Frédéric Lefrançois

This book has been designed to prepare candidates for the fourth question in the literature section of the written exams for the 2026 session of the external English Agrégation. This question focuses on both Mark Twain's novel _Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_ (1884) and Wes Anderson's film _Moonrise Kingdom_ (2012). The “hybrid” literature-cinema format consists of two different works, rather than a literary work associated with its film adaptation, as is usually the case in this exam. This interdisciplinary challenge, while certainly stimulating, takes on a special twist this year. In addition to the characteristics specific to each medium, this time we are dealing with two works whose artistic “personality” is well established, created by two authors whose styles are equally distinct and striking. Preparation for the exam will therefore have to take into account the originality of each work while allowing for a fruitful “dialogue” between them. This is why the essays collected in this book highlight the uniqueness of each work, captured in its generic, contextual, or stylistic dimensions, while others offer cross-readings that facilitate the identification of numerous bridges between two creations that are, at first glance, exclusive to each other but connected in several ways.

Through the prism of archipelicity, the artistic production of the Afro-American Diaspora reveals its diffractive potential: at once close to and far from its original origins, it unfolds in the in-between of a double consciousness. In his seminal essay, Paul Gilroy calls for the overcoming of binary oppositions in order to better apprehend the complexity of Afro-diasporic intellectual culture, which he sees as specifically transnational (Gilroy, 1993). As inclusive as this theoretical framework may seem, it is challenged by the inherent transcoloniality of the artistic dynamics animating the region of the Black Island Americas. To this day, avatars of the colonial model persist in the Lesser and Greater Antilles and in the majority of the coastal nations of the Caribbean basin. To a certain extent, these schemes continue to influence the aesthetic-political choices of the region’s visual artists and performers, while providing them with symbolic codes that can be interpreted as signs of belonging to the Afro-Trans American diaspora. It is therefore a challenge to claim any form of diasporic citizenship in such a shifting and uncertain configuration. What is thought to be relevant from an individual or community perspective may prove to be institutionally subversive. In the syncretic tradition of Cuba and Brazil, the same code can be given different semiotic meanings depending on the political and pragmatic context. This article therefore takes an ethno-critical look at the contribution of such practices to the broader framework of archipelagic networks and map zones of Afro-diasporic connectivity in a trans-American context.

This collective work consists of a dozen studies devoted to Trinité, the seminal work of Stan Musquer, a Guadeloupean painter originally from Nantes. This unique painting, with its marked cultural fusion, is firmly rooted in Caribbean transmodernity. While probing the soul of societies whose past and current dynamics it questions, Trinité ties in with the evolution of art from an eminently transhistorical perspective. Combining several different angles and approaches, a dozen researchers and art critics have examined this enigmatic and emblematic work of Stan's painting to reveal its originality and complexity. This transdisciplinary crossroads brings together art history and sociology, semiotics, and decolonial studies, all of which will enrich the reading of this highly dialogical opus.

Invoquer la question des traditions au sein de l’immense aire géoculturelle des Amériques nous place d’emblée à l’entrelacement de l’ontique et de l’esthétique, dans lequel se déploie toutes les strates mémorielles de l’art pan-caribéen. Dans sa fonction inclusive, cette archive recense et fédère toute la pluriversalité de l’expérience collective et individuelle de la Diaspora. Ce grand carrefour des peuples métis nés du heurt physique, psychique et ontique de la colonisation ont toujours cherché à sanctuariser, depuis l’époque du Popol Vuh, l’encodage oral, artistique et kinesthésique d’une grande civilisation. Toute cette science, survivant sous des modalités hybrides, de visibilité variable, est fondatrice de l’ethno-esthétique trans-caribéenne. Les Amériques du Milieu en sont le légataire initial depuis l’essaimage des peuples premiers. Ceux-ci ont marqué leur passage à travers les paysages rupestres et picturaux, la créolisation des langues, la gestique et l’ontique qui soutiennent l’esthétique du quotidien : les danses afro-latines, grooves syncopaux, vibrations chromatiques et poétiques du lien constituent autant de signes palpables de la connexion qui règne depuis plus de dix millénaires dans cette région fractale du monde. Si Wilson Harris et Edouard Glissant, visionnaires et architectes d’une créolité inclusive et transgénérationnelle ont posé les bases théoriques de cette esthétique, les artistes du Nouveau Monde, en relaient une expression éminemment concrète. Il s’agit là d’un héritage diasporique constitué au fil de quatre siècles par l’agrégation de multiples apports picturaux, sculpturaux, qui interroge foncièrement notre généalogie. Les nombreuses rémanences et correspondances esthétiques traversant le grand archipel du nord au sud, d’est en ouest, témoignent de la vivacité de cette archive qui, comme le rappellent Walter D. Mignolo, résonne toujours dans les pratiques contemporaines. Il convient aujourd’hui d’en saisir et formuler le principe et la portée. Nous entendons, dans le cadre de cette communication, jeter les bases théoriques d’une profonde réflexion idoine, située à la croisée transhistorique de la pensée décoloniale et de l’hypermodernité transcaribéenne, en s’appuyant sur des paradigmes artistiques, philosophiques et littéraires sur l’intervalle du « quatrième siècle ».

Can provocative sculptural aesthetics alter our perception of history? This article focuses on the sensational effect caused by the 2015 exhibition of Anish Kapoor's monumental Dirty Corner in Versailles. Does the reception of such contextual art rely on the ability to collate different aesthetic experiences on the artwork's surface? The Indo-British sculptor's divisive use of ethics has opposed the supporters of a vision of art based on the quest for the sublime to those who opt for an artistic adventure pulling down ethical and aesthetic norms.

Strange Fruit is an exemplary study of the question of the integration of West Indians of immigrant origin living in England in the 1980s. Through this play structured in three acts, Caryl Phillips offers the reader-viewer privileged access to the inner world of a West Indian family living in a deprived London neighborhood. At the heart of this intimate drama with tragic overtones, there is a cultural conflict between two successive generations of immigrants. Philosophical and existential issues are deftly treated in a psychoanalytical perspective.