The Creoles of New Orleans or How to Perform Your Identity through Translation
This paper examines the performative function of translation in the context of the struggle for survival of a French identity in 19th century New Orleans. Between 1877 and 1913 were published in the Comptes-rendus de l’Athénée louisianais several translations of texts from various languages and genres. The purpose of the Athénée was clearly to preserve French culture in New Orleans, a rather desperate project at the end of a century marked by the erasure of cultural differences through the difficult and willfully unifying times occasioned by the Civil War and the period of Reconstruction.