In this paper, the "postcolonial" concept in its various written forms (whether incorporating a hyphen, a slash, or agglutination) is examined in order to define what constitutes a postcolonial approach in a literary work. The connection with the French-speaking world is debated, along with the question of commitment. Based on the evidence of a political commitment at the time of independence and in the immediate postcolonial period, this paper shows that authors from former colonies range between posture and imposture, negotiating their space between the specific and the universal, the local and the global.