The discursive constitution of a world-spanning region and the role of empty Signifiers: The case of francophonia

Geopolitics

Volumn 12, Issue 4, 2007, Pages 656-679

  Glasze, Georg ^a  

^a JOHANNES GUTENBERG UNIVERSITY   (Germany)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CULTURE; GEOPOLITICS; GLOBALIZATION; INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS; LANGUAGE; POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY;

EID: 34748831621     PISSN: 14650045     EISSN: 15573028     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/14650040701546103     Document Type: Article

References (81)

1. Ben Alex Beobo, 'Une "Maison TV5" à Boulmiougou - le Viêtnam signale', L'Opinion (Ougadougou) 375 (7 Jan. 2004).
2. "...le partage de la langue fran&aise et de valeurs universelles" "(, accessed 19 Dec. 2005). By the end of 2006 the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie had 55 members (mostly nation-states but the Canadian provinces Quebec and New Brunswick as well as the Belgian French-speaking region are full members beside Belgium and Canada), and 13 members with a status as observers.
3. "La francophonie s'est bâtie sur le socle de la diversité culturelle dès ses origines." Speech of the general secretary Abdou Diouf, 9 April 2003.
4. From 1997 to 2005 the juridical position of the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie was not based on a treaty or any other juridical instrument. It was not before November 2005 that a ministers conference adopted a modified Charta of the Francophonia ( charte de la Francophonie), which renamed the Agence de la Francophonie in Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie.
5. There are several descriptive and rather apologetic publications on the history of Francophonia, often written by authors with personal links to the organisations of Francophonia: Xavier Deniau, La francophonie (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France 1992)
6. Michel Guillou, La Francophonie: Nouvel enjeu mondial (Paris: Hatier 1993)
7. Michel Tétu, Qu'est-ce que la francophonie? (Paris: Hachette, EDICEF 2000).
8. Jacques Barrat & Claudia Moisei, Géopolitique de la francophonie: un nouveau souffle? (Paris: Presses Univ. de France 2004)
9. Alfred Gilder and Albert Salon, Alerte francophone (Paris: Franel 2004).
10. Bernhard Giesen, Kollektive Identität (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1999).
11. While there is a well-established discussion on francophonia (sometimes differentiated through the use of a miniscule) as the ensemble of cultural production in French language outside of France (especially in literature studies) and a huge number of rather descriptive and often apologetic publications on the organisations of Francophonia, there is a lack of publications which focus in a critical perspective on the interplay between the political and the cultural. It is not until very recently that some authors have started to analyse the construction of Francophonia. Thus, Janos Riesz has written several essays on the "invention" of Francophonia and especially the role of L. S. Senghor (János Riesz, '"Frankophonie" - Überlegungen zur Geschichte ihrer Anfänge und der Narration ihrer frühen Entwicklung', Grenzgänge 19/(2003) pp. 100-129
12. János Riesz, 'Die Erfindung der "Frankophonie". Koloniales Erbe und globale Perspektiven im Widerstreit', in Richard Faber (ed.), Imperialismus in Geschichte und Gegenwart (Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann 2005) pp. 223-240).
13. Mathias Middell has suggested to view Francophonia as a "post territorial" world region, which is not based on geographical proximity but on "stabilising narratives" and common "lieux de mémoire" (Matthias Middell, 'Francophonia as a World Region?' European Review of History - Revue européenne d'Histoire 10/2 (2003) pp. 203-220).
14. Ingo Kolboom sees the current development of Francophonia as a response to globalisation - a "cultural macro region", which represents a new form of international governance between the nation-state and the global organisations (Ingo Kolboom, 'Internationale Frankophonie - eine Brücke in der Globalisierung', Dokumente 60/1 (2004) pp. 15-31).
15. Furthermore, several authors have stressed the continuity of the Francophonia discourse for example with the discourse of colonialism and the discourse of the enlightenment (Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink, 'L'espace francophone, un objet de discours', in János Riesz and Véronique Porra (eds.), Enseigner la Francophonie (Bremen: Palabres Editions 2000) pp. 27-39
16. Margaret A. Majumdar, 'La Francophonie', in Christopher John Murray (ed.), Encyclopedia of modern French thought (New York, NY: Dearborn 2004) pp. 231-234
17. Gabrielle Parker, 'Francophonie et universalité: évolution de deux idées jumelles', in Pascal Blanchard and Nicolas Bancel (eds.), Culture post-coloniale 1961-2006. Traces et mémoires coloniales en France (Paris: Autrement 2005) pp. 228-242
18. Jürgen Erfurt, Frankophonie. Sprache - Diskurs - Politik (Tübingen and Basel: A. Francke 2005)).
19. Marianne W. Jørgensen and Louise Phillips, Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method (London: Sage Publ. 2002) p. 11.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid., p. 21.
