In J.-H. Rosny’s 1888 novella Les Xipéhuz, strange beings invade humans’ territory and immediately begin to kill them. Communication becomes impossible; translation is useless because the Xipéhuz threaten humanity’s existence. In today’s essay, Andrea Blatz argues that, whilst science fiction purports to tell stories foreign to our own experience, this French book represents an all-too-familiar colonial situation—and crystalizes the relationship between language and imperialism.
J.-H. Rosny—the nom de plume of brothers Joseph Henri Honoré Boex and Séraphin Justin François Boex—wrote during the Third Republic, when France was expanding its empire in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific Islands. But the country had also recently lost the Alsace-Lorraine region to Germany after the Franco-Prussian War, and a loss so close to home was a brutal blow to national pride. Borders also shift in Les Xipéhuz, in which mysterious creatures invade the humans’ territory. The French empire claimed that its raison d’être was to bring its civilization to the rest of the world, and one way to do this was to spread its language. Consequently, the Alliance Française was established in 1883 to teach the French language and spread its culture and civilization, as well as to help create a new French identity.
In this context of imperial expansion, science fiction emerged. Belgian author J.-H. Rosny Aîné—the later pen name of elder brother Joseph—was one of the first authors to write science fiction in the French language, along with Jules Verne. In his works, Rosny pushes readers to imagine humans evolving to create a better world, free of colonialism, through science. The protagonist in Les Xipéhuz, Bakhoûn, represents the use of scientific knowledge for human advancement. Although seen as an outsider for his strange habits—for example, he farms instead of hunting and gathering—he is respected, and the nomadic Pjehou tribe turns to him when their methods against the invading Xipéhuz—who may or may not be from another planet—prove useless. Bakhoûn, who is thousands of years ahead of his time, represents modern rationality in comparison to the primitive beliefs of the other members of his tribe. His beliefs are based on logic rather than superstition:
Premièrement, il croyait que la vie sédentaire, la vie à place fixe, était préférable à la vie nomade, ménageait les forces de l’homme au profit de l’esprit. Secondement, il pensait que le Soleil, la Lune et les étoiles n’étaient pas des dieux, mais des masses lumineuses; Troisièmement, il disait que l’homme ne doit réellement croire qu’aux choses prouvées par l’expérience.
First, he espoused the idea that sedentary existence was preferable to nomadic life, allowing man to channel vital forces toward the development of the mind. Second, he thought that the Sun, the Moon and the Stars were not gods but luminous bodies. Third, he taught that man should only believe in things that can be proven by Measurement.
In other words, Bakhoûn bases his conclusions on evidence he has gathered, employing a quantitative methodology to learn about the Xipéhuz. During the weeks he spends observing them, he formulates and tests hypotheses regarding the invaders’ social, educational, and communication systems.
His findings mirror an anthropological study and the importance of science for the spread of the French empire. As the French did with their subjects, Bakhoûn used his newly acquired knowledge to gain a position of power over the Xipéhuz. Scientific advancement was said to measure how advanced a group of people were and thus was used as a tool in imperial expansion. Scientism, which promoted an objective view of the world, became the dominant ideology. To spread science, language also had to be spread.
The formation of the Alliance Française provided France with a structure to systematically disseminate its language to the so-called “primitive” people it was colonizing. Pierre Foncin, the director of French secondary education in the 1880s, credits the French language as the force behind civilization, as it could change “timid, ignorant, sickly and dirty young vagabonds, speaking and understanding only Arabic” into “educated and self-disciplined young men” who could speak French and be employed by French companies. In this way, the French language was a gateway, opening up modernity to “primitive” people.
While Bakhoûn might be a modern man, the other nomads are primitive, offering sacrifices to appease the Xipéhuz. Xipéhuzian technology was far more advanced and deadly than the nomads’, who had to rely on spears and arrows and were killed at a rate of fifteen to one. Another obvious indication of their primitiveness is that the novel is set in prehistoric times, a thousand years before the founding of Babylon. The tribes demonstrate atavism in their nomadic lifestyle and irrationality in their belief that human sacrifice will satisfy the invaders—another reflection of colonial beliefs.
Man’s primitiveness might also explain why the Xipéhuz do not attempt to communicate with them: as an earlier version of humans, they were closer to languageless animals than modern humanity. Since the humans’ language was sufficiently different than the Xipéhuz’s, the Xipéhuz might not have recognized it as a language. It’s possible that the invaders did send some sort of message, which the humans were unable to interpret, much like early encounters between Europeans and Indigenous people. Stephen Greenblatt explains that in making first contact with Indigenous people, the Spanish expected them to understand the laws outlined in the Requerimiento when read to them in Spanish. Rosny’s novella echoes a ridiculous reality: colonizers expected Indigenous people to understand an entirely new language the first time they heard it.
As readers, we are meant to identify with the humans, although this creates a dilemma: readers from Rosny’s time would have been French—the colonizers, not the supposedly weak “native” people. These views of the civilized French and the uncivilized colonized people were perpetuated by propaganda, which was supposed to underline the power and intellectual prowess of France. Photographs printed in newspapers and on postcards depicted foreign countries and people, which highlighted racial differences by showing only people who looked vastly different from the typical white French person.
The focus on physical differences removed the Other’s agency by not allowing them to speak for themselves, and this lack of communication meant that there was no chance at understanding each other. Indeed, Patricia Kerslake states that “[j]ust as silencing the Other is an imperialist colonial technique of repression, so too is the Other prevented from speech in [science fiction].” Without a voice, it remains impossible for the Xipéhuz to lose their otherness.
