, the new book co-authored by Julien Suaudeau (lecturer in French and Francophone Studies) and Mame-Fatou Niang of Carnegie Mellon University was recently reviewed in the French newspaper Le Monde.
The book is published by Anamosa. Suaudeau describes the work as an essay on the reinvention of universalism as an antiracist and postcolonial language.
The is available only to subscribers. Below is an excerpt from the review:
鈥淭o debunk the universalist pretense of this 'Eurocentric illusion,' the authors first retrace the history of the concept and of its concrete forms. Despite its humanistic and progressive premises, universalism also served as a smokescreen, in the 17th and 18th century, for colonization and slavery, which Suaudeau and Niang describe as 'the universalization of European reason.' According to the authors, although colonialist institutions have been dismantled, their legacy informs the republican universalism in France."
Suaudeau is the coordinator of the non-intensive language sequence in French and the director of film studies. He is a filmmaker and the author of four novels: (2014), (2015), (2016), (2019). His fiction work focuses on contemporary France seen through the lenses of colonial and postcolonial history, immigration, 濒补茂肠颈迟茅, terrorism, and socioeconomic inequalities. His books explore the blind spots of the Great French Narrative, in search of repressed voices and counter-accounts.