22. The idea that every object, every social phenomenon is an object of discourse does not necessarily mean that there is no world external to language and thought. Torfing has explained this idea with the example of a stone, which can be discursively constructed as "a projectile or as an object of aesthetic contemplation, but...is still the same physical object." Jacob Torfing, New Theories of Discourse: Laclau, Mouffe and Žižek (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1999) p. 94.
23. Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony & Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics, (London: Verso 1985) p. 105.
24. Jørgensen and Phillips (note 8) p. 36.
25. Ernesto Laclau, New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time (London: Verso 1990) pp. 60.
26. Jørgensen and Phillips (note 8) p. 42.
27. Ernesto Laclau, 'Why Do Empty Signifiers Matter to Politics?' in Ernesto Laclau (ed.), Emancipation(s), (London and New York: Verso 1996) pp. 36-46.
28. Jacob Torfing (note 11) p. 124.
29. Oliver Marchart, 'Gesellschaft ohne Grund: Laclaus politische Theorie des Post-Fundationalismus', in Ernesto Laclau (ed.), Emanzipation und Differenz (Wien: Turia+Kant 2002) pp: 7-18.
30. An idea already conceived by Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Basil Blackell 1983)
31. and explicity formulated by Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso 1996).
32. Philipp Sarasin, 'Die Wirklichkeit der Fiktion. Zum Konzept der "imagined communities", in Philipp Sarasin (ed.), Geschichtswissenschaft und Diskursanalyse (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp 2003) pp. 150-176.
33. See also the discussion in: Doreen Massey, 'Thinking Radical Democracy Spatially', Environment and Planning D 13/3 (1995) pp. 283-288.
34. Following Howarth and Marchart, Laclau conceptualises "space" in an ontological sense as the (impossible) result of a perfect fixation of meaning. However, this extreme case never occurs, because the constitutive outside of the structure will always leave traces and dislocating turbulences on the inside. On an ontic level, politics are to be equated with spatialisation. Here "spaces" are conceptualised as the results of hegemonic articulations, as sedimentations (David Howarth, 'Reflections on the Politics of Space and Time', Angelaki 1/1 (1993) pp. 43-55
35. Oliver Marchart, 'Kunst, Raum und Öffentlichkeit(en)', Transversal 10 (1998)). Though, from the perspective of the discussion on space and spatiality within geography it seems to be at least questionable whether it is heuristically fruitful to conceptualise "spatialisation" as the only form of politics. In so doing, one would lose the possibility of differentiating between identity constructions, which refer explicitly to territorial notions and operate with a differentiation between "here and there" (e.g., "suburbia" versus "city", "London" versus "Frankfurt", "Catalonia" versus "Spain", "Europe" versus "US-America"
36. see: M. Redepenning, Wozu Raum? Systemtheorie, critical geopolitics und raumbezogene Semantiken (2006) pp. 128) and other identity constructions (e.g., "black" versus "white", "academic" versus "non-academic", "men" versus "women"). Then, cross-settings between both categories and thus the specific role of spatiality could hardly be analysed.
37. A range of studies is to be found in: David Howarth, Aletta J. Norval and Yannis Stavrakakis, Discourse Theory And Political Analysis. Identities, Hegemonies and Social Change (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press 2000).
38. Reiner Keller, Wissenssoziologische Diskursanalyse: Grundlegung eines Forschungsprogramms (Wiesbaden: VS, Verl. für Sozialwiss. 2005) p. 162.
39. One might criticise that the relation "among elements such that their identity is modified" as conceived by Laclau and Mouffe encompasses much more than lexical elements - that is to say all social phenomena. As a matter of fact, lexicometric approaches are restrained to the analysis of lexical elements. However, if one agrees that language is an inevitable basis of thinking and that language use is a very important signifying system it seems to be more than justified to apply this set of well-established methods. For a more detailed description of the methodology and the methods of the research project see: Georg Glasze, 'Vorschläge zur Operationalisierung der Diskurstheorie von Laclau und Mouffe in einer Triangulation von lexikometrischen und interpretativen Methoden', FQS - Forum Qualitative Research 8/2, Art. 14, http://www.qualitative-research.net/fqs-texte/2-07/07-2-14-d.htm.
