Introduction

Over the past two decades, we have witnessed what Françoise Lionnet has termed the ‘becoming-transnational’ of French Studies. French and the other modern languages had originally been constructed as academic subjects around the framework of the nineteenth-century European nation-state but, as the primacy of the nation state has come to be challenged in the era of globalisation, this structure has been increasingly questioned by scholars working from transnational, global and postcolonial perspectives. The prominent North American critic Lawrence Kritzman has been prompted to ask, in light of these developments, whether the very existence of French Studies is now in question:

This chapter considers the specific challenge posed to previous conceptions of French Studies by the field's engagement with the specific ‘transnational’ form of questioning involved in the development of postcolonial teaching and research. Echoing Kritzman's questions cited above, it seeks it to explore whether the development of francophone postcolonial studies represents the demise or the rebirth of the French department.

This is in no way to suggest that postcolonial studies scholars bear all the responsibility/deserve all of the credit (depending upon one's point of view) for the changes that French Studies has undergone as a field.