ABSTRACT
France and the Francophone world play a special and in some ways unique role in relation to issues of cultural prestige in the realms both of literature and cinema. Both French and American nationalism evoke their universal mission through metaphors of light, the US as “beacon to the world,” and France as the beacon whose Enlightenment and rayonnment spread out and illuminate the world. The global configuration of cultural power has implications for the status of postcolonial studies in France vis-a-vis the English-speaking world. Anglophone-centered postcolonial studies tends to neglect the French-speaking world, while for a long time France tended to neglect, or even resist, postcolonial studies. The postwar period also witnessed the emergence of an embryonic black movement ensuant to the arrival in France of a new generation of African and West Indian students, often on scholarships, leading to a substantial intellectual community.