40. Pascal Marchand, L'analyse du discours assistée par ordinateur: Concepts, méthodes, outils (Paris: Colin 1998).
41. Ludovic Lebart, André Salem and Lisette Berry, Exploring Textual Data (Dordrecht et al.: Kluwer 1998).
42. For an overview see: Reiner Keller, 'Analysing Discourse. An Approach From the Sociology of Knowledge', Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/ Forum: Qualitative Social Research 6/3 (2005) pp. 33, available at
43. Willy Viehöfer, 'Diskurse als Narrationen', in Reiner Keller, Andreas Hirseland andWerner Schneider (ed.), Handbuch Sozialwissenschaftliche Diskursanalyse. Band 1: Theorien und Methoden (Opladen: Leske+Budrich 2001) pp. 177-206
44. Margaret R. Somers, 'The Narrative Constitution of Identity: A Relational and Network Approach', Theory and Society 23/5 (1994) pp. 605-649
45. Luc Herman and Bart Vervaeck, Handbook of Narrative Analysis (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press 2005).
46. The lexicometric analysis has been carried out with the software Lexico3 - the analysis of narrative patterns and topoi have been facilitated by the use of the qualitative data analysis software Atlas TI.
47. See for example: Martin Nonhoff, 'Soziale Marktwirtschaft - ein leerer Signifikant? Überlegungen im Anschluss an die Diskurstheorie Ernesto Laclaus', in Johannes Angermüller, Katharina Bunzmann and Martin Nonhoff (eds.), Diskursanalyse: Theorien, Methoden, Anwendungen (Hamburg: Argument Verlag 2001) pp. 193-208.
48. The "Documentation française" runs a home page with a digital database of presidential speeches from 1973 to the present, available at .
49. The following texts were integrated: The speeches of the general secretary of the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF, 1997-2005) (this position was established in 1997 and represents a new place of enunciation within Francophonia: A kind of spokesman of the organisation), the introductions and final chapters of twelve monographs on Francophonia with a high-circulation, several texts, which are presented by the organisations of Francophonia as founding documents (e.g., texts from the colonial geographer On)ésime Reclus and texts from the former President of Senegal L.-S. Senghor) as well as texts from authors and organisations which have positioned themselves as critics of Francophonia (e.g., texts from the NGO Survie France and texts from the French-Cameroonian writer Mongo Beti).
50. "...la langue fran&aise qui nous unit malgré notre diversité " Speech of the President of Niger Hamani Diori at the 2nd founding conference of ACCT 1970 in Niamey. "Ce qui unit les participants à cette réunion, c'est la langue française. Elle est, entre nous, un magnifique instrument d'équilibre, d'harmonie et de progrès au service de peuples qui sont faits pour s'entendre, à l'exclusion de toute considération de race, de croyance ou d'idéologie." President L.-S. Senghor (Senegal) at the 1st founding conference of ACCT 1969 in Niamey. "L'usage de la langue française est d'abord, en effet, un instrument de cohésion au sein d'un groupe d'hommes, de races, de couleurs, de modes de vie différents...il apporte également une même vision du monde...l'usage de la langue française est, ensuite, un moyen d'ouverture sur le monde...elle est l'instrument d'analyse par excellence...miracle de logique, de clarté et de précision " (Tunisian President Habib Bourguiba at the 1st founding conference of ACCT 1969 in Niamey.)
51. "...notre langue...amalgame à la longue une vaste nation francisante." Onésime Reclus, Lâchons l'Asie, prenons l'Afrique. Où renaître? Et comment durer? (Paris: 1904) p. 151
52. for a detailed discussion of the concept of Francophonia in the writings of Onésime Reclus see: Georg Glasze, 'Von der Assimilation zur "diversité culturelle" - der Kolonialgeograph Onésime Reclus (1837-1916) als Vordenker der Frankophonie?' in Sebastian Lentz and Ferjan Ormeling (eds.), Die Verräumlichung des Welt-Bildes. Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen zwischen "explorativer Geographie" und der Vermessenheit europïascher Raumphantasien. Beiträge der Internationalen Konferenz auf Schloss Friedenstein Gotha, 9.-11. Oktober 2005 (Stuttgart: Steiner 2007) in press.
