Comparing Francophonie and ‘Anglophony’ allows us to shed light on two differing relations of nations to languages, and on the central importance of diverging disciplinary academic traditions in the conception of this relation. The colonial past can only be one element in the explanation of the respective positions of Anglophonie and Francophonie in the contemporary world and cannot be considered in isolation from the institutionalisation of the literary disciplines of French and English. As linguistic dynamics and disciplinary forces combine to configure knowledge, the  rapport of Anglophony to Francophonie can be seen as eminently postcolonial.