disaster
4. The question of fatality
5. Double circulation and mythical substrates
6. Confrontation or syncretism?

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Contemporary Oceanian societies navigate the complex intersections of colonial legacy and globalization, prompting a widespread reexamination of their relationship with the past. Within this cultural landscape, literary narratives serve as a space where the representation of history, memory, and the conceptualization of time and space are negotiated. Authors from the region engage with these themes to outline figures of the past, question the modalities of human agency, and configure unique experiences of spacetime that reflect regional perspectives.

Readers interested in contemporary literature, postcolonial studies, and regional narrative forms may find this book relevant for understanding how Oceanian writers address history and agency through fiction. The study draws on broader frameworks, including the work of Paul Ricoeur, to interrogate the meaning of history and the interplay between narrative utterances and historical consciousness, examining various models such as destructive trajectories and living continuities of time.