53. János Riesz, 'Négritude, Frankophonie und afrikanische Kultur - Léopold Sédar Senghor als Paradigma', in Ingo Kolboom and Bernd Rill (eds.), Frankophonie - nationale und internationale Dimensionen (München: Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung e.V. 2002) pp. 99-108.
54. János Riesz, 'Die Erfindung' (note 7) pp. 223-240.
55. "Nous assistons à une puissante symbiose afro-latine. L'indépendance politique retrouvée, je la crois viable, pour les mêmes raisons qui rendront viable la symbiose gallo-romaine." Speech of the French Minister of Culture André Malraux at the 1st founding conference of ACCT 1969 in Niamey. "C'est une évidence que l'expansion de la francophonie, qui débute au moyen age, est directement liée à l'expansion française. Nous n'en ressentons aucune humilité, pas plus que le monde européen ne rougit d'une culture gréco-latine imposée d'abord par la conquête. Speech of the Nigerian President Hamani Diori at the 1st founding conference of ACCT 1969 in Niamey.
56. Imitons Rome! Onésime Reclus, Lâchons l'Asie, prenons l'Afrique. Où renaître? Et comment durer? (Paris: 1904) p. 95. "...faire en Afrique ce que Rome a fait dans le monde ancien " Onésime Reclus, Un grand destin commence (Paris: La renaissance du Livre 1917) Chapter 19.
57. The Francophonia discourse in the 1960s and 1970s already has linked Francophonia with diversity. However this diversity was related to "races", "religions" and "continents" - not to cultural diversity. Thus, this diversity could be linked easily with patterns of the colonial discourse as the French language is placed in a position to establish a community despite (!) the diversity. Especially in the colonial discourse of the early twentieth century there were already narrative patterns, which described the French language as the binding element of a diversity of continents and races within the empire.
58. Thus, the French educated political and intellectual elites in the newly independent former colonies played a major role in constituting the Francophonia discourse in the 1960s. The founding conference of the ACCT has been prepared by the Organisation commune africaine et malgache (OCAM) - an organisation grouping former French and Belgian colonies. Against this background the US-American political scientist Victor T. Levine thinks that "the real French victory in Africa was that it created a self-generating, self-perpetuating cultural myth able to bind the elites of its former colonies with an invisible thread where it could no longer hold them on a colonial leash." (Victor T. Levine, 'Political-Cultural Schizophrenia in Francophone Africa', in Isaac James Mowoe and Richard Bjornson (eds.), Africa and the West. The Legacies of Empire (New York: Greenword Press 1986) p. 171.) Political elites in France like the French president de Gaulle, however, had been rather reluctant concerning the idea of Francophonia - de Gaulle never went to a meeting of an organisation of Francophonia and he hardly ever used the expression. Several monographs aiming at a description of the history of Francophonia have explained this resistance taking into account the possible fear of de Gaulle and French foreign policy of being suspected of establishing a neo-colonial structure. Another explanation might offer the argument that French foreign policy has favoured bilateral relations with rather small independent states over multilateral relations within a community of states.
59. Josseline Bruchet and Délégation Générale à la Langue Française, Langue française et francophonie. Répertoire des organisations et associations oeuvrant pour la promotion de la langue française et de la francophonie (Paris: Documentation Fran&aise 2001).
60. Marocco joined the ACCT in 1981. Switzerland did participate at all the summits from 1986 on and finally joined the (renamed) Agence de la Francophonie in 1996.
61. "'S'agissait-il de préserver l'espace francophone d'un expansionnisme anglophone - le FPR béénéficie du soutien de l'Ouganda?'" [Is it a matter of saving the francophone space against the Anglophone expansionism - the FPR [rebels] benefit from the support of Uganda?]," Le Monde (7 June 1994) p. 1.
62. "Alors, on voit fort mal comment la francophonie peut être autre chose, vue d'Afrique, que la façade culturelle de néo-colonisation." (Guy Ossito Midiohouan, Du bon usage de la francophonie. Essai sur l'idéologie francophone (Porto Novo/Benin: Editions CNPMS 1994) p. 34.)
