État présent

This état présent examines the emergence and potential of the blue humanities as a framework for rethinking relations between culture, language, and territory across French and francophone contexts. In light of recent geopolitical shifts that challenge the coherence of la francophonie , the article argues that water — both material and conceptual — offers a productive paradigm for decentring Eurocentric, land-based models of culture and articulating new forms of relationality. Drawing on key established figures in the francophone world who have influenced how we conceptualize water, such as Édouard Glissant and Fernand Braudel, as well as more recent scholarship engaging with the blue humanities, the état present is structured around three interconnected themes: seas and oceans; islands and coasts; and fresh-water perspectives. Together, these strands reveal how francophone writing and thought have long anticipated the blue humanities’ transdisciplinary turn, contributing distinctive methodologies and aesthetics to this expanding field. The article concludes that an écopoétique of the francophone blue humanities could provide an important critical lens for interrogating the entanglements of nature and culture, human and nonhuman, and for reimagining the future orientation of French and francophone literary studies

Coherence (philosophical gambling strategy · French · Geopolitics · Key (lock · Scholarship · Caribbean and African Literature and Culture · Comparative and World Literature · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature