French and Francophone Studies seminar

Representing “unrepresentable” memory: nuclear testing in Mā’ohi Nui (French Polynesia)

Abstract

This seminar explores representations of memory in the context of French nuclear testing in Mā’ohi Nui. This is a work in progress, drawing on research expounded in the second chapter of my thesis.

In the collaborative photobooks Visages de Polynésie (1996), Témoins de la bombe (2013) and “Nu/clear Stories” (2023-), Mā’ohi photographer, cinematographer and audiographer Marie-Hélène Villierme engages in diverse representations of her community’s memory of French nuclear testing in Mā’ohi Nui-French Polynesia. How do Villierme’s works participate in and challenge the “myth of Tahiti”? How do her works engage with the idea that the impacts of nuclear testing are unrepresentable as in the words of Chantal Spitz: “Comment expliquer l’inexplicable?” (L’Ile des rêves écrasés, 1991, 113)?

About the presenter

Josephine Goldman is a final year PhD student at the University of Sydney, writing a thesis on the representation of the relationship between water, gender and cultural identity in contemporary writing and art by francophone Caribbean and Oceanian women. She has published on francophone Caribbean literature and race in France in the Australian Journal of French Studies, Francosphères and Literature & Aesthetics.

For more information, contact: Dr Victoria Souliman (victoria.souliman@sydney.edu.au)

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