ABSTRACT
Marie NDiaye may be France’s most celebrated and controversial playwright, the only woman to have a work in repertory with the French national theatre, the Comedie-Francaise, and only the second woman to have a play in repertoire with the permanent company since its establishment in 1680 by royal decree. As NDiaye’s short story preface to scholar attests, mixed race and otherwise racialised lives in France are still rarely addressed, almost invisible, elusive to white majority in the everyday. At same time, and in line with this, she carefully and consistently stops short of associating herself with any identitarian programme, and thus suffering yet another form of critical or cultural capture. Indeed, if NDiaye refrains from expressing party politics of any sort, as she argues – anything pertaining to ‘ism’ – it is clear that her work offers a radical attachment to, and grounding in, language as that which has the possibility of seeing and making the world around her.
