ABSTRACT
Postcolonial francophone writers unanimously agree that the imposition of the French language was not merely one example among others of colonial oppression, but its very instrument, a fundamental vector whose impact still has enduring effects. The frequency of that charge and of that critical turn in the analysis of both French colonialism and racism is evident in the writings of Négritude authors such as Aimé Césaire and Léopold Sédar Senghor, and in the essays of Frantz Fanon. Lately, this critique has been stated by postcolonial novelists and essayists as disparate as the Caribbean authors of Eloge de la créolité (In Praise of Creoleness) or Édouard Glissant, and the Maghrebian writers Rachid Boudjedra and Abdelkebir Khatibi, to mention only a few. All have in common the recognition that the French politics of assimilation was pre-eminently enforced through the compulsory use of the French language.
