Is Preserving Minority Languages and Cultures the Key to Avoiding the Impending Eco-Apocalypse? : An Ecolinguistic Reading of Le Clézio’s Le Rêve Mexicain

Authors

  • Keith Moser Mississippi State University

Keywords:

ecolinguistics, Le Clézio, environmental discourse analysis, 2008 Nobel Laureate in Literature

Abstract

The purpose of this essay is to explore Le Clézio’s Le Rêve Mexicain from the lens of the growing field of ecolinguistics. In Le Rêve Mexicain, the 2008 Nobel Laureate in Literature speculates about the present and future ramifications of the destruction of divergent Amerindian civilizations. When a civilization or a language disappears, an entire worldview vanishes as well. In addition to wondering how Amerindian societies would have evolved if their trajectory would not have been ‘interrupted’ by the Conquest, Le Clézio hypothesizes that these indigenous voices could still help us to avoid the impending eco-apocalypse. In Le Rêve Mexicain, the Franco-Mauritian author attempts to preserve the remaining vestiges of rich Amerindian cultures and to embed them into the existing environmental discourse of dominant world languages.

Author Biography

Keith Moser, Mississippi State University

Keith Moser is Assistant Professor of French at Mississippi State University. He is the author of J.M.G. Le Clézio: A Concerned Citizen of the Global Village (New York: Lexington Books, 2012), ‘Privileged Moments’ in the Novels and Short Stories of J.M.G. Le Clézio: His Contemporary Development of a Traditional French Literary Device (New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2008), and J.M.G. Le Clézio dans la forêt des paradoxes. (co-editor with Bruno Thibault, Paris, France: L’Harmattan, Collection Études transnationales, francophones et comparées, 2012). He has contributed several essays to peer-reviewed publications, such as the International Journal of Francophone Studies, The French Review, Romance Notes, Dalhousie French Studies, Les Cahiers Le Clézio, Modern Language Review, French Cultural Studies, Janus Head, Sprachkunst, Moderna språk, and The EFL Journal. Although the majority of his research focuses on the Franco-Mauritian author and 2008 Nobel Prize recipient J.M.G. Le Clézio, he has also published material related to Camus, Proust, Sartre, Claude Lanzmann, Fatima Besnaci-Lancou, Dalila Kerchouche, Zahia Rahmani, Bruno Doucey, Messaoud Benyoucef, and Driss Chraïbi. Moreover, he organized the first campus visit in the United States for the 2008 Nobel Laureate in Literature, J.M.G. Le Clézio at Mississippi State University from March 28-April 4, 2009.

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Published

2015-10-06

How to Cite

Moser, K. (2015). Is Preserving Minority Languages and Cultures the Key to Avoiding the Impending Eco-Apocalypse? : An Ecolinguistic Reading of Le Clézio’s Le Rêve Mexicain. Journal of Ecocriticism, 7(1), 1–11. Retrieved from https://ojs.unbc.ca/index.php/joe/article/view/581

Issue

Vol. 7 No. 1 (2015): Journal of Ecocriticism - Summer 2015

Section

Articles

License

Copyright Journal of Ecocriticism