TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226822242.003.0001
[passionate mobility;colonial administration;intimacy;archives;migration;surveillance;empire;belonging;affect;emotion]
The introduction explores the concept of passionate mobility in relation to French colonial history and independent women’s migratory practices between France, West Africa, and Southeast Asia. This chapter shows why a focus upon intimacy, affect and emotion belongs in a study of colonial history and the French empire. The colonial administration’s policing practices of surveillance were shaped by certain ideas of masculinity, gender, race, and French prestige, revealed for example in the files of the Guernut commission. When seeking to pursue migration, women met such tropes, which determined their relative undesirability, with practices of refusal or supplication as they sought a sense of belonging overseas. This chapter also compiles the data available in the archives in maps that show women’s routes and locations in the French empire and reflects upon the practice of listening for individual voices in colonial archives.
1: “I Refused”: Undesirable | Immobile | Vengeful
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226822242.003.0002
[undesirable;mental health;revenge;Clotilde Chivas-Baron;prostitution;sex work;whiteness;interracial;immobility;disability]
This chapter delves into what defined an undesirable woman and the concept of undesirability more generally in the French empire through a discussion of representations of the ideal colonial woman as told by the French author Clotilde Chivas-Baron, and five archival case studies. The first archival case considers a Syrian woman and her African companion, a colonial soldier known as a tirailleur from Côte d’Ivoire. Her whiteness in the context of an interracial intimacy led French colonial administrators to fear for white prestige in the region. The second case looks at why a woman in a chaise longue was perceived as undesirable in light of intersections between her race, class, gender, and alleged disability and mental health issues. The next three cases consider instances of revenge, first in relation to a prostitute’s broken heart and exploitation as a sex worker, second in response to sexual assault, and third via several Vietnamese prostitutes in Hanoi who reacted to lost wages and theft of clothes by turning to the French police.
2: Traversing Movements of Embarking, Crossing, Disembarking, Circulating, Dispersing, and Reconstructing
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226822242.003.0003
[mobility;modes of transportation;ships;Marguerite Duras;Marie Donnadieu;Andrée Viollis;Denise Moran Savineau;Lucie Cousturier;École normale de jeunes filles de Rufisque;Ken Bugul]
This chapter looks at mobility via the physical dimensions of travel to and throughout West Africa and Indochina. Women’s experiences of modes of transportation such as ships, walking, carrying, trains, flying, cars, trucks are described. Using cases found in archives and published texts by authors such as Andrée Viollis, Denise Moran Savineau, Lucie Cousturier, Marguerite Duras, her mother Marie Donnadieu, and the aviatrix Maryse Bastié, the chapter explores social, political, and sexual tensions revealed by descriptions of these modes of transportation. Comparing and contrasting the texts of European travel writers with letters written by West African students at the École normale de jeunes filles de Rufisque, who are recurring figures in this book, this chapter also contrasts travel as a mode of exploration with travel as a form of labor. This chapter, finally, considers how people dispersed and disappeared into the empire, and how along with careful readings of colonial archives, films or novels, for example by Mariama Bâ or Mariètou Mbaye Biléoma (pen name Ken Bugul), can aid in the reconstruction of such stories.
3: “Man-Woman”? Siting Frenchness, Sites of Frenchness
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226822242.003.0004
[Frenchness;man-woman;Soukeyna Konaré;toubab;Camille Drevet;gender;race;sexuality;embodiment;class]
This chapter looks at how mobility and migration intersected with constructions and critiques of Frenchness and womanhood in the French empire. The chapter includes the points of view of European women who were called man-woman by those they encountered in West Africa or, like Camille Drevet in Indochina, perceived as men dressed in feminine clothes. This chapter also considers African women at a school directed by Germaine Le Goff, the École normale de jeunes filles de Rufisque,who were called toubab (white or foreign) to consider Frenchness through the lenses of race, gender, sexuality, and class. This chapter pays particular attention to the notion of embodiment and to the African point of view regarding how French women failed to properly embody Frenchness. This chapter concludes with a look at how an African woman such as Soukeyna Konaré called herself and therefore played with the symbolism Joan of Arc, a quintessential and potent emblem of Frenchness, to insert herself into local Senegalese politics, thereby challenging both African and French men’s masculinity in the process.
4: “The Law Has Been Violated in My Person”: On the Anatomy of Intimate Violence
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226822242.003.0005
[physical violence;sexual violence;emotional violence;intimacy;torture;tutoiement;carnal;Andrée Viollis;racism;rape]
This chapter explores some of the ways in which violence was gendered and inherent in colonial migrations. The chapter looks at three forms of violence, all of which were intimate and carnal, to consider how women spoke up for themselves or on behalf of other women who experienced such violence. The first form was physical violence, which included torture and slaps. The second was sexual, which included the targeting of genitalia, rape, and sexual assault. The third was emotional, which included racism, insults, and tutoiement, or the use of the informal when addressing another person. This chapter also details how these forms of violence, which extended to domestic violence, were handled by colonial administrators, including the Sûreté, in charge of security and intelligence, and therefore how various racist, sexist, ableist, and colonialist structures informed formal responses to women’s complaints of such violence. However this chapter also considers how women perpetrated violence, with a particular focus upon white colonialist women in French Indochina during World War II. The passion in this chapter was often rooted in anger.
5: They “Allegedly Had Intimate Relations”: Gossip, Desire, and Companionship
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226822242.003.0006
[sex;rumor;gossip;migration;passion;domesticity;respectability;intimacy;love;interracial]
This chapter focuses upon women whose migrations were driven by sex and love, and how gossipy intimate information was used by French administrators and colonial society to track and regulate sexual behavior overseas, especially interracial sexual behavior. Gossip created intimate connections among gossipers, while rumors served to determine whether women were of good conduct and character and in particular whether they were engaging in sex outside of marriage. This chapter thus explores tensions between intimacy, passion, and respectability, especially for West African women studying to be teachers. Another problem explored here is that of how to track the sexual mores of women who were not formally registered as prostitutes and yet received financial and emotional comfort or security as a result of their sexual practices. This chapter concludes with a focus upon what women did to remain close to their loved ones. They used affect and emotion in letters designed to persuade administrators to let European women pursue migrations allowing them to locate or meet up with their West African or Southeast Asian companions. Along with texts published by Vu Tr?ng Ph?ng and Marguerite Duras, this chapter offers careful readings of these passionate letters.
Epilogue
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226822242.003.0007
[Anta Gaye;Soukeyna Konaré;Bao Luong;Coordination des femmes noires;Marianne;undesirability;passionate mobility;migration;voting rights;French Republic]
The epilogue reflects upon how passionate mobility and undesirability have continued to influence migrations into the 2020s. The story of Bao Luong and the 1928 Barbier street affair serves as an example of passionate mobility in which the passion was political, anti-imperial, and revolutionary, prefiguring Vietnam’s independence. The chapter also explores the demands made by Anta Gaye, Soukeyna Konaré, and other Senegalese women to vote like other French women after World War II. The chapter also considers how tensions around Frenchness and undesirability have continued to play out. In the 1970s, the Coordination des femmes noires (Coordination of Black Women) critiqued the ways in which societies both in the Global South and Europe sought to control women’s actions and bodies and to define their respectability. In the early twenty-first century, the idea of who could be a Marianne, an iconic figurehead of the French Republic whose bust to this day figures in mayor’s offices in both metropolitan and overseas France, was reimagined. The potential for undesirability has continued to shape women’s lives and experiences, and thus their uses of passionate mobility as a practice and a tactic for counteracting obstacles faced during migrations have also endured.
