Abstract
- The purpose of this article is to scrutinize the political dimension of the recent proliferation of “poets’ paths” in Alsace, as a way to counter processes of French cultural homogenization. In addition to oral performances of regional poetry, the goal of these “poets’ paths” is to permanently inscribe the endangered Alsatian dialect into the natural Alsatian landscape as well as into the mental landscape (or mindscape) of Alsatian people. This phenomenon of Alsatian “poets’ paths,” then, is best understood through a postcolonial analysis of “nation-region” relationships in contemporary France. Such an analysis relies on concepts of internal colonization, “accented literature” and politics of aesthetics in the Rancierian sense of “visibility” and “perceptibility,” which ultimately leads to a redefinition of the psycho-social notion of “landscape.”