Caribbean Interfaces

TEXTXET

Studies in Comparative Literature 52 Series Editors C.C. Barfoot and Theo D’haen

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Caribbean Interfaces

Edited by

Lieven D’hulst Jean-Marc Moura Liesbeth De Bleeker Nadia Lie

Amsterdam - New York, NY 2007

Cover design: Pier Post The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of ‘ISO 9706: 1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents - Requirements for permanence’. ISBN-13: 978-90-420-2184-6 © Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2007 Printed in The Netherlands

Table of Contents Openings The Editors

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Interdisciplinary Exchanges: Aimings and Effects

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Au-delà d’A History of Literature in the Caribbean: Perspectives de recherche qui s’ouvrent Albert-James Arnold

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Violence and Sexual Others in Caribbean Literary History Vera M. Kutzinski

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The Museum and the Opera-House: Modernity and Identity in Alejo Carpentier’s Los pasos perdidos Maarten van Delden

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La Diversalité à l’épreuve de la pensée de l’Universel – Déviances et instrumentalisation d’un concept de résistance culturelle Véronique Porra

67

Major Concepts: Transversal Applicability

85

From Appropriation to Resignification: Caribbean Discourses of Identity Amaryll Chanady

87

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Table of Contents

Islands, Borders and Vectors: The Fractal World of the Caribbean Ottmar Ette

109

Oriente: Towards a Literary Geography Peter Hulme

153

Cultural Memories, Literary Forms, Caribbean Revolutions Theo D’haen

169

Des discours caribéens Jean-Marc Moura

185

Postcolonialism, Literary Heteroglossia and Translation Paul Bandia

203

Caribbean Research Projects

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Archives des Littératures de la Caraïbe: un projet, une équipe, une technologie Albert-James Arnold

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Intra- and Intersystemic Relations in the Caribbean: A Research Project Lieven D’hulst

237

Revolutionary Self-Fashioning: Rewriting Strategies in the Cuban Magazine Casa de las Américas (1989-1999) Nadia Lie

249

Vers une étude de la scénographie et de l’espace romanesque dans l’œuvre de Patrick Chamoiseau Liesbeth De Bleeker

263

Table of Contents

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Neo-Baroque Poetics. A Latin American Affair Biagio D’Angelo

283

“Histoires de femme et de chien cannibales”: Réécritures et intertextualités inaperçues ou inavouées (Condé/Chamoiseau) Kathleen Gyssels

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La littérature caribéenne francophone en Italie Carla Fratta & Francesca Torchi

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The Contemporary Dominican Literature in the Caribbean Perspective Rita De Maeseneer

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Name Index

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Openings The Editors The dynamic of Caribbean studies is almost overwhelming, especially in literature, where historical syntheses, thematic studies, analyses of genres, styles and linguistic usages go hand in hand. This success, which is also connected with the worldwide development of postcolonial studies, has foregrounded the difficulty of considering the archipelago in terms of unity as well as the need to appeal to several disciplines in order to respond to the challenge of an obvious diversity. During a previous colloquium, which was organised by Georges Voisset1 and took place in Martinique, participants emphasized the difficulties concerning the representation of the archipelago. According to contemporary philosophy the archipelago symbolises irreducible difference, the dispersion of life, the external pressure to resist the ‘system’, the impossibility to reduce reality to the order of thought, and, consequently, of power. The archipelago is said to be the proof of difference, the manifestation of what refuses the unity of the Self, the signature of the Other in its most radical alterity.2

The theoretical and critical development of studies on the Caribbean, then, maybe stems from the multiplicity of possible approaches (connected with each society, even with each island) and the impossibility to reduce the archipelago to any single disciplinary approach, calling for ever innovating endeavours to understand its complexity in spite of a horizon of homogeneity. In the cultural domain, the problem is even more delicate, especially because the Caribbean space varies according to whether one 1

G. Voisset (ed.). 2003. L’Imaginaire de l’archipel. Paris: Karthala. J.P. Engélibert. 2003. ‘L’Encyclopédiste et le voyeur dans l’archipel. Cinq romans de Michel Rio’ in Voisset 2003: 323. Cf. aussi C. Ruby. 1989. Les Archipels de la différence. Paris: Éditions du Félin. 2

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adopts a perspective that is confined to the archipelago, a perspective that connects the Caribbean with Latin-America, or a perspective that locates it in an Interamerican whole, for instance in New World Studies. As Amaryll Chanady remarks: En plus de constituer un ensemble hétérogène comportant des pays au bord de la faillite perpétuelle et de riches paradis touristiques, des nations indépendantes, des enclaves états-uniennes et des départements d’outre-mer français, aussi bien que des cultures francophones, anglophones, hispaniques et créolophones, les Caraïbes ne peuvent être délimitées géographiquement de façon rigoureuse.3

The epistemological challenge of the archipelago joins the contemporary phenomenon of transnationalism. Contemporary subjects live in and enter into relationships with several communities at the same time. This causes the maxim “no one can have two countries” to be less and less pertinent. The works of a Haitian and Quebec author as Emile Ollivier are exemplary in this respect. In his novel Passages, he represents Florida as the meeting point between Quebec, Haiti and Cuba in such a way that it appears to be a Caribbean place rather than territory belonging to the United States. One could give numerous other examples that illustrate the extension of the Caribbean to the US, but also to Colombia and Venezuela. Encompassing the Caribbean presumes facing the difficulties concerning the notion of an archipelago and a transnationalism that is typical of our contemporary world. In the cultural and esthetical order that occupies us, numerous answers have been given to this problem. Theoretical positions have been diverse ever since Alejo Carpentier’s famous position in ‘La cultura de los pueblos que habitan las tierras del Mar Caribe’.4 He called music the highest common factor of all those countries. Román de la Campa studied A. Benítez-Rojo’s and Édouard Glissant’s position in the third volume of A History of Literature in the Caribbean,

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A. Chanady. 1999. Entre inclusion et exclusion. La symbolisation de l’autre dans les Amériques. Paris: Champion: 314. 4 Alejo Carpentier. January-February 1980. ‘La cultura de los pueblos que habitan las tierras del Mar Caribe’ in Casas de las Américas 118: 2-8.

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which was published by A.J. Arnold.5 The question is whether postcolonial criticism provides these debates with indisputable facts. The first postcolonial studies hardly touched upon the Hispanic and francophone Caribbean (including Haiti, postcolonial since 1804). The francophone Caribbean were primarily present by virtue of theory, from négritude to Fanon and J.S. Alexis’s “magic realism”. One may deplore the selective and decontextualized use that was made of these authors6. It is crucial to reconsider certain postcolonial notions with respect to the non-Anglophone Caribbean. One could not neglect, however, Silvio Torres-Saillant’s warning. He insisted that Caribbean literary history be defined “from the inside out”7. The Caribbean intellectual distrusts exogenous theories that were developed in order to describe the conditions of the literatures belonging to post-industrial society at the end of the twentieth century. Such theoretical perspectives could indeed distort the literary and historical realities of Caribbean societies. This is why European and North-American researchers have to be careful when producing general analyses. Within the context of these investigations into interfaces, it is without a doubt appropriate to distinguish between several approaches that tend to be mixed up, and not only in Caribbean studies: pluridisciplinary studies (associating, for instance, history, sociology, political science and linguistics in the context of the francophonie), interdisciplinary studies (such as comparatist or postcolonial studies) and transdisciplinary studies (using concepts that cross disciplinary specialties: identity, alterity, culture...). We will come back to this further on, but it is clear that the question being asked is one of pertinent disciplinary structures, of levels of study (of the archipelago, X-phone zones, postcolonial territories, regions even in a global world) and of effective general concepts. The attempts to provide answers will hopefully 5

A.J. Arnold (ed.). 1999. A History of Literature in the Caribbean. Vol. 3. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company: 87 ff. In the same volume, see the contribution by Theo D’haen, 303 ff. 6 J.M. Dash. 2003. ‘Postcolonial Thought and the Francophone Caribbean’ in Forsdick, C. & D. Murphy (eds). Francophone Postcolonial Studies. A Critical Introduction. London: Arnold: 232. 7 S. Torres-Saillant. 1999. ‘The Cross-Cultural Unity of Caribbean Literature: Toward a Centripetal Vision’ in Arnold 1999: Vol. 3, 57-78.

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make it possible to contribute to the project of foundation as defined by A.J.Arnold in the introduction to the most recent volume of his History: “a project that inaugurates a new discipline, the comparative literary history of the Caribbean”.8 This book wishes to contribute to this project by examining how this nascent discipline joins (or skirts) certain established disciplinary differences, borrows concepts in order to elaborate its own concepts and, by doing so, provides social science with a wide range of specific tools, which can be reused in other theoretical, critical and historical fields. In this respect, in La isla que se repite,9 Antonio Benítez-Rojo emphasizes the omnipresence of plantation societies from the sixteenth century onwards, the particular rhythm stemming from Africa and the hybridity of Caribbean cultures at the same time. Like Sidney W. Mintz, however, he emphasizes that caribeñidad cannot be defined as a cultural space in the sense of an ensemble of historical traditions. Consequently, if la caribeñidad, the caribbeanness, la caribéanité, de Caribische identiteit, cannot be defined in uniquely cultural terms, what else can we do but study the interfaces between several disciplines belonging to social science? It is there that echoes, reflections and fragments might loom up. Such is the vocation of this book. The Robert of the French language does not attest “Caribéen”. One only finds “Caraïbe” (noun and adjective): “De la population indigène des Antilles et des côtes voisines. Les Indiens caraïbes” and noun: “le caraïbe: groupe de langues amérindiennes de ces régions”. Caribéen, therefore, may be suspected of being – o horror! – an Anglicism, to which the Belgian Francophones rightfully pay far less attention to than the French, who are obsessed with an illusory linguistic purity. We propose to adopt the adjective in order to indicate a quality we are searching for. This quality is not an obvious and simple given. It is a name, the novelty of which corresponds to the order of the project and to what we are searching for, but has not yet been found: the hybrid tools, notions and concepts that allow us to think the Caribbean archipelago. 8 9

Arnold 1999: Vol. 2, 5. Antonio Benítez-Rojo. 1989. La isla que se repite. Hanover: NH.

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Let us now turn to the book’s structure. As its title suggests, the theme that will be dealt with is rather ambivalent. It covers both the search for interfaces between several literatures of the Caribbean space as well as the search for interfaces between the disciplines that deal with these literatures. We all know that literatures and disciplines are cultural practices relating to each other in complex cognitive and institutional ways, and it is not easy to make clear-cut distinctions between both types of interfaces. This holds especially for the Caribbean: a real space as well as a virtual space where analytical and prototypical models of cultural and literary relations and groupings are considered a central issue by writers and scholars and, more often than not, by writers-scholars. And yet, the constraints imposed upon current research practices do not always allow us to step back and to consider a number of more basic questions from a historiographical point of view: When and why did the very conceptualization of the Caribbean emerge? How did it spread in literature and literary scholarship? What where its major tools and how and under what circumstances did they change? This book will not provide final answers, but we hope it may help to render these interfaces more conspicuous and their study more systematic. It will try to do so by focusing on three related areas: the study of interfaces between literary and disciplinary practices, the transversal applicability of a series of analytical tools, and the confrontation of a number of case studies and concrete projects for integrated research. To start with, one should ask oneself what an interface is. However fashionable it may be – as a pragmatic concept or as an ethical attitude – , it should not prevent us from understanding the very process by which ideas, writing techniques, methods and the like, migrate from one cultural practice to another. This process is anything but simple. Firstly because ideas or techniques are aggregates that make it difficult to isolate and describe migrating and non-migrating elements. Secondly because traces of the process of migration are not always easy to discover once this process has come to an end. And yet, it seems indispensable to reflect on this process, at least if we want to achieve an efficient dialogue between the practices involved, and if we want to develop adequate tools for the very analysis of the exchanges

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The Editors

taking place between cultural practices such as literature, criticism and scholarship. Let us pose the question again: what is an interface? Basically, it is a term used in computer science to indicate a shared boundary between various systems or programs. This definition, however, is far from being standardized and its extensions are characterized by conceptual obscurity. This is illustrated by three more or less equivalent terms, i.e. interdisciplinarity, multidisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity. Let us consider these briefly. Interdisciplinarity is often defined as a sort of mutual exchange between different disciplines or practices. In fact, interdisciplinarity often works in a single direction, within a communication structure that may take the form of a metaphor and creates an interaction between a topic and a vehicle. The concept of hybridation, for example, serves as a vehicle for the migration of information from biology and anthropology to literary research, where it may help to expand and change the content of one or more themes (e.g. relations between literary languages, polyphonic narrative structures, etc.). It is important to unravel such metaphors, their appearance, frequency and directions, and to make clear what happens to them once they have been assimilated into the receiving practice. Networks of metaphors create new conceptual structures and, in the long run, they help to construct new theories. Multidisciplinarity, on the other hand, is understood as the study of a single object from the point of view of a number of different disciplines. Caribbean poetry, for instance, can be approached from sociolinguistic, literary, cultural and other viewpoints. As is commonly known, such theoretical diversity is widely spread in the field of Caribbean research. It is undoubtedly partially inspired by the complexity of the field. At the same time, this diversity may be understood as a strategy for splitting up the field in a rather painless way, often for institutional reasons that prevent individuals or research groups from developing common grounds. Transdisciplinarity applies to the study of an object from a point of view that unites and supersedes individual disciplines at the same time. This could, for instance, mean: Caribbean narrative studied from a relational viewpoint that borrows concepts and methods from differ-

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ent disciplines (gender studies, comparative literature, translation studies, media studies, etc.). Or: Caribbean literature approached from a cultural viewpoint that is characterized by a similar choice within cultural studies, comparative anthropology, or field theory. Whatever the advantages or disadvantages of these three types of interfaces are, and whatever the usefulness of a cautious distinction between them is, we can safely assume that interfaces are operational in current Caribbean research. Interfaces are not limited to scholarly practices but cover literary practices as well. Writers have tried to develop cognitive and discursive strategies for the fictional representation of interrelational universes. In this sense, Glissant’s entire work can be considered as a complex interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary move. In addition, one has to mention the very migration of literature itself. The intricate processes of intertextual and intersemiotic transformations that operate on the level of texts or of their constituents (topoi, characters, etc.) in translation, adaptation and rewriting, all involve exchanges and changes on the side of the receptor. Our task is vast and complex, if not overwhelming. No readymade solutions are at hand. This remark also holds for the scope of interfaces: How large or small should they be? How should we structure them and according to which priorities? Should language divisions be considered prior to literary, historical, geopolitical or cultural divisions? And, in view of the fact that intercultural and interdiscursive relations seem to be an in-built mechanism of all Caribbean literatures, what about the scope of the literatures themselves? Such questions probably need continual reflection, but this also applies to other complex literary areas such as the African, American and, why not, European areas. Further, how should concepts be made transferable from one language area to another, from one literature to another, from one discipline to another? In this book, a number of analytical concepts will be discussed at length. What follows is a random selection: process geographies, masking, resignification, scénographie, vectorization. Other concepts are already known but will be critically evaluated and

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adapted to new contexts: neo-baroque, diversalité, literary geography, translation, etc. These concepts will undoubtedly reveal their convenience with regard to specific and less specific repertories. And what about their possible extension and interdisciplinary usage by means of metaphorical and metonymical shifts in scholarly and literary writing? This is open for debate. Comparison is the keyword of this book. Still, a comparative approach is not a panacea for the limits imposed by non-comparatist approaches. But do we have an alternative? From the very moment we decide to step out of the straight corset of national or cultural boundaries and their specific analytical and historical procedures, we face a whole array of methodological problems that lack ready-made answers. Accepting a wider scope is concomitant with accepting a set of questions that will need time and effort to be put into a coherent perspective. This book is the outcome of a conference that was held in the Universities of Lille III and Leuven, Campus Kortrijk, 19-21 May 2005. We wish to express our gratitude to all the persons and institutions actively involved in the organisation of this conference, especially the presidents of the Université de Lillé III (Michel Rousseau) and of the University of Leuven, Campus Kortrijk (Piet Vanden Abeele) as well as the conference chairs (Marie-Madeleine Castellani, Joëlle Prungnaud, Patrick Collard, Theo D’haen, José Lambert). The editorial work has greatly benefited from the help of Hanne Callewaert, Sofie De Smyter and Marjan De Smet. Finally, we thank the following institutions for their generous financial support: FWO-Vlaanderen, K.U.Leuven, Faculty of Arts, K.U.Leuven, Campus Kortrijk, and the Centre de Recherches en Littérature Comparée of the Université Charles-de-Gaulle Lille 3.

Interdisciplinary Exchanges: Aimings and Effects

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Au-delà d’A History of Literature in the Caribbean: Perspectives de recherche qui s’ouvrent Albert-James Arnold University of Virginia À partir de la première histoire littéraire comparée de la région, éditée dans la collection de l’Association Internationale de Littérature Comparée entre 1994 et 2001, quelles sont les perspectives fructueuses de recherche à l’ère où on dit le postcolonialisme en perte de vitesse? Ce papier fournit une analyse détaillée en amont et en aval.

Il y a près de vingt ans que l’Association Internationale de Littérature Comparée, à son congrès de Paris en 1985, a donné le feu vert au comité qui allait produire, entre 1994 et 2001, les trois tomes de la première histoire littéraire à étudier les quatre principales régions linguistiques de l’aire caraïbe: anglophone, hispanophone, francophone et néerlandophone. Avant cette date, personne n’avait songé à inviter ces quatre littératures à dialoguer entre elles. Étant donné que la diffusion des collections de l’éditeur Benjamins reste faible en dehors des zones anglophones ou qui pratiquent facilement l’anglais, il n’est peut-être pas superflu de rappeler ici la structure du projet et ses principales réalisations. Le premier tome a rassemblé quarante-trois textes rédigés par trente-quatre auteurs des Antilles, d’Afrique, d’Europe et d’Amérique du Nord. Le volume se présente en deux parties principales: littérature hispanophone, sous la direction de Julio Rodríguez-Luis; littérature francophone, sous la direction de J. Michael Dash. Comme c’est le cas du tome deux, les deux parties linguistiques présentent des divisions consacrées, respectivement, aux langues de chaque aire culturelle, à leurs régions individuelles – îles et territoires continentaux essentiellement, parfois les diasporas – et, enfin, à leurs traditions

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lettrées et populaires. La deuxième grande division se consacre aux principaux genres littéraires, avec une large part accordée à l’essai, particulièrement important au cours du dix-neuvième siècle. Le deuxième tome se consacre aux littératures anglophone – sous la direction de Vera Kutzinski – et néerlandophone – sous la direction de Ineke Phaf-Rheinberger. Entre ses 672 pages on trouve, répartis selon la même structure qui régit le premier tome, quarante articles par trente-deux auteurs des Antilles, d’Afrique, d’Europe, d’Australie et d’Amérique du Nord. L’usager de ces deux tomes peut faire une lecture transversale – en quelque sorte à travers les quatre littératures – à la recherche du développement de mouvements socioculturels similaires. Les idéologies identitaires qui ont marqué la région tout au long du 20e siècle en sont un excellent exemple. J’y retournerai tout à l’heure. Nous avons veillé à ce que l’on tienne compte du rôle de l’imprimerie dans la région également. Il ressort de l’attention prêtée aux régions à l’intérieur de chaque division linguistique que certaines îles jouent un rôle dominant – Cuba et Haïti dans le cas du premier tome – là où d’autres – la République Dominicaine ou la Guadeloupe – se trouvent dans l’ombre d’une voisine littérairement, sinon politiquement, plus puissante. La division du travail ne nous a pas permis de problématiser de façon adéquate les pressions historiques qui ont produit cette dissymétrie historico-littéraire. On peut espérer qu’une nouvelle génération de chercheurs s’y penchera sérieusement. Une autre dissymétrie se fait remarquer également. Si les littératures anglophone et francophone se trouvent traitées sur un pied d’égalité et avec une sophistication théorique et critique de même envergure, on ne peut pas en dire autant des littératures hispanophone et néerlandophone. Celle-là est l’aînée de la région et jouit d’une théorisation très poussée, alors que celle-ci en est souvent aux premiers coups de pioche qui finiront un jour par révéler les articulations majeures de son développement diachronique. Et cela malgré le fait que l’un des collaborateurs, Wim Rutgers, préparait dans le même temps la première histoire de la seule région littéraire néerlandophone. C’est la raison pour laquelle la principale rédactrice de cette partie du tome deux, Ineke Phaf-Rheinberger, a insisté pour que les deux divisions de son travail portent les sous-titres ‘Prospecting the Field…’, (prospec-

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tions, pour la première partie) et ‘A Mosaic Setting…’ (ou mosaïque, pour la seconde). On y trouvera toutefois des éléments fort utiles pour l’étude de la première langue créole de la caraïbe, le guéné; de la diffusion des contes mettant en scène l’araignée originaire d’Afrique, Anancé, ou encore une survivance des chants dansés d’esclaves à l’île de Curaçao, intitulée Banya. L’usager sera peut-être surpris d’apprendre que les esclaves dans la région néerlandophone ont été alphabétisés par des prêtres catholiques, tandis que les colons et administrateurs protestants, sans parler de l’importante communauté sépharade, gardaient leurs distances, culturellement et religieusement, par rapport aux esclaves. Cette situation bicéphale à l’intérieur des colonies néerlandophones a résulté en deux traditions littéraires, la tradition lettrée – conditionnée par la religion réformée – et la tradition populaire – conditionnée par la religion catholique. Cette dernière a d’ailleurs donné ses premiers fruits dans des magazines catholiques à but didactique auxquels nous avons consacré un article de fond. La tradition des contes de Cha Nanzi à Curaçao nous est d’ailleurs connue aujourd’hui par les efforts d’un prêtre catholique – M.D. Latour – à la fin des années 1930 et leur interprétation par une représentante de la communauté sépharade – Nilda Geerdink-Jesurun Pinto – au début des années 1950. La contribution critique de Joceline Clemencia rendra possible pour la première fois des études comparatistes transversales de ce motif incontournable de la culture populaire de la région antillaise. Certains articles consacrés au Suriname sont plus étonnants encore, surtout celui de Theo Damsteegt, qui fait état de plusieurs langues indiennes qui ont un statut littéraire, à côté du néerlandais, du sranan ou créole de Suriname, ou encore d’un anglais créolisé par les marrons établis en communauté autarcique dès avant la conquête du Suriname par les Pays-Bas. Les résultats sont fort stimulants et doivent susciter de nouvelles études comparatistes qui prennent en considération l’ensemble des Guyanes – du Brésil au Vénézuela – dans leurs relations avec l’aire caraïbe. De telles études finiraient par faire ressortir la spécificité de la Guyane française, notamment, d’une manière qui éclairerait aussi l’appauvrissement qui résulte de l’insistance, en France, sur les seuls DOM-TOM. Cette attitude bien française, institutionnalisée depuis un demi-siècle, privilégie les îles au détri-

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ment des espaces continentaux dont les frontières sont parmi les plus poreuses de la planète. A mon sens, le défaut le plus grave qui empêche le développement sérieux du comparatisme caribéen reste le monolinguisme – particulièrement poussé aux États-Unis, comme chacun sait – mais dont la France souffre plus qu’elle ne veut l’admettre. Nous comprendrons littérairement la Guyane Française quand nous l’aurons mise en relation culturelle avec les Guyanes britannique et néerlandaise – c’est-à-dire, le Suriname – sans parler des régions frontalières du Brésil et du Vénézuela, qui partagent une histoire similaire. Exemple: quand nous préparions A History of Literature in the Caribbean nous n’avons trouvé aucun chercheur capable de traiter plus d’une des Guyanes sur le plan littéraire. Ce triste fait, qui n’a guère changé depuis vingt ans, continue à caractériser la recherche dans notre domaine, où il est normal qu’un spécialiste des Nancy Stories (contes d’Anancé) dans la région anglophone ignore jusqu’à l’existence de la tradition de Nanzi à Curaçao. Passant de la tradition populaire à la tradition lettrée, combien d’études portant sur le roman dit créoliste de la Martinique témoignent d’une connaissance de la tradition de la novela de la caña de la région hispanophone? On retiendra les noms de Enrique Laguerre à Puerto Rico, aussi bien que ceux de Luis Felipe Rodríguez et Félix Pita Rodríguez à Cuba. Passons rapidement à un recensement du troisième tome d’A History of Literature in the Caribbean, qui se consacre aux études proprement comparatistes. Vingt-deux contributions par un nombre égal de collaborateurs, dont trois seulement avaient participé aux tomes un et deux, constituent ce volume de quatre cents pages. Neuf divisions internes présentent les contributions par groupes de deux à trois chacune. Ce troisième tome est beaucoup plus riche sur le plan de la théorie littéraire que les deux autres, qui s’efforcent de montrer, pour les quatre littératures, une évolution diachronique, bien que parfois déphasées les unes par rapport aux autres. Quels nouveaux horizons ce tome présente-t-il? La contribution de Michael Palencia-Roth porte sur l’imaginaire des premiers explorateurs et cartographes, qui avaient d’abord projeté sur la région nouvellement découverte une vision du monde héritée du Moyen-Age chrétien, quand ce n’était celle de l’Antiquité Classique.

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On peut se demander si certaines catégories de l’imaginaire antillais encore aujourd’hui ne fonctionnent pas, dans leur représentation de l’altérité à l’intérieur de leurs sociétés respectives, selon des modèles qui remontent très loin dans le temps en reproduisant des conventions de représentation qui ne sont pas, en soi, spécifiquement antillaises. L’ouvrage récent de Roger Toumson1 ouvre des perspectives fructueuses en ce sens. Déjà à la fin des années 1990 Amaryll Chanady s’était proposé l’investigation de la représentation.2 L’une des rubriques autour desquelles nous avons organisé ce tome de Cross-Cultural Studies a été consacrée au topos de Caliban. Deux des participants au colloque de Lille-Kortrijk y ont contribué des articles remarquables. J’ai nommé Vera Kutzinski et Theo D’haen. L’article de Theo D’haen théorise la migration de beaucoup de chercheurs, que j’appellerai les déçus du postmoderne, vers le postcolonial. Ce phénomène, qui marque la fin des années 1980 et le début des années 1990, a produit plus d’un ouvrage où le critique postcolonial, fraîchement émoulu, interroge le nouvel objet de connaissance en se servant d’outils fournis par Derrida et Lyotard. Theo D’haen a, entre autres, recommandé de relire certains des grands noms de la littérature de la Caraïbe dans la perspective d’un anti-modernisme. Après une analyse perspicace d’Une tempête de Césaire et sa réception critique, il consacre une analyse détaillée au roman de Marina Warner, Indigo, de 1992. Il s’agit de faire valoir cette tentative de récrire au féminin ce topos marqué du sceau du masculinisme moderniste. Dans son compte rendu de ce volume de Cross-Cultural Studies, Roberto Márquez a noté, au sujet de la contribution de Vera Kutzinski, que “[l]e complexe de Caliban […] semble aujourd’hui en retrait par rapport à son autorité allégorique et privilégiée d’autrefois […] face à la critique aigüe de son inflexion masculiniste”.3 Vera Kutzinski 1

Roger Toumson. 2004. L’Utopie perdue des îles d’Amérique. Paris: H. Cham-

pion. 2

Amaryll Chanady. 1999. Entre inclusion et exclusion: la symbolisation de l’autre dans les Amériques. Paris: H. Champion. 3 Roberto Márquez. 1997. ‘Seeing Fragments Whole: “The Unity is Submarine”‘ dans Arnold, A. James (ed.). A History of Literature in the Caribbean. Vol. 3: Cross-Cultural Studies. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins: 85; review (Spring 2000) in Latin American Literature and Arts 60: 83-86.

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avait déployé une grande sophistication critique et théorique dans sa présentation du topos de Caliban, de Rodó à Fernández Retamar et de Césaire à C.L.R. James et Kamau Brathwaite. Elle fait valoir le fait que le masculinisme antillais critiqué par moi-même et d’autres est, avant tout, hétérosexuel et que l’altérité à laquelle il s’oppose est autant homosexuelle que féminine. Dans ce sens, son commentaire de la collaboration de Miguel Barnet et Esteban Montejo, dans la préparation de la Biografía de un cimarrón, en 1966, porte sur l’appropriation du texte par l’anthropologue qui allait fonder le genre de la novelatestimonio. Comme Theo D’haen, mais à partir d’exemples différents, elle interroge la nature de l’autorité de la narration. Nos deux collègues, par ces interventions publiées l’une à la suite de l’autre, ont ainsi contribué largement à théoriser en profondeur ce topos sur lequel Theo D’haen et Nadia Lie ont préparé, la même année, tout un volume dans la perspective de la littérature générale.4 Un survol rapide d’une autre des rubriques de ces Cross-Cultural Studies servira à ouvrir le débat sur les problématiques qui doivent nous retenir aujourd’hui. Intitulée en anglais “Literary Creoleness and Chaos Theory” (ou “Antillanité littéraire et Théorie du chaos”), elle porte essentiellement sur l’œuvre théorique de notre regretté ami Antonio Benítez-Rojo et celle d’Édouard Glissant. Un critique chevronné – Román de la Campa5 – et un doctorant – Keith Sprouse6 – se font face autour de La Isla que se repite de Benítez-Rojo et du Discours antillais de Glissant. Notons au passage qu’au moment d’écrire leurs ouvrages respectifs Glissant et Benítez-Rojo ne se connaissaient pas encore et ne s’étaient pas lus. Si la théorie du Chaos était bien dans l’air du temps vers 1990, elle n’occupe plus la place ni n’exerce plus l’attirance pour les transfuges du postmoderne qu’elle avait encore au milieu de cette décennie. La théorie de la culture-rhizome, par contre, reste vivace et c’est à celle-là que je consacrerai mes observations ce matin. Benítez-Rojo et Glissant avaient, tous les deux, lu Deleuze et 4

Theo D’haen & Nadia Lie (eds). 1997. Constellation Caliban: Figurations of a Character. Amsterdam & Atlanta: Rodopi. 5 Román de la Campa. 1997. ‘Resistance and Globalization in Caribbean Literature: Antonio Benítez-Rojo and Édouard Glissant’ dans Arnold 1997: 87-118. 6 Keith Alan Sprouse. 1997. ‘Chaos and Rhizome: Introduction to a Caribbean Poetics’ dans Arnold 1997: 79-86.

