The littérature-monde movement, as it is elucidated in the 2007 volume Pour une littérature-monde, has at its heart the ambition to uncouple literature from the nation. Frustrated with the neo-colonial undertones of Francophonie, with the term's perpetuation of an imperialist conception of the benefits of French culture and language for the ‘natives’ of its supposedly inferior colonies and ex-colonies, Rouaud and Le Bris propose littératuremonde as a more liberating, all-encompassing term for the literature of diverse cultures throughout the world. The last vestige of French colonialism, Francophonie is described by Le Bris as ‘un espace sur lequel la France mère des arts, dépositaire de l'universel, dispenserait ses lumières’ (Le Bris, 2007: 45), and littérature-monde will sound the death knell of this essentially nationalist and ultimately reductive conception of literary production in French. Moreover, at the same time littérature-monde offers a challenge not only to the strict association of literature with the nation, but also to an excessive self-consciousness or ‘textualism’ detected in literature in French in the wake of post-structuralism and the nouveau roman. Littératuremonde refuses what is seen as an inward-looking preoccupation with language in order to embrace lived realities. If this two-pronged critique of Francophonie is carried out in the name of a celebration of plurality and diversity, however, it is striking that this plurality is couched in terms of a new humanism. On the one hand, Rouaud and Le Bris affirm that their movement addresses a universal humanity, rather than simply the citizens of the French nation and its colonies or ex-colonies, and they conceive literature as a site for the exploration of human beings above and beyond their national affiliations. Littérature-monde celebrates the enriching intermingling of human cultures, the vast, chaotic network of interactions that affects and defines all human life. On the other hand, Rouaud and Le Bris equally champion a commitment to humanity as opposed to pure textuality, and recommend an exploration of ‘l'humaine condition’ [the human condition] (Le Bris, 2007: 26, 41) in contradistinction to what they perceive as French literature's recent and arid focus on literature itself.