Constructed identities and strategies for public emergence - An institutional analysis of the francophone literary system

If it is difficult, if not impossible, to define francophone literature as a precise literary field, we must nonetheless recognize the existence of a francophone literary system, which is determined by instances both of produ ction on the part of the peripheral areas and of reception on that of the c entre. According to the position they occupy in the margins, authors choose different rhetorical strategies which, in turn, determine the way they are received by Paris (assimilated or considered as exotic). The rhetoric of i dentity seems, in this case, to be an effective strategy as well as a condi tion of recognition by the centre, whose demand for exotic productions on t he part of certain peripheral areas seems quite great.