Mémoire, identité et représentation de l’exilé chez Émile Ollivier et Dany Laferrière
Testifying to their forced experience of emigration, Émile Ollivier's Mille eaux and Les urnes scellées as well as Le cri des oiseaux fous and Je suis un écrivain japonais by Dany Laferrière, question the feeling of belonging to a culture or a country.  In the authors’ writings, the question of identity is closely linked to the notion of exile and their works allow us to reflect on the issues pertaining to integrating into a new society, the experience of being thorn from one's native land, and the impact of wandering on the perception of identity. Reflecting a journey marked by violence, their novels also explore memory and its role in the preservation of a past that would otherwise be irretrievably lost. The present work examines the complex relationship between exile and past, both magnified by the memories of childhood as well as tainted by the violence engendered by a dictatorship. Assuming that the migrant identity, as represented in their publications, is rooted in their displacement from their native land, this paper probes the links between exile, identity and memory.  Postulating that the age difference between Émile Ollivier and Dany Laferrière has an impact on the evolution of the forms of exile in their works, I also illustrate how their respective novels attest to an experience of dictatorship, exile and the difference in the adaptation work of memory proper to each of their generation.
Émile Ollivier Dany Laferrière exil exiliance exile memory identity