DÉSORDRES À PONDICHÉRY. A Paratextual Study of a Novel on a French Trading Post in India in the Late 1930s

Abstract: The novel Désordres à Pondichéry by Georges Delamare (1897-1988) was published in Paris in 1938, dealing with the current situation in the French trading post Pondichéry. A preface by right-wing author Claude Farrère (1876-1957) expressed fear of Communism or anarchy in the city. The plot includes an intruding Communist agent who fails in his mission to induce disorder, and is expelled by the French Governor. The book was “rediscovered” by French historian Jacques Weber in the 1980s, and characterized as a “colonial novel” with a message in concordance with the preface, but omitting facts from the time. A reprint of the original, with a postscript by Weber, was published in 1997. The aim of the study is to provide a context for the novel, and to conduct a paratextual analysis based on the concepts of paratexts according to Gérard Genette. The material is the 1997 edition of the narrative and the two paratexts. Farrère’s original preface contains a stern warning of future threats to Pondichéry, hopes for pertinent readers and an ambiguity toward Delamare’s text. The narrative converges with the paratext regarding historical nostalgia, and a “seascape” is created within the paratextual field. Fears of “communism and anarchy” are told but not “mise en scène”, and the happy ending of the story ruptures the paratextual concordance. In the posthumous postscript, Weber adds a frame of colonial context and understanding of the text. The paratext displays the omission of severe factual events in the text, e.g. the constant disorder in the city and the killing of workers on strike by the French police in 1936. Désordres à Pondichéry fits into the pro-colonial, anti-communist French propaganda of the 1930s. The novel has been discussed as a symbol of threats to the French Empire in its entirety.