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Guattari et chacun s’y est penché – peu ou prou – dans sa tentative d’élaborer une théorie archipélagique de la Caraïbe. Dans Le Rhizome, de 1976, et dans le chapitre liminaire de Mille plateaux, 1980, Deleuze et Guattari avaient articulé une théorie des systèmes complexes, ou système de systèmes. L’intérêt pour les spécialistes de la Caraïbe est évident: l’archipel présente une variété hallucinante de phénomènes culturels qui résultent toutefois d’un processus historique qui reste similaire dans ses grandes lignes. La mise en place d’un système économique organisé autour de l’usine (l’ingenio espagnol) qui reposait sur une main d’œuvre servile importée d’Afrique et – à la suite de l’abolition de l’esclavage, de différentes régions d’Asie – a créé la société créole: langues, religions, cuisine et, à plus longue échéance, la matière première des arts et des lettres. Le problème principal, tout au long du vingtième siècle, est celui de dépasser le morcellement de ce processus selon les idiosyncrasies des quatre grandes puissances européennes qui se sont partagé la région: Espagne, France, GrandeBretagne et Pays-Bas. Ajoutons qu’à l’intérieur de la région il reste, encore aujourd’hui, plus facile de connaître la littérature de l’ancienne métropole que celle de l’île voisine. La méconnaissance des uns par les autres reste aussi l’une des caractéristiques marquantes de la région. J’ai déjà soulevé deux de ces phénomènes tout à l’heure: l’un concerne la culture religieuse qui conditionne la future littérature des descendants d’esclaves; l’autre, le monolinguisme qui empêche de reconnaître l’existence de traditions littéraires (populaires ou lettrées) parallèles. Benítez-Rojo a conclu à la prééminence de la polyrythmie qui, selon lui, sous-tend les formes culturelles – littéraires ou autres – de la Caraïbe. Pour lui c’est l’espace socioculturel qui prime les manifestations discrètes où nous constatons des différences à la surface (ou, si l’on préfère, dans la texture poétique). Comme le Barbadien Brathwaite, qui avait écrit que l’unité est sous-marine (phrase reprise par Glissant dans Le discours antillais), Benítez-Rojo pose une unité socioculturelle qui produirait, par des effets de polyrythmie, des phénomènes extrêmement diversifiés. Pour Glissant, c’est la Relation qui prime, c’est-à-dire l’ouverture du système local à d’autres systèmes. La pensée de Glissant est foncièrement optimiste, les oppositions socioculturelles à l’intérieur de l’aire caraïbe ne représentant que des

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accidents de parcours, pour ainsi dire. Román de la Campa traite les principaux essais de Glissant face aux théoriciens de la postcolonialité – principalement Bhabha et Mbembe – afin d’examiner la valeur de sa notion de transversalité. Il cite cette phrase du Discours antillais: C’est ainsi que nous avons appris, non la transcendance ni l’universel sublimé, mais la transversalité. Il nous a fallu bien du temps pour le savoir. Nous sommes les racines de la Relation. Des racines sous-marines: c’est-à-dire dérivées, non implantées d’un seul mât dans un seul limon, mais prolongées dans tous les sens de notre univers par leur réseau de branches.7

A partir de cette observation fondamentale, Román de la Campa dresse une critique du projet postcolonial qui a évolué, en une dizaine d’années, des prises de position et surtout des concepts postmodernes: On voit difficilement à quel point les approches postmodernes et postcoloniales entreprennent une analyse spécifique et compréhensive du contexte historique contemporain, par rapport à la Caraïbe en particulier.8

C’est sur cet appel à une nouvelle historicisation de la région caraïbe que l’on quittera ce survol du troisième tome d’A History of Literature in the Caribbean, afin de passer à la problématique que le colloque s’est proposé d’examiner. Si interfaces il y a entre les îles et territoires de l’archipel caraïbe, de quelle nature sont-elles et comment s’articulent-elles? Dans la perspective où je me place, le risque qui guette beaucoup de comparatistes en ce moment est celui de l’hybridité heureuse. Je m’explique. Les pressions historiques qui œuvrent en faveur d’une politique culturelle de consensus – c’est le but du mouvement faussement baptisé politiquement correct aux USA – se fait sentir très fortement en Amérique du Nord et, à un degré moindre, à l’intérieur de l’Europe des 25. De puissantes forces assimilatrices favorisent les recherches – et surtout les cours universitaires – qui priment l’hybridité, le métissage (ou encore, la créolité) conçu comme la résultante d’un processus considéré comme terminé: la fin de l’histoire coloniale, en somme. Ces forces présentent des faces différentes des 7 8

Édouard Glissant. 1981. Le Discours antillais. Paris: Seuil: 134. De la Campa 1997: 112.

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deux côtés de l’Atlantique. Depuis une bonne dizaine d’années, une orthodoxie s’est implantée aux États-Unis autour de la nouvelle trinité Genre (Gender), Classe, Race. À la limite, c’est-à-dire à l’échelon le plus bas de la recherche universitaire, on envoie à la collection que je dirige aux Presses de mon université des manuscrits qui se proposent de traiter le domaine de la culture transnationale en chantant les louanges des vertueux métis de tous acabits et de toutes origines opposés aux mauvais blancs. Le schème interprétatif ne dépasse pas, parfois, la lutte entre le Bien et le Mal dont Roger Toumson a retrouvé le schéma dans le livre cité plus haut. Il va sans dire que ces manuscrits ne sont pas édités chez nous, mais il est tout aussi vrai que d’autres Presses, universitaires ou commerciales, et qui connaissent le marché du livre, les éditent et les vendent. Ce qui plus est, les livres en question reçoivent d’excellents comptes rendus dans un circuit universitaire qui met en place cette nouvelle pseudoscience interprétative à l’intention des professeurs du 1er cycle. Leurs étudiants, arrivés au 3e cycle, produisent des thèses de la même trempe. Je viens de décrire le processus classique selon lequel une idéologie se reproduit à l’intérieur d’un système de représentation très étendu, certes, mais plus ou moins clos. Cette même idéologie est d’ailleurs curieusement anhistorique, malgré ses prétentions post-coloniales, ce qui a parfois donné des résultats assez drôles. Entre 2002 et 2003, la Revue de littérature comparée a publié deux articles qui portent sur l’amalgame qu’a produit cette trinité idéologique chez des chercheurs, essentiellement nord-américains, au cours des années 1990. Le roman intitulé Je suis Martiniquaise a vu le jour à Paris en 1948, dans le sillage de la départementalisation des vieilles colonies des Antilles. Près d’un demi-siècle plus tard, Mayotte Capécia – dont le nom orne la couverture du roman – s’est trouvée portée aux nues par les thuriféraires de la nouvelle orthodoxie postcoloniale. Leurs œillères idéologiques les empêchaient de voir qu’un roman fort mal écrit – le fait d’un auteur et d’un éditeur racistes, colonialistes et misogynes! – véhiculait une vision du monde diamétralement opposée à la leur.9 Le premier de ces deux articles a paru dans un 9

A. James Arnold. Avril-Juin 2002. ‘Frantz Fanon, Lafcadio Hearn et la supercherie de “Mayotte Capécia”’ dans Revue de littérature comparée 302: 148-66; A.

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numéro consacré à Un espace comparatiste: la Caraïbe, ce qui semble faire preuve d’une résistance institutionnelle à de tels amalgames chez les comparatistes sérieux qui siègent à la RLC. Une remarque préliminaire d’ordre méthodologique: à l’optimisme foncier de Benítez-Rojo et Glissant on a opposé l’objection qu’ils ne peuvent rendre compte des luttes interethniques qui caractérisent la région depuis l’époque coloniale. Ce fait est réel mais curieux aussi, étant donné que tous les deux avaient reçu une solide formation dans les sciences humaines. Le problème relève du climat postmoderne dans lequel leurs œuvres marquantes ont été éditées. Face à cette problématique, on a tout intérêt à se tourner vers les historiens de l’école des Annales. Adaptant leurs méthodes aux conditions historiques qui ont prévalu aux Antilles, il faudrait pouvoir différencier entre cycles brefs (dont dépendent les accès de violence communautaire que l’on constate à travers la région) et cycles longs (qui correspondent à l’ouverture vers l’extérieur qui se dégagent des essais de Glissant et Benítez-Rojo). L’œuvre romanesque d’un Wilson Harris, qui puise dans une vision mythique de l’expérience caribéenne, tend à noyer les cycles brefs dans l’océan des cycles longs. Un Naipaul, par contre, donne une vision de type réaliste aux violences qui caractérisent les cycles brefs, de telle sorte qu’il est impossible, à partir de son seul œuvre, d’envisager un cycle long qui opérerait une transformation positive. Dans cette perspective l’œuvre romanesque de Glissant est lumineuse, car – du Quatrième siècle en 1964 à Toutmonde en 1993 – il arrive à faire s’interpénétrer les deux cycles à l’intérieur d’une fiction qui suit les descendants de deux familles datant des premiers temps de la colonie. Le livre de Celia Britton Édouard Glissant and Postcolonial Theory,10 est fortement axé sur cette problématique. Le livre que Dash a consacré à Glissant,11 dans son dernier chapitre, interroge le rôle de la théorie du Chaos dans les romans récents de Glissant mieux que tout autre. Mais pour trouver James Arnold. Janvier-Mars 2003. ‘“Mayotte Capécia”: De la parabole biblique à Je suis Martiniquaise’ dans Revue de littérature comparée 305: 35-48. 10 Celia Britton. 1999. Édouard Glissant and Postcolonial Theory (New World Studies). Charlottesville & London: University Press of Virginia. 11 J. Michael Dash. 1995. Édouard Glissant. Cambridge Studies in African and Caribbean Literature. Cambridge & London: Cambridge University Press.

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une articulation de la littérature antillaise qui corresponde aux modèles de société que les intellectuels antillais eux-mêmes reconnaissent, nous ferions bien de lire le sociologue Bolland qui, au début des années 1990, a avancé la théorie que les sociétés antillaises se créolisent progressivement, en passant à travers des périodes de conflit et de crises qui sont constitutives du processus de créolisation.12 En un mot, et sans se référer à l’école des Annales, Bolland rend compte également des cycles brefs et des cycles longs. Résumons: Pour entrer dans une nouvelle ère, les études portant sur la région caribéenne pourraient utilement s’articuler autour des trois axes auxquels j’ai fait allusion et que je m’efforce de préciser ici: • d’abord, les chercheurs sont appelés à pratiquer sérieusement plus d’une langue de la région et à connaître plus d’une littérature; bref, les littéraires doivent se faire comparatistes; • ensuite, les recherches littéraires se doivent de faire entrer en ligne de compte les travaux d’historiens, de sociologues et d’ethnologues qui se penchent sur les faits sociaux qui caractérisent la région; en un mot, force nous est de devenir pluridisciplinaires; • troisièmement, les littéraires, où qu’ils se situent dans le monde, doivent reconnaître que la région antillaise est née de la première mondialisation de la planète et qu’elle participe déjà – quoi qu’on veuille – à la mondialisation présente; bref, il faut dépasser la perspective de la littérature régionale pour saisir le fait transnational qui concerne la région tout entière. Ailleurs dans ce volume on pourra lire mon analyse d’un exemple de cette première mondialisation qui allait mettre en marche le système de production où le fait créole plonge ses racines, sans parler de ses rhizomes. Pour le présent, contentons-nous de présenter deux problématiques qui se trouvent au centre du débat sur le post(-)colonialisme. La première est celle des mouvements identitaires qui secouent la région antillaise durant la première moitié du vingtième siècle; la seconde est celle qui, ces dernier temps, a résulté en de nombreux pro12 O. Nigel Bolland. 1992. ‘Creolization and Creole Societies: A Cultural Nationalist View of Caribbean Social History’ dans Hennessy, A. (ed.). Intellectuals in the Twentieth-Century Caribbean. Vol. 1. Basingstoke: Macmillan Caribbean: 50-79.

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jets de recherches qui examinent séparément littérature féministe et littérature masculiniste à travers la région. L’examen des mouvements identitaires (poesía afro-antillana hispanophone, indigénisme haïtien, avant même la trop célèbre négritude martiniquaise ou le phénomène contemporain et analogue à Trinidad, sans parler du réveil nègre à Curaçao) s’est typiquement fait à l’intérieur d’une seule culture linguistique ou par rapport à une seule culture de comparaison. On n’a guère dépassé le stade où l’on s’interroge si, oui ou non, la négritude césairienne aurait influencé la poétique de Brathwaite (Barbade) ou celle de Frank Martinus Arion (Curaçao). Ce qui nous manque est un survol de la région qui prendra en considération les interventions de l’extérieur qui ont précipité la prise de conscience par les déshérités de l’imbrication de classe et de race – en un mot, d’ethnoclasse – qui a déterminé leur rôle dans la société de la post-plantation. Aussi longtemps que les rapports de force qui ont caractérisé la dynamique de la société créole en un endroit donné n’auront pas été troublés, les relations de profonde inégalité sociale perdurent sans qu’on les questionne en profondeur. Dès qu’un regard étranger à la société créole se porte sur ces mêmes rapports de force pourtant, les déshérités commencent à se voir par les yeux de l’autre. Dès lors, la prise de conscience est possible. Étant donné qu’à travers la Caraïbe les plus déshérités présentent aussi le phénotype le plus africain, ce réveil s’est généralement fait au nom d’une référence à l’Afrique-mère, qu’il s’agit de retrouver en se servant des moyens du bord. Le premier de ces phénomènes est aussi le plus paradoxal. Il s’agit du réveil cubain qui s’est fait connaître sous le nom de poesía afro-antillana. Vera Kutzinski a étudié à fond les conditions socioéconomiques imposées par les États-Unis au début du siècle et qui ont suscité, chez les blancs créoles de Cuba, une réaction culturelle qui a fait appel à la composante nègre de la culture cubaine. On en trouvera les éléments indispensables au chapitre cinq de son livre Sugar’s Secrets.13 Le seul poète de renom de ce groupe qui pouvait se réclamer 13 Vera Kutzinski. 1993. Sugar’s Secrets: Race and the Erotics of Cuban Nationalism (New World Studies). Charlottesville & London: University Press of Virginia.

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d’une ascendance africaine est Nicolás Guillén, qui est aussi le plus grand d’entre eux. L’élément sur lequel je dois insister est celui de l’intervention extérieure – en l’occurrence, celle des États-Unis – qui bouleversa l’ordre socio-économique et aussi racial, de l’île. Une cause similaire a provoqué des réactions plus typiques à Haïti entre les deux guerres mondiales et à Trinidad, pendant la seconde guerre mondiale. Les États-Unis ont occupé Haïti de 1915 à 1934 et y ont introduit, comme à Cuba, une attitude raciste conditionnée par leur propre expérience de ségrégation raciale. Le résultat est connu. Comme à Cuba, où des intellectuels nationalistes se sont groupés autour de Fernando Ortiz, l’ethnologue Jean Price-Mars rallia à Haïti les intellectuels autour du drapeau de l’indigénisme. Il faut souligner aussi le fait que ce sont des intellectuels issus d’une élite de couleur – le plus souvent mulâtres plutôt que nègres – qui constituent le fer de lance de l’idéologie nationaliste en opposition à l’occupant. Notre collègue Michael Dash a traité ce phénomène littéraire dans des études très remarquées.14 On trouvera dans les nouvelles de Naipaul, éditées sous le titre Miguel Street en 1959, des détails fort intéressants sur le bouleversement qu’ont opéré les forces armées américaines à Trinidad pendant la seconde guerre mondiale. Contrairement à la situation à Cuba et en Haïti, la Grande-Bretagne a invité les États-Unis à fortifier sa colonie en temps de guerre afin de décourager les incursions allemandes possibles. Les résultats auprès du petit peuple, objet des nouvelles de Naipaul, ressemblent fort à ceux constatés ailleurs. L’élément constant est l’arrivée sur place d’une puissance économique qui bouleverse l’économie locale et les relations entre ethnoclasses qu’elle avait favorisées. Exception faite de l’écriture, essentiellement réaliste chez Naipaul, on constate des ressemblances au niveau des relations sociales avec le monde dépeint par les créolistes martiniquais une génération plus tard. En effet, dans le cas de la Martinique et de la Guadeloupe, il s’agissait d’une occupation militaire en temps de guerre, mais par la puissance coloniale elle-même. On sait quel fut le résultat chez les 14 J. Michael Dash. 1998. The Other America: Caribbean Literature in a New World Context (New World Studies). Charlottesville & London: University Press of Virginia.

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jeunes professeurs groupés autour d’Aimé Césaire au Lycée Schoelcher de Fort-de-France. Le mouvement de négritude, en tant qu’idéologie consciente de sa fonction collective, naît à ce moment-là et sous cette pression historique précise. Le cas de Curaçao est différent à bien des égards. Il s’agit de l’arrivée, vers 1918, de la société Royal Dutch Shell, qui bouleversa l’économie et encouragea l’immigration de beaucoup de travailleurs étrangers, de Trinidad notamment. Aucune intrusion ni occupation militaire, mais une rupture abrupte des habitudes coloniales héritées du temps de l’esclavage. Les dates de cette transformation de l’économie de Curaçao correspondent parfaitement à celles de l’occupation américaine d’Haïti. Aart Broek en a rendu compte dans le tome deux de A History of Literature in the Caribbean.15 L’espace nous manque pour développer cette question passionnante et peu connue. Nous ne pouvons qu’appeler de nos vœux des études comparatistes futures qui en feront la synthèse nécessaire. Pour finir, soulevons la nécessité de traiter ensemble les écrits littéraires des hommes et des femmes de la région. Si le mouvement féministe des années 1970 a fait œuvre utile et nécessaire en attirant l’attention sur les écrivains femmes, le moment est largement dépassé où cette séparation des sexes, sinon des genres (genders) puisse se justifier. À l’heure actuelle, nous ne sommes pas près de comprendre la nature de la dynamique – elle aussi héritée des temps de l’esclavage – qui a conditionné les rapports des femmes et des hommes issus de l’esclavage, avec la société dominante, c’est-à-dire avec l’élite de la colonie. Une théorie et une critique post(-)coloniales qui évitent d’articuler une vue d’ensemble des fractures entre discours des femmes et discours des hommes de la Caraïbe risque de se condamner à court terme à l’insignifiance. Qui répondra à ces questions: • Pourquoi à la Guadeloupe, à l’heure actuelle, est-ce que les voix de femmes prédominent, tandis qu’à la Martinique voisine la littérature est dominée à peu près totalement par les hommes?

15 Aart G. Broek. 2001. ‘Prewar Prose and Poetry in Papiamentu’ dans Arnold, A. James (ed.). A History of Literature in the Caribbean. Vol. 2. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins: 633-642.

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Pourquoi, à travers l’archipel caraïbe, constate-t-on un hypermasculinisme de la part des écrivains hommes, tandis que les femmes déplorent ces mêmes attitudes? (La charge subversive de la chutney soca intitulée ‘Lick Down Me Nanny’, de Shalini Puri, à Trinidad, repose précisément sur cette dynamique.) • Pourquoi est-ce que l’homosexualité, surtout masculine, est si férocement réprimée par la culture littéraire, ainsi que par la culture populaire, un peu partout dans l’aire culturelle caraïbe? Autant de questions qui attendent leur résolution au cours de colloques futurs.

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Violence and Sexual Others in Caribbean Literary History Vera M. Kutzinski Vanderbilt University, The Center for the Americas Since the 1960s, several prominent writer-critics from different parts of the Caribbean have insisted that analytical and political categories such as cultural identity in the Caribbean (and, throughout the plantation Americas) are highly unstable. But their ideas have conspicuously not been extended to discussions of gender and sexuality. Caribbean literary histories, and most Caribbean literary scholarship, has systematically excluded issues of non-normative sexualities from critical debate, despite the existence of a growing body of contemporary Caribbean fiction (and some poetry) on transgenderism, transvestism, and homosexualities. In this paper, I will speculate on the reasons for this exclusion and focus on the potential that literary representations of non-normative sexualities offer for re-imagining theories about “Relations” (Glissant) and the “person” (Harris).

Non-normative genders and sexualities rarely find their way into a Caribbean studies research agenda. In his introduction to the 2003 essay collection The Culture of Gender and Sexuality in the Caribbean, Linden Lewis summarizes the situation: sexual orientation is “very much a taboo subject, especially in the English-speaking Caribbean”, and “[a]lternative sexual orientations such as transvestism, bisexuality, and transsexuality are almost unmentionable in the academic literature of the Caribbean”.1 With few exceptions, such as the 2000 special issue of the journal Small Axe,2 Caribbeanist literary scholarship generally follows this (in Lewis’ words) “very cautious 1

Linden Lewis (ed.). 2003. The Culture of Gender and Sexuality in the Caribbean. Gainesville: University Press of Florida: 10. 2 See especially Aparajíta Sagar. 2000. ‘AIDS and the Question of Memory: Patricia Powell’s A Small Gathering of Bones’ in Small Axe 7: 28-43; and Lawson Williams (pseud.). 2000. ‘Homophobia and Gay Rights Activism in Jamaica’ in Small Axe 7: 106-111.

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and conservative” path. It is worth noting, for instance, that the 1996 Routledge Reader in Caribbean Literature, compiled by Alison Donnell and Sarah Lawson Welsh, carefully eschews categories such as sexuality, homosexuality, gay, lesbian, and queer. This pattern is curious, for non-normative genders and sexualities are frequently at issue in the works of noted contemporary Caribbean writers, among them H. Nigel Thomas, Lawrence Scott, Patricia Powell, Dionne Brand, Michelle Cliff, Robert Antoni, and Shani Mootoo.3 With this context as a starting point, I will address three principal questions in my talk today: (1) Why should we take special notice of novels and poems with a thematic focus on non-normative genders and sexualities? (2) How might we approach such representations? (3) What significance might they have for Caribbean literary history? Through readings of a key passage from Shani Mootoo’s 1996 novel Cereus Blooms at Night, I will show how literary representations of so-called third genders and sexualities offer us fruitful opportunities to test the limits of the analytical frameworks on which our field frequently relies, notably postcolonial theories of performance, hybridity, and resistance.4 I will argue that novels such as Mootoo’s propose alternatives to identity as the central organizing principle of human communities. As literary scholars and literary historians, we must take note of such alternatives because how we imagine communities affects the way in which we construct the narratives that underlie literary, and other, histories. 3 See, for instance, H. Nigel Thomas. 1993. Spirits in the Dark. Concord (Ontario): House of Anansi Press; Lawrence Scott. 1992. Witchbroom. London: Heinemann; Idem. 1999. Aelred’s Sin. London: Allison & Busby; Patricia Powell. 1994. A Small Gathering of Bones. Westport, Connecticut: Heinemann; Idem. 1998. The Pagoda. New York: Alfred A. Knopf; Dionne Brand. 1996. In Another Place, Not Here. New York: Grove Press; Michelle Cliff. 1987. No Telephone to Heaven. New York: Dutton; Robert Antoni. 1997. Blessed is the Fruit. New York: Henry Holt; and Shani Mootoo. 1993. Out on Main Street and Other Stories. Vancouver: Press Gang Publishers. 4 I have in mind here especially Judith Butler’s (1993) influential Gender Trouble Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York & London: Routledge, and, more recently, Andrew Parker and Eve Kosofsky’s (1995) Performativity and Performance. New York & London: Routledge, as well as Geraldine Harris’s (1999) Staging Femininities. Performance and Performativity. Manchester & New York: Manchester University Press.

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These ideas are by no means new. Even before the publication of Benedict Anderson’s notorious Imagined Communities, much had been written on the topic. In the Caribbean context, Wilson Harris and Édouard Glissant in particular have insisted, in novels and essays written since the 1960s, that the ideas of identity formation derived from Hegelian paradigms cannot adequately account for the human person and distort the kinds of relations on which communities can and should be based.5 It is urgent, I believe, that we extend their thinking to gender and sexuality issues, which their work typically does not address, at least not directly. It is urgent because gender conflict and sexual violence pervade today’s Caribbean societies to a disproportionately large extent. The work of feminist scholars and recent research into Caribbean carnival, dancehall culture, and popular music amply confirm the existence of a culture of verbal and physical violence against women and against homosexuals, to say nothing of socalled third genders.6 Creating a broad awareness of this situation is an important first step; but our work cannot stop there. Literary scholars must participate more in formulating alternatives to social violence in the Caribbean by showing that such alternatives already exist in the region’s literary texts. In his novel Carnival, Wilson Harris has articulated most succinctly what is at stake here: to put into practice the belief that “[v]iolence is not the cornerstone of a civilization”.7 I would now like to turn to Mootoo’s Cereus Blooms at Night to look closely at one of several dramatic accounts of cross-dressing, which tell us a great deal about the limits of the language of identification.8 The focus in this particular scene, which occurs fairly early on 5 Harris (1967), for instance, first distinguishes “the obscure human person” from “the ideology of the ‘broken’ individual” in Tradition, the Writer and Society. Critical Essays. London: New Beacon Books: 27-28. See also Glissant’s (1990) Poétique de la relation (Poétique 3). Paris: Gallimard. 6 See, for example, Timothy Chin. 1997. ‘“Bullers” and “Battymen”: Contesting Homophobia in Black Popular Culture and Contemporary Caribbean Literature’ in Callaloo 20(1): 127-141; and Kamala Kempadoo. 2004. Sexing the Caribbean. Gender, Race, and Sexual Labor. New York & London: Routledge. 7 Wilson Harris. 1985. Carnival. London: Faber & Faber: 90. 8 For an earlier version of this reading, see Kutzinski. Summer 2001. ‘Improprieties: Feminism, Queerness, and Caribbean Literature’ in Macalester International 11: 165-206.

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in the novel, is on Nurse Tyler, the novel’s narrator. Tyler is a male nurse employed at the alms house in Paradise, Lantanacamara, Mootoo’s fictionalized Trinidad. The alms house doubles as a nursing home for the indigent. In the following scene, we witness Tyler dressing up in a female nurse’s uniform – a white dress and “nylon stockings the colour of black tea”.9 The uniform is a gift from Mala Ramchandin, an old woman in his care. Mala, known in her youth as Pohpoh, is also the novel’s protagonist whose story Tyler at length recounts. To encapsulate that story in a nutshell for those of you unfamiliar with the novel, suffice it to say that Mala and her younger sister endured years of sexual abuse at the hands of their father, after their mother fled Paradise with her female lover. Mala eventually kills her father and ends up being institutionalized because she is believed to be mad and violent. This is how she meets Tyler, about whom we know very little except that he is not a heterosexual white male and that he likes to dress in women’s clothes. Here is the first part of this lengthy passage. I reached for the dress. My body felt as if it were metamorphosing. It was as though I had suddenly become plump and less rigid. My behind felt fleshy and rounded. I had thighs, a small mound of belly, rounded full breasts and a cavernous tunnel singing between my legs. I felt more weak than excited but I was certainly excited by the possibilities trembling inside me. I hugged the dress […]. I unbuttoned my shirt and felt an odd shame that my mammary glands were flat. I dropped my pants. My man’s member mocked me yet was a delight to do battle with when pulling the stockings against my thighs. I had no corset to hold them up, but it was enough to see the swirl of hairs on my calves and thighs trapped under the nylon. There was something delicious about such confinement. I held up the dress and slowly stepped into it, savouring every action, noting every feeling. I powdered my nose, daubed rouge on my cheeks and carefully smeared a dollop across my lips. I looked down at my stockinged feet and the dress, pressed it with my flat palms against my body and worried that I might look disappointingly ridiculous to my benefactress. I took a deep breath. “Ready?” I called out in a loud whisper (76-77).

As a narrator who is also a character in the novel, Tyler has at least two distinct audiences – Mala and the reader – , and he performs dif9

Shani Mootoo. 1996. Cereus Blooms at Night. New York: Grove: 75. All other page references are in textual parentheses.

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ferently for each of them, at the level of plot and at the level of narrative. In what I have quoted thus far, Tyler does not actually perform for Mala, at least not yet, for he is still behind the room divider. At the level of plot, his invisibility makes the passage a dress-rehearsal for an anticipated performance. At the narrative level, Tyler performs for the reader, using interior monologue to grant the reader a privileged glimpse behind the room divider. Although Tyler identifies himself mainly as Mala’s chronicler, he is by no means a self-effacing narrator; in fact, he is quite the exhibitionist in many respects. In the above passage, he renders himself hyper-visible by playing out in sexually charged language the performative gender “possibilities” that the nurse’s uniform represents to him. While imagining bodily changes renders him “weak” with excitement, it is his transformed appearance that produces outright “delight.” To Nurse Tyler, wearing women’s clothes ultimately does not mean becoming a female rather than a male. Far more pleasurable than a biological transformation is the dissonance produced by the clash of physical realities (his penis and his flat chest) with the female anatomy the nurse’s uniform helps him imagine. Tyler delights in creating visible disjunctions between biological sex and performed gender identities. He plays the role of woman in the same way that he performs the professional role of a male nurse, by using gender conventions as if they were accessories, like the bright scarf he wears with his more masculine outfits. Because the notion of gender as performance de-naturalizes the meanings imputed to bodily/biological differences, it helps us understand why Tyler manipulates gender conventions: he is, in his own words, “trying to understand what was natural and what perverse, and who said so and why” (48).10 Can might safely assume that he has gained such understanding and that his narrative is simply the vehicle for imparting his knowledge to us? Regardless of whether we read this 10 According to Heather Smyth, the novel “plays with the designations ‘perverse’ and ‘natural’ in relation to the ‘natural’ world of plants and insects that surrounds Mala’s house”: “This linking of the metamorphosis of sexuality with the larger metamorphosis of the natural world serves to authorize the location of these marginal characters in Caribbean space” (Heather Smyth. [1999]. ‘Sexual Citizenship and Caribbean-Canadian Fiction: Dionne Brand’s In Another Place, Not Here and Shani Mootoo’s Cereus Blooms at Night’ in ARIEL 30(2): 149).

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scene as evidence of perversion or celebrate it as a triumphant liberation from the constraints of social norms, it remains sensationalistic. For one, it is explicitly autoerotic. Tyler arouses himself with the very conventions we would have him resist: “There was something delicious about such confinement,” he remarks. For another, Tyler’s excitement can also be taken as a turn-on for a reader, which would make this scene one of seduction. Mootoo constructs Tyler’s dressrehearsal as a semi-pornographic scene in which an invisible self (the reader) gazes upon the hyper-visible body of an Other. Tyler playfully offers up to our willing gaze images of sexual transgression and exotic foreignness which explicitly eroticize what most readers would identify as a scene of resistance to ideological confinement. The conceit of secrecy embodied in the room divider helps create a false sense of intimacy and complicity between actor and audience here: we think that we can know Tyler through the images of sexual and cultural otherness he projects here. Our desire for such knowledge may well blind us to the manipulations in which Mootoo engages as she makes her narrator reflect back to us images that tell more of ourselves than about the character. The distinction between being an Other constructed and objectified by an audience’s gaze and a subject, a person, comes into view when we consider what actually happens once Tyler actually steps out from behind the room divider. When Tyler finally becomes visible to Mala, he slips away from the hold we thought we had on him. The delight he displays earlier yields to self-doubt as the passage becomes considerably less theatrical and performative. When I stepped out from behind the curtain, I saw that Miss Ramchandin had made herself busy. She was piling furniture in front of the window. She glanced at me, made no remarks and kept right on building the tower. I walked over to her and stood where I was bound to be in her vision. At first I felt horribly silly, like a man who had put on women’s clothing for sheer sport and had forgotten to remove the outfit after the allotted period of fun. I felt flatfooted and clumsy. Not a man and not ever able to be a woman, suspended nameless in the limbo state between existence and nonexistence. She had already set a straight-back chair on the table in front of the window. On top of that she placed a stool and was now preparing to stand on her bed and place an empty drawer on the pinnacle.

