Banned Books and Counterfeit Notes - (Anthem Studies in Travel) by Sophie Fuggle (Hardcover)

About the Book

Banned Books and Counterfeit
Notes examines
how convicts sent to France's most notorious and longest running overseas
penal colony in French Guiana would use the colonial postal system together
with other, unofficial means of communication, to document and challenge lived
experiences of transportation and forced labour.

Book Synopsis

Banned
Books and Counterfeit Notes explores the way in which convicts sent to France's overseas penal
colony in French Guiana used the colonial postal system together with other,
unofficial means of communication, to document and challenge lived experiences
of transportation and forced labour. Identifying a series of 'counterfeit
notes', the forensic aim of the book is to refocus attention on different forms
of writing, and reading (including the 'banned books' indicated in the title),
which occur inside the penal colony (commonly referred to as the bagne) itself.
In doing so, the book deconstructs many of the stories, anecdotes, myths, and
legends which have come to define and legitimise the bagne in French Guiana.
The book's theoretical framework is indebted to the work of philosopher Jacques
Derrida and his extended commentary on writing, reading, paper, postal systems,
archives, the death penalty, friendship and hospitality. Connecting histories
of reading and writing within the penal colony to contemporary heritage
practices and the repurposing of former sites, the book offers wider
reflections on decarceration, abolition, education and community.

About the Author

Sophie Fuggle is Associate Professor of Postcolonial Studies and
Cultural Heritage at Nottingham Trent University. She is author of France's Memorial Landscape: Views from Camp des Milles (Liverpool University Press, 2023) and co-editor of Framing the Penal Colony (Palgrave, 2023).