63. "...la Macédoine, tout au long de son histoire, s'est fortement engagée à promouvoir la diversité culturelle, aussi bien dans notre pays que dans un cadre plus global" (Gipfelkonferenz der OIF 2004 [Summit of Francophonia 2004]).
64. "...pays carrefour établi là où la Méditerranée et l'Europe centrale se parlent, aux confins de l'Orient (...). [La Croatie] souhaite apporter son tribut à la diversité culturelle de l'humanité et son expérience de pays charnière" (Gipfelkonferenz der OIF 2004 [Summit of Francophonia 2004]).
65. "...ein Bekenntnis zur kulturellen Vielfalt und zum interkulturellen Dialog." See , accessed 13 March 2006.
66. "La Francophonie a vocation à appeler toutes les autres langues du monde à se rassembler pour faire en sorte que la diversité culturelle, qui résulte de la diversité linguistique, que cette diversité soit sauvegardée. Au-delà du français, au-delà de la Francophonie, il nous faut être les militants du multiculturalisme dans le monde pour lutter contre l'étouffement, par une langue unique, des diverses cultures qui font la richesse et la dignité de l'humanité."
67. "La Francophonie nous permet de nous organiser, nous Arabes, Africains et autres identités menacées par le rouleau compresseur des industries culturelles américaines car, seuls, nous ne serions pas assez forts pour nous défendre... ". These citations are taken from a Web site of the French foreign ministry, available at , accessed 30 Jan. 2006.
68. The Organisation of Ibero-American States for Education, Science and Culture was founded in 1949. Since 1991 the head of states of Spain, Portugal and Latin America meet for an annual Ibero-American Summit.
69. These organisations have established a common Web site under the title "three linguistic spaces", available at": , accessed 10 Dec. 2005.
70. , accessed 13 Jan. 2006.
71. For a detailed discussion on this convention see: Georg Glasze and Aika Meyer, 'Das Konzept der "kulturellen Vielfalt"' - Protektionismus oder Schutz vor kultureller Homogenisierung?' in Johannes Kessler and Christian Steiner (eds.), Facetten der Globalisierung: Zwischen Ökonmie, Politik und Kultur (Mainz: Geographisches Institut Mainz 2007) p. in press.
72. Yves Léonard, La lusophonie dans le monde (Paris: La Documentation Française 1998)
73. Susanne Gratius, 'Die Institutionalisierung der Iberoamerikanischen Staatengemeinschaft als ein neuer internationaler Akteur unter spanischer Führung?' Brennpunkt Lateinamerika 19/5 (2005).
74. 'Bollwerk gegen kulturelle Gleichschaltung. Die Schweiz gibt sich "Frankophonie-phil""', in Neue Zürcher Zeitung (8 June 2002) p. 7.
75. See for example: Mongo Beti, La France contre l'Afrique. Retour au Cameroun (Paris: La Découverte 1993)
76. Guy Ossito Midiohouan, Du bon usage de la francophonie. Essai sur l'idéologie francophone (Porto Novo/Benin: Editions CNPMS 1994)
77. François-Xavier Verschave, La Françafrique: Le plus long scandale de la République (Paris: Stock 1998).
78. "The political Francophonia is exactly a way to construct another globalisation" [La francophonie politique c'est précisément une façon de construire 'l'autre mondialisation']. (The OIF general secretary Abdou Diouf, 28 May 2004, University of Lyon.)
79. Véronique Porra argues for example that the notion of diversalité has been a "concept of cultural resistance" against French dominance and became integrated and instrumentalised by the organisations of Francophonia. Véronique Porra, 'La Diversalité à l'épreuve de la pensée Universel - Déviances et instrumentalisation d'un concept de résistance culturelle', in Lieven d'Hulst and Jean-Marc Moura (eds.), Carribean Interfaces Caribéennes (Amsterdam: Rodopoi) in press.
80. Il s'agit encore de montrer que la France est elle aussi francophone, dans les tissages de son identité, en invitant l'hexagone à se confronter aux singularités culturelles et à partager, sans peur, tous les cousinages qui l'ouvrent à une autre vision de la mondialisation, créative et joyeuse." (Cultural festival francofffonies 2006; see , accessed 12 May 2006.)
81. "nous nous battrons ensemble...pour la défense et le rayonnement de la langue française...[et] pour la diversité linguistique et culturelle" (Abdou Diouf, general secretary of the OIF, Summit of Francophonia 2002, Beirut).