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Just as I was hoping the tower would come crashing down and extinguish me forever, a revelation came. The reason Miss Ramchandin paid no attention to me was that, to her mind, the outfit was not something to either congratulate or scorn – it simply was. She was not one to manacle nature, and I sensed that she was permitting mine its freedom. I took the drawer from her, climbed up onto her bed, and placed it at her tower’s peak (77).

It is difficult even to talk about this passage as a performance at all, other than in narrative terms, because Mala hardly pays any attention to Tyler, except to “glance” at him briefly. In refusing to fix Tyler in her gaze, Mala declines to judge his performance. It is not odd that she remains silent as well, since she has largely forsaken human speech at this point in the novel. In her refusal to assume the play the part of audience, Mala refuses the power of the gaze to confer upon Tyler the identity of an actor, or any identity, for that matter. In the process, she also declines to assume an identity for herself. Rejecting the power of identitifcation is tantamount to refusing to pay the price it would exact, which is the loss, or curtailment, of one’s ability to imagine human relations outside of categories of selfhood and otherness. If turning away from Tyler is what creates true intimacy with him, that gesture marks the limits of performance’s analytical usefulness. The act of turning away “deconstructs” (as Tyler puts it later) the very idea of performance by calling attention to two things: how performance regulates the interactions between characters, and between characters and readers, and what sorts of interactions it precludes. The lesson Mala imparts to Tyler, and to us, is that the only way not to construct others is to refuse being a self. This is not an easy lesson. Unlike Mala, we as readers cannot easily avert our gaze, for that would mean to stop reading. But we can re-focus it and take note of certain changes that occur in Tyler’s narrative once he realizes that Mala did not intend for him to make a mere spectacle of himself. Mootoo now re-directs our attention away from Tyler and toward the furniture tower that Mala has been building throughout this scene and which almost completely blocks the room’s window. We realize that most of the passage is, in fact, about what Mala does, which we are bound to not to take seriously as long as we accept that she is just a crazy old woman. If what we are witnessing

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here is a play at all, it might be best liked to a Beckett play, in which each of the two characters is initially engaged in a set of unrelated activities: Mala is busy building her tower; Tyler, actually does very little beyond walking, standing around, and waiting. Their activities combine when Tyler, alert to why Mala is ignoring him, decides suddenly to give up reveling the self-doubt that Mala’s inattention has generated and participates in the construction of the furniture tower. It is at the point where their efforts join that the oddly chaotic sculpture moves from the sidelines to center stage. As mere background description suddenly emerges as the main attraction, we realize that our task in this scene is to focus not on the characters and assign them identities – for they already have those – but on the relationship that forms between them. The tower makes accessible the terms of this relationship. It shows us how a “madwoman” and a “pervert” reclaim what Tyler calls a feeling of being “ordinary”.11 It is tempting to read the tower as a monument to the creative collaboration that has developed out of an initially adversarial situation: “Every night Miss Ramchandin would built, and every morning [following Sister’s orders] I would deconstruct” (78). This does not, however, take into account that the tower is not only unstable (which Sister sees as dangerous) but also temporary. What it stands for is an ongoing imaginative process of construction and deconstruction (not destruction). Tyler compliance with Sister’s order to dismantle the tower every morning is what actually what keeps alive a creative process in which both he and Mala are equal participants. The tower itself is but a momentary manifestation of that process. It is part of an elusive semiotic system that shares the space of the page with a linguistic one, with which it is always in tension. This semiotic system is in evidence elsewhere in the novel in the form of drawings that interweave with words, running alongside and underneath them. (Illustrations, by contrast and convention, exist in a visually separate space.) The novelistic text that is created through the dynamic interaction of these two systems of signs functions much like this scene does as it 11

Ordinariness should not be confused with normalcy. As Judith Butler notes, “normalizing the queer would be, after all, its sad finish” (Judith Butler. 1997. ‘Against Proper Objects’ in Weed, Elizabeth & Naomi Schor (eds). Feminism Meets Queer Theory. Bloomington: Indiana University Press: 25.)

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continuously focuses and refocuses our readerly gaze so that our mind stays engaged with the inconsistency, unpredictability, and the everprovisional signs and shapes through which the imagination announces its working and through which characters refuse to be identified by norms that regulate what a postcolonial subject should be and how he, or she, ought properly to behave – intellectually, emotionally, socially, and sexually. Still, our own language makes it difficult to grant Tyler and Mala their “ordinariness,” which is a more precise way to talking about their humanity. Consider for instance, that Tyler’s position as a first-person narrator liberates him (her?) from ever having to call himself anything other than “I”. It is only the reader who struggles with the frustration that no personal pronoun consistently suits this narrator. The passage on which I have commented at some length is a crucial scene in Cereus Blooms at Night: it shows what sort of relationship with Mala, the novel’s purported madwoman, makes it possible for Tyler to be much more than the usual sympathetic witness and chronicler of a life rent by emotional violence and sexual abuse. It is worth noting here that Mootoo’s novel constructs Tyler not just as witness but as a care giver in the broadest sense, presenting an alternative to the texts such as Jamaica Kincaid’s My Brother, Patricia Powell’s A Small Gathering of Bones, and even Lawrence Scott Aelred’s Sin, where non-normative characters, especially male homosexuals, are patients afflicted with AIDS and other diseases.12 Among these characters, Tyler decidedly stands out, and not just because he does not die. Neither does Mala, and her recovery, which includes her return to speech, is very much due to Tyler’s efforts, as a nurse and as “the one who ended up knowing the truth, the whole truth, every significant and insignificant bit of it. And I am the one who is putting it all to good use by recording it” (7). Tyler’s narrative is, in a sense, Mala’s “letter to the world” (in Dickinson’s words). It is a response to the letters her sister Asha had written her after Asha escaped her fa12 Tyler is a literary descendent of Michelle Cliff’s (1987) Harry/Harriet from No Telephone to Heaven. New York: Dutton. For a discussion of Harry/Harriet as a queer healer see Nada Elia. 2000. ‘“A Man Who Wants to be a Woman”: Queerness as/and Healing Practices in Michelle Cliff’s No Telephone to Heaven’ in Callaloo 23(1): 352-65.

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ther’s reign of incestuous terror, communications for which Mala longs throughout but does not know exist until the novel’s end. Tyler’s epistolary narrative seeks to restore that broken thread of communication between Mala and “any existing relatives”, or, for that matter, “anyone else [who] might come forward and pay the old lady a visit” (7). “To pay a visit” to a novelistic character does not mean to confuse fiction with life. What it means is to treat that character’s fictional existence as we would an actual person’s. Tyler’s narrative, and Mootoo’s novel, pleads with its readers to take care to notice Mala’s “ordinariness” underneath the labels that less careful readers affix to her: madwoman, murderer, incest victim, freak. To argue that novels such as Cereus be included in literary histories of the Caribbean amounts to beating a dead horse. The problem is not so much that such texts are excluded, but that their inclusion has made little difference to Caribbeanists’ methodologies. As a result, we reproduce in our own critical narratives the very identity labels that many writers, in the Caribbean and elsewhere, reject as more damaging than enabling. Placing such texts in separate categories does not solve the problem. The line between celebrating difference and pathologizing it is a fine one. Plus the last thing anyone needs is yet another set of specialized subcategories, such as gay, lesbian, and transsexual Caribbean writers. We also know just how misleading such categories can be: Mootoo may be a lesbian, but she did not write a lesbian novel, even though Cereus does include two lesbian characters. We cannot assemble literary histories by using categories that suggest characters and narrators, including first-person narrators such as Tyler, to be somehow unproblematically continuous with their authors’ persons (and vice-versa) when we know such imputation of autobiographical realism on postcolonial novels to be false. What are the alternatives? We may not be able to do without abstractions and categories. But we can refuse to use identity labels as epistemological shortcuts that, at once glance, tell us everything we need to know – about individuals, ethnic groups, nations, and, yes, critical methodologies. Because identity labels simulate knowledge, they obstruct imaginative access to the complexities of human lives and of lived communities. In Cereus Blooms at Night, Mootoo imag-

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ines an impossibly inclusive community in which is there are, in the end, no selves, only persons. In this community, otherness has no meaning because everyone is potentially an other, Tyler no less so than Mala herself. These are the kinds of imagined communities academic scholarship should be able to articulate more fully by developing methodologies that test, rather than just apply, critical theories. Imposing and policing identity labels is its own form of violence; and it is no more benign for not having visible and tangible consequences.

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The Museum and the Opera-House: Modernity and Identity in Alejo Carpentier’s Los pasos perdidos Maarten van Delden Rice University The relationship between Latin America and Europe is a constant theme in the Latin American (and Latin Americanist) intellectual tradition. In this paper, I begin by providing a brief overview of some of the dominant interpretations of this relationship, such as the reading of Latin American culture as fundamentally contestatory, parodic, and subversive in its appropriation of European models, the less-oftendiscussed view of Latin American culture as more cosmopolitan and universal than European culture, and the recent deconstructive turn, which attempts to dismantle the very concept of a Latin American identity. In the second part of my paper, I will develop an alternative perspective on this relationship through short commentaries on novels by Alejo Carpentier, José Lezama Lima and Severo Sarduy. Focusing on the ambivalent relationship of these three Cuban writers to modernity, my reading will avoid the temptation of turning the Latin American text into an embodiment of the critic’s own preferred aesthetic, political or epistemological views.

Carpentier and His Critics Alejo Carpentier’s Los pasos perdidos (1953) is widely viewed as a paradigmatic text of both Caribbean and Latin American literature.1 The emblematic quality of Carpentier’s novel derives in large part from its thematization of the relationship between periphery and me1

Roberto González Echevarría describes Los pasos perdidos as “a book in which all the important narrative modalities in Latin America, up to the time when it was published, are contained and analyzed as in a kind of active memory” and as “an archive of stories and a storehouse of the master-stories produced to narrate from Latin America”. See Roberto González Echevarría. 1990. Myth and Archive: A theory of Latin American narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 3. For a reading of Los pasos perdidos as a text that sums up key concerns of Caribbean discourse, see Antonio Benítez-Rojo. 1992. The Repeating Island: The Caribbean and the Postmodern Perspective. Durham & London: Duke University Press: 186-196.

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tropolis, a constant preoccupation in the Latin American literary tradition. This relationship, which has been conceptualized in terms of oppositions such as those between modernity and pre-modernity, civilization and primitivism, and Europe and Latin America, has been extensively commented upon in the large body of critical works devoted to Carpentier’s novel. In discussing the journey made by the novel’s anonymous protagonist and narrator from a North American metropolis (closely resembling New York) to a remote South American jungle community, many critics have concentrated on the opposition between the degraded, inauthentic way of life found in the city and the primordial state of bliss and harmony experienced by the inhabitants of Santa Mónica de los Venados.2 Alongside this first reading of the novel, which tends to take the narrator’s understanding of his own story at face value, there has arisen a more sophisticated counter-interpretation focused on demystifying the meaning of the 2

I will mention a handful of representative readings of Carpentier’s novel. Donald L. Shaw states that “the theme of Los pasos perdidos is connected with the contrast between two modes of existence; one is characterized by anguish, monotony, and frustration, the other by serenity and self-fulfillment. In other words, the novel is about the authentic and the inauthentic life.” See Donald L. Shaw. 1985. Alejo Carpentier. Boston: Twayne Publishers: 55-56. Wendy Faris’s interpretation of the novel focuses on “an elaborate set of dualities that particularizes the division between civilization and wilderness.” She argues that Los pasos perdidos describes a battle between two “systems” or “war zones”, with “the mythic, Edenic indigenous absolute” on one side and “the historical, compromised, colonized contingencies” on the other. See Wendy Faris. 1990. ‘Marking Space, Charting Time: Text and Territory in Faulkner’s “The Bear” and Carpentier’s Los pasos perdidos’ in Pérez Firmat, Gustavo (ed.). Do the Americas Have a Common Literature? Durham & London: Duke University Press: 246. Néstor Ponce reads the novel as a voyage of initiation that takes the narrator from an alienated reality to a mythic world. See Néstor Ponce. 2002. ‘La verdad de los libros: los caminos iniciáticos en Los pasos perdidos’ in Ponce, Néstor (ed.). La représentation de l’espace dans le roman hispano-américain. Nantes: Temps: 179190. Andrés Bansart’s eco-critical reading of the novel centers on the opposition between processes of disintegration, which the narrator experiences in New York, and processes of integration, which he discovers on his journey to the South American interior. See Andrés Bansart. 2002. ‘Una lectura eco-crítica de Los pasos perdidos’ in Franco, Jean (ed.). La vorágine de José Eustasio Rivera; Los pasos perdidos de Alejo Carpentier. Montpellier: Université Paul-Valéry: 219-236. There are innumerable additional examples in the critical literature on Los pasos perdidos of readings organized around these kinds of dichotomies.

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journey depicted in the novel. These critics insist on the impossibility of the narrator’s longed-for return to a simpler, purer existence, arguing either that the narrator cannot escape the grip of his own cultural (de)formation or that the imagined space of plenitude simply does not exist.3 But they have neglected to develop a similarly critical perspective on the concept of modernity, which is a far more complex and various phenomenon in Los pasos perdidos than has been acknowledged in the available commentaries on the novel. The purpose of this essay is to highlight Carpentier’s fractured, conflictive, and wideranging depiction of modernity, and to show, therefore, that a reading that argues that the primitive community of Santa Mónica de los Venados is not a utopia remains incomplete without a parallel account of the degree to which the modern metropolis is not a dystopia. I will demonstrate that Carpentier’s reading of modernity is not at all onedimensional; in fact, I will distinguish four different dimensions of modernity in the novel: capitalist/bourgeois modernity; bohemian modernity; the modernity embodied in cultural institutions such as museums, libraries, and symphony orchestras; and the modernity of underdevelopment.4 Capitalist/Bourgeois Modernity The opening sections of Los pasos perdidos stand as one of the most vivid and memorable expressions in the Spanish language of the horrors of modern urban existence. The novel’s narrator describes the 3 The most important contribution to a demystified reading of the protagonist’s journey has been made by Roberto González Echevarría. See Roberto González Echevarría. 1990. Alejo Carpentier: The Pilgrim at Home. 2nd edition. Austin: University of Texas Press: 155-189; and Idem. 1985. ‘Introducción’ in Carpentier, Alejo. Los pasos perdidos. Roberto González Echevarría (ed.). Madrid: Cátedra: 15-53. For other interpretations that present the narrator’s quest for authenticity as an illusion (or delusion), see Frances Wyers. June 1992. ‘Carpentier’s Los pasos perdidos: Heart of Lightness, Heart of Darkness’ in Revista Hispánica Moderna 45(1): 84-95; Daniel Pageaux. 1984. ‘Temps, espaces romanesques et histoire dans Los pasos perdidos d’Alejo Carpentier’ in Bessière, Jean (ed.). Récit et histoire. Paris: Presses universitaires de France: 139-157; and Mark I. Millington. March 1996. ‘Gender Monologue in Carpentier’s Los pasos perdidos’ in MLN 111(2): 346-367. 4 For an earlier attempt on my part to explore these issues in Los pasos perdidos, see Maarten van Delden. 2002: ‘Los rasgos olvidados de la modernidad de Alejo Carpentier’, in Franco 2002: 417-431.

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great metropolis where he lives and works as a giant machine that imprisons its inhabitants and deprives their lives of meaning. Images of incarceration and enslavement lace the long passages in which the narrator captures the feel of urban life. Daily existence is dominated by mechanical routines and by the unforgiving struggle for survival. Everything revolves around making money and as a result modern culture is marked by phoniness, by fake rituals, and by an absence of meaningful beliefs. In this world, one can neither aspire to become a true individual nor hope to be part of a genuine community. Everything – the urban architecture, the movements of the crowds in the streets, the blank faces of the congregants at a church service – points to a loss of vitality, an inability to forge authentic human connections. The overall sense of alienation is reflected in the protagonist’s experience of time, which for him is either circular and repetitive or vacant and fleeting. Time eludes the protagonist’s grasp or weighs too heavily on him. He seems to be either running after time or busy killing it. The sense of confusion and isolation is summed up in the narrator’s situation at the start of the novel: he doesn’t believe in the work he does for an advertising agency, and he no longer loves his wife. His misery is such that he seems to live without living. In sum, Carpentier’s reading of capitalist/bourgeois modernity stresses familiar ideas of depersonalization, mechanization, and one-dimensionality. But the notion that life in the modern metropolis is marked by an allencompassing uniformity is refuted by the novel itself, which devotes long passages to the evocation of an alternative world within modernity, that is, the world of bohemia.5

5

I devote far less space to the analysis of capitalist/bourgeois modernity than to its other dimensions for the simple reason that this aspect has already received a great deal of critical attention. For an account that helpfully summarizes the main features of the standard reading of modernity in Los pasos perdidos, see Santiago JuanNavarro. 2002. ‘Las cárceles imaginarias de Sísifo: Visión de la urbe arquetípica en Los pasos perdidos’ in Ponce 2002: 167-177.

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Bohemian Modernity The narrator speaks of a “ciudad dentro de la ciudad”,6 a nocturnal, underground city where one can briefly escape from the tyranny of time. It is a hidden realm of pleasure and excess. At one point in the novel the narrator visits a night-club called Venusberg, where the walls are covered with surrealist paintings and the dance-floor is “un intríngulis de cuerpos metidos los unos en los otros” (309-310).7 Whereas capitalist/bourgeois modernity is characterized by regimentation, bohemian modernity thrives on a complete rejection of order and discipline. People escape into this alternative space in search of the freedom of which they have been robbed by the everyday world of work and family. It is where the boredom of daily existence seems momentarily suspended. The narrator seems alternatively seduced and repelled by the bohemian life-styles of his friends. His ambivalence appears with particular clarity in his relationship with Mouche, his mistress. Mouche exercises a powerful attraction over the narrator, who speaks of the pull of his lover’s “exigente y egoísta animalidad” (92).8 Overall, however, he treats Mouche with such contempt that the reader ends up thinking poorly of him rather than of her. For the narrator, Mouche represents the degradation of belief in the modern world. Her work as an astrologer signals her rejection of conventional, bourgeois rationality. Although the narrator shares with his mistress the desire to find alternatives to the dominant outlook of modernity, he expresses nothing but disdain for the path she has chosen. “Muy asustados por su tiempo debían estar los hombres,” he observes, “para interrogar tanto a los astrólogos, contemplar con tal aplicación las líneas de sus manos, las hebras de su escritura, angustiarse ante las borrajas de signo negro” (91).9 He notes that astrology is Mouche’s 6 Carpentier 1985: 73. Translated into English as “a city within a city.” See Alejo Carpentier. 1989. The Lost Steps (tr. Harriet de Onís). New York: Noonday Publisher: 10. All subsequent page references to the Spanish original will appear in parentheses in the text. Translations of quotations into English will be provided in subsequent footnotes. I have made some changes in de Onís’s translation. 7 “[…] a jigsaw puzzle of bodies fitted into one another” (253). 8 “[…] imperious, selfish animality” (25). 9 “People must be very uneasy [...] to consult the astrologers so often, to study the lines of their palms so carefully, the strokes of their handwriting, shivering at the menace of unpropitious tea leaves” (24-25).

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“manera actual de hacer poesía” (92).10 One infers that it is only because she is incapable of writing real poetry that Mouche resorts to this degraded mode of creative expression. All in all, the most prominent feature of her personality is her utter lack of originality. Mouche is a bohemian Madame Bovary, someone whose thoughts and emotions are all second hand. The narrator points out that Mouche “se había formado intelectualmente en el gran baratillo surrealista” and he expresses his irritation at “su dogmático apego a ideas y actitudes conocidas en las cervecerías de Saint-Germain-des-Prés” (92).11 Mouche is incapable of responding to the world around her in a natural, spontaneous fashion; she filters everything through a hackneyed set of literary references. When the narrator raises the possibility of making a trip to South America, Mouche immediately begins to hold forth on los grandes tópicos del anhelo de evasión, la llamada de lo desconocido, los encuentros fortuitos, en un tono que algo debía a los Sirgadores Flechados y las Increíbles Floridas del Barco Ebrio (98).12

But Mouche has read more than just French literature: at one point on the journey to the interior of the unnamed South American country to which they have traveled, she notes that “aquí, los temas del arte fantástico eran cosas de tres dimensiones; se les palpaba, se les vivía” (182),13 thus proving that she has read none other than ... Alejo Carpentier himself!14

10

“[…] present method of writing poetry” (25). “[…] had acquired her intellectual formation in the great Surrealist bargain basement […] her dogmatic devotion to ideas and attitudes that she had picked up in the cafés of Saint-Germain-des-Prés” (25). 12 “[…] the desire for escape, the call of the unknown, chance encounters, in a tone which revealed the influence of the Arrow-Pierced Rowers and the incredible Floridas of the Bateau ivre” (31). 13 “[…] here the themes of fantastic art were three-dimensional; they could be felt, lived” (118-119). 14 Mouche is quoting from Carpentier’s prologue to his novel El reino de este mundo (The Kingdom of this World, 1949). Carpentier published an expanded version of this essay under the title ‘De lo real maravilloso americano’ (1967) in Tientos y diferencias. Montevideo: Arca: 96-112. 11

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Bohemians strive for a freedom, naturalness, and spontaneity that are suppressed in bourgeois society. It is for this reason that they cultivate unconventional behavior and thinking. In Mouche’s case, however, the rejection of everything labeled bourgeois strikes the narrator as unconvincing. He constantly harps on the clichéd nature of her ideas. And he insists that “siempre atenta a su bienestar, colocando por encima de todo sus placeres y pequeñas pasiones, Mouche me resultaba el arquetipo de la burguesa” (188).15 Still, it would be a mistake to conflate the categories of the bourgeois and the bohemian. At a gathering of his bohemian friends near the beginning of the novel, the narrator expresses his irritation at a certain phoniness he detects in their attitudes. Yet he also makes it clear that he likes their playfulness and inventiveness. He admires their “alta acrobacia de la cultura” and the way their conversations leap “de lo trascendental a lo raro, del teatro isabelino a la gnosis, del platonismo a la acupunctura” (97).16 In the end, the narrator much prefers the fun and artistry of his bohemian friends over the utilitarian, materialistic ethic of bourgeois/capitalist society, with its exclusive fixation on questions of “cantidad y beneficio” (97).17 High Cultural Modernity In the opening sections of Los pasos perdidos, Carpentier captures yet another dimension of modernity, one that is embodied in institutions such as museums, universities, libraries, symphony orchestras, and bookstores. We might call this the world of high cultural modernity. It shares with bourgeois modernity an emphasis on order and respectability, and with bohemian modernity its orientation toward the arts and creative expression. But it is distinct from these two other domains. When, at the beginning of the novel, the narrator is granted a vacation from his work, it is this world that opens its doors to him. Not 15

“[…] with her eye always on her own well-being, with her way of putting her own pleasures and petty passions above everything else, Mouche was my idea of the archetypal bourgeoise” (124). 16 “[…] high cultural acrobatics […] from the transcendental to the eccentric, from Elizabethan drama to Gnosticism, from Platonism to acupuncture” (30). 17 “[…] volume and profit” (31).

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knowing exactly what to do with his free time, the narrator goes for a stroll in the streets of the city. He stops in front of Brentano’s bookstore and contemplates the books on display in the window. Later, he enters a concert hall and listens to part of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. When he returns outside, he runs into an old friend, the Curator of the Museum of Organography, a museum that is “orgullo de una venerable universidad” (83).18 The Curator invites the narrator to his home, where he asks him to undertake a mission for the museum: to travel to South America “para conseguir unas piezas que faltaban a la galería de instrumentos de aborígenes de América” (88).19 At first, the narrator turns down the Curator’s invitation. He had once done research on “los orígenes de la música y la organografía primitiva” (83),20 but he has spent so many years since then as a musician-forhire in the entertainment and advertising industry that he no longer feels worthy of undertaking such a weighty scholarly endeavor. Still, a day later he returns to the museum to sign the contract for the project and collect the money for his trip. The narrator never questions the mission on which he is about to embark. One might ask, for example, what right the museum has to dispatch someone to a foreign country in order to “secure” (the term is significantly imprecise) a set of musical instruments to add to its collection. The legitimacy of the enterprise is not an issue for the narrator, nor for anyone else in the novel. Los pasos perdidos never questions the history of plunder in which modern Western museums have participated. On the contrary, the Curator is presented as a person of absolute integrity, and the institution for which he works is wrapped in an aura of respect and prestige. Carpentier’s novel has consistently been read as offering a blistering attack on modernity. And yet it unblinkingly accepts the right of modern nations to appropriate for their own purposes the cultural artefacts of primitive societies. Insofar as the narrator does not interrogate the institution of the Western museum, it is clear that he identifies with at least some of the values of modernity. Why, then, have Carpentier’s critics focused 18

“[…] the pride of a prestigious university” (19). “[…] to secure certain examples still missing from the collection of aboriginal American musical instruments” (22-23). 20 “[…] the origins of primitive music and organography” (19). 19

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exclusively on the dystopian side of modernity in Los pasos perdidos? It seems likely that the narrator’s use of different modes of representation for the various dimensions of modernity is responsible for this oversight in the critical commentaries on the novel. In the sections devoted to bourgeois/capitalist and bohemian modernity he writes in a moralizing fashion, constantly judging the world around him. He forcefully expresses his rejection of these dimensions of modern society. Yet when the text focuses on the world of high cultural modernity, the judgmental stance disappears. Or rather, the narrator’s moralizing gaze is no longer focused on the external world; instead, it targets the narrator himself. His meeting with the curator makes him feel ashamed of having abandoned his true vocation as a musicologist and of having sold out to the material concerns that predominate in bourgeois/capitalist society. As a result of this shift in focus, the domain of high cultural modernity appears not in the foreground of the narrative, but as the background to the protagonist’s inner turmoil. The sociocultural world in which this section of the narrative takes place is made to appear less central to the narrator’s overall representation of modern society. And yet, the narrator’s sense of shame results from his awareness of the discrepancy between the high cultural norms embodied in the institution of the museum and what he himself has made of his life. It is clear, therefore, that the protagonist is nowhere near as disengaged from the values of modernity as he – and the novel’s critics – think. The Modernity of Underdevelopment21 The narrator of Los pasos perdidos emphasizes the uniformity and monotony of life in the North American metropolis. But his narrative, as we have seen, includes elements indicating that modernity is more various and complex than he himself recognizes. In his description of the South American city where he makes his first stop on his journey 21

See Marshall Berman. 1988. All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity. New York: Penguin, for a discussion of what the author calls “the modernism of underdevelopment”. Berman defines this concept via an exploration of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century writings on St. Petersburg. Some of the themes he examines, such as the idea of Petersburg’s “warped and weird modernity” (181), are echoed in Carpentier’s novel.

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to locate the primitive musical instruments sought by the Museum of Organography the focus changes noticeably. For the narrator, Latin American modernity is characterized by a deep sense of dislocation and contradiction. His initial impression of the city (which resembles Caracas) is that everything seems out of place. Yet soon afterward he begins to develop a thematic strand that appears to undermine the notions of displacement and incongruousness. In this other reading, the tropical city is depicted as the locus of a recovered harmony, of an organic interconnectedness between the people and their surroundings. A reporter whom the narrator meets on the plane comments on the jumbled, chaotic character of the city where they are about to land: “me hablaba con una mezcla de sorna y cariño de aquella capital dispersa, sin estilo, anárquica en su topografía, cuyas primeras calles se dibujaban ya debajo de nosotros” (105).22 The impression of a lack of style results from the eclectic combination of different styles: in the narrator’s description of the city “los patios de las casas coloniales” are juxtaposed with “la mejor voluntad funcional de Le Corbusier” and “las torres de las iglesias modernas” appear next to “los cimborrios de comienzos de siglo” (105-106).23 In the South American city, history does not unfold in a linear fashion, as it appears to do in the metropolitan nations. This is reflected both in the acceleration of time that occurs here, and in the superimposition of historical eras that evolve sequentially elsewhere. The narrator notes that progress, surprisingly, sometimes moves faster in the periphery than in the metropolis: Aquí las técnicas eran asimiladas con sorprendente facilidad, aceptándose como rutina cotidiana ciertos métodos que eran cautelosamente experimentados, todavía por los pueblos de vieja historia (106).24

22

“[…] he spoke with a mixture of contempt and affection of that sprawling capital, anarchic in its layout, without style, whose first streets were becoming visible beneath us” (37). 23 “[…] the patios of colonial houses […] Le Corbusier’s best functional designs […] the spires of modern churches […] turn-of-the-century domes” (38). 24 “Techniques caught on with amazing ease, certain procedures being accepted as a matter of course when they were still being cautiously tried out in countries with older histories” (39).

