Memorial Traces as Tropes of Postcolonial Hauntings in Robert Lalonde’s Sept Lacs plus au Nord and Nina Bouraoui’s Mes mauvaises pensées

Abstract

This article is a comparative analysis of the language of memory in two auto-fictional narratives by two postcolonial francophone authors of mixed background, belonging to the area of Québec (Robert Lalonde) and Algeria (Nina Bouraoui). It will be argued that both authors seek to deconstruct the binary relationship of the spaces and identities they each belong to (white-Amerindian for Robert Lalonde vs. Franco-Algerian for Nina Bouraoui) through a specific poetics of writing or language of memory. At the same time, they each return cyclically in their writing to the postcolonial spaces, memories and histories of their respective non-Western cultures, as if ‘haunted’ by these spaces. Using the method of close textual reading in a comparative postcolonial francophone context, the article aims to show how the language of memory is deployed in the two narratives chosen. It demonstrates that both authors use the figure of the memorial trace as a trope of haunting in order to construct that language. It concludes that the figures of memory identified in the two texts analyzed give rise to a series of ‘postcolonial hauntings’ producing a postcolonial discourse of ambiguity rather than resistance.