The Chagossians in Francophone fiction: (Post)memory, trauma and reclaimed agency

Beginning in the late 1960s, the entire population of the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, part of a British colony, was deported in order to establish an American military base in this geostrategic location. Ignorant about their fate, most of the traumatized Chagos islanders were dumped in shacks on the island of Mauritius. This article analyses the representation of the Chagossians’ plight and eventual fight for justice through the prism of three fictional Francophone texts: Shenaz Patel’s Le Silence des Chagos (2005), Caroline Laurent’s Rivage de la colère (2021) and Jean-Michel Fillol’s Chago, l’orphelin de l’histoire (2014). The focus will be on the development of three prevailing themes, (post)memory, trauma and reclaimed agency, by engaging with an array of approaches to trauma theory, in particular as they pertain to a social and cultural postcolonial context. Therefore, the article aims to uncover how these narratives reflect the nostalgic and critical memories, the revolt and the legal battle against the Mauritian and British authorities by the Chagossians. The most significant function of the texts is to enable the Chagossian exiles and their descendants to process the traumatic event, thus empowering and healing them.