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The same sense of the discordant marks the country’s political conflicts, which leave the narrator with the impression of “una especie de batalla librada, por encima del tiempo entre gentes que vivieran en siglos distintos” (118).25 A lawyer whom the narrator meets in the hotel where he is staying points out that in this country “por tradición, estamos acostumbrados a ver convivir Rousseau con el Santo Oficio, y los pendones al emblema de la Virgen con El Capital” (118).26 The simultaneous appropriation of belief systems that are regarded as incompatible in the European tradition turns out to be the way ideologies function in a peripheral nation. The passages that develop the theme of Latin America’s heterogeneity are linked to a meditation on the conflict between nature and civilization. As the narrator’s plane approaches the city, he notices, jutting here and there into the urban landscape, “la inconmovilidad de peñones de roca negra [...] inescalables, solitarios, pulidos, con algo de tiro de aerolito salido de una mano celestial” (105).27 These sharp incrustations of the natural world into an urban space act as a striking reminder of the tenuousness of the human presence in this part of the world. The narrator presents the South American city as a human construction that fails, in spite of all its efforts, to tame the surrounding natural world. The symbol of nature’s power to upset human calculations is “el polen maligno” that often circulates in the city air (107).28 This pollen, also known as “el Gusano” (107),29 eats away at the artefacts of civilization: Una mañana, las ampolletas de suero de un hospital amanecían llenas de hongos; los aparatos de precisión se desajustaban; ciertos licores empezaban a burbujear dentro de las botellas; el Rubens del museo era mordido por un parásito desconocido que desafiaba los ácidos (107).30 25

“[…] a kind of battle between people living in different centuries” (51). “[…] because of our tradition, we are accustomed to living with Rousseau and the Inquisition, with the Immaculate Conception and Das Kapital” (51). 27 “[…] the immobility of the cliffs of black rock […] unscalable, stark, polished, like aerolites thrown by some celestial hand” (38). 28 “[…] a baleful pollen” (39). 29 “[…] the Worm” (39). 30 “One morning the ampoules of serum in a hospital were found to be full of mold; precision instruments were not registering correctly; certain liquors began to 26

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The huge downpours that periodically afflict the region, causing the sewerage system to break down and traffic to be disrupted, further highlight the city’s rickety condition, in spite of “la abundancia y prosperidad de la urbe ejemplarmente legislada en sus textos” (106).31 In drawing attention to this struggle between nature and culture, the narrator underlines the elements of artificiality and contrivance in Latin American modernity. Unexpectedly, the narrator’s journey, which he had initially resisted undertaking, turns into a voyage of self-discovery. In the South American city, the protagonist of The Lost Steps discovers not only a world that is absurd, contradictory, and incongruous, but also one that is warm, intimate, and harmonious. This other dimension takes the narrator back to his childhood, which he had spent in an unnamed Spanish-speaking country. Two sets of phenomena precipitate the narrator’s re-encounter with the past: first, certain elements in the natural world, and second, the persistence in the modern era of the country’s past. When he disembarks from the plane, the narrator experiences a sudden expansion of the senses: “hay como una luz recobrada, un olor a espartillo caliente, a un agua de mar que el cielo parece calar en profundidad, llegando a lo más hondo de sus verdes” (108).32 His pleasurable response to these elements of the natural environment opens the door to a journey into the deepest interior of his own self. He begins to recover his native language: “el idioma que hablé en mi infancia; el idioma en el que aprendí a leer y solfear” (108).33 The scent of basil in a store reminds him of the perfume on the skin of a girl with whom he used to play as a child. But the memories that flood the narrator’s being are not only of a private, individual nature. They are linked to the narrator’s discovery that the inhabitants of the South American city have preserved an entire way of life and a bubble in the bottle; the Rubens in the national museum was attacked by an unknown parasite immune to sprays” (39). 31 “[…] the abundance and prosperity of the city, whose legislation was exemplary on the statute books” (38). 32 “[…] there was something like a recovered light, the smell of hot esparto grass, of sea water that the sky seems to permeate to the depths of its green” (40). 33 “[…] the language I had talked in my infancy; the language in which I had learned to read and solfa” (40-41).

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set of traditions that have been cast aside in modern societies. This contact with the past, which in turn links human beings to the rhythms of nature, is captured in the description of a bakery that the narrator encounters on a stroll through the city. Noticing the “calor [...] de masa recién horneada” coming from a nearby basement, the narrator stops “con deleitosa sorpresa” (115).34 He promptly develops a contrast between two different “cultures of bread”. On the one hand, we have the North American city he has just left behind, “donde el pan, amasado no se sabía dónde, [era] traído de noche en camiones cerrados, como materia vergonzosa” (115).35 On the other hand, we have the old way of baking bread, which the narrator encounters in the Latin American city, and which for him evokes a continuous tradition linking the present with classical antiquity: el pan que se rompe con las manos, el pan que reparte el padre luego de bendecirlo, el pan que debe ser tomado con gesto deferente antes de quebrar su corteza sobre el ancho cuenco de sopa de puerros o de asperjarlo con aceite y sal, para volver a hallar un sabor que, más que sabor a pan con aceite y sal, es el gran sabor mediterráneo que ya llevaban pegado a la lengua los compañeros de Ulises” (115-116).36

This paean to bread demonstrates the narrator’s allegiance to a richly sensuous and deeply ordered culture that has managed to steer clear of the forces of abstraction represented by modernity. To the narrator of Los pasos perdidos, the South American city appears now as an inorganic and artificial jumble of cultural fragments, now as an organically integrated entity connected to a deep and continuous cultural tradition. These two opposing visions are combined in the scene in which Mouche and the narrator attend a perform34

“[…] the breath of bread just out of the oven” [...] “in delighted surprise” (47-

48). 35 “[…] where bread, kneaded God knows only how and where, [was] brought in by closed trucks as though it were some shameful thing” (48). 36 “[…] the bread one breaks with one’s hands, the bread the father hands around after he has blessed it, the bread that should be received with deference before breaking its crust into the broad bowl of leek soup or sprinkling it with oil and salt to recover a taste which, more than the taste of bread with oil and salt, is the old Mediterranean taste already on the tongue of Ulysses’ comrades” (48).

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ance of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor at the local opera-house.37 At first, the narrator zeroes in on the elements of artifice, contrivance, and fakery in both the performance and the behavior of the audience. As the curtain goes up, he notices “lo desusado de una escenografía de falsas perspectivas, mentideros y birlibirloques” (111).38 In the meantime, the audience seems as interested in itself as it is in the performance: apenas salido de páginas muy sabidas, [la música] sólo servía de fondo melodioso a un vasto mecanismo de miradas intencionadas, de ojeadas vigilantes, cuchicheos detrás del abanico, risas ahogadas, noticias que iban y venían, discreteos, desdenes y fintas, juego cuyas reglas me eran desconocidas, pero que yo observaba con envidia de niño dejado fuera de un gran baile de disfraces (113).39

The elaborate architectural details of the opera-house and the theatrical eroticism of the female members of the audience reinforce the sense of display and visual excess – and hence of incongruousness, since we must not forget that this entire performance is taking place in a city that is barely able to master its natural environment. And yet it is precisely in this setting that the narrator experiences one of his Proustian moments of involuntary memory. Surprisingly, the rickety stage-set fails to arouse the narrator’s irony: “Me sentía dominado más bien por un indefinible encanto, hecho de recuerdos imprecisos y de muy remotas y fragmentadas añoranzas” (111-112).40 A surge of childhood recollections rises up in him. In particular, he recalls one 37

For an incisive reading of this scene, see Roberto González Echevarría. 1997. ‘Latin American and Comparative Literatures’ in Cowan, Bainard & Jefferson Humphries (eds). Poetics of the Americas: Race, Founding, and Textuality. Baton Rouge & London: Louisiana State University Press: 58-62. 38 “[…] the outmoded scenography with its false perspectives, its claptrap, its trick devices” (44). 39 “[…] as soon as the music became unfamiliar, it served only as a background for a vast machinery of meaningful looks, vigilant glances, whispers behind fans, smothered laughs, gossip, flirtations, feigned disdain, a game whose rules I did not know, but which I watched with the envy of a child looking at a masked ball to which he has not been invited” (45). 40 “I felt myself yielding to an indefinable charm, a fabric of vague, remote memories and partly remembered longings” (44).

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afternoon when he had found, at the bottom of a trunk, a diary belonging to his great-grandmother in which he had read “la maravillada descripción de una Gemma di Vergy cantada en un teatro de La Habana” (112).41 His great-grandmother’s diary had unveiled for the narrator a “mundo mágico” of which the performance he attends with Mouche appears to be a kind of echo (112).42 He suddenly realizes that he is in the presence of a “complejo de tradiciones, comportamientos, maneras de hacer, imposible ya de remozar en una gran capital moderna” (112).43 In sum, the narrator describes the opera as both an artificial superimposition on the reality that surrounds it and as an integral part of an ongoing, coherent, and organic cultural tradition. Unfortunately for the narrator, Mouche does not share his delight in the performance. At intermission time, she abruptly dismisses the opera as “algo así como ‘la Lucía vista por Madame Bovary en Rouen’” (113),44 and forces the narrator to leave the theater. It’s a remarkable statement that deserves careful analysis. With her allusion to Madame Bovary, Mouche wants to underscore the provincialism of the scene of the opera (hence the reference to Rouen). Madame Bovary’s visit to the opera in Flaubert’s novel takes place at the very end of Part II, when she is still recovering from the end of her relationship with Rodolphe, and just before she embarks on another adulterous affair, this time with Léon. She responds to the performance with characteristic naïveté, allowing herself to be swept away by the music and losing herself in the story of Lucia’s love for Edgar. For Madame Bovary there are no boundaries between art and life.45 Presumably, it is this lack of critical detachment that Mouche wishes to mock. And yet, Mouche herself resembles Madame Bovary in some key aspects of her character. The narrator puts his finger on the prob41

“[…] the astonished description of a Gemma di Vergy sung in a theater in Havana” (44). 42 “[…] magic world” (44). 43 “[…] complex of traditions, manners, attitudes, which could no longer be revived in a great modern city” (44). 44 “[…] something like ‘Lucia as seen by Madame Bovary in Rouen’” (45). 45 See Gustave Flaubert. 1972 [1857]. Madame Bovary. Paris: Gallimard: 289298.

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lem when he depicts Mouche’s dismissal of the performance as an example of una suficiencia muy habitual en mi amiga, que la ponía en posición de hostilidad apenas se veía en contacto con algo que ignorara los santos y señas de ciertos ambientes artísticos frecuentados por ella en Europa (113).46

Like Madame Bovary, Mouche’s responses to the world around her are shaped by the books she has read, or the cultural references she has picked up. She cannot see reality without the help of this aesthetic filter. Of course, her literary training differs considerably from Madame Bovary’s: whereas the latter has immersed herself in romantic literature, the former is drawn above all to modern and avant-garde culture. In sum, Mouche is a Madame Bovary who has read Flaubert. To the narrator, Mouche’s view of things seems terribly derivative. In criticizing her, he takes on the role of the anti-bovarist, the person who rejects the literary view of reality. And yet, soon afterward the reader is forced to wonder whether the narrator is really all that different from his lover. After all, he too tries to manage the situation with the help of a literary reference: he tries – unsuccessfully – to get Mouche to return to her seat by means of “la argucia de evocar la Opera de Parma en días de Stendhal” (113).47 The battle of allusions shows that the narrator and Mouche are in some ways mirror images of each other. The narrator, as much as Mouche, is trapped inside a literary and European frame of reference. Like the museum, the opera-house belongs to the world of high cultural modernity. The narrator’s enthusiasm for the performance he attends, like his reverential attitude toward the Curator and the Museum of Organography, reveals the extent of his identification with the cultural institutions and practices of the metropolis, and as a result complicates our view of him as the spokesman of a uniformly dystopian view of modernity. The scene at the opera is also interesting for what it tells us of the relationship not just of the narrator but of Latin 46

“[…] her habitual self-sufficiency, which made her adopt an attitude of hostility the moment she came into contact with anything that did not bear the stamp of approval of certain artistic circles she had frequented in Europe” (45). 47 “[…] a subtle allusion to the Parma Opera in the days of Stendhal” (45).

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America to modernity. One can distinguish three aspects to this relationship. In the first place, the opera, as a product of European bourgeois culture,48 constitutes, in its Latin American appropriation, a symptom of the global reach of this culture and of Latin America’s integration into a cosmopolitan cultural enterprise. At the same time, however, the elements of ostentation and datedness that the narrator highlights in his description of the opera underline the artificial and simulated quality of Latin American modernity. This is the second aspect to be noted in this scene. And yet the third element seems to directly contradict the ideas of fakery and incongruity. For by linking his visit to the opera in the present with the memory of his Cuban grandmother’s love of the opera in the past, and by inserting this moment into the theme of the narrator’s progressive rediscovery of his Spanish-speaking cultural identity, Carpentier suggests that the opera has in fact become an integral, organic part of the Latin American cultural tradition itself. It is no longer an extraneous element, imposed on the continent from the outside. Rather, the opera offers the narrator a privileged pathway leading toward the recapturing of a lost cultural self. In restating the tension between the organic and inorganic elements that characterizes the narrator’s overall perception of the Latin American city where he has stopped on his way to the interior, the scene at the opera-house provides important clues for Carpentier’s conception of Latin American identity. And in order to grasp the shape of this identity in Los pasos perdidos, one needs to read the novel not only as a journey from one point in space (New York) to another (the South American jungle), but also as a passage through a series of transitional spaces, of which the museum and the operahouse constitute two of the most striking examples.49

48

See Theodor W. Adorno. 1994. ‘Bourgeois Opera’ in Levin, David J. (ed.). Opera Through Other Eyes. Stanford: Stanford University Press: 25-43. I am grateful to Roberto Ignacio Díaz for bringing this essay to my attention. 49 For a discussion of transitional spaces in Los pasos perdidos, see Renato Prada Oropeza. 2002. ‘Los pasos perdidos: Discurso y poética de lo real maravilloso’ in Franco 2002: 375-390.

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Modernity and Identity A great deal of contemporary Latin Americanist thinking is characterized by an extremely negative view of modernity, which many commentators associate with such phenomena as instrumental and technological reason, homogenization, Eurocentrism, and colonial domination.50 The predisposition to judge modernity from a hostile perspective no doubt accounts for the eagerness with which Carpentier’s critics have accepted the narrator’s overt denunciation of modern life in Los pasos perdidos and have failed to identify the elements in the text that modify and even counteract this denunciation. Ironically, the tendency of many critics to take the narrator’s statements at face value leads them to adopt a position that is both too critical of modernity and, on occasion, not critical enough. I am referring to the curious fact that the role of the modern museum in both relying on and reinforcing the metropolitan domination of non-Western cultures is never questioned even by critics who repeat the narrator’s litany of complaints about the alienation and dehumanization suffered by the inhabitants of the modern city. The larger problem, however, is the failure to recognize the extent to which the narrator in fact identifies with key aspects of modern culture and society, such as the freedom, creative improvisation, and spontaneity of his bohemian friends, the dedication to knowledge and learning embodied in the institution of the modern museum, and the helter-skelter style, mixing the old and the new, of the South American city. The search for identity in Latin America is often portrayed as a journey away from modernity. It is because the basic structure of the plot of Los pasos perdidos so perfectly mimics this conception of modernity and identity as polar opposites that the novel has regularly been read as a paradigmatically Latin American work. The reading I have developed here suggests, however, that the relationship between the two poles in Carpentier’s novel is much more complex than is

50

See Walter D. Mignolo. 2000. Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, for a forceful statement of the negative view of modernity. Mignolo’s argument focuses on the fusion between modernity and what he calls “coloniality.”

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often recognized.51 In spite of the narrator’s vivid denunciation of modern society, the course of his narrative demonstrates that he remains inextricably tied to many of its values and institutions. In fact, the voyage of self-discovery he ends up undertaking is initiated and sponsored by – and therefore dependent on – one of the key institutions of high cultural modernity, that is, the museum. Without the intervention of the Curator of the Museum of Organography, the search for identity could not even have taken place. The institution of the modern museum shapes the very conditions within which this search develops. Furthermore, the encounter with an identity one might define as Latin American does not occur solely at the end-point of the narrator’s journey. One does not have to wait until the protagonist reaches Santa Mónica de los Venados for the novel’s portrait of Latin Americanness to emerge into view. An equally important role is played by the narrator’s description of the South American city, with its jarring combination of the strange and the familiar. The scene at the opera, with its simultaneous emphasis on the elements of foreignness and artifice in the performance, on the one hand, and of cultural traditionalism and authenticity, on the other, captures, with great precision, the layered and contradictory quality of the world the narrator has just reentered. If the search for identity with which Los pasos perdidos concerns itself is what turns this novel into a paradigmatically Latin American text, it is as much for the way in which the journey gets started and for what the narrator encounters en route to his destination as for what he finds when he gets there.

51

For an excellent historical and theoretical account of the relations between identity and modernity in Latin America, see Jorge Larrain. 2000. Identity and Modernity in Latin America. Malden, MA: Blackwell: 2000. Larrain rejects “absolutist theories which present modernity and identity as mutually excluding phenomena” and argues for the “continuity and interconnection” between the two throughout Latin American history (6).

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La Diversalité à l’épreuve de la pensée de l’Universel – Déviances et instrumentalisation d’un concept de résistance culturelle Véronique Porra Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz Quinze ans après la publication par Patrick Chamoiseau, Raphaël Confiant et Jean Bernabé de leur très polémique Éloge de la Créolité (1989), la littérature inspirée de la Créolité fait partie des formes littéraires les plus institutionnalisées du champ littéraire français contemporain. Dans cette communication, nous nous interrogerons sur ce paradoxe qui fait qu’une littérature qui aurait logiquement dû être honnie par des instances qu’elle agressait ouvertement a, semble-t-il, fait l’objet d’une récupération puis d’une instrumentalisation contre d’autres formes d’universalisme, notamment face à la tentation uniformisante de la mondialisation, si redoutée par les instances culturelles françaises. L’étude des textes confrontée à celle des diverses formes de consécration de ces littératures en France devrait permettre de mettre à jour certains phénomènes inattendus et pour le moins ambigus générés par la dimension institutionnelle croissante de la littérature en ce tournant de siècle.

À la fin de leur essai programmatique Éloge de la Créolité publié aux Éditions Gallimard en 1989, Jean Bernabé, Patrick Chamoiseau et Raphaël Confiant définissent ainsi les principes essentiels de ce qu’ils entendent par Créolité: Notre diversité première sera inscrite dans un processus intégrateur de la diversité du monde, reconnue et acceptée comme permanente. Notre créolité devra s’acquérir, se structurer, se préserver, tout en se modifiant, tout en avalant. Subsister dans la diversité. L’application de ce double mouvement favorisera notre volonté créatrice en toute authenticité. Cela nous évitera aussi un retour à l’ordre totalitaire de l’ancien monde, rigidifié par la tentation de l’Un et du définitif. Au cœur de notre créolité, nous maintiendrons la modulation des lois nouvelles, de mélanges illicites. Car nous savons que chaque culture n’est jamais un achèvement mais une dynamique constante chercheuse de questions inédites, de possibilités neuves, qui ne domine pas mais qui entre en relation,

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qui ne pille pas mais qui échange. Qui respecte. C’est une folie occidentale qui a brisé ce naturel. Signe clinique: les colonisations. La culture vivante, et la Créolité encore plus, est une excitation permanente de désir convivial. Et si nous recommandons à nos créateurs cette exploration de nos particularités c’est parce qu’elle ramène au naturel du monde, hors du Même et de l’Un, et qu’elle oppose à l’Universalité, la chance du monde diffracté mais recomposé, l’harmonisation consciente des diversités préservées: la DIVERSALITE.1

Cette longue définition finale reprend, dans toute leur ambiguïté et leur complémentarité les mouvements essentiels qui sous-tendent l’ensemble de l’Éloge: on y trouve tout à la fois 1) la proclamation du principe d’ouverture par l’évocation d’une dynamique du renouvellement ouverte vers l’échange et de la relation, se rattachant ainsi à l’idée fondamentale d’Édouard Glissant, prônant la substitution d’une identité-relation à une identité-racine;2 2) une tendance évidente à la clôture ressortant de l’emploi récurrent des substantifs formés sur le suffixe –ité, qu’il s’agisse du concept de créolité, de celui de diversalité, et plus encore du recours au discours de l’authenticité, concepts qui sont autant de signes de la fixation identitaire; 3) la nature de discours d’opposition face à l’emprise exercée par la vision du monde française et l’aspiration de celle-ci à soumettre les autres cultures. On le constate, une telle définition, qui se veut essentiellement marquée par une aspiration à l’ouverture et à la dynamique culturelles ouvre, dans un premier temps, des horizons pour toutes sortes de “branchements”:3 dans la sphère caraïbe bien sûr, ne serait-ce que par la pratique de la créolisation ou de l’intégration des principes d’oralité 1

Jean Bernabé, Patrick Chamoiseau & Raphaël Confiant. 1989. Éloge de la Créolité. Paris: Éditions Gallimard: 53-54. 2 Voir notamment les développements d’Édouard Glissant (1990) dans son essai Poétique de la Relation (Poétique 3). Paris: Gallimard. 3 Sur cette notion et sa productivité pour l’analyse des cultures à l’ère de la mondialisation, voir Jean-Loup Amselle. 2002. Branchements – Anthropologie de l’universalité des cultures. Paris: Flammarion. L’auteur souligne par ailleurs, à l’exemple d’É. Glissant, les spécificités, mais aussi les ambiguïtés voire les contradictions de la pensée de la créolisation qui sous-tendent la dialectique du discours identitaire antillais. Il souligne notamment une contradictio in terminis dans le caractère identitaire de la démarche glissantienne, dont la structure paradoxale se retrouve dans les écrits de la Créolité: “Définir les sociétés primitives ou exotiques en termes d’atavisme interdit précisément d’y reconnaître des phénomènes de mélange et de créolisation” (21).

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à l’écriture,4 pour ne citer que deux exemples formels, ou au travers de nombreux phénomènes d’intertextualité voire d’interdiscursivité; avec les cultures mondiales en général; mais aussi et surtout – au travers du postulat d’opposition formulé par le néologisme diversalité, qu’il faut avant tout comprendre comme un instrument de combat contre une universalité déviée et instrumentalisée au service du discours impérialiste français – avec ce qui reste, malgré les protestations idéologiques qui innervent l’Éloge, la sphère de référence par excellence de la Créolité ainsi définie: la sphère franco-parisienne, dont il s’agit de mettre en question la valeur de repère. Aussi paradoxal que cela puisse paraître, cet élément non négligeable dans le fonctionnement du discours identitaire de l’Éloge revient à confirmer et bien involontairement renforcer la pérennité de la relation centre-périphérie dans les littératures d’expression française.5 En somme, cette situation ex negativo par rapport à des discours socio-culturels/politico-culturels français fait de ceux-ci une sorte d’interface inévitable et puissante, puisqu’elle régit l’ensemble du discours définitionnel qui ne peut plus se concevoir, dans son essence, que comme un anti-programme. Or, de nos jours, force est de constater que ce postulat de diversalité, qui remettait en cause l’un des principes fondateurs du discours de légitimation de la domination culturelle française, a perdu l’essentiel de son pouvoir subversif. Plus encore, la Créolité de l’Éloge, depuis quelques années, fait l’objet de récupérations, d’instrumentalisations, qui dans le meilleur des cas, ne tiennent pas compte de l’intention idéologique ni esthétique des auteurs, voire, le cas échéant, en trahissent jusqu’à l’essence même. Dans le cadre de cette étude, il sera moins question des textes de Bernabé, Chamoiseau et Confiant que des interprétations qui en ont 4

Voir par exemple Jean Bernabé. 1997. ‘De l’oralité à la littérature antillaise: figures de l’Un et de l’Autre’ dans de Labsade Françoise, Tétu (ed.). Littérature et dialogue interculturel – Culture française d’Amérique. Sainte Foy (Québec): Presses de l’Université Laval: 49-68. 5 Dans un article récent, Lieven D’hulst a souligné la complexité et l’importance de ce schéma pour les littératures francophones: Lieven D’hulst. 2003. ‘Quel(s) centre(s) et quelle(s) périphérie(s)?’ dans D’hulst, Lieven & Jean-Marc Moura (eds). Les études littéraires francophones: état des lieux. Lille: UL3, Travaux et recherches: 85-98.

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été données, voire des inflexions que les auteurs ont eux-mêmes données à certains concepts-clefs énoncés dans l’Éloge de la Créolité, texte dont la réception, quinze ans après sa publication, est marquée par de nombreuses ambiguïtés allant parfois jusqu’au contresens. Déviances interprétatives et récupérations On peut en effet se demander si les processus inhérents à l’institutionnalisation de l’œuvre des auteurs de la Créolité n’a pas contribué à en faire les victimes d’une déviance contre laquelle ils s’apprêtaient explicitement à lutter et qu’ils voulaient prévenir lorsqu’ils exigeaient comme principe fondamental pour l’interprétation de leur discours, la séparation de leur œuvre de son contexte de réception: Sera créole l’œuvre qui, exaltant dedans sa cohérence, la diversité de significations conservera cette marque qui fonde sa pertinence quelle que soit la façon dont on la lira, le lieu culturel d’où on la percevra, la problématique dans laquelle on la ramènera.6

Bernabé, Chamoiseau et Confiant pressentent en effet ici les dérives interprétatives potentielles que les “concrétisations” et “actualisations” (R. Ingarden), bref les sélections opérées par les lectures individuelles ou collectives, pourraient faire subir à leurs concepts et aux esthétiques que ceux-ci sont censés générer. Et ils les réfutent, pour ainsi dire, de façon prophylactique, déclaration d’intention qui de toute évidence n’a pas pu, pas su (ou pas voulu) résister à la pratique. Deux exemples illustrent de façon paradigmatique les fonctionnements de tels processus: Le premier est la relecture et l’assimilation des ouvrages des auteurs de la Créolité (précisons à nouveau qu’il est ici question de la Créolité de l’Éloge – plus particulièrement telle qu’elle trouve son expression littéraire vers le milieu des années 1990) à la pensée globalisante et universalisante française: celle qui depuis le XVIIIe siècle s’est déclinée régulièrement en toutes sortes de variations autour de l’idée d’une Universalité de la langue française, puis en en parallèle autour de l’idée de l’Universalité des valeurs françaises (celles no6

Bernabé, Chamoiseau & Confiant 1989: 52.

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tamment issues de la Déclaration des droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen), principes dans lesquels d’aucuns ont vu le fondement légitime pour développer l’idée d’une Universalité de la France.7 Loin de disparaître, de tels discours sont toujours bien présents, soit de façon explicite, ce qui nous intéresse ici, soit de façon larvée, comme résidu, comme substrat pas forcément conscient d’une bonne partie des mentalités françaises, comme nous le verrons plus tard. Dans son ouvrage Langue française, terre d’accueil, publié aux Éditions du Rocher en 1997, André Brincourt s’inscrit précisément dans ce genre de perspective. Il livre une réactualisation du concept de l’universalité prétendue de la langue française. Le corpus que Brincourt se propose d’étudier à travers ce prisme est tout simplement l’ensemble des littératures françaises “venues d’ailleurs”, dans lesquelles il voit tout à la fois une confirmation du génie, de la clarté et de l’universalité de la langue française; et un renforcement de la production de langue française qui, par ce biais, se trouverait redynamisée. En somme, les auteurs cités par Brincourt trouveraient une “identité nouvelle que confère la patrie trouvée de la langue” et apporteraient “du sang neuf dans notre encre”.8 Et Brincourt de continuer, sans tenir compte à aucun endroit ni des discours ni de leur contexte d’énonciation: “Le français a su devenir l’expression, c’est-à-dire l’âme d’un pays qui voulait transmettre quelque chose au monde”,9 7 Citons ici notamment l’ouvrage du philosophe Manuel de Diéguez. 1991. Essai sur l’Universalité de la France. Paris: Albin Michel, qui procède précisément à ce genre d’amalgame. 8 André Brincourt. 1997. Langue française – terre d’accueil. Monaco: Éditions du Rocher: 15. 9 Signalons que si Brincourt est le journaliste qui donne à ce discours sa plus grande ampleur, il n’est pas le seul tenant de telles représentations. En novembre 1996, Patrice Delbourg publiait dans les colonnes de l’Événement du Jeudi un compte rendu collectif intitulé ‘Un sang neuf abreuve nos éditions. Il vient des Antilles – Un luxuriant panier de Caraïbes. Patrick Chamoiseau, Raphaël Confiant, Édouard Glissant … et les autres. Avec eux, la littérature caribéenne montre patte d’ébène’ dans L’Événement du Jeudi (7-13 novembre 1996). On retrouve ici, mis en évidence les mêmes associations par le jeu des allusions: l’enrichissement et le renouvellement (luxuriant/neuf) par la subversion (panier de Caraibes/panier de crabes) et par l’altérité (patte d’ébène/patte blanche), de même que l’intégration de l’ensemble à une identité française forte par l’écho de la Marseillaise (un sang neuf abreuve nos éditions/un sang impur abreuve nos sillons).