Just as colonized people were made to look different from French people, the Xipéhuz look completely alien to humans. They are also able to change their shape, mysteriously lure and incinerate animals, and glide across the ground. While Africans were othered through their dark skin, the Xipéhuz are othered through their unnatural machinelike appearance. These differences preclude the nomads from trying to understand them.
These physical differences draw further attention to their linguistic differences. As Mark Bould states, communication in science fiction “only works with humanoid aliens, the perceptions of nonhumanoids being too radically different to assimilate.” The nomads are unable to identify at all with the alien Other, and this prevents any and all communication. While Bakhoûn is able to easily ascertain that the Xipéhuz have a language, he is unable to correspond with them.
While humans communicate through speech—producing and perceiving sounds—the Xipéhuzian language is completely different. Their language might be visual or tactile, depending on if they see certain signs on their bodies or perceive them internally. While Bakhoûn tries to learn about the language by observing these signs, it’s possible that the Xipéhuz feel them, or process them internally. Linguistic relativism, the idea that different languages give speakers different views of the world, is a common trope in science fiction. The Xipéhuz’s strange way of communication illustrates a parallel to new methods of contact over vast distances, such as the telegraph, which would have been alien to a group of people living in remote areas.
While their physical and linguistic differences foreshadow a block in communication, Bakhoûn nevertheless tries to understand them. He interprets the images in a way that resembles observational sentences; for example, when he sees a certain trio of signs, he observes that it is always followed by combat or ambush. He infers that these symbols must stand for something related to fighting. These observations allow Bakhoûn to learn the signs for concrete concepts, connecting the image to a certain action or object.
However, Bakhoûn is only able to make meaning of signs whose referents he can see in connection to the sign. He explains that
Les Xipéhuz ont d’ailleurs des signes plus compliqués, se rapportant non plus à des actions similaires aux nôtres, mais à un ordre de choses complètement extra-humain, et dont je n’ai rien pu déchiffrer. On ne peut entretenir le moindre doute relativement à leur faculté d’échanger des idées d’un ordre abstrait, probablement équivalentes aux idées humaines, car ils peuvent rester longtemps immobiles à ne faire autre chose que converser, ce qui annonce de véritables accumulations de pensées.
The Xipéhuz in fact have more complex signs, which refer not only to actions similar to ours, but to an order of things that is totally extraordinary, and which I have been completely unable to decipher. One cannot have the least doubt about their faculty that allows them to exchange ideas of an abstract nature, ideas most likely similar to those of humans, for they are able to remain immobile for a long time doing nothing but conversing among themselves, which indicates a genuine accumulation of thought.
In other words, Bakhoûn is unable to translate signs with abstract meanings, much as colonized people had trouble adapting to new systems imposed by the colonizers. For example, early French colonial strategy dictated the attempt to completely uproot indigenous systems of government and replace them with French systems, but they could not convince the Indigenous people to follow their model. In later colonies, they kept the original systems of government and replaced the leaders with people they could control.
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Les Xipéhuz opens with a surprise attack. The invasion seems easy for the Xipéhuz, which underlines the primitiveness of the nomads and reflects how Europeans viewed nonwhite races. Rieder points out how invasion plots in fiction can reveal anxieties about shifts in power structures and maintaining one’s self-interest; “a disavowed self-recognition makes its uncanny reappearance in the figure of the imaginary enemy.” The fictional invasion revealed contemporary French anxieties—the fear of losing a battle to a country viewed as weaker—when they saw themselves in the Xipéhuz.
Indeed, this is what happened in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, when the Prussians, who were believed to have had a weaker military, defeated the French. Les Xipéhuz reverses the traditional roles of the Self and Other, as it is the humans who are being invaded and experiencing the destruction of their homes. Here, then, Rosny offers the French reader an opportunity to see what the life of a weaker Other would have been like: total defeat by a foreign power.
France’s true intention—imperial dominance—was masked by the civilizing mission. The Xipéhuz express no intention to communicate with the humans; they seem to simply want to live without them. And this lack of communicative intention underlies all of Bakhoûn’s failures to learn their language, dooming his attempts from the start. Rosny suggests that colonialism will eventually end because of a lack of communication. Just as Bakhoûn learned how to defeat the invaders, colonized people would eventually overcome their colonizers. As he learned about the Xipéhuz, he was also able to anthropomorphize certain aspects of their traits. In doing so, he associated with them and eventually regrets destroying them:
une plainte est montée de mon cœur. Car, maintenant que les Xipéhuz ont succombé, mon âme les regrette, et je demande à l’Unique quelle Fatalité a voulu que la splendeur de la vie soit souillée par les ténèbres du Meurtre !
a cry of sorrow arises in my heart. For now that the Xipéhuz have perished, my soul misses them, and I ask of the Unique One what Fatality has ordained that the splendor of Life be soiled by the Blackness of Murder?
Calling the destruction of the Xipéhuz “murder” underlines Bakjoûn’s guilt. Rosny once again critiques France’s colonial project by suggesting that the French should feel guilt at the destruction of the Other, including their languages and cultures—and he once again illustrates the importance of communication as the basis for a relationship.
Andrea Blatz is PhD candidate and French instructor at the University of Texas at Austin. Her dissertation focuses on colonialism, spatiality, ecocriticism, and transhumanism in pre-1940 French science fiction. She is also a blog copyeditor at Asymptote.
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