HYBRIDITY AND AMBIGUITY IN THE COLONIAL SITUATION: THE QUESTION OF RACE IN KIM LEFÈVRE'S MÉTISSE BLANCHE

Abstract

In the form of an autobiography which relates the vicissitudes of life of a woman who was born and grew up in French Indochina, Kim Lefèvre's Métisse Blanche is such a striking story not only in the narrator's adventures but also in the matter of race it calls into question. This matter is much more complicated as the narrator is a miscegenetic person living in a colonial society which is very often hostile to hybridity and ambiguity. How do contrary racial discourses encounter and compete in that context? How does the protagonist struggle to survive in that harsh situation to define and pursue an identity for her own? This paper seeks to find the answers for those questions from which to point out that identity is not a stable one, and that the identity the protagonist tries to find lies in the very adventures she is constantly engaged in.