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avant de poursuivre: “‘Étranger, mon ami’ – je m’aperçois que mon métier de critique littéraire m’a, tout ensemble, incité à confondre et à distinguer ces livres d’un français né du sol et du sang”.10 Une étude systématique des discours qui sous-tendent cet ouvrage révèle rapidement sa parenté avec celui de l’universalité d’une part, et de l’autre, celui de la pensée impérialiste, réactivée, de ce que l’on appelait alors la Plus Grande France, la France des cinq parties du monde. Or, Brincourt intègre totalement les auteurs de la Créolité à cette lecture, à laquelle il soumet l’ensemble du corpus de langue française. Confiant, en particulier, écrit selon lui “des romans dans un français chargé, enrichi des fleurs de son pays”,11 qui l’ont “conquis par le côté lumineux et coloré de cette langue inventive qu’est le français des Antilles”.12 À propos d’Eau de café (1991), Brincourt affirme par exemple: La merveille de ce roman est de nous dire que notre langue ne se fait pas étrangère en s’éloignant d’elle-même, mais trouve, tout au contraire, dans les métamorphoses et les libertés qu’elle s’accorde, une musique qui nous invite à entrer dans la danse.13

Chamoiseau, en revanche, dans le chapitre intitulé “Patrick Chamoiseau écrivain et martyr”, fait l’objet d’attaques et de mises en garde. De toute évidence, Brincourt ne lui pardonne pas son essai Écrire en pays dominé ni d’ailleurs certains passages de Le Chemin d’école (1994) dans lesquels l’auteur martiniquais attaque explicitement la colonisation. Comme on le voit, Brincourt procède par scission entre réalisation esthétique et contenus idéologiques, entre forme et contenu. Tandis que la forme est intégrée à une vision universalisante d’une langue française enrichie et réactualisée (“revivifiée”, “rafraîchie”, “revigorée”, “ravivée”), le contenu polémique et idéologique est évacué d’un revers de plume et toute contestation explicite de l’hégémonie cultu10

Brincourt 1997: 19. L’auteur souligne. Brincourt 1997: 54. 12 Brincourt 1997: 55. 13 Brincourt 1997: 56. 11

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relle française, celle que l’on trouve dans Le Chemin d’école, considérée avec mépris comme débordement intégré à ce qu’il appelle “un petit récit vengeur”14 auquel il dénie toute importance et toute légitimité. Le second exemple de déviance que l’on observe de nos jours par rapport au discours idéologique initial de l’Éloge, est l’intégration de ces auteurs, à l’instar d’ailleurs de bon nombre d’écrivains dits francophones, et de la Créolité développée en projet définitionnel, au discours de la Francophonie institutionnelle (qu’il s’agisse là de celui de l’Agence intergouvernementale de la Francophonie, de celui de l’Organisation internationale de la Francophonie ou de tout autre organe des institutions francophones). Des auteurs comme Bernabé, Chamoiseau et Confiant se trouvent là, au travers d’une réception et d’une réorientation ciblées, en particulier de la notion de diversalité qu’ils appelaient de leurs vœux en 1989, en position de faire valoir d’une grande Francophonie, opposée par ses valeurs et ses esthétiques à une mondialisation perçue et présentée comme un nivellement destructeur des particularismes culturels. De nos jours, en effet, la Francophonie pose, au niveau du discours, la diversité comme le principe fondamental d’une identité forte qu’elle est en train de construire. Ce discours d’affirmation identitaire se double d’une autre dimension essentielle dans le discours de l’identité, à savoir le potentiel différentiel, la distinction par rapport à l’entité contre laquelle on se définit. La définition positive s’accompagne donc, une fois de plus, d’une définition ex negativo, tout au moins autant sinon plus importante que la définition positive, toujours très problématique quand il s’agit de déterminer ce qu’est la Francophonie. Depuis quelques années, la diversité culturelle a été érigée, par le discours officiel francophone, comme la marque principale de distinction par rapport à la pratique du nivellement et de l’homogénéisation culturels d’une globalisation sur modèle anglosaxon.15 La construction discursive de cette dichotomie ressort de façon exemplaire des propos de Roger Dehaybe, administrateur géné14

Brincourt 1997: 62. Signalons ici que la Francophonie institutionnelle est en grande partie à l’origine de la Charte de l’UNESCO sur la diversité culturelle et en est de nos jours l’un des plus importants soutiens. 15

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ral de l’Agence intergouvernementale de la Francophonie, lorsqu’il présente les enjeux qu’il y a dans l’option de la diversité culturelle, ce qui revient, dit-il, à “choisir entre l’omnipotence d’une culture stéréotype dominante ou la richesse de la différence”.16 Si l’on ne peut reprocher à la Francophonie institutionnelle de prendre position contre une disparition des cultures ou du nivellement intellectuel, quelle que soit leur origine, il convient néanmoins de s’interroger sur les raisons d’une telle ferveur à défendre ce genre de droits. Il est en effet surprenant de constater qu’une entité émanant essentiellement d’un discours français ou franco-centré mette au premier plan la reconnaissance des cultures, quand on sait que les principes fondamentaux de la construction sociale d’inspiration française ne reposent en rien sur le multiculturalisme (tel qu’on le trouve par exemple dans les sociétés nord-américaines), mais sur une exigence tantôt d’assimilation, tantôt d’intégration.17 L’identité de la Francophonie qui se construit actuellement au niveau discursif, se fait en opposition à un monde anglo-saxon dont on dénonce la tendance à l’uniformisation et l’anéantissement des particularismes. Dans ce contexte, prôner la diversité culturelle comme principe identitaire de base, c’est avant tout s’opposer à ce que l’on croit reconnaître d’une identité anglo-saxonne globalisée en construisant sur un nouveau paradigme une communauté antagoniste,18 ce qui laisse à penser que l’appel à la diversité culturelle a autant sinon plus valeur de prétexte et d’alibi en tant qu’artifice susceptible de créer de la différence, que valeur de véritable projet politique et culturel. Ce que l’on pouvait donc au départ considérer comme une démarche d’ouverture culturelle intrafrancophone est tout autant motivée par une volonté de repli identitaire, contre ce que l’on ressent comme un nouvel impérialisme. Il 16 Roger Dehaybe. Novembre 2001. ‘Un modèle alternatif’ dans La maison francophonie. Paris: Société de la Revue des Deux Mondes: 28 (numéro spécial de La Revue des Deux Mondes 9). 17 Un modèle républicain fragilisé, qui, d’ailleurs, tend de nos jours à se modifier par des tendances à l’ethnicisation de certains groupes. Cf. Pierre-André Taguieff. 2005. La République enlisée – Pluralisme, communautarisme et citoyenneté. Paris: Éditions des Syrtes. 18 Sur la société ou la communauté comme construction imaginaire, cf. Cornélius Castoriadis. 1975. L’Institution imaginaire de la société. Paris: Seuil, et plus récemment Benedict Anderson. 1983. Imagined Communities. London: Verso.

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s’agit d’ériger en défense un nouvel universalisme francophone dont le ressort argumentatif serait la diversité. Ce double mouvement ressort tant des communiqués officiels, tels que la déclaration de Cotonou en 2001, par exemple, que de déclarations d’écrivains.19 On note en effet que tous ces textes, qui en appellent au respect de ce qu’ils nomment les “autres langues”, soumettent la nouvelle communauté, par définition au demeurant, au dénominateur commun, ciment identitaire qu’est la langue française. Et que le but ultime est moins la sauvegarde de la pluralité des langues et des cultures que celle de la langue française – toujours conçue dans son caractère prétendument universellement représentatif et porteur de valeurs – et de son influence sur de vastes zones géographiques. Dehaybe, toujours, affirme par exemple: La défense de la langue française passe non pas par une vision frileuse, mais par l’idée que le français est un outil de communication international, porteur de la richesse des autres et de ce que nous sommes.20

On trouve par ailleurs des tonalités similaires dans l’article de Denis Tillinac (Ancien représentant personnel du Président de la République française pour la Francophonie de 1995 à 1997): La francophonie est cruciale, car elle est le reflet direct d’une volonté d’ouverture de la France au monde, par le vecteur de sa langue et de sa vision du monde, au moment où la mondialisation favorise les échanges et la communication;21

et dans une formulation encore plus explicite chez Christian Valantin (Ancien représentant personnel du president de la République du Sénégal au Conseil permanent de la Francophonie, 1986-2000): “Le 19

On peut par exemple se reporter au dossier publié dans le quotidien Le Figaro en date du 17 octobre 2002: ‘Francophonie: peut-on enrayer le déclin? À l’occasion du IXe Sommet de la francophonie, qui se tient à Beyrouth, des écrivains proposent des solutions pour favoriser le rayonnement de la langue française’ dans Le Figaro Littéraire (17 octobre 2002). 20 Dehaybe 2001: 31. 21 Denis Tillinac. Novembre 2001. ‘Francité et France’ dans La maison francophonie. Paris: Société de la Revue des Deux Mondes: 50 (numéro spécial de La Revue des Deux Mondes 9).

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partenariat entre les langues est le meilleur garant de la vitalité et la pérennité du français en francophonie”.22 Si l’on conçoit en effet la possibilité d’assouplir la norme linguistique pour laisser entrer un métissage contrôlé, on ne remet pas pour autant en cause les principes fondamentaux du discours de l’universalité. Bien au contraire, le renoncement à l’exiguïté formelle semble bien être l’ultime recours pour sauvegarder une aspiration à l’universel qui pourrait s’opposer à une autre tendance universalisante. Ce sont là autant d’accents que l’on trouve effectivement de façon massive dans des volumes se faisant l’écho d’un discours idéalisant et destinés à promouvoir une sorte d’utopie francophone, tendance dont témoigne en effet le numéro spécial de la Revue des deux mondes intitulé: La maison francophonie23 dont il a déjà été question dans cette étude ou partiellement dans le volume publié plus récemment aux Éditions Autrement sous le titre Diversité culturelle et mondialisation.24 Dans un tel contexte, la diversalité prônée par l’Éloge est à l’occasion considérée effectivement comme une illustration de ce que l’on pourrait réaliser en matière de diversité culturelle francophone: on y voit parfois une forme de prototype, interprétation qui n’est au demeurant possible qu’à condition de l’évider et de l’expurger de ses contenus subversifs. Bien évidemment, une telle récupération pose le problème que des pans entiers de la revendication diverselle de la créolité (notamment de la dialectique ouverture/fermeture) disparaissent. Structure, genèse et autorisation d’un contresens Face à de telles lectures et de telles dérives conceptuelles, il convient de s’interroger sur les raisons qui ont motivé ce processus d’interprétation d’un concept tel que celui de la diversalité, et en quel-

22

Christian Valantin. Novembre 2001. ‘Francophonie et langue française’ dans La maison francophonie. Paris: Société de la Revue des Deux Mondes: 59 (numéro spécial de La Revue des Deux Mondes 9). 23 Novembre 2001. La maison francophonie 9. 24 2004. Diversité culturelle et mondialisation (Collection ‘Mutations’ 233). Paris: Éditions Autrement.

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que sorte autorisé de telles déviances. Trois raisons principales semblent avoir permis un tel glissement interprétatif: La première explication est externe aux œuvres: elle réside tout simplement dans le poids qu’exercent les contingences et structures voire la dynamique de ce que Pierre Halen, dans une série d’articles publiés depuis 2001, a désigné du terme de “système francophone”.25 Les consécrations par le centre ont fait oublier le potentiel subversif initial de tels écrits. Les romans de Chamoiseau et de Confiant notamment sont devenus fréquentables au fur et à mesure qu’ils ont été intégrés par les institutions du centre comme le résultat de pratiques certes marginales mais néanmoins institutionnalisées.26 Ils représentent une périphérie exotique, celle à laquelle on les réduit, une langue dans laquelle on voit un français enchanté et poétique chargé de tout le génie présumé d’une langue française foisonnante, comme nous l’avons vu avec André Brincourt et comme Bernard Pivot l’a abondamment commenté dans ses diverses émissions télévisées qui ont considérablement contribué à entériner cette interprétation.27 Cette valorisation, par le prisme de la lecture exotisante, d’une composante initialement conçue comme subversive ressort par exemple de façon exemplaire de l’article de Patrice Delbourg: La fécondité de l’imaginaire créole est inépuisable. La littérature caraïbe s’apparente à un incessant cyclone culturel qui étrille les synapses du lecteur

25

Pierre Halen. 2003. ‘Le “système littéraire francophone”: quelques réflexions complémentaires’ dans D’hulst & Moura 2003: 25-37; Idem. 2001. ‘Notes pour une topologie institutionnelle du système littéraire francophone’ dans Samba Diop, Papa & Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink (eds). Littératures et sociétés africaines. Mélanges offerts à János Riesz. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag: 55-67. 26 Sur les ambiguités régissant l’institutionnalisation de la marge et de la périphérie, voir Pierre Halen. 1998. ‘Primitifs en marche – Sur les échanges intercollectifs à partir d’espaces mineurs’ dans Jewsiewicki, Bogumil & Jocelyn Létourneau (eds). Identités en mutation – Socialité en germination. Sillery, Québec: Septentrion: 139156 et Véronique Porra. Avril-Juin 2005. ‘De la marginalité instituée à la marginalité déviante, ou que faire des littératures africaines d’expression française contemporaines?’ dans Revue de Littérature Comparée: 207-225. 27 Sur le rôle fondamental de telles instances de consécration, voir Jacques Dubois. 1978. L’institution de la littérature. Bruxelles: Éditions Labor.

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tiède et continental, une cosmique biguine chaloupée qui frotte langues et cultures, réinvente un français de tafia et de cannelle.28

Nous avons ici à faire à une sorte de déviance du concept d’universel pur et clos par la tendance normative très pesante dans la conception culturelle française vers un universel créateur où le métissage ne serait plus perçu comme une menace. En somme, cette déviance – essentiellement dans sa dimension linguistique – s’est institutionnalisée à la périphérie et est devenue un positionnement (pour reprendre la terminologie de Pierre Bourdieu) tout à fait conforme aux attentes et orthodoxe dans le paysage littéraire français du système des positionnements différentiels des diverses productions de langue française. Par ailleurs, le centre français a aussi compris l’avantage qu’il y avait à ériger ce discours en position centrale au niveau institutionnel: les auteurs de la Créolité bénéficient ainsi d’une liberté de fou du roi, qui légitime l’auto-représentation de la France comme un État de la liberté d’expression, et de ce fait désarme la violence des attaques qui perdent de leur puissance qu’elles auraient gardé si ces écrits avaient été censurés ou avaient rencontré la moindre difficulté de publication. Or il n’en est rien: Confiant, Chamoiseau publient dans les plus grandes maisons d’éditions françaises, leurs romans font régulièrement l’objet de compte rendus ou d’articles complets dans les plus légitimants des organes de presse de tous bords (du Figaro à L’Humanité en passant par le Monde des Livres). Par ailleurs, une lecture superficielle de ces formes esthétiques les inscrivent opportunément comme élément légitimant du discours francophone sur la diversité culturelle. Finalement – et pour filer une métaphore familiale chère à un discours français par rapport aux territoires qui, au cours des siècles, se sont trouvés d’une manière ou d’une autre sous la tutelle de la France – à ces auteurs qui comptaient bien jouer les mauvais garçons, les instances de consécration continuent d’opposer une sorte de discours de la maternité bienveillante, traitant tous ses enfants avec équanimité, même ceux dont le charme réside dans un côté un peu chamailleur. La deuxième raison est à rechercher dans la nature même du projet esthético-idéologique proposé par les trois auteurs de l’éloge et 28

Delbourg 1996.

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dans sa réalisation. La créolité, qui se définit par son côté ouvertfermé pourrait laisser attendre une ouverture et une flexibilité de la représentation identitaire ou son refus. Or, avant tout, entre autres précisément au travers du concept de Diversalité, la créolité postulée dans l’Éloge, se définit contre quelque chose d’autre, à savoir contre l’emprise culturelle française basée sur la pensée de l’universalité, une universalité fonctionnant de façon fondamentalement normative, étouffant les particularismes et les diversités. On retrouve une longue variation sur ce thème quelques années plus tard dans l’ouvrage de Chamoiseau, Écrire en pays dominé en 1997: Comment écrire alors que ton imaginaire s’abreuve, du matin jusqu’aux rêves, à des images, des pensées, des valeurs qui ne sont pas tiennes? Comment écrire quand ce que tu es végète en dehors des élans qui déterminent ta vie? Comment écrire, dominé? […] Au fond de cette angoisse, il t’arrive de murmurer amer: Heureux ceux qui écrivent sous la domination de l’âge dernier: leurs poèmes peuvent faire balles et conforter l’espoir du nombre de leurs impacts. Car l’âge d’à présent – le tien où nulle balle n’est utile – est à venir pour tous: il est celui du chant dominateur qui te déforme l’esprit jusqu’à faire de toi-même ton geôlier attitré, de ton imagination ta propre marâtre, de ton mental ton propre dealer, de ton imaginaire la source même d’un mimétisme stérile: ton âge est celui d’une domination devenue silencieuse.29

Or, s’opposer, dans un texte programmatique tel que L’éloge de la créolité, à une identité implique nécessairement développer un discours identitaire au moins dans la partie qui définit le projet exnegativo. En somme, paradoxalement, de par sa nature, l’Éloge confirme (1) son inscription dans la relation centre-périphérie qu’elle prétend contester paradoxalement au travers d’un discours de la périphérisation volontaire; (2) sa nature fondamentalement identitaire, qui est précisément ce qu’elle reproche à la culture française. On tombe ici tout simplement dans l’ambiguïté voire la fatalité du destin de l’écriture manifestaire:30 à se poser en opposition par rapport aux dis29

Patrick Chamoiseau. 1997. Écrire en pays dominé. Paris: Gallimard: 18. Sur les grandes caractéristiques thématiques et morphologiques du genre du manifeste, voir les articles de Hubert Van den Berg & Ralf Grüttemeier. 1998. ‘Interpretation, Funktionalität, Strategie – Versuch einer internationalen Bestimmung des Manifests’ dans Van den Berg, Hubert & Ralf Grüttemeier (eds). Manifeste: Intentio30

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cours idéologiques ou esthétiques antérieurs, on ne peut éviter de se définir, donc de se fixer. Dès lors que cette fixation a eu lieu, le programme (qui peut être un programme d’avant-garde orienté vers l’avenir) est soumis au poids du temps: son côté révolutionnaire s’atténue par l’évolution historique et la position de rupture de jadis devient une position acceptée, institutionnalisée dans le présent, avant d’être tout simplement dépassée, dans le futur.31 Le paradoxe et la contradiction sont donc deux composantes inhérentes à l’écriture manifestaire. Le manifeste de Bernabé, Chamoiseau et Confiant n’échappe pas à cette implacable logique. Il semble que nous soyons précisément là, avec l’Éloge, dans ce présent de l’institutionnalisation, de la perte de saveur et juste avant le passage à un discours d’arrièregarde, récupérable, ce qui leur sera, un jour, vraisemblablement reproché. Par ailleurs, le tout-métissage, une fois érigé en principe d’authenticité, devient lui aussi une position identitaire fixe et close dès lors qu’il est posé en principe fondamental que l’on oppose à l’uniformisation anglo-américaine marquant de son empreinte cette mondialisation qui suscite tant de craintes culturelles. Cet écart se reporte de fait dans la pratique littéraire: de par l’effet conjugué du poids des instances de consécration, du marché des biens symboliques (Bourdieu), de la répétition de schémas qui se sont fixés dans une revendication identitaire et dans l’inscription, comme le souligne Katia Levesque dans son étude intitulée La créolité: entre tradition d’oraliture créole et tradition littéraire française des esthétiques de la créolité dans les codes de la postmodernité,32 ces littératures ont perdu peu à peu leur saveur, leur originalité et leur pouvoir subversif. On passe en effet d’une esthétique de l’ouverture et du métissage à des formes marquées par la fixation stylistique et thématique, et surtout à la reproduction: il y a – il faut bien le reconnaître – peu de nalität. Amsterdam: Rodopi; ainsi que Hubert Van den Berg. 1998. ‘Das Manifest – eine Gattung? Zur historiographischen Problematik einer deskriptiven Hilfskonstruktion’ dans Van den Berg & Grüttemeier 1998: 193-225. 31 Pierre Bourdieu. 1992. Les Règles de l’art – Genèse et structure du champ littéraire. Paris: Seuil. 32 Katia Levesque. 2004. La créolité: entre tradition d’oraliture créole et tradition littéraire française. Québec: Nota Bene.

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renouvellement dans ces écritures qui fonctionnent de plus en plus en forme de variations sur des principes désormais reconnus: ceux de la créolisation de la langue, du carnavalesque, de l’oraliture, trois composantes initialement pensées dans leur pouvoir de subversion et devenues, pour la réception, les marques identitaires d’une production littéraire de langue française qui reste à sa place dans le système qui s’institutionnalise. En somme, une fois assimilée, la subversion est devenue orthodoxie, s’est elle-même fixée, et devient donc élément stable, c’est-à-dire contrôlable. Il devient alors possible de l’instrumentaliser au service de discours le plus souvent idéologiques malgré tout toujours fondamentalement marqués par la pensée universalisante française. La troisième raison est que certains de ces auteurs, dans le nouveau contexte de la mondialisation, s’inscrivent eux-mêmes dans ce processus d’assimilation, sans peut-être voir pour autant qu’ils ouvrent, dans leur propre pensée, des brèches où s’engouffreront les tentatives de récupération idéologique, voire fissurent eux-mêmes leur principe fondamental d’opposition aux tendances universalistes et réductrices reprochées à la culture française. L’exemple de Confiant est en cela symptomatique. Dans son article ‘Créolité et francophonie: un éloge de la diversalité’,33 Confiant, après avoir donné un court résumé de la situation historique, reprend l’éloge de la diversalité, diversalité, dit-il, qui a permis d’établir une mondialisation créole qu’il faut se garder de confondre avec la mondialisation anglo-saxonne, contre laquelle il convient, selon l’auteur, de lutter encore et encore. À ces fins, et face à la montée d’une mondialisation que l’on pourrait qualifier de négative” Confiant propose de créer une Académie francophone, qui serait la pierre angulaire d’une utopie francophone, c’est-àdire, pour la Francophonie, de nouvelles instances normatives. On ne peut éviter de souligner le paradoxe inhérent à cet article, dans lequel la condamnation de la “fétichisation de la norme”34 en France côtoie la volonté de reproduction d’une tendance normative à outrance typi33 Raphaël Confiant. 2004. ‘Créolité et Francophonie: un éloge de la diversalité’ in Diversité culturelle et mondialisation. Paris: Autrement: 240-253. Ce texte est par ailleurs largement diffusé par l’intermédiaire du site internet du Capes créole: http://www.palli.ch/~kapeskreyol/articles/diversalite.htm. 34 Confiant 2004: 248.

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quement française. Une telle contradiction rouvre donc la porte aux vieux démons français que l’on prétend condamner dans un même mouvement. À supposer, comme Confiant l’appelle de ses vœux, que l’on se soumette à certaines règles pour garantir l’équilibre de la représentation, peut-on véritablement attendre d’une Francophonie institutionnelle encore totalement sous l’emprise de la pensée de l’Universel et marquée par la relation centre-périphérie, quelles que soient les protestations contemporaines qui tentent de démontrer la caducité de ce modèle d’interprétation, qu’elle perçoive et instaure la diversité autrement que comme ce qu’elle est à l’heure actuelle, à savoir une folklorisation exotique des productions littéraires de langue française? Il est à craindre qu’une utopie fonctionnant au niveau du discours ne donne une pratique antinomique à laquelle, par la nature même de sa prise de position, Confiant ouvre grand les portes (les récentes difficultés rencontrées par la construction européenne et les réactions françaises face à cette problématique ont bien illustré la persistance des vieux schémas de repli sur une identité nationale). Confiant fait lui-même disparaître partiellement, au moment même où il le proclame de nouveau haut et fort, le côté ouvert de la créolité, fondement de la Diversalité, dans la clôture d’un autre espace: l’espace francophone. En somme, il reproduit, à une autre échelle le fait d’ériger un espace, certes métissé mais fermé, contre le reste du monde. Cette ambiguïté et ce porte-à-faux le rend récupérable par les instances de la Francophonie, qui peuvent tout à fait reprendre de tels discours pour les opposer à la suprématie du bloc angloaméricain: une dichotomie, une antinomie, que R. Confiant formule de façon tout à fait explicite dans son appel à une utopie francophone: Le monde ne va pas sans utopies. C’est là le moteur des énergies intellectuelles. L’utopie francophone doit s’inscrire résolument dans la créolisation et la diversalité. Dans la créolisation d’abord comme modèle de mondialisation opposé au communautarisme anglo-américano-saxon […]. C’est la théorie du separate but inequal (et non pas equal comme cela est mensongèrement affirmé), que Hollywood, CNN et Coca-Cola tentent d’imposer au monde entier. La juxtaposition des communautés. L’enfermement dans l’Identité Unique. En effet, devant la mondialisation inéluctable, inexorable qui se met en place, il n’y a qu’une alter-

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native sérieuse: la créolisation ou Identité Multiple contre la globalisation communautariste sous égide étasunien ou Identité Unique.35

En somme, ce que l’auteur reproche aux États-Unis en 2004 n’est rien d’autre que ce qu’il reprochait à la France en 1989: la réduction du tout au Même et à l’Un. Encore faudrait-il, pour que le nouveau système de répartition des valeurs régissant le propos de R. Confiant soit cohérent, que la diversité prônée par la Francophonie soit une véritable pratique et non pas un artifice discursif destiné à ériger une communauté-rempart face à une mondialisation porteuse d’angoisses identitaires. Conclusion Comme nous l’avons vu, la Créolité de l’Éloge et son corollaire, la diversalité, connaissent aujourd’hui un destin qui peut paraître bien éloigné de celui que Bernabé, Chamoiseau et Confiant voulaient leur faire assumer de potentiel de subversion il y a de cela quinze ans. Le paradoxe ultime réside dans la réception du concept de diversalité: forgée comme concept de contestation et de lutte contre l’Universalité affirmée par le discours français, elle est aujourd’hui, avec l’accord de ses inspirateurs, intégrée à une nouvelle pensée universaliste: soit comme élément venant soutenir l’Universalité de la langue française chez Brincourt en 1997, soit comme élément venant étayer des aspirations francophones, elles aussi marquées par une aspiration universaliste s’opposant à l’impérialisme anglo-saxon ressenti. Le poids des contingences, mais aussi les failles inhérentes à la pensée de la Créolité ont permis à certaines lectures de s’engouffrer vers de nouvelles interprétations. Dans son étude Littérature et identité créole aux Antilles, Mireille Rosello a, dès 1992, souligné l’ambivalence du discours culturel de la Créolité et de fait sa proximité structurelle avec les courants de la Négritude et de l’Antillanité, qui, selon elle, relèvent d’une même dynamique: Les trois termes ‘Négritude’, ‘Antillanité’ et ‘Créolité’ peuvent être considérés comme les avatars successifs d’une quête de la différence (et donc de

35

Confiant 2004: 251.

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l’identité) qui amènent les auteurs à théoriser de plus en plus précisément leur rapport avec une certaine idée du culturel.36

Mais c’est avant tout le changement de contexte et surtout d’échelle dans l’appréhension du culturel dans son articulation avec la composante géopolitique qui a entraîné la condition sine qua non pour une telle évolution, à savoir la mutation de la notion d’Universalité: en quelques années, on est passé d’une universalité close sur la norme et le discours essentialiste français, à une universalité de la diversité, du métissage, tout aussi close au demeurant, mais ouverte sur un vaste espace géopolitique (avec intérêts économiques) cette fois. À voir l’évolution de la réception de la Créolité/diversalité de nos jours, et surtout à analyser les raisons de ces évolutions interprétatives, on ne peut qu’être frappé par la similitude structurelle avec le destin tardif de la Négritude, contestation devenue collaboration aux yeux de nombreux critiques africains par exemple, précisément parce que auteurs et surtout critiques ont perdu le rapport au contexte mais aussi ont procédé à des lectures sélectives réductrices. L’avenir dira si la Créolité, à travers ses déviances imposées ou autorisées, structurellement proches de celles de la mutation de la négritude senghorienne, par exemple, connaîtra le même tragique destin.

36

Mireille Rosello. 1992. Littérature et identité créole aux Antilles. Paris: Karthala: 20.

Major Concepts: Transversal Applicability

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From Appropriation to Resignification: Caribbean Discourses of Identity Amaryll Chanady Université de Montréal Postcolonial criticism has often stressed the importance of both the appropriation and parody of colonial discourses. Particularly significant, however, is the creative and critical rewriting of colonial discourses in the development of new discourses of identity in postcolonial societies. My paper will discuss the ways in which we can theorize this process, drawing upon the concepts of resignification, performance and resistance. This will be followed by an analysis of several Latin American examples of resignification such as Carpentier’s marvelous real, Fernandez Retamar’s Caliban and Brazilian anthropophagy, which show how significant discourses of identity emerge from the subversive repetition and rewriting of Western discourses, especially those linked to representations of the Other. Finally, I will discuss how the widespread circulation of critical and literary discourses in the last few decades has led to the further resignification of these discourses in other postcolonial societies.

Introduction Caribbean discourse has often been linked explicitly to European discourses, and seen as repetition, imitation, resistance, adaptation or critical rewriting. The importance of language for the colonization of the Americas has frequently been emphasized, often with a reference to the symbolic coincidence of the publication of the first Spanish grammar by Elio Antonio de Nebrija and Columbus’ first voyage in 1492.1 The language of the colonial master was not simply imposed on passive imitators, but appropriated by the colonial subjects in a 1

See, for example, Walter D. Mignolo. 1992. ‘When Speaking Was Not Good Enough: Illiterates, Barbarians, Savages, and Cannibals’ in Jara, René & Nicholas Spadaccini (eds). Amerindian Images and the Legacy of Columbus. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press: 325-329.

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wide variety of ways. The most poignant and well-known metaphor for this process is Shakespeare’s figure of Caliban, who learned the master’s language only to curse him. A language symbolizing civilization and culture was thus transformed into one of revolt and resistance, not only to a given situation of subjection and abjection at the hands of Prospero, but also to the claims of a particular discourse that held up European culture as the epitome of civilization. Caliban’s babbling was thus a matter of transforming language, which meant speaking it imperfectly, from the point of view of the colonizer. But it also illustrates the emergence of a new discourse as a specific and systematized way of using language according to a particular cultural, social and political perspective. Many subsequent discourses of identity have drawn on the motif of Calibanesque babbling, either as a self-depreciating affirmation of New World belatedness and imperfect mimicry of metropolitan paradigms, or as a selfempowering appropriation of Western discourses in an act of creative adaptation and reterritorialization according to different social, cultural, political and geographical contexts. In my paper I will examine different ways in which Caribbean discursive appropriation has been conceptualized, as well as more recent theoretical models that allow us to reread Caribbean discourses of identity in new ways. While my main focus is on works written in Spanish, or dealing with Spanish Caribbean authors, I will also refer to texts from other cultural traditions, since there has been considerable cross-fertilization.2 As the anthropologist James Clifford pointed out in his article on “traveling cultures”,3 societies should not be studied as closed systems, but as hubs of movement in which one cannot establish absolute distinctions between insider and outside. Clifford 2

Two obvious examples of works that have had great influence on writers from different linguistic traditions are Édouard Glissant’s (1981) Le discours antillais. Paris: Seuil, and Alejo Carpentier’s (1967 [orig. published in 1949]) ‘Prologue to El reino de este mundo’ in Carpentier, Alejo. Tientos y diferencias. Montevideo: Arca: 96-112. 3 James Clifford. 1992. ‘Traveling Cultures’, in Grossberg, Lawrence, Cary Nelson & Paula Treichler (eds). Cultural Studies. New York & London: Routledge: 96-112.

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also advocated the study of cultural groups that travel and develop hybridized forms of subjectivity: If we rethink culture and its science, anthropology, in terms of travel, then the organic, naturalizing bias of the term culture – seen as a rooted body that grows, lives, dies, etc – is questioned. Constructed and disputed historicities, sites of displacement, interference, and interaction, come more sharply into view (101).

Both of these situations apply to the Caribbean even more so than to most societies studied by Clifford, since it has always been a hub of multiple influences and migrations and has more recently given rise to diasporic cultures abroad. Babbling The first figure of appropriation I will look at is that of babbling, or the Calibanesque imperfect imitation of an original. The motif of colonial mimicry in Latin America and the Caribbean – akin to what Homi Bhabha called “almost the same, but not quite”4 in the context of colonial India – is particularly widespread in a continent in which the major institutions and cultural paradigms were largely imported from Europe by the colonial administrations and which is still on the periphery of global centers of power. The belief that Latin Americans are but a deformed echo of Europe is often found in outside depictions and internal self-representations of collective and individual identity. The best example is maybe V.S. Naipaul’s novel The Mimic Men, in which the inhabitants of the fictitious Caribbean island Isabella strut and posture in an exaggerated and ineffectual act of role-playing, imitating the real work of politicians abroad.5 A more recent discussion of colonial, postcolonial or Third World babbling, but in the area of theoretical production, is found in an article by Hugo Achugar (2004) in which the Uruguayan critic refers to both Hegel’s portrayal of the “immature” Latin American, 4

Homi Bhabha. 1994. ‘Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse’ in The Location of Culture. London & New York: Routledge: 86. 5 V.S. Naipaul. 1969. The Mimic Men. London: Penguin Books Limited. See Amaryll Chanady. 2005. ‘Excentric Positionalities: Mimicry and Changing Constructions of the Centre in the Americas’ in D’haen, Theo et al. (eds). How Far is America From Here? Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi: 233-246.

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and the outraged reaction of the Cuban critic Roberto Fernández Retamar, author of the well-known essay on Caliban, to a European journalist’s question about whether Latin American culture exists.6 This question implies, in the words of the Cuban critic, that Latin Americans are only a “distorted echo of what goes on elsewhere”.7 Achugar reformulates the European journalist’s question to Fernández Retamar by replacing the emphasis on culture with one on theory in order to ask the following question: Can Latin Americans in Latin America have ‘theory,’ whether minor or major? [...] Can it be that on a theoretical or scientific level the Northern hemisphere ears will always perceive discourse from Latin America – whether major or minor, learned or popular, left-wing or right-wing, from men or women, miners or academics – to be like incoherent or inconsistent theorizing? (672-673).

