Companions in Restoration: Buffalo Ranching as Interspecies and Intercommunity Reconciliation, The Case of Dan O’Brien’s Wild Idea / Tom Lynch, Keynote in International Symposium "Companion Species in North American Cultural Productions", organisé, sous la responsabilité scientifique de Claire Cazajous et Wendy Harding, par le Département d'Études du monde anglophone, Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès, 17 juin 2016. In the European settlement of North America, companion species were an essential component of the settler-colonial process. As Alfred Crosby and others have demonstrated, Europeans brought with them a suite of animals and plants from the old continent that they utilized both to supplant the Indigenous populations and then to reconstruct a neo-European landscape replete with grasses, shrubs, trees, and domestic animals that were either derived from, or closely approximated, European varieties. This process had enormously detrimental effects on various native bioregions, at times completely altering their composition. One of the most notable examples of this process was the replacement of native bison by imported European cattle varieties over nearly the full extent of their original range, resulting in the near extinction of the bison by the last years of the 19th century. As is well known, buffalo were an integral species in the lives of the Native communities of the prairie biogregions of the Great Plains, providing sustenance, shelter, clothing, and a variety of material goods; and the species was central to the religious life of most prairie cultures. The animal and the people had an intimate, one might say companionate, relationship. In the past century, the cattle ranching industry that replaced the bison hunting regime of the Indigenous populations has proven to be difficult to sustain ecologically, economically, and socially. This has resulted in renewed efforts to restore bison to some of their historic range, a project that can perhaps be seen as an attempt to renew a companionate relationship between humans and buffalo on the Great Plains. In this talk I examine a number of works of non-fiction, in particular Dan O'Brien's two memoirs, Buffalo for the Broken Heart: Restoring Life to a Black Hills Ranch and Wild Idea: Buffalo and Family in a Difficult Land, that recount efforts to supplant the settler-colonial cattle industry with a restored economy/ecology based on bison. I pay particular attention to several elements: 1) the efforts to prevent buffalo raised on ranches for slaughter from becoming industrialized like the cattle industry. That is, can ranched buffalo maintain much of their wildness and species autonomy? 2) the ecologically positive cascading effect of replacing cattle with buffalo, which seems to result in an increase in biological diversity and richness. 3) the similar potentially positive effect on familial and social relations of buffalo restoration. 4) the possibility of enhanced connections between European settler-colonists and Indigenous communities based on a mutual interest in buffalo ranching. In short, my paper seeks to address the question of the degree to which buffalo ranching can be seen as an effort at reconciliation between settler-colonists and both native species and Indigenous communities. Can the companionate relationship between people and bison be restored on the Geat Plains, and if so, with what rippling consequences?
Mot(s) clés libre(s) : relations homme-animal, nature (dans la littérature), écocritique, bison d'Amérique, colonisation (Etats-Unis)

Patrick Chamoiseau, quelle écopoétique ? / Hannes de Vriese. In "Patrick Chamoiseau et la mer des récits", colloque international organisé par le laboratoire Lettres, Langages et Arts (LLA CREATIS) de l'Université Toulouse Jean-Jaurès-campus Mirail, 8-10 octobre 2014. Thématique 4 : Gaïa et la mer des récits 1. L’écrivain antillais, par sa position au point de rencontre entre littératures américaines, européennes et africaines, apparaît comme un passeur privilégié de genres et d’esthétiques littéraires. L’œuvre de Patrick Chamoiseau le démontre, en brassant le canon littéraire européen, l’esthétique baroque sud-américaine et l’écopoétique, très présente en Amérique du Nord. En s’interrogeant en priorité sur ce dernier aspect, on se demandera non seulement quelle place l’écriture de la nature occupe dans l’œuvre chamoisienne, mais également comment l’écopoétique détermine l’univers fictionnel, sur le plan de l’écriture et surtout sur celui de la géographie littéraire. Le texte, on le verra, se saisit de l’écopoétique sans se laisser écraser par une présence trop univoque ou monolithique d’une telle influence, qu’il s’agit d’intégrer à un univers créolisé. En relevant les effets d’écho et/ou de dissonance entre une dimension postcoloniale d’une part et une portée écopoétique d’autre part, on visera en outre à démontrer comment l’écriture de la nature offre à Patrick Chamoiseau un solide ancrage dans les enjeux littéraires et sociétaux d’ajourd’hui. À ce titre, les transformations de la nature dans le microcosme martiniquais se réfère chez Patrick Chamoiseau inévitablement à une échelle mondiale sinon universelle.[Illustration adaptée de "Mystery River", photographie de Mattias Ripp, 2014, publiée sur Flickr].
Mot(s) clés libre(s) : littérature et géographie, littérature française (20e-21e siècles), Patrick Chamoiseau (1953-....), littérature antillaise de langue française, nature (dans la littérature)