Later on in the essay, he states this even more strongly: Can barbaric Latin Americans theorize? Should they ‘Prospereanly’ speak or can they ‘barbarically’ babble? Speaking differently used to mark one off as a barbarian; it was, literally, to ‘babble.’ Is there only one way of theorizing? Can I as a barbarian have the right to my own discourse? Or should I theorize as Prospero does? (679).

He relates the barbarian to Fernández Retamar’s figure of Caliban, who “cannot carry on a major discourse but can only ‘maldecir’/‘decir mal,’ that is, curse/speak awry, or, rather, carry on a discourse of resistance, a minor discourse” (674). Although this babbling is seen as an affirmative act of resistance from the perspective of Caliban, it is considered by the metropole as a “poor imitation” of the original since Caliban is “not capable of what is perceived as ‘systematic’ and ‘methodic’ thought” (674). He describes the Cuban critic’s revaluation 6

Hugo Achugar. 2004. ‘Local/Global Latin Americanisms: “Theoretical Babbling”, apropos Roberto Fernández Retamar’ in Del Sarto, Ana, Alicia Ríos & Abril Trigo (eds). The Latin American Cultural Studies Reader. Durham & London: Duke University Press: 671. 7 Roberto Fernández Retamar. 1989. ‘Caliban: Notes Toward a Discussion of Culture in Our America’ in Caliban and Other Essays (tr. Edward Baker). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press: 3.

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of the ubiquitous Latin American genres of the essay and the speech as a recommendation to prefer “theoretical babbling”, which is a Calibanesque “valid and structured discourse” in its own right (675), to the simple application of European and North American theoretical models (which Fernández Retamar considered as “cultural colonialism” (676)). Elaborating further on the Cuban critic’s position, Achugar wonders whether we can see Latin American theoretical discourse as a “minor” use of theory in the Deleuzian sense (679), although he expresses reservations about its reception elsewhere as barbarism, and advocates a “multiple dialogue between the numerous interlocutors […] and the need to transform Prospero’s monologue into a truly democratic assembly in which all voices can be spoken” (684). Imitation The conceptualization of Latin American culture as derivative has often characterized collective self-representation. This has taken the form of descriptions of the state of culture in the New World, criticism of Latin America’s imitation of foreign models, or exhortation to improve society by emulating admired societies elsewhere. While Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, the 19th-century Argentine president, exhorted his citizens to become like United States Americans, the Cuban poet, essayist and revolutionary José Martí criticized servile imitation of European models and his compatriot Fernández Retamar condemned the uncritical application of the excesses of structuralism to Latin American fiction almost a century later. The issue of imitation is still very much present in discourses on the Caribbean. Román de la Campa,8 for example, has taken to task an influential book by the Cuban-born Antonio Benítez-Rojo,9 who discussed Caribbean identity in terms of chaos theory and other postmodern notions such as free play. De la Campa considers this book as “cultural theorization from afar” (89), since Benítez-Rojo lives in the United States, and one of the main objects of criticism is the imitation, in Latin Americanism practiced outside Latin America, of a theoretical/critical discourse that 8

Román de la Campa. 1999. Latin Americanism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 9 Antonio Benítez-Rojo. 1992. The Repeating Island (tr. James Maraniss). Durham: Duke University Press.

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emerged in Europe and North America, an imitation that erases “any trace of resistance or claims on the world of life experience” (89). He characterizes Benítez-Rojo’s book as an “explicit attempt to rewrite Caribbean culture as a postmodern performance” (90), following “de Man’s literary deconstructionism much closer than postmodern precepts as such” (100). Caribbean history is not seen as a set of social, political and economic problems, but as a “series of tropes against which close readings of a few chosen texts stand for all of history as a distant text” (97). De la Campa argues that Benítez-Rojo’s version of Caribbean postmodernity appears as an all-encompassing aquatic essence capable of drifting toward all ages and places, through openended metaphors such as chaos, meta-archipelagos, “the semipagan hagiography of the Middle Ages and African beliefs”, and the “turbulent and erratic rhythms” of the entire Third World (“copper, black and yellow rhythms”) that belong to the Peoples of the Sea (100). He adds that Benítez-Rojo’s “newly essentialized Caribbean is ultimately understood as nothing but literary dissemination” (101), and describes his book a “celebration of literariness” (102). He explicitly formulates this criticism in terms of identity: Does not such a celebration also implicate certain identitarian tendencies in its complacent aestheticism, unperturbed as it is by the grave distance between its radical epistemological claims and its general indifference toward the contemporary social world? (102).

The “contemporary social fabric” (102) and the “idea of a living community” (103) remain absent. This criticism echoes Martí and Fernández Retamar, as well as numerous later Latin American scholars, who question the application of concepts such as postcolonialism, postmodernism, the national allegory and metafiction to their literature, since its specificity is lost in the critic’s homogenization of different cultural traditions and political and social contexts. Imitation from within Latin America and by Latin American scholars living abroad, and the application by critics from other countries of paradigms developed in Europe and North America to Latin America and the Caribbean all result in a simplification and deformation of the complexities of the continent’s fiction.

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Creative Transformation The third ubiquitous figure of appropriation is that of the creative transformation of discourses in the elaboration of new ones. Postcolonial theory has frequently emphasized parody, pastiche, indigenization, hybridization, colonial appropriation and adaptation. One example is Homi Bhabha’s description of the appropriation in India of Western biblical discourse to a different cultural reality.10 Bhabha explains that the converted Indians consider the Bible as their gift from God, and adapt it to their own customs, selectively appropriating those parts that are relevant to their lives (103-4). This “Indianized Gospel” affects the power relations between them and the British colonizers: When they make these intercultural, hybrid demands, the natives are both challenging the boundaries of discourse and subtly changing its terms by setting up another specifically colonial space of the negotiations of cultural authority (119).

Bhabha considers this a form of colonial mimicry, which implies hybridity, appropriation and resistance (120), and not simply the mimicking of the colonizer’s language and customs satirized by Naipaul. This imitation is deliberately imperfect and often subversive. Nelly Richard also invokes the concept of hybridity in her description of Latin American discourse as based on “mixed appropriations, translations, and reconversions of statements that also force theory to reformulate itself in a hybrid way”.11 An important Latin American metaphor for the creative appropriation of European discourses is the Brazilian notion of anthropophagy in the nineteen twenties. The Brazilian modernists rejected the pejorative paradigm of imitation in favor of a conscious and selfempowering act of incorporating the other, just as the cannibal chooses to eat those parts of the victim he considers most palatable, 10

Homi Bhabha. 1994. ‘Signs Taken for Wonders: Questions of Ambivalence and Authority under a Tree outside Delhi, May 1817’ in The Location of Culture 1994: 102-22. 11 Nelly Richard. 2004. ‘Intersecting Latin America with Latin Americanism: Academic Knowledge, Theoretical Practice, and Cultural Criticism’ in Del Sarto, Ríos & Trigo 2004: 687.

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and those he believes will confer on him the positive attributes of the captured warrior of exceptional bravery. Creative appropriation implies autonomization, in which the initial heteronomy of the other’s laws is replaced by the autonomy of the later discourse in which new models are developed in the context of one’s particular social and cultural circumstances and thus conform to one’s own emergent conventions. What is essential here is the implication of the new. In The Imaginary Institution of Society, the political philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis emphasizes the role of the imaginary in the reworking of the existing “magma” of significations in the creation of different cultural and social forms that become autonomous.12 A parallel can be drawn between his valuation of the new springing from the old and the concept of neoculturation developed in the nineteen forties by the Cuban critic Fernando Ortiz, who explains that transculturation implies “the idea of the consequent creation of new cultural phenomena, which could be called neoculturation”.13 A certain degree of autonomization always accompanies the transfer of a model to a new context, since reterritorialization results in the transformation of former meanings. Fernández Retamar’s criticism of imitation refers to a process in which the context, the “lived reality”, is erased. However, if the borrowed discourses are applied in the context of a new reality, the old necessarily becomes new. An extreme illustration of this is Jorge Luis Borges’ short story ‘Pierre Menard, author of the Quijote’,14 in which the protagonist’s meticulous and rigorously faithful rewriting of Cervantes’ famous novel creates a new work with entirely different meanings in a different historical context. Creative transformation, however, deliberately transforms the imported models in a process of appropriation and autonomization that adapts them to a new context in recognizable ways and thus leads to something new.

12

Cornelius Castoriadis. 1987. The Imaginary Institution of Society. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. 13 Fernando Ortiz. 1995. Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar (tr. Harriet de Onís). Durham & London: Duke University Press: 102-103. 14 Jorge Luis Borges. 1956. ‘Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote’ in Ficciones. Buenos Aires: EMECÉ Editores: 35-47.

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Resignification In The Protestant Ethnic, Rey Chow uses the figure of the zoo to refer to the “coercive mimeticism” of the ethnic writer in North America who is expected to conform to prescribed constructions of otherness.15 Hugo Achugar provides a list of these inhabitants of the zoo in the context of Latin America: “Cannibals, barbarians, natives, savages, subalterns, slaves, ‘people without history,’ marginalized, colonized, dominated” (671). Latin Americans, in other words, are interpellated, to use Louis Althusser’s term, in particular ways that lead to negative forms of subjectivation. In Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon analyzed a particular form of interpellation – that of the subjection of the racially marked subject through the white gaze, leading to a problematic sense of self.16 To use Rey Chow’s colorful metaphor, the ethnics (and we can broaden this category to include any marginalized or oppressed group), are confined to the zoo of imposed ethnicity through powerful forms of interpellation. Judith Butler, on the other hand, sees interpellation as an important component of subjectivation: I am led to embrace the terms that injure me, precisely because they constitute me socially […] As a further paradox, then, it is only by occupying – being occupied by – that injurious term that I become enabled to resist and oppose that term […] an attachment to an injurious interpellation by way of a necessarily alienated narcissism will become that condition by which a resignification of that interpellation becomes possible.17

She concludes her article by arguing that a “passionate attachment to subjection” is necessary to subject-formation (246). In her discussion of the contemporary critical and theoretical landscape of Latin Americanism, however, Nelly Richard evinces strong reservations about certain forms of resignification that have emerged outside Latin America. She emphasizes the continuing construction of Latin America as marginal within the newer paradigm of 15

Rey Chow. 2002. The Protestant Ethnic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Columbia University Press: 95-127. 16 Frantz Fanon. 1952. Peau noire masques blancs. Paris: Seuil. 17 Judith Butler. 1995. ‘Subjection, Resistance, Resignification: Between Freud and Foucault’ in Rajchman, John (ed.). The Identity in Question. New York & London: Routledge: 246-247.

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cultural and postcolonial studies in the centers of symbolic power that represent and “re-signify” the periphery.18 She points out that globalization has not eliminated asymmetries of power that, in the case of cultural peripheries, obstruct the multilateral flow of signs, blocking the routes of reciprocity that would activate the exchange of messages between recognized and equally valid interlocutors (689).

Latin America is still fetishized as the body, authenticity and lived experience, source of action and imagination, a radical “outside” of “metropolitan intellectuality” (691): “a prediscursive or extradiscursive force that resists the Center and that Latin Americanism tries to capture or declare uncapturable” (692). The Latin American remains “in a situation of pre-theoretical or sub-theoretical conscience” (694). But it is not just a matter of escaping from the zoo, or, in Richard’s words, the “assigned place of the unrepresentable” in order to engage in “counter-representation or derepresentation” (694) – a form of “writing back to the Center”. Richard inverts the dichotomy of lived experience (situated outside the symbolic order) as opposed to theorizing and redefines, or resignifies, experience as “subjectivities in context” that produce theoretical knowledge as “multiarticulated through local effects of signification” (695). She points out that the ideas of Walter Benjamin, for example, are not analyzed by Chilean intellectuals according to the precepts of institutionalized philosophy, but combined with “heteroclitic residues of cultural languages strongly unaffiliated with the whole university-theoretical legacy” (696) in a “collage” of “renegade knowledge” (697). Richard’s discourse constructs Latin Americans not only as resisting subjects who refuse metropolitan interpellation as pre-civilized beings, but resignifies the concept of experience from within a Latin American positionality to represent them as producers of particular forms of knowledge that contribute to global knowledge production. Judith Butler’s positive valuation of interpellation as productive of subjectivity in new ways, through multiple rewritings and repetitions of the elements of the Foucauldian disciplinary discursive machine, illuminates many examples of creative appropriation, such as 18

Richard 2004: 690.

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the concepts of hybridity, Caliban and the marvelous, which are resignified and become important models of self-representation. In the case of Nelly Richard’s resignification of experience, Latin American critics and theoreticians become autonomous subjects, as she deconstructs the dichotomy between the European and United States producer of knowledge on the one hand, and the Latin American object of knowledge on the other. The resignified Caliban acquires his own specific speech and subjectivity and also enters the global intellectual dialogue. Not only can the subaltern speak, to use Gayatri Spivak’s wellknown expression, but he can speak as an other, as well as an equal other, and he must be listened to if cultural centers want to understand Latin America. An important example of resignification is the concept of miscegenation. José Martí’s famous concept of “our mestizo América” (“nuestra América mestiza”)19 became a significant metaphor for a specific Latin American hybrid identity that revalued a concept that had usually been defined in pejorative ways – miscegenation as contamination and degeneration.20 Although Martí frequently drew attention to the social and political conflicts and the inequalities of his hybrid Caribbean society, he established a distinction between a negatively depicted North, or the “continent’s blond people” (“pueblo rubio del continente” (317)), which systematically excluded Blacks and Indians from their society, with “our mestizo America”, where “the autochthonous mestizo has vanquished the exotic Creole” (“el mestizo autóctono ha vencido al criollo exótico” (310)). The scandal of the human hybrid (which implies degeneration and infertility according to Western racialist paradigms) is erased in Martí’s appropriation of a concept which he resignifies in a new context and in the light of a strategy of anticolonial struggle and a call for national and continental unity. Rather than an invocation of race and filiation (although he expresses a strong symbolic filiation through identification with the 19

José Martí. 1972. ‘Nuestra América’ in Martí, José. Antología mínima. Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales: 307-317. 20 See Amaryll Chanady. 2003. ‘Identity Politics and Mestizaje’ in Hart, Stephen & Richard Young (eds). Contemporary Latin American Cultural Studies. London: Arnold: 192-212, and Amaryll Chanady. 1999. ‘La hibridez como significación imaginaria’ in Revista de crítica literaria latinoamericana 49: 265-279.

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indigenous culture), Martí’s discourse is a call for collective action within diversity. Hybridity has also been a central figure for Caribbean writers in other linguistic areas. One example is Michelle Cliff, whose novel Abeng starts with a celebratory metaphorical illustration of hybridity in the description of the infinitely varied hues, shapes and hybridizations of the Caribbean mango, only to deconstruct it further on through the depiction of the racial, social and economic inequalities and conflicts of her homeland, Jamaica.21 Many Caribbean authors have deconstructed the celebratory ideologeme of hybridity. One of the major problems, beside the marginalization of the Caribbean in the global economy, its general underdevelopment, social inequality and political violence, is the persistence of ethnic and racial tensions. In Samuel Selvon’s novel A Brighter Sun,22 for example, the Trinidadian author describes racial segregation in his society: “The Negroes were never farmers, and most of them did odd jobs in the village or the city” (10), while the “majority of Chinese in Trinidad are shopkeepers or launderers” (50). The Indian protagonist, Tiger, is told that he must find Indian friends, since Indians “must keep together” (47) and creoles must “keep they [sic] distance” (48). At the same time, racial stereotypes influence people’s self-perception. The novel’s black characters generally have a very low opinion of themselves. Rita tells her husband that “black people can’t get on” (30) and asks herself: “Why we creole can’t live like Indian, quiet and nice” (31). The Indians also have a negative self-image. Urmilla, for example, “knew from experience that Indians fought and quarrelled just as much” and wishes that “they could only be like white people” (31). Whites, on the other hand, treat non-whites with disdain, as in the scene where the shop attendant serves a white woman first even though she arrived after Tiger (92) or the incident where the same woman threatens a colored policeman for enforcing parking regulations (94). Solidarity within racial groups is also frequently absent, because of class divisions. Neither the black nor the Indian doctor will make a 21 22

Michelle Cliff. 1995. Abeng. New York: Plume: 3. Samuel Selvon. 1952. A Brighter Sun. Essex: Wingate Press.

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home visit to treat the sick wife of the protagonist Tiger, who voices his frustration at class discrimination: “Is just these damn people who have money and moving in society, who does laugh and spit on we poor people” (188). Ironically, it is a white doctor from England who agrees to visit Tiger’s wife in the middle of the night. But the novel does not simply describe the dysfunctional aspects of society. It explicitly criticizes racism and portrays solidarity between the four main characters, the ethnically Indian Tiger and his wife Urmilla, and their black friends, Joe and Rita. Tiger himself is very critical of segregation and race prejudice and advocates not just tolerance, but also friendship between races: “Is true I used to play with Indian friend in the estate, but that ain’t no reason why I must shut my heart to other people. Ain’t a man is a man, don’t mind if he skin not white, or if he hair curl?” (48). Selvon thus describes racial tensions while at the same time showing that it is possible to find solutions on an individual basis. In an important study of popular culture in Latin America, William Rowe and Vivian Schelling criticize the historian Benedict Anderson, since his “thesis that the novel was the main vehicle for forging the ‘imagined community’ of the nation corresponds more to the desires of the bourgeoisie than to the works that were actually produced” (204).23 The authors of Memory and Modernity argue that “what the major works of literature display are the fundamental divisions of culture, language and territory that made the formation of modern nation-states difficult” (204). However, I would argue that many novels do both, and that criticizing racial tensions is an essential step toward imagining a more functional community. Martí himself stressed both – racial tensions and the necessity for adhering to an ideal of community and solidarity. While portraits of diversity may indeed be criticized for their idealism in the absence of social criticism, positive paradigms remain important for the construction of community. Another important example of resignification is the marvelous. The Cuban author Alejo Carpentier, who had strong links to the French Surrealists, appropriated the concept of the marvelous, which 23

William Rowe & Vivian Schelling. 1991. Memory and Modernity: Popular Culture in Latin America. London & New York: Verso: 204.

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critics such as Pierre Mabille considered as a characteristic of authentic non-Western societies more in touch with nature and cosmic forces, and resignified it as the marvelous real (“lo real maravilloso”) which he presented as a central marker of Latin American identity. He contrasted artificial Surrealist constructions of the marvelous with Latin American reality, which he described as marvelous because of its impressive geography, cultural diversity and presence of indigenous people who believed in magic.24 The Haitian novelist JacquesStephen Alexis further resignified Carpentier’s concept of the marvelous real as le réalisme merveilleux in order to stress the importance of Afro-Caribbean oral culture.25 Outside Latin America, the concept has also been appropriated – as a literary expression of marginality in Western Canada, and as a hybrid form of novelistic writing in Africa and India that combines the Western tradition of the novel and nonWestern cultural traditions, especially those linked to religion and belief in the supernatural. The concept of Caliban the cannibal, created by Shakespeare in his play The Tempest, has been resignified in English, French and Spanish by several Caribbean authors, including Roberto Fernández Retamar. From the uncouth primitive of Shakespeare’s play, Caliban is transformed into a positive metaphor for Latin America: “The independentistas, white and black, adopted with honor something that colonialism meant as an insult. This is the dialectic of Caliban”.26 Fernández Retamar consciously appropriates a figure and revalues it in the context of self-affirmation and resistance against outside intervention in Cuban affairs during the Cold War, as well as in the more general context of Latin American struggle for recognition and autonomy with respect to hemispheric and global power structures: “In proposing Caliban as our symbol, I am aware that it is not entirely ours, that it is also an alien elaboration, although in this case based on 24 Alejo Carpentier. 1967 [orig. published in 1949]. ‘Prologue to El reino de este mundo’ in Carpentier 1967: 96-112. 25 Jacques-Stephen Alexis. June-November 1956. ‘Du réalisme merveilleux des Haïtiens’ in Présence africaine 8-9-10: 245-271. For further discussion of this resignification, see Amaryll Chanady. 1999. Entre inclusion et exclusion: la symbolisation de l’autre dans les Amériques. Paris: Champion: 109-121. 26 Fernández Retamar 1989: 16.

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our concrete realities” (16). The figure of Caliban thus symbolizes anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist struggle on a local and global level, as well as the affirmation of a specific, vibrant and heterogeneous Latin American culture, which Fernández Retamar illustrates by providing a list of some of the most significant revolutionaries, intellectuals, writers and politicians, such as José Martí, Pablo Neruda and Aimé Césaire. Resistance The emphasis on resistance has always played an important part in Caribbean discourses of identity, as illustrated by the figure of Caliban. Martí resists both the prolonged colonial presence of Spain in Cuba, and United States neo-imperialist designs on Latin America, while Fernández Retamar resists European manifestations of cultural superiority as well as the encroachment and interventions of the capitalist West in general. However, as the centers of power have become increasingly diffuse with the effects of globalization, we can no longer always identify a well-defined power to oppose and resist. Furthermore, any settler society develops contradictory responses to metropolitan power, as cultural institutions are adapted to conflicting, multicultural societies. In ‘Opposition, Political Identities and Spaces of Resistance’,27 Steve Pile develops a notion of resistance that corresponds to the new realities of globalization and heterogeneous and fluid cultural formations. He conceptualizes resistance in terms of space, arguing that “geographies of resistance do not necessarily (or even ever) mirror geographies of domination”, but create “distinct spatialities” (2): resistance seeks to occupy, deploy and create alternative spatialities from those defined through oppression and exploitation. From this perspective, assumptions about the domination/resistance couplet become questionable (3).

27 Steve Pile. 1997. ‘Opposition, Political Identities and Spaces of Resistance’ in Pile, Steve & Michael Keith (eds). Geographies of Resistance. London & New York: Routledge.

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He explains that it is no longer sufficient to assume that resistance arises from innate political subjectivities which are opposed to, or marginalized by, oppressive practices […] Instead, resistant political subjectivities are constituted through positions taken up not only in relation to authority […] but also through experiences which are not so quickly labelled ‘power’, such as desire and anger, capacity and ability, happiness and fear, dreaming and forgetting (3).

Much recent Caribbean narrative can be conceptualized in this way. Multiple strategies of resistance to external forces, state apparatuses, social conventions, taboos and prescriptions do not necessarily aim to subvert a particular power that can be easily localized, but to create new possibilities for social and political action and the artistic imagination that enhance experience within the interstices of power. Differentiation Roberto Schwarz’s assertion that many Latin American discourses of identity involve a conscious “subtraction” or elimination of metropolitan models in a simple binary construction of positive Self and negative Other is an extreme case of differentiation that attempts to constitute the continent symbolically as specific and unique.28 Many discourses of identity, however, appropriate metropolitan paradigms while explicitly demonstrating to what extent they are actually different from Latin American models. Resignification often involves this additional gesture of establishing and emphasizing distinctions between Self and Other. Martí’s notion of hybridity illustrates this kind of differentiation, since the positive revaluation of the pejorative racialist concept of the human hybrid is accompanied by an emphatic demonstration of Latin American difference with respect to both Europe and the United States. The figure of Caliban is also resignified in discourses that stress the differences between the metropole and Latin America, as is the concept of the marvelous, which Carpentier takes great care to redefine and set against French Surrealist practices, even though his own resignification owes much to French primitivist 28

Roberto Schwarz. 1992. ‘Brazilian Culture: Nationalism by Elimination’ in Misplaced Ideas: Essays on Brazilian Culture. New York & London: Verso.

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celebrations of the authentic native who still believes in the supernatural. Differentiation is an essential aspect of subjectivation, both individual and collective. This process is particularly ambivalent in a colonial or postcolonial context and serves more to create a sense of distinct identity than it describes absolute distinction in heterogeneous cultural practices drawing from several sources. The ubiquity of globalizing forces increases this ambivalence. Although differentiation is still a common characteristic of identitarian discourses, it is often combined with the creation of complex webs of affiliation and identification, local as well as global. Differentiation arises out of a dialogic relation with the Other, in which an interdiscursive dynamic leads to the emergence of discursive practices that are perceived as different, but still connected to former discourses. Emplacement The creative appropriation of discourses generally involves localization or indigenization that requires the adaptation of former discourses to a new context. The anthropologist Arjun Appadurai has studied how different societies maintain a sense of identity in an increasingly globalized world in which no society can remain isolated from the numerous global forces affecting economics, politics and culture.29 He is particularly interested in the ways in which migrants maintain a specific cultural identity in new and unfamiliar surroundings, and introduces the concept of “diasporic public spheres” (4). His main concern, however, is linked to the complexity and changing nature of one’s identification with a concrete place, or, in other words, “how locality emerges in a globalizing world” (18). Appadurai’s theorization of locality is particularly relevant to the Caribbean, as complex webs are created by the various linguistic communities not only in their place of birth, but also in their new homes within the Americas and Europe to which they migrate in large numbers. The identities of these groups cannot be linked to single places in an age of mass mobility and flows of information. Furthermore, a sense of location was 29

Arjun Appadurai. 1996. Modernity at Large. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

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already problematic for many inhabitants of the Caribbean who traced their ancestors back to India or Africa. The appropriation of discourses must therefore be related to complex constructions of a sense of locality. In the field of theory, discursive appropriation should always remain conscious of locality, according to Nelly Richard, who advocates the necessity of thinking about “situated knowledge”,30 “theoretical location” and immersion in a “particular geocultural locality through the (constructed) relationship between the positioning of the subject and the mediation of codes, between contextual location and discursive positionality” (688). An important Caribbean example of creative appropriation and autonomization which emphasizes locality is Édouard Glissant’s 1990 study of Caribbean discourse, in which he develops the concept of the relation.31 Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari, he distinguishes between the root model of identity, which involves myths of origin, filiation, hierarchy and territorial possessions and conquest, and which he relates to the colonizer, and a rhizomic identitarian model which he considers relevant to the Caribbean. In spite of his appropriation of certain aspects of postmodern theory, he contextualizes it in terms of politics and concrete emplacement – the opacity of the local. Figures of postcolonial thought thus acquire concrete meaning in a new conceptualization of Caribbean identity as heterogeneous and characterized by multiple cultural connections. In his monograph on the “poetics of relation” he criticizes traditional models of identity (rootidentity) and proposes a model based on concrete experiences of contact between cultures (“Relation”) in a particular land (“terre”) which is not seen as a territory but as a place (157-158). Identities are not already existing entities that enter into contact with other identities, but are constantly created and recreated by intercultural contact and differentiation reminiscent of the Deleuzian metaphor of the rhizome, in which the hierarchical root is replaced by the infinite ramifications of the rhizomatic web.

30 31

Richard 2004: 690. Édouard Glissant. 1990. Poétique de la relation. Paris: Gallimard.

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At the same time, Glissant insists on the problematic nature of rhizomatic identity in a “composite” society in which the danger of assimilation to French culture and “generalizing universality” (160) is always present. For him, a sense of cultural specificity is essential, and this can be acquired in three main ways: geographical identification (with the Caribbean), popular language (Creole) and the Earth (he specifically mentions “the planet Earth” (160)). Although he admits that these elements are ambiguous, he argues that what he calls an “ecological vision” excludes the intolerance associated with the traditional “root identity” and is based on “relational solidarity of all lands, of the whole Earth” (160). Although Glissant’s identitarian paradigm is contradictory (are not language and geography the essential elements of a traditional sense of identity and is not the exclusive insistence on the Creole language problematic in a fully relational and non-filiational model that should logically eschew exclusions of any kind?), it illustrates the apparently insurmountable problems of reconciling a sense of cultural identity and belonging to a particular community in an increasingly heterogeneous modern society, especially in the Caribbean in which different cultural memories have coexisted uneasily since the beginnings of colonization and conquest. Glissant’s emphasis on intercultural (or transcultural) contact, solidarity and the land reminds us of the novelist Wilson Harris, in whose novel The Whole Armour the protagonist stresses the hybrid nature of the population: “the violent mixture of races that had bred them as though their true mother was a wanton on the face of the earth and their true father a vagrant and a rogue from every continent”.32 Since the inhabitants of the Caribbean are “all mixed up, East, West, North, South, every race under the sun” (114), they must turn to the land and create a sense of belonging. It is the new generations, not the first settlers who had no “conception of what it means to belong to the grass-roots” (115), who are the “first potential parents” (116; italics in the original).

32

Wilson Harris. 1962. The Whole Armour. London: Faber & Faber: 49.

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Intervention One final concept I would like to mention is that of intervention. One of Hugo Achugar’s sub-titles, ‘Latin American Critical Discourse as Intervention’,33 must be linked to his final comments on the necessity of dialogue. It is not a matter of writing back to the center in protest and self-affirmation, but one of participating – intervening – in the global production of knowledge, instead of remaining the Other of discourse. This reminds me of an interesting passage in Édouard Glissant’s Le discours antillais, in which the Martinican author and critic rejects the notion of colonial reaction in favor of intervention: “Notre critique de l’acte et du donné littéraires ne procède donc pas d’une ‘réaction’ à des théories qu’on nous propose, mais d’une nécessité fulgurante d’intervention”.34 Arturo Aldama’s final comments in his introductory chapter to the book Disrupting Savagism are particularly relevant in the context of Glissant’s work on the Relation and his stress on intervention: he advocates drawing on “different reservoirs of signifying practices” and reclaiming a “vital heterogeneity that reconfirms our interconnectedness with all of our relations” and speaking and acting as “subjects-in-process”.35 Three points stand out in this passage: the necessity of dialogue (not only with metropolitan centers, but also within Latin America), interconnectedness in the era of globalization and thus a de-centered world, and that of intervention. Both Glissant and Aldama stress the necessity of becoming subjects, individual or collective, but not essentialized subjects that have distinct, permanent and well-defined identities standing in clear distinction to those of other subjects. The distinction made by the French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy between two different conceptions of the subject elucidates the way in which recent thinkers in the Caribbean and Latin America have resignified this concept.36 He contrasts sujets communs – common in 33

Achugar 2004: 679. Glissant 1981: 258. 35 Arturo Aldama. 1991. Disrupting Savagism: Intersecting Chicana/o, Mexican Immigrant, and Native American Struggles for Self-Representation. Durham & London: Duke University Press: 33. 36 Jean-Luc Nancy. 1991. The Inoperative Community. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press: 1-42. 34

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the sense of alike or identical, in a homogenizing conception of the nation or other collectivity – and sujets en commun – subjects in common, or singularities – , to use his preferred term for the subject, that remain different but share the experience of being human and finite. Many newer discourses of identity, in the Caribbean and the rest of Latin America, do not simply resist, appropriate, resignify, or write back to the dispersed and rhizomatic Center, but strive towards becoming subjects en commun, retaining their singularity, their otherness, in a new constellation of global others located in various ways and caught up in an ever-changing web of connections and conflicts. Caribbean discourses of identity are not merely illustrations of new forms of symbolization and subjectivation; their authors demand the right to intervene actively in the global discourse. The creative appropriation of metropolitan discourses should thus not be seen simply as a matter of resignification on the local level of identity formation and self-affirmation, but on the global level as it aims at changing the terms of dialogue between Latin America and its interlocutors.

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Islands, Borders and Vectors: The Fractal World of the Caribbean Ottmar Ette Universität Potsdam In need for new conceptions of literary history, the analysis of transareal and transdisciplinary relations and dimensions in the American hemisphere and beyond could be extremely helpful if we try to insert it into broken, shattered, discontinous relations. How can we rethink the Caribbean in terms of a not only discontinous but also fractal (literary) history? In what sense the archipilago situation may be understood as a landscape of theory, allowing new insights into literary vectorizations? Can the Caribbean even be considered as a model for literary history/histories beyond the difference between world literature on one side and national literatures on the other? How can we find the fractal patterns that enable us to inscribe the complexity of the Caribbean’s “poétique de la relation” (Édouard Glissant) in the dialectics of homelessness that characterize the literatures without a fixed abode of the 21st century? The Caribbean interfaces of “las islas dolorosas del mar” (José Martí) are based upon a fractal geometry of culture.

– ¿A tí no te cansa eso de que en este jodido país cada vez que vas a un lugar, ¡pum!, te tropiezas con el mar? No hay salida, estamos rodeados de agua. – Coño, claro, Ana, si has mirado bien un planisferio somos una isla.1

Islands and the Island World At the end of Friedrich Cramer’s Chaos und Ordnung (Chaos and Order) – a fascinating study that combines scholarship and literature in order to analyze the complex structure of living creatures – there is a short chapter entitled, ‘We Islanders: The Beautiful Life on the Archipelagoes’. 2 In this chapter, the author (and long-time director of the Göttingen Max Planck Institute for Experimental Medicine), em1

Zoé Valdés. 2001. Café Nostalgia. Barcelona: Editorial Planeta: 164. Friedrich Cramer. 1993. Chaos und Ordnung: Die komplexe Struktur des Lebendigen. Frankfurt am Main & Leipzig: Insel Verlag: 304. 2

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ploys a self-contained circular structure and draws a comparison between his book and all of (modern) life on the one hand and island existence – indeed, an island world – on the other hand: We live in an island world, on islands of order, on islands of physical laws, on islands of ideas, on islands of trust. We live on our own private island….There may be other islands – an entire archipelago even. The structures there may be of another kind, but we must grant their equality, for we now know about the plurality of this world.3

The island metaphor is meant to represent a way of living living that is characterized by a certain sense of order on a particular island. At the same time, it testifies to a (world) consciousness of other islands where other orders prevail. These other orders obey a logic that is essentially different, but that still has the same rights as one’s own logic. In this respect, Friedrich Cramer is in accord with Immanuel Kant, the author of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft (The Critique of Pure Reason), one of the most important philosophical treatises of the modern age. At the beginning of his discussion of ‘Phenomena and Noumena’, Kant emphasized that one had “not only now traveled through the land of pure reason and carefully scrutinized every aspect of it, but also paced off its dimensions and defined the place of its every component”.4 Adding: But this land is an island encircled by immutable boundaries thrown up by Nature itself. It is the Land of Truth (an enchanting name), surrounded by a wide and storm-tossed sea, the actual sea of appearances, where seemingly new lands are introduced through the deception of fog banks and icebergs that will soon melt away.5

The island metaphor – Kant obviously uses its Nordic variant, fog and ice included – is deeply embedded in Western thinking. It can be found in those mental habits and traditions of a Europe whose namesake was abducted from the coast of Asia Minor (i.e. a continent) 3

Cramer 1993: 304. Immanuel Kant. 1974. Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Vol. 1. (ed. Wilhelm Weischedel). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp: 267 (B 294, 295 / A 236). 5 Kant 1974: 267 (B 294, 295 / 236). 4

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and transported to an island (if not in Kant’s Baltic Sea, then in the Mediterranean, seat of Western civilization) by Zeus. The two quotations I have used so far belong to an age-old Occidental ideational world, but it is important to keep the difference between them in mind. The Königsberg philosopher conceived his island as a completely isolated “Land of Truth”, with shores that were immutably bounded by an ocean that only conjured illusory and deceptive images. Cramer, on the other hand, posits an island world in which one’s own island and its order enter into a pluralistic relationship with other islands that obey their own systems of meaning. The island metaphor leaves room for at least two interpretations. It can both be seen as symbolizing an isolated separateness from the Other and as symbolizing the consciousness of a variegated relationship with the Other. On the one hand, in the clarity of its seemingly firm borders, the island is a world detached from the Other. This is the case in Thomas More’s Caribbean Utopia, which is under the sway of a single logic that has taken on a material and territorial form. On the other hand, it is a place that perceives itself as one fragment among many, torn away, separated and at the same time in many ways still linked with a continent whose very etymology alludes to connectedness; be it as a linked continens of the Old World – Europe, Asia and Africa – or be it as a self-contained general land mass like America or Australia. The semantics of the island in the Western tradition can pivot either way. As a result, it comprises not only the concept of the island as an island world in which its seclusion encompasses a totality that breaks down into various regional, climatic and cultural parts, but it is a world of islands representing that which is fragmentary, splintered and mosaic-like, and which is distinguished by manifold inner connections and constellations. Obviously, this world of islands can also become a self-contained island world or be conceived as an archipelago that communicates with other regions. Both interpretive models can overlap, thereby creating the conditions for the semantic oscillation anyone who occupies himself with islands should be conscious of.

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Island Boundaries In his lecture on the notion of la clôture (closure),6 Roland Barthes emphasized the seclusion that is involved in the process of defining in the spatially fixed mental world: “C’est le sens de ‘définir’: tracer les limites, des frontières. Clôture = définition du territoire, et donc de l’identité de son/ses occupants”.7 Even though the French semiologist was not talking about islands but about other self-contained spaces such as monasteries or multi-storied apartment buildings, what is valuable to us is his notion of the territorial demarcation – finis – of every rational definition, the creation of a space with clearly defined borders that excludes the Other. As in Immanuel Kant’s “Land of Truth”, seclusion is defined and created through an insular structure that also affects the inhabitants or occupants of this territory. They are either assigned an identity that is marked by bounded space, or they themselves feel a common identity that is bound up with their territory. They are involved in this self-defining process of delimitation, demarcation, exclusion and the breaking down of barriers, and are subject to it to the same degree as that definitively isolated land, the island and its inhabitants. Here the seclusion of the insular combines with the question as to the power to define and, even moreso, to the power that is wielded over those who are islanders, or to that power which is exercised by the islanders themselves. Islands have always been important starting points for geo-strategic considerations as well as for internal power constellations. But let us, from the perspective of islands, first address the problems involved in defining and fixing borders. One only needs to look at a map of the world to see that island borders are always clearly defined. These all-encompassing borders, however, are only “immutable boundaries thrown up by Nature itself”8 at first glance. How are these natural borders measured within Nature? In 1977, the mathematician Benoît B. Mandelbrot published a large-scale and influential study that attempted to replace or, at least, 6

This lecture took place on the 2nd of March 1977 at the Collège de France. Roland Barthes. 2002. Comment vivre ensemble: simulations romanesques de quelques espaces quotidiens – Notes de cours et de séminaires au Collège de France, 1976-1977 (ed. Claude Coste). Paris: Seuil/IMEC: 94. 8 Kant 1974: 267. 7

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to supplement Euclidean geometry with a new, fractal geometry of Nature. In his explication of what he termed fractal, he took the island as an example. Thanks to his famous question “How long is the British coastline?”, he was able to show the ramifications of his problem with reference to something that prima facie would appear a very straightforward measurement of coastline: The length of a coastline proves an indefinable concept that slips through one’s fingers when one tries to seize it. In the final analysis, all methods of measurement lead one to the conclusion that the length of a typical coastline is very great and so badly defined that it is probably best to regard it as endless.9

What kind of boundary, however, is formed by an endless insular coastline? It makes perfect sense that the length of a coastline, to put it simply, depends on the accuracy with which we map a certain coast and its bays, inlets and coves. As whole-number dimensions are no longer adequate, Mandelbrot introduces fractal, broken dimensions. Euclidean geometry can no longer explain the phenomenon Mandelbrot chose to study. The notion of self-similarity10 is very important for describing the features of fractals. Mandelbrot, who gave a fractal structure to his book and stressed his “lifelong attachment to this land [of fractals]”,11 indicated in his epilogue that the consequences of self-similarity held in store some “extraordinary surprises” that were of fundamental assistance to him “in understanding the Workshop of Nature”. 12 The self-similarity of the fractal, which appears positively malleable when viewed by means of various “enlargements” of the outline of a coast, displays a characteristic that is in no way limited to the “Workshop of 9

Benoît B. Mandelbrot. 1999. Die fraktale Geometrie der Natur (tr. from English by Dr. Reinhilt Zähle & Dr. Ulrich Zähle. Basel, Boston & Berlin: Birkhäuser Verlag: 38. 10 See Cramer 1993: 172 f.: “The concept of fractal dimension and selfsimilarity is first and foremost a mathematical one. Self-similarity over all scales of length is never ideally fulfilled with regard to real physical and chemical objects, diffusion curves, crystal surfaces and proteins […]. One can dissect a surface into ever smaller self-similar fragments. It thereby becomes more fissured and takes on added dimensions”. 11 Mandelbrot 1999: 429. 12 Mandelbrot 1999: 430.

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Nature”. We are dealing with a phenomenon a wide variety of cultures can attest to. In the field of anthropology, it can be linked to Claude Lévi-Strauss’s modèle réduit, and in the field of literary studies, it can be linked to Gide’s mise en abyme. These concepts, in other words, are to be understood as structural components that contain the entire structure – and hence also themselves – in a reduced form. Here as well, we have a fractal relation that is marked by a fundamental selfsimilarity and to which widely diverse functions can be assigned. From this point of view, Mandelbrot’s statement becomes even more relevant. In view of the “irregularities and splinterings” of many natural phenomena, it is not about simply assuming “a higher degree of complexity vis-à-vis Euclid”.13 Rather: The existence of such forms challenges us to study that which Euclid put aside as being ‘formless,’ and leads us to the morphology of the ‘amorphous’ […]. In response, we will develop a new geometry of nature and prove its benefit in a variety of areas. This new geometry describes many of the irregular and splintered forms around us – and with a family of figures that we will call fractals. The most useful fractals contain chance in their regularities as well as in their irregularities.14

Mandelbrot’s thoughts on the irregular, “amorphous” character of coastlines draw our attention to the “double nature” of islands, which are to be understood as incoherent fragments of enclosed coastlines. Islands distinguish themselves through the irregular brokenness of their fractal dimension. At the same time, they can be grasped by means of their infinite nature, which is in turn based on their selfsimilarity. Our consideration of island boundaries once again shows the double character of the island. It is both fragmentariness and totality; a fragmented, splintered structure and a mise en abyme that goes on into eternity and that wants to create new totalities. The island oscillates between its eruption from a coherent world and its own world as a continuously differentiating unity. One of the central theses of this analysis is that this natural foundation has specific cultural repercussions. 13 14

Mandelbrot 1999: 13. Mandelbrot 1999: 13.

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It should also be pointed out that the terrestrial borders of noninsular countries can still be compared and even equated with insular coastlines. These boundaries, which not infrequently follow the twists and turns of rivers and mountain chains, are also of a fractal nature. It is hardly surprising that countries such as Spain and Portugal or Belgium and the Netherlands assign various lengths to their common borders. Mandelbrot himself drew attention to this interesting phenomenon, presuming that the smaller countries calculated their borders at twenty percent longer than the larger nations because their chosen scale of measurement was based on smaller proportions. The greatly differing border lengths not only illustrate that “a small country (Portugal) measures its border more carefully than its larger neighbor”,15 but also that the concept of length is by no means as “objective” as it would like to be. “The observer unavoidably meddles in the definition”.16 Even mathematically based and comprehensible definitions become territorialized, as they depend on who is observing. We are not dealing with the mathematical calculability of borders here, but with the difference between island and mainland boundaries. Contrary to terrestrial (national) borders, island borders are boundaries that divide water and land. When crossing such borders, one is forced to change, among other things, one’s mode of transportation. The streets of an island never leave the island; they do not continue beyond the island. If they do continue, then they succeed in continentalizing this world of islands. This is the case with the Keys (Florida), which have indeed been linked to the continent by streets. This elementary and medial discontinuity is an essential prerequisite for the double semantics of the island notion as well as for the oscillation between fragmentariness and totality, between the island world and the world of islands. It transforms this fractal dimension, which in a fundamental way equates dividedness and self-similarity with the image of the island, into a life-world and a quotidian cultural experience.

15 16

Mandelbrot 1999: 39. Mandelbrot 1999: 39.

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Archipelagoes In an essay that dates back to 1976, the Brazilian cultural theorist Darcy Ribeiro asked himself whether Latin America truly existed. By considering this question from a geographic perspective, he was able to ascertain a revealing tension between the continental and the insular: From a geographic standpoint, Latin America forms a continental unity; but there is neither a corresponding socio-political structural unity nor any active system of interaction. This great continent is segmented into individual nations, some of which have very little chances for development. Geographic unity in Latin America has never led to political unity because the various colonies from which the various Latin American societies emerged, have lived next to each other for centuries without any contact. Each one of them was directly tied to its respective metropolis. To this very day, we Latin Americans live as if on an archipelago whose islands are linked with one another through ships and airplanes, and which are less inwardly directed than outwardly oriented toward the world’s economic centers. Even the borders of Latin American countries run along the uninhabited Cordillera or the impenetrable jungle, and they isolate more than they conjoin, and thus seldom allow for any intensive contact.17

Despite the fact that the culturally defined concept of Latin America is not a suitable geographic term, despite the fact that South America itself can certainly not be designated as a continental unit but rather as a subcontinental one, and despite the fact that it ultimately remains unclear how the Brazilian anthropologist would classify the Caribbean islands with respect to Latin America, his portrayal of the continental nations of South America as an archipelago is significant in several ways. Firstly, he rightfully draws our attention to the age-old continuity of an external relation toward the needs of the colonial powers. Secondly, he portrays the archipelago situation as a massive hindrance to a purposeful internal relationality. And finally, the borders running through the “uninhabited” Cordillera and jungles are depicted as extremely hostile to communication. Twentieth-century Latin America, whose actual existence Ribeiro questions, is seen as a splintered region that represents a negatively stigmatized island logic. 17 Darcy Ribeiro. 1980. ‘Gibt es Lateinamerika?’ in Ribeiro, Darcy. Unterentwicklung, Kultur und Zivilisation: Ungewöhnliche Versuche (tr. from Portuguese by Manfred Wöhlcke). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp: 315.

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In 1971, the Uruguayan essayist Eduardo Galeano published an essay that inspired debates throughout the 1970s and 1980s. His Las venas abiertas de América Latina was a comparable but essentially more sweeping analysis that located the main reason for the so vastly different economic development of the former English and Iberian colonies in the divergent development of internal and external relationality: Esta es también la clave que explica la expansión de los Estados Unidos como unidad nacional y la fracturación de América Latina: nuestros centros de producción no estaban conectados entre sí, sino que formaban un abanico con el vértice muy lejos.18

Whereas the agrarian products of the Anglo-Saxon colonies in America could be compared to those of the mother country and in no way offered a range of supplementary products, the situation in the Antilles and in the Iberian colonies was entirely different. The reason for this was the production of sugar, tobacco, cotton and other colonial products: “una pequeña isla del Caribe resultaba más importante para Inglaterra, desde el punto de vista económico, que las trece colonias matrices de los Estados Unidos”.19 Galeano equated the archipelago situation with extreme external dependence and a dearth of internal forces directed toward the development and setting up of autonomous structures within the fracturación. Indeed, one can say that it was the prominent role played by various Caribbean islands, especially after Columbus’s so-called discovery and in the second half of the eighteenth century, that conditioned the highly developed external relationality of the Greater and Lesser Antilles. By contrast, the internal relationality of this island world – not the least because of their allegiance to various mother countries and the resulting boundaries between the colonial possessions – was vastly neglected, impeded or entirely put a stop to. In view of these considerations, it is certainly extraneous to enter into any detailed discussion of the common basis of these sometimes 18 Eduardo Galeano. 1982. Las venas abiertas de América Latina. Mexico: Siglo XXI Editores: 215. 19 Galeano 1982: 216.

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gradual, sometimes tumultuous developments that have left their mark on the Caribbean across all political borders and highly diverse cultural hybridization processes starting with their entrance into a globalized and globalizing economic context. One can delineate four essential phases in and four structural features of an archipelago that obeys both common and different rules: the very different histories of conquest, entailing repression or genocide of the indigenous population; the transition from a precarious extraction economy, including the forceful deportation of Indian labor forces, to a plantation economy that was strongly oriented towards sugar and based upon the ruthless exploitation of African slaves; the growing mechanization, intensification and industrialization of complementary colonial economic structures along with the progressive replacement of slaves by predominantly Indian, Chinese or Malaysian contract workers, day laborers, and coolies; and, ever since the achievement of Haitian independence in 1804, the independence movements that have transformed the entire Caribbean into the most politically heterogeneous region of the world. The plethora of structures and logics that are partly contradictory and that are already hybrids themselves can thus be seen as the fundamental structural feature of an island group that geographically, culturally and politically has disintegrated into several overlapping and simultaneously interacting partial regions. It is an island group that, from the very beginning, was much more than a transit area between Europe and America, between the hemisphere’s northern and southern regions. It was essentially responsible for creating this hemisphere in the first place. Pre-Islands and Power Spheres The Old World and New World dichotomy began to leave its stamp on European perceptions, not with Columbus, but when the Florentine Amerigo Vespucci began to speak of a Mundus Novus. He did this in his famous letter (1503) to Lorenzo di Pier Francesco de Medici, a letter that was copied and translated at high speed: In the last days I have given you a thorough report of my return trip from these new regions [ab novis illis regionibus] which we discovered and explored with the fleet that was financed and commissioned by His Most Serene Majesty and King of Portugal (whence I write you now) and which one could designate as a

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new world [novum mundum appellare licet] of which the ancients had no knowledge and whose existence is completely new [novissima res] for all who hear of it. For this [new world] far exceeds the ideas of our ancients [opinionem nostrorum antiquorum excedit] insofar as the majority of them judged there to be no mainland at all south of the equator but only the ocean, which they called the Atlantic; and even if some few asserted that there was mainland to be found there, they argued in numerous ways that this land was uninhabitable. But my last sea voyage proved that this notion of theirs does not at all correspond to the truth, as in those southern latitudes I came upon a continent that was more densely populated with peoples and animals than our Europe or Asia or Africa, and which, moreover, possesses a climate more temperate and pleasing than that of any other known region of the world, as you will hear in due course of my narrative. In all brevity, I will commit to paper the main events and all things worthy of mention that I saw or heard in this new world [in hoc novo mundo].20

I do not intend to enter the debate as to what degree the Florentine could have been conscious of having discovered a land mass that was definitively and by definition (meaning territorially) separate from Asia. None other than Alexander von Humboldt, in his unjustly neglected study Examen critique (except by certain specialists), dealt with this question. He felt that both Columbus and Vespucci “held consistently to the belief that at various points they had made contact with the Asian continent”.21 Commonly known, on the other hand, is that the young geographer Martin Waldseemüller proposed Vespucci’s first name as the name for the latter’s recently invented continent. He used it when drawing his world map of his Cosmographiae universalis introductio (1507). In 1940, Stefan Zweig, who delineated this “New World” from the “World of Yesterday,” sensitively showed how the American entity – this Mundus Novus – 20 Amerigo Vespucci. 2002. ‘Eine Neue Welt: Brief des Amerigo Vespucci an Lorenzo di Pier Francesco de’Medici’ in Wallisch (ed., tr. and comm.). Der Mundus Novus des Amerigo Vespucci. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften: 13 (here also are the Latin quotations). 21 Alexander von Humboldt. 1852. Kritische Untersuchungen über die historische Entwickelung der geographischen Kenntnisse von der Neuen Welt und die Fortschritte der nautischen Astronomie in dem 15ten und 16ten Jahrhundert. Vol 3 (tr. from French by Jul. Ludw. Ideler). Berlin: Verlag der Nicolai’schen Buchhandlung: 130 f. It is high time that this important, insightful and still very relevant book be made available again to a larger public.

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first penetrated European consciousness through this appellation. Zweig emphasized that the “islands” of the two Americas were linguistically and discursively composed and cartographically and territorially anchored. He ironically remarked that “Mercator, King of the Cartographers,” drew “the entire continent as a single unit in his world map” and wrote “A M E over the north and R I C A over the south” 22 in 1538. The cartographic melding of the two parts (or islands) of America, which initially had not been perceived as conjoined by an isthmus, by dint of a name that in a highly significant way bound up the continent, opened the possibility of a kind of hemispherical thinking that from the sixteenth century to the present day has given birth to diverse perspectives on the so-called New World. But it seems decisive to me here that these varied perspectives on the New World from the side of the Europeans should have been gained from the main perspective of islands. Columbus’s first expedition was, in a way, characterized by islands and so were his successive voyages. He used the Canaries, where the Guanches had not been completely quelled yet, as a strategic outpost and jumping off point. When he noticed that birds were flying southwest, he changed course and landed not on the coast of a continent but on what he expected to be the coastal islands of the Asian land mass. He immediately seized these islands for the Spanish crown. The Antilles were counterparts to the Canaries and served as a base for the transatlantic Spanish expansion and power politics that was island-based for four hundred years, until it finally collapsed in the nineteenth century. This insular perspective is clearly represented by the first map that was drawn by Juan de la Cosa (1500). The map – partly precise, partly invented – shows a circum-Caribbean space whose irregular coastlines allow sufficient room for a coherent continent. The drawings of the Azores and the Cape Verde Islands (esp. the Lesser Antilles), indicate an insular logic of regional reconnaissance, conquest and acquisition. They illustrate that even without knowing for certain that 22 Stefan Zweig. 1990. ‘Amerigo: Die Geschichte eines historischen Irrtums’ in Zweig, Stefan. Zeiten und Schicksale: Aufsätze und Vorträge aus den Jahren 1902 – 1942. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag: 423.

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all this constituted a New World, people could think in terms of hemispheres, within which the Caribbean island world took on a defining role by marking out territorial borders. By virtue of the Tordesillas Treaty (1494), which was signed by the Iberian powers, the basis had already been laid for a division of the world into spheres of political influence on a scale that had never been seen before. This division consisted not only of a political but also of a military and mental mapping, which took shape in Juan de la Cosa’s ill-informed but experience-based map. What becomes clear is the interrelationship between (already present) topos knowledge, experiential knowledge, and the level of expectations that – as the next example will show – would characterize all (European) ideas about the New World. Impressive about Juan de la Cosa’s map is not only the enormous length of the insular coastlines but also the interplay between islands and continents. This central relationship also shows from two map sketches that were included in Alessandro Zorzi’s written manuscript and from a map that was used in Bartolomé Colón’s travel account (1500). At the center of these maps, one can easily discern some of the names given to the Antilles, “spagnola” and “guadalupa”, and an island of the “canibali”.23 On the eastern part of the map, one can detect the Iberian peninsula, Africa and its offshore islands. The land mass on the map’s western part bears the name “Asia” and stretches to northern China. On the map’s southern part, the coastline of Parias appears and one can also recognize the words “Mondo Novo”. We are not so much concerned here with the notion that a New World can be conceived from a European point of view without necessarily separating it from Asia, but rather with the idea that it is by virtue of the islands that Europeans came to understand these largely unknown continents. The islands are the actual focal point and configure a New World that was discovered and invented by the Europeans. Onto this New World, however, an insular logic is projected. This is 23

See, among others, Cart Ortwin. 1993. Descubrimiento y dominación española del Caribe (tr. by Stella Mastrangelo). Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica: 220-222 (especially map 18) as well as Bernhard Jahn. 1993. Raumkonzepte in der Frühen Neuzeit: Zur Konstruktion von Wirklichkeit in Pilgerberichten, Amerikareisebeschreibungen und Prosaerzählungen. Frankfurt am Main, Berlin & Bern: Peter Lang: 145 and 185.

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the case in Eduardo Galeano’s and Darcy Ribeiro’s analyses. They stress the archipelago situation of Iberian-influenced America as well as its neglected internal relationality and the momentous consequences of such. The invention and configuration of the New World occurred with the help of the Caribbean island world. The New World cannot be conceived as a hemispherical construction without taking these islands and their development into account. Island Fragments and Island Relations The aforementioned maps clearly illustrate that, from a European point of view, the islands were the beginning. Appearances, however, can be deceiving. An island is not a firm and stable thing and needs to be understood from a vectorial perspective. It is a place where diverse movements intersect and overlap; a force field in which these movements are stored. An island can be defined (and territorialized) as a place of movement; a place whose historically stored mobile pattern and vectors can always be called upon and retrieved. When the Spanish first appeared in America, they already knew a lot about islands. Their familiarity with insular structures as spaces of transit and movement enabled them to develop a kind of island logic that was necessary for the rapid conquest of the mainland. This conquest need not necessarily be interpreted as the further appropriation of land, but as the occupation and protection or provision of particular centers. Independent of the Caribbean sugar cane economy, one can certainly speak of an insulin-fueled expansion politics that wanted to establish power-islands that would, ultimately, report back to Madrid. Whereas the insulin that was injected into the colonial bodies strengthened an external relationality, the internal linkage between the harbors and power centers and the hinterland remained rudimentary. This also strengthened the fact that these power-islands and island worlds were distinguished on the continent not by a coherent – that is to say, continental – territoriality, but rather through a vectorial constitution. In this respect, insularly stored vectors are not established within a continuous, so to speak, Euclidean geometry but within a splintered space that is marked by a multitude of leaps and discontinuities. Not only coastlines but movements as well can be understood

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as fractal patterns.24 As a result, the stored-up patterns of movement establish themselves within a fractal geometry not only of Nature but even moreso of culture and thereby within a space that from a Euclidean standpoint remains amorphous; but which from the standpoint of fractal geometry – or quantum geometry – exhibits specific patterns of meaning. Incoherent insularity becomes characteristic of a geographically coherent continent. What patterns of movement can be discerned here? “Transitions from Periodicity to Chaos”,25 used in Nature for the description of the fundamentally complex26 structure of the living creature, makes a new view of the space-time mesh of relationships within an island world possible. In this island world, the separate positions of the islands can be understood as multiple overlays27 and as interactions between diverse patterns of movement. They enable not only a retroactive understanding of historical but also of future movements – which does not mean to say, of their predictability. The seemingly stable and territorial can be interpreted as a fundamental pattern of movement in which every single position, every single island, possesses its own vectorial history and relevance to future movements and developments. Every island has its own obdurate sense, which, of course, cannot be revealed without considering the island world from a relational point of view. On receiving the Nobel Prize for literature, Derek Walcott expressed legitimate anger about the touristic image Caribbean Islands propagate. They have lost themselves in the “high-pitched repetition

24

For the concept fractal pattern, see Mandelbrot 1999: 42. Cramer 1993: 191. 26 For Cramer’s concept of fundamentally complex systems, see Cramer 1993: 223 f.: “Such systems [i.e. highly interactive multi-parameter systems] are not reducible; those whose whole is greater than their parts, I name fundamentally complex systems. In such systems there is no reversability. One cannot apply classic, reversible thermodynamics but rather irreversible thermodynamics. And therefore it would simply be intellectual carelessness to assume that in sciences such as biochemistry or neurophysiology one can piece together an overall picture of a living creature from little mosaic stones.” 27 Overlays or superpositions are called decoherence in quantum theory. 25

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of the same images of service that cannot distinguish one island from the other”.28 Each island should develop a specific memory instead: All of the Antilles, every island, is an effort of memory; every mind, every racial biography culminating in amnesia and fog. Pieces of sunlight through the fog and sudden rainbows, arcs-en-ciel. That is the effort, the labour of the Antillian imagination, rebuilding its gods from bamboo frames, phrase by phrase.29

The task of literature and art is to reconstruct these island histories. What Walcott wrote, however, about Saint-John Perse, also applies to himself: “Caribbean genius is condemned to contradict itself”.30 When talking about poetry, he chose a metaphor that was not only characteristic of him but that also aimed at a movement between island and continent, or more precisely, at a breaking away of the island as fragment: “Poetry is an island that breaks away from the main”.31 Is the poet, therefore, a lonely islander. A few lines before, Walcott had compared this metaphor of movement of the fragment to the relatively stable image of a whole that one should reconstruct and restore. Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole. The glue that fits the pieces is the sealing of its original shape. It is such a love that reassembles our African and Asiatic fragments, the cracked heirlooms whose restoration shows its white scars. This gathering of broken pieces is the care and pain of the Antilles, and if the pieces are disparate, ill-fitting, they contain more pain than their original sculpture, those icons and sacred vessels taken for granted in their ancestral places. Antillean art is this restoration of our shattered histories, our shards of vocabulary, our archipelago becoming a synonym for pieces broken off from the original continent.32

The Antilles archipelago appears as a collection of fragments that stem from their “original” continents, including Africa, Asia and 28

Derek Walcott. Spring 1993. ‘The Antilles: Fragments of Epic Memory. The 1992 Nobel Lecture’ in World Literature Today 67(2): 261-267; here citing from Derek Walcott. 1998. ‘The Antilles: Fragments of Epic Memory’ in Walcott, Derek. What the Twilight Says: Essays. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux: 81. 29 Walcott 1998: 82. 30 Walcott 1998: 78. 31 Walcott 1998: 70. 32 Walcott 1998: 69.

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Mediterranean and European cultures.33 Thus the fragment does have a close link to a global totality, and in the best case emerges as a heightened presence. At the same time, the image of the broken vase refers to a unity that is lost and that can be reestablished in an act of restoration. This image can be easily compared with Walter Benjamin’s notion of the broken vessel of language. All humans originally had this vessel in common. It is the translator who has to restore it and who has to preserve difference. As fragments of a vessel, in order to be reassembled, to fit in even the smallest detail, must match one another, although they need not be like one another, so too must the translation, instead of making the original similar to its own sense of things, rather lovingly and in detail adapt itself to the original’s mode of signification in its own language, thus making both, like the fragments of a vessel, recognizable as a fragment of a larger language.34

Unmistakably inherent in Walcott’s concept of restoration, is the idea of an original condition one can once more return to – with or without scars. This idea is closely related to Benjamin’s utopia of a “larger language”. From this point of view, Derek Walcott can be seen as a representative of an island world in which the island becomes the entire world pieced together. Even if in his idea of an archipelago there always inheres the notion of diversity that can never emerge as homogeneous, one still sees that every island as the “fragment” of a broken receptacle has a firm, stable place out of which a general picture can be assembled. Could this not be the way back to cohesion, the way back to a continent? Unlike an island world where a privileged relationship between the “fragment” and the “vessel,” between island and continent, can be discerned, Édouard Glissant’s island world does not focus on the historic-genealogical relationship with an “original”. It develops a “Poetics of Relation” instead, whose centerpiece are the changeable and mobile mutual relations beyond the “essential”. Not only does he con33

Walcott 1998: 74. Walter Benjamin. 1980. ‘The Task of the Translator’ in Benjamin, Walter. Gesammelte Schriften. Vol. 4 (ed. Tellman Rexroth). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp: 18. 34

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trast the notion of a mobile “identité-relation” with the territorially rooted concept of identity,35 he also develops a relational understanding of the Caribbean world – by 1981 at the latest – in his influential Le discours antillais: Qu’est-ce les Antilles en effet? Une multi-relation. Nous le ressentons tous, nous l’exprimons sous toutes sortes de formes occultées ou caricaturales, ou nous le nions farouchement. Mais nous éprouvons bien que cette mer est là en nous avec sa charge d’îles enfin découvertes. La mer des Antilles n’est pas le lac des États-Unis. C’est l’estuaire des Amériques.36

This multi-relational complexity goes beyond an imperial hegemonic power that semantically limited the name America to the USA and that is logically consistent with the plurality of the Americas. What is more, in the metaphor of the estuary – untenable, of course, from a geo-morphological perspective – a geographic concept that we have already encountered when discussing Juan de la Cosa’s map (1500) is inserted: an Antillean sea that is nourished by the rivers of the surrounding circum-Caribbean land masses and that opens up onto the Atlantic Ocean. Fixed identities, however – as Glissant makes clear in his Poétique de la Relation – must be set in motion by concepts that radicalize Gilles Deleuze’s and Félix Guattari’s philosophically developed rhizomatics. According to Glissant, every identity must be relationally “thought out” in its relation to the Other.37 Of course it is decisive for our examination that the island world of the Antilles, in its multi-relationality in Glissant’s sense of the term, opens itself to the entire hemisphere – and not in the sense of the American Hemisphere. Even though the Guadeloupian poet and cultural theoretician deals more with the part of the New World that was influenced by Romance languages, he also underscores the necessity of a hemispherical perspective on the Caribbean – including a Caribbean perspective on the hemisphere. The Caribbean consists not only 35 See Ottmar Ette. 2001. Literatur in Bewegung: Raum und Dynamik grenzüberschreitenden Schreibens in Europa und Amerika. Weilerswist: Velbrück Wissenschaft: 472. 36 Édouard Glissant. 1981. Le discours antillais. Paris: Seuil: 249. 37 See Édouard Glissant. 1990. Poétique de la Relation. Paris: Gallimard: 23.

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of the island world but also of the world of the circum-Caribbean continental coast. Geographically and culturally, it has always served as a bridge between North and South America. But how does one rethink the relationship between the hemisphere and a world of islands, the largest island of which (i.e.Cuba) is a long way off from belonging to the world’s top ten? To put it differently, which possibilities do exist for approaching a study of the Caribbean not from an isolated regional perspective or by splintering it into individual disciplinary fragments, but rather to rethink it in a more holistic fashion? Old World and New World: Hemispherical Constructions On an epistemological and discursive level, the difference between Old World and New World regulated the assymetrical exchange of knowledge and material goods such as the implementation of biopolitics which – like the driving of indigenous population into reserves, the introduction of black slaves, or an immigration politics organized to meet colonial needs – naturally favored the interests of the Old World and particularly those of the Iberian powers. The categorical distinction between Old World and New World encompassed all aspects and fields of knowledge, from the concept of a European evangelization, to the development of legal ideas for the extraEuropean regions and peoples, to geognosy and geology. Deep into the nineteenth century, it was believed that the western hemisphere was literally a new world that – as the Orinoco and Amazon showed – had risen from the waters at a later date and whose development was accordingly retarded. The centuries-enduring “Dispute on the New World”38 substantiates the impact and explosive power of the discursive divorce. The structuring power of this divorce is by no means completely broken today – and not only in Old Europe. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, a hemispheric construction arose that sought to promote the interests of the New World and to eliminate the European colonial nations as power factors in America. This construction emerged within the context of the independence movement and was owing in part to desacrilized expecta38

See Antonello Gerbi. 1983. La disputa del nuovo mondo: Storia di una polemica, 1750-1900. Milan & Naples: Riccardo Ricciardi editore.

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tions of salvation and certain concepts and ideas from the Spanish colonial Enlightenment and especially from New Spain about PanAmericanism, particularly in their Bolívarian guise. In his Contestación de un Americano Meridional a un caballero de esta isla – one of the most famous documents of the continent’s Independencia movement (‘Carta de Jamaica’) – Simón Bolívar spoke of those “limitados conocimientos que poseo de un país tan inmenso, variado y desconocido, como el Nuevo Mundo”.39 This New World, which Bolívar repeatedly referred to as “hemisferio”40 or “nuevo hemisferio”,41 had to be entirely free. This was not only necessary for “el equilibrio del mundo”42 but also for the interests of a trade-oriented Europe. Instructive is that Bolívar, from the island perspective of Jamaica, also portrayed the New World as an island – its denizens were in fact “un pequeño género humano”43 living in “un mundo aparte”,44 “cercado por dilatados mares”.45 This islandization or even Caribbeanization of at least the Iberian-influenced part of the hemisphere was of course limited. Bolívar saw in the Central American isthmus, which occupied a splendid position between two immense oceans, a future “emporio del universo”.46 By linking the two oceans via a canal, they would be able to play a central role in relations between Europe, the Americas and Asia. Consequently, any future world capital – “la capital de la tierra”47 – could only be located there. It is from this perspective, conceived on the Caribbean island of Jamaica, that first emerged the vision of a continentally centered hemisphere serving the “cuatro partes del globo”48 and therefore a global perspective characteristic of Bolívar’s pan-American thought. 39 Simón Bolívar. 1984. ‘Contestación de un Americano Meridional a un caballero de esta isla’ in Bolívar, Simón. Obras completas. Vol. 1. Madrid: Maveco de Ediciones: 159. 40 Bolívar 1984: 160. 41 Bolívar 1984: 162. 42 Bolívar 1984: 162. 43 Bolívar 1984: 164. 44 Bolívar 1984: 164. 45 Bolívar 1984: 164. 46 Bolívar 1984: 171. 47 Bolívar 1984: 171. 48 Bolívar 1984: 171.

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Not less global – but at the same time hegemonic – were the ideas coming from the north several years later. The Monroe Doctrine, along with claims to territorial expansion inherent in the notion of Manifest Destiny, and the growing territorial, political and economic might of the United States on the North American continent signaled the development and formation of a kind of pan-Americanism in the course of the nineteenth century that might have read pan-U.S.Americanism, which likewise sought to delimit European power in the western hemisphere but which would do so – quite consciously – in service of United States interests. This construction and its underlying understanding of hemispheres as spheres of influence and power reminded of the division of the world in the Treaty of Tordesillas. The main difference, of course, was that the power-control of the western hemisphere was about to be shifted to the western hemisphere itself, a theoretical claim that was translated into practice in the USA’s intervention in 1898 in the Cuban-Spanish conflict, successfully dispelling the Spanish colonial power from the Caribbean and the Philippines. Very early on, William H. Seward, U.S. Senator and Secretary of State, “prophet of an American imperialism based on global trade”,49 had sketched out this development and designated both the Caribbean and Mexico – whose capital, according to Seward, could one day serve as the “seat of a future American empire”50 – as direct spheres of influence of the USA. In the course of the nineteenth century, the division of the western hemisphere became an established fact and the term America was increasingly associated with the United States. Whereas from a European perspective the Latin south appeared more and more as a backward region, the United States increasingly embodied – witness Alexis de Tocqueville – a model for future developments, both positive and negative, for an Old World that more than ever seemed to deserve its sobriquet. In Latin America as well, the notion took hold of a hemisphere divided in two and under the increasingly obvious dominance of the United States. The division of the western hemisphere into two 49 Hans-Ulrich Wehler. 1974. Imperialismus: Studien zur Entwicklung des Imperium Americanum, 1865–1900. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht: 14. 50 As cited in Wehler.

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separate continents was based on their divergent development and put an end to nascent hemispheric thought of an egalitarian caliber. Throughout the twentieth century, discourse on the American Hemisphere maintained its imperial character. José Martí’s Caribbean work Nuestra América did nothing to change this. In the Bolívarian tradition, it aimed to establish a global equilibrium In his conclusion, the author requested, as it were, the blessing of the Indian cultures for “la América nueva […] por las naciones románticas del continente y por las islas dolorosas del mar”.51 Henceforth, the ruling hemispherical doctrine of the twentieth century would no longer be insular but continental, and thus determined by the contiguous land mass of a great nation and its ubiquitous economic power. The island element emerged only in U.S. military strategy insofar as it concerned the arrogation of initially continental and then soon global power – i.e. American seapower and an Ocean Empire – through artificial, mobile islands in the form of battleships and later aircraft carriers that could be rapidly dispatched to the coast of whatever country to serve as military bases. This means that the island technique of the Spanish politics of expansion continued and was even surpassed. Starting with the third phase of accelerated globalization at the end of the nineteenth century, U.S. hegemony was underpinned by the creation of its own islands in the middle of a Mare Americanum that would soon be of worldwide scope. Transareal Caribbean Studies Against this background, and in the current fourth phase of accelerated globalization, it is necessary to develop concepts that can be situated between a local and/or national level on the one hand and a planetary, universal level on the other. At the same time, one needs to avoid the intellectual and scholarly reinforcement of the static and simplistic territorialized contrasts of the U.S.A. and/or Canada versus the Latin American and Caribbean states. One can only agree with Erich Auerbach’s notion of a philology of world literature: “our philological

51

José Martí. 1975. ‘Nuestra América’ in Martí, José. Obras Completas. Vol. 6. La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales: 23.

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homeland is the earth; it can no longer be the nation”.52 Yet it seems necessary to me that we develop mediating levels between the longquestioned but de facto still dominant concept of national literature and a globally expanded world literature, as well as between nationally oriented historiography or social analyses and a certain promising investigation into the stabilizers that go to creating a world society53 and which have a transareal and transregional orientation. And for the transdisciplinary development of such an approach, the Caribbean seems to me particularly suitable. For moving forward to a new construction of America as a topic of scholarly research (and one that is also propelled by Latin American specialists), all this would initially mean that any new hemispheric perspective on the New World would of course entail awareness of American political and economic predominance, but this consciousness is not to be reproduced at the level of research. It is important to link up the internal relationality of the various regions of the American continent – i.e. an inter-American linkage of the various Americas – with an external relationality that would not revert to the dependencies and hierarchies that have accrued along the years, or to an unreflective view of America solely from the European standpoint. The networks that exist between America and Africa, and those between America and Asia should be taken into account as well. This worldwide networking is less about a new territorialization of regional concepts than it is about their dynamization in order to distinguish the movements of the various regions more sharply. This holds equally true for the movements and divergent processes that exist between the two Americas themselves, relations that have become focused in a unique way in the Caribbean. Should one wish to speak of “zones of intensified globalization” – as Günther Maihold

52 Erich Auerbach. 1952. ‘Philologie der Weltliteratur’ in Weltliteratur. Festgabe für Fritz Strich. Bern: Francke Verlag: 39-50; later collected in Erich Auerbach. 1967. Gesammelte Aufsätze zur romanischen Philologie (eds Fritz Schalk & Gustav Konrad). Berlin & Munich: Francke Verlag: 301-310; here 310. 53 Matthias Albert. 2002. Zur Politik der Weltgesellschaft: Identität und Recht im Kontext internationaler Vergesellschaftung. Weilerswist: Velbrück Wissenschaft: 330-340.

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does54 – the Caribbean, without a doubt, can be regarded as a zone of intensified patterns of movement ever since the first phase of accelerated globalization. Nowhere else in the world, has the globalizing power of so many European mother countries been so effectively evidenced over a comparable period of time. It is very important to rob antagonistic regional concepts of their stability and to dynamize them. At the same time, transareal and transregional excisions of specifically European interests, which have left their imprint on scholarly work for historical reasons, should not deny the historical asymmetries and dependencies that go with them. A transareal literary analysis would not focus on European-driven processes of world literature or on developments of Latin American or of a particular national literature, but on movements that transect these levels of reference. It is less a question of regions than of routes, less a matter of drawing borders than of shifting or crossing them. The disciplinary construction of objects should not be abandoned but interlinked so that the resulting object is more than the sum of the individual findings. Every translocal, transregional, transnational, transareal and transcontinental research on the western hemisphere ought to question regional thought patterns from a comparative perspective and ought to link up individual regions. This means that specific competencies will have to be developed in a transdisciplinary fashion with respect to Latin America. Priority should not be given to a comparison between Latin America and Anglo-America, but to the fundamentally complex system of interactions within a continent that is characterized by cultural hybridity. Developing an adequate understanding of the Caribbean without the transareal and transdisciplinary inclusion of India, China, West Africa and Western Europe seems as illusory as attempting to understand the Caribbean from a single (national) cultural perspective. Therefore, new concepts of relationality and cultural mobility will have to be developed in order to depict the Caribbean as a region of movement. It is a region that can no longer be grasped by 54 See Günther Maihold. 2005. ‘Die neue (Ohn-)Macht der Grenze: MexikoUSA’ in Braig, Marianne et al. (eds). Grenzen der Macht – Macht der Grenzen. Frankfurt am Main: Vervuert Verlag: 39-76; here 69.

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means of a continuous (Euclidean) spatial model but by means of a kind of fractal geometry and an ideational world that allows discontinuous relations of time, space and movement that are marked by a multitude of rifts and fractures to exist. We are not dealing with the construction of a (new) territory, but with the conception of a vectorial space at the quantum-geometric level. This space stores movements that can no longer be solely explained by traditional notions of time and space, but that also function in the sense of fractal patterns and networks that are broken up in a quantum-geometric fashion. Natural sciences have shown, with the help of various logics and theories – this side of Euclid and Newton or beyond – how similar objects can be variously conceived from various perspectives. In the Caribbean, not everything is simultaneously linked with everything else, but everything does come into contact with everything else – whether sporadically or continuously – at one time or another. These leaps in time and space, these spatial irregularities and specific developmental simultaneities of the nonconcurrent, determine the fundamentally complex structure of the Caribbean region. As Antonio Benítez-Rojo suggests,55 important is not so much the chaotic structure of the Caribbean, as the dynamic and living oscillation between chaos and cosmos.56 The Caribbean shows how a single disciplinary approach, due to its hermetic isolation, can foster devastating errors of judgment. The complex interplay and high concentration of geopolitical, geocultural and biopolitical factors in a region like the Caribbean can only be inadequately elucidated from the restricted vantage point of a single discipline. Consequently, what we are looking at is a transareal and 55

See his certainly stimulating but slightly binary study, Antonio Benítez-Rojo. 1998. La isla que se repite. Barcelona: Editorial Casiopea: 16 ff. as well as 413, where it becomes clear that his borrowings from chaos theory merely serve, according to Benítez-Rojo, to dynamize the Caribbean’s basic underlying structure – the plantation: “Si he utilizado ciertos modelos que pertenecen a la teoría de Caos, no ha sido por entender que éstos alcanzan a significar plenamente el meta – archipiélago, sino más bien porque hablan de formas dinámicas que flotan, a veces de un modo imperceptible, dentro del descomunal archivo de la plantación.” 56 I use the term living in the sense of the oft-cited bio-scientifically funded analysis of Friedrich Cramer, whose book illuminates the tension between chaos and cosmos.

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transregional construction of the American hemisphere. In this construction, the North should not be divided off from the South, and Indo-American, Afro-American and Anglo-American aspects should not be divorced from one another. Transareal studies combine sustained specialization, interdisciplinary dialogue and transdisciplinary conceptions and processes so as to transcend regional, national or international thought patterns and explanatory models by perceiving the hemispherical links. In this sense, transareal studies always rest on the development of multiple logics of mobile relations which, for their part, accommodate singular or particular logics with their own stubborn independence. The focus is less on stable processes of consecutive deterritorialization and reterritorialization than it is on oscillating movements between various regions. Migration processes of dramatic scope, from the wanderings of the Caribs to the emergence of the Caribbean boat people, should not be understood solely as linear processes but also as complex interactions that effectuate knowledge transfers between various regions and continents. Beyond bilateral and binomial structures lies not primarily the assumption of stable identities but the formation of mobile configurations of identity. It is a kind of thinking that goes beyond identity and beyond re-centering regional models as described by Jean Bernabé, Patrick Chamoiseau and Raphaël Confiant in their influential 1989 work Éloge de la Créolité, a thinking focused “on the chaos of this new humanity that we represent”.57 And literature would play a large role as the interactive memory of life-knowledge insofar as within the context of fundamentally complex systems these contradictions would not have to be smoothed or glossed over or eradicated, as is the case in the scholarly disciplines. Therefore, literary works should claim our attention. I should mention, however, that studies dealing with Americans from a Latin American point of view and vice versa are to be understood as neither transareal nor hemispheric because they mainly proceed along binary lines that only contribute to the further cementing of fruitless (and well-known) antagonisms. By contrast, the development of new transareal and 57

Jean Bernabé, Patrick Chamoiseau, Raphaël Confiant. 1989. Éloge de la Créolité. Paris: Gallimard & Presses Universitaires Créoles: 22.

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transregional concepts makes an innovative interdisciplinary approach beyond traditional forms of regional research possible. Fractal Pattern 1: Island House With respect to George Lamming’s remark that there is no more appropriate geographic location for a study of exile than the island,58 Chris Bongie, in Islands and Exiles (1998), describes the ambivalence of the islander I have already referred to: The island is a figure that can and must be read in more than one way: on the one hand, as the absolutely particular, a space complete unto itself and thus an ideal metaphor for a traditionally conceived, unified and unitary, identity; on the other, as a fragment, a part of some greater whole from which it is in exile and to which it must be related – in an act of (never completed) completion that is always also, as it were, an ex-isle, a loss of the particular. The island is thus the site of a double identity – closed and open – and this doubleness perfectly conveys the ambivalences of creole identity that I outlined above.59

The island as materialization of closed or open identity – or, in Édouard Glissant’s words, of “identité-racine” and “identité-relation” – makes us aware of the ambivalent semantics of the island as isolation and exile on the one hand and as openness and relationality on the other. Indeed, isolation and exile are often explored in Caribbean literature. The voluntary or forced exile and the tension between a-islamiento and deterritorialization frequently play a decisive role. Even Caribbean literature, from its ascent in the nineteenth century to the present day, has been characterized by a constant movement of its protagonists: between Cuba and Mexico in the works of José María Heredia, between Cuba and Spain in the writings of Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, between Cuba and the United States in the literature of Cirilo Villaverde. The insular marginalization of a Julián del Casal or of a Juana Borrero is juxtaposed with the many exiles of José Martí in Spain, Mexico, Guatemala, Venezuela and the United States. It is a parcours that once again makes us recognize the hemispheric dimen58

George Lamming. 1992. The Pleasures of Exile. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press: 96. 59 Chris Bongie. 1998. Islands and Exiles: The Creole Identities of Post/Colonial Literature. Stanford: Stanford University Press: 18.

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sion – a dimension that is certainly not confined to Cuban literature. The same goes for Dominican, Puerto Rican and Haitian literature. We are dealing with literature that is bereft of a fixed abode,60 and in which isolation stands in a paradoxical relationship with errance. A glance at any island map suggests a territoriality that in reality cannot be reduced to the seemingly stable region within the island’s borders. The fractal and broken dimension of these island boundaries – thanks to, as I have already mentioned, their self-similarity – relates directly to the technique and processes of the mise en abyme in Caribbean narrative texts. But how will this process, which one could compare to Russian dolls, be implemented in Caribbean literatures? Are there thematic, aesthetic or literary-theoretical specifics that pertain to the Caribbean region? If one perceives Caribbean literature as literature without a fixed abode, a condition that – to take a page from Chris Bongie’s book – has been generated through the tension of isolation and exile, then it should come as no surprise that the house plays an important role. The relatively enclosed nature of the domestic space and the possibility to divide its subdivision into smaller subdivisions are distinguishing features that also turn the house into the ineluctable model for an insular situation and for a writing that finds its home there. A very good example of a subdivided area within which the house functions as a mise en abyme for the entire structure of the novel is Maryse Condé’s Traversée de la Mangrove. The spatial structure in the novel closely relates to the entire novelistic structure. The subdivided house of the protagonist, who, at the end, is found lying in his coffin, is at the displaced center of the novel. The house is divided into an inside and an outside and occupies an eccentric position vis-àvis the microcosmos of the hamlet Rivière au Sel. More: This hamlet is taken up with Petit Bourg, a small centrally situated locale, which for its part is in relation with Pointe-à-Pitre, which in turn is integrated into the two-room structure of the island of Guadeloupe, which opens itself to and orients itself toward the French Antilles and Guyana and 60 See Ottmar Ette. September-December 2005. ‘Una literatura sin residencia fija. Insularidad, historia y dinámica sociocultural en la Cuba del siglo XX’ in Revista de Indias 65(235): 729-753.

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the Caribbean island world including Cuba and Haiti as well as the circum-Caribbean coastline of the South American and North American coastline (Tierra firme and Louisiana) and then the American continents in their hemispherical dimension, in addition to Europe and particularly the French motherland and finally Africa and India.61 Caribbean literature abounds with convincing and aesthetically pleasing examples of the arrangement of spatial structures. It is rich in the depiction of overlapping and subdivided space (and time). The house also plays a central role – one that leaves its stamp on human life and an entire social group – in V. S. Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas (1961). The book examines the struggle for social advancement of proto-middle class Trinidadians of Indian heritage, a heritage that is claimed by the author himself. The first part of the novel’s prologue already shows the protagonist role that is played by the house situated in the Sikkim Street in St. James, Port-of-Spain, as well as the spatial structures of the novel itself. Right from the start, A House for Mr. Biswas presents a domestic interior that overlaps in the memories of the novel’s characters and also gives an account of the family’s emigration from India and its future immigration to England. It is there that Anand, thanks to the sacrifices of his father, Mr. Biswas, will start to study, a plot-turn that parallels Naipaul’s own life. From the very beginning of the novel, the overlapping Trinidadian timespace structures – embedded for their part in American-IndianEuropean structures of reference – are lovingly developed. In the final chapter, ‘The House’, and in the epilogue, they are taken up one last time in an ironic and thoughtful way. For Mr. Biswas, the insular situation of a closed and simultaneously differentiated world is impressively embodied in the house of the dying, yet still hopeful, journalist. He thought of the house as his own, though for years it had been irretrievably mortgaged. And during these months of illness and despair he was struck again and again by the wonder of being in his own house, the audacity of it: to walk in through his own front gate, to bar entry to whoever he wished, to close his doors and windows every night, to hear no noises except those of his family, to 61

For a more detailed analysis, see the section ‘Romanstruktur und Raumstruktur’ in the eleventh chapter of Ette 2001: 479-485.

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wander freely from room to room and about his yard, instead of being condemned, as before, to retire the moment he got home to the crowded room in one or the other of Mrs. Tulsi’s houses, crowded with Shama’s sisters, their husbands, their children. As a boy he had moved from one house of strangers to another; and since his marriage he felt he had lived nowhere but in the house of the Tulsis, at Hanuman House in Arwacas, in the decaying wooden house at Shorthills, in the clumsy concrete house in Port of Spain. And now at the end he found himself in his own house, on his own half-lot of land, his own portion of the earth. That he should have been responsible for this seemed to him, in these last months, stupendous.62

This passage is a modèle réduit of the unmistakable hallmark of Naipaul’s novel: the highly concentrated and overlapping insular timespace subdivisions. The mise en abyme structure of the house is one of the indispensable features of Caribbean literature. In Gisèle Pineau’s tale ‘Tourment d’amour’, the overlapping structures are linked with an island house, or, more precisely, with the young narrator’s “projet d’album inédit sur les cases créoles de mon île”.63 Concealed behind the classic division into an external narrative frame and an internal story, which are linked through an accidental encounter, is a complex farrago of time and space in which the history of Guadeloupe is told with the aid of a sequence of huts and houses from the mid-nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth. It commences with the aforementioned project of an album with photographs of all kinds of cases créoles. Without going into detail with respect to the narrative techniques employed here, it must be emphasized that the rifts and overlaps that exist between writing and photography, between written culture and oral culture, and within a genealogy women have left their distinctive stamp upon, all proceed from a century-old hut that – “agrippée comme une chauve-souris fiévreuse au flanc d’un morne verdoyant” – unites life and death through a “vision exaltante et mor-

62

V. S. Naipaul. 1961. A House for Mr. Biswas. London: André Deutsch Lim-

ited: 8. 63 Gisèle Pineau. 1994. ‘Tourment d’amour’ in Écrire la ‘parole de nuit’: la nouvelle littérature antillaise. Nouvelles, poèmes et réflexions poétiques de Patrick Chamoiseau, Raphaël Confiant, René Depestre, Édouard Glissant, Bertène Juminer, Ernest Pépin, Gisèle Pineau, Hector Poullet et Sylviane Telchid (ed. and introd. Ralph Ludwig). Paris: Gallimard: 80.

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bide”.64 Freedom of movement, inertness and deportation of the various figures overlay the few pages of the story in a complex way. In the end, however, they are superimposed by the author – who herself grew up in both Paris and Guadeloupe – in such a way as to allow, on this “jour de grande révélation”,65 the (literary) recording of a fragmented story to emerge in which the isolated island house becomes a shard of a world that audience and reading public are entrusted with perfecting. Thus, in the case créole, a fractal story is focused, a story whose rifts and caesuras, world of islands and island worlds, create a concentrated understanding of a region that does not limit itself to itself but that can only be conserved on a global (and globalized) scale. Haitian writer Yanick Lahens’ Dans la maison du père (2000) is a final example of a fractal pattern that is embodied in a Caribbean house. Right from the beginning of the novel, the house the title refers to is presented to the reader. It is a house in which the courtyard and the outside view, European mass culture and Haitian popular culture, imported body control and traditional knowledge about the body abruptly and even brutally knock up against one another. Emerging from the novel’s accelerated opening scene, dated 22 January 1942, and culminating in an act of violence, is the choppy and fluid image of an entire life in which past, present and future overlap: En avant de cette image il n’y a pas de commencement. L’image est centrale. Elle est le mitan de ma vie. Elle résume l’avant et éclaire déjà l’après […]. Je suis née de cette image. Elle m’a mise au monde une second fois et je l’ai enfantée à mon tour.66

The original heritage disappears in the double birth-metaphor of the one giving birth and the one being born, and becomes an interplay of interpenetrating and self-mirroring time levels, without the disappearance of individual and collective history. As in V.S. Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas, the image of the house, with its power to make 64

Pineau 1994. Pineau 1994: 87. 66 Yanick Lahens. 2000. Dans la maison du père. Paris: Le Serpent à Plumes: 65

14.

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the nonconcurring simultaneous, runs throughout the novel. As in Gisèle Pineau’s Tourment d’amour, the fragmented story of a life and an island originates from a single image that has absorbed many other images. And, as in Maryse Condé’s Traversée de la Mangrove, the subdivided house opens itself to and orients itself towards an island region that opens itself to the world through the protagonist’s peregrinations and his always fragile link between body control and body knowledge, and, more precisely, toward that other dreamed-of island known as Manhattan: Durant ces années j’ai dansé sous tous les cieux du monde et j’ai planté mes pieux un soir de décembre à Manhattan, au plus près des rêves fous d’un pianiste de jazz, pour ne jamais les enlever. Loin de mon île, j’eus souvent envie de sa lumière, de l’indescence vaporeuse de ses aubes, des palmiers dansant sous son ciel essoré, de ces jours ensoleillés où la terre a des yeux de goyave, de ses hommes et de ses femmes de foudre, de l’aridité des Gonaïves, de sa force, de son ciel et de ses paysage déchirés. Un besoin aussi fort que celui du corps quand il réclame de la nourriture, de l’air ou de l’eau. Dans ces moments-là, j’enfonçais souvent ma solitude tout au fond de ma gorge et plus loin encore, là où avaient déjà pris place les matinées souyeuses de l’enfance.67

This is not the portrayal of a kind of warmed-up island nostalgia – a well-worn theme in Caribbean literature – but rather of the lifeknowledge of a dancer who embraces the isolated and lonely region that was also presented in the opening scene. This is about the body of the self, that island body that yearns for subsistence so that it may survive. This embodiment of the island, which is already hinted at in the image of the birth-giving newborn, can be linked existentially and by means of literary theory to the relation between island and exile, which for Yanick Lahens marks out the position of the Haitian writer. The latter finds himself or herself Entre l’Ancrage et la Fuite68 in the endless internal space of a type of literature that has no fixed abode.

67

Lahens 2000: 152 f. See Yanick Lahens. 1990. L’Exil: entre l’ancrage et la fuite. L’écrivain haïtien. Port-au-Prince: Éditions Henri Deschamps, and also Ottmar Ette. 2002. ‘Faire éclater la problématique d’une littérature nationale: Entretien avec la romancière haïtienne Yanick Lahens à Berlin, le 24 mars 2002’ in Lendemains 27(105-106): 221235. 68

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Fractal Pattern 2: Island Camp and Island Prison In his interpretation of the Caribbean, Antonio Benítez-Rojo made the plantation the pivot and crux of his views concerning not only the economic and political but also the cultural and political identitydevelopment of the Caribbean. Without considering the fundamental structure of the plantacíon – according to his well-defended thesis in La isla que se repite – one cannot possibly understand Caribbeanness (“lo Caribeño”).69 The structural matrix of the plantation is also the focus of Cuban Reinaldo Arenas’ El Central. The cycle of poems was completed in May 1970 on the Manuel Sanguily sugar plantation and first published in 1981. Arenas is widely known, especially for his novels and his autobiography Antes que anochezca, which was published posthumously. In El Central, time-space convolutions are crystallized in the transtemporality of the work camp. The forced labor of the subjugated and doomed Indians, the enslavement of African black people, used as colonial “fuel”,70 and the young male convicts who were sexually and politically oppressed on the sugar cane plantations – all these groupings and their toils overlap. And escaping was impossible. From the conquest and the period of Christian proselytizing onwards, to the establishment of the “primer territorio libre de América” and Castro’s socialist state, the hands of slaves – “manas escalavas”71 – had powered Cuban history. Even this supposedly progressive ideological thinker of the present phase, however, can make sense out of all this, and even in the face of all the festivals and parades staged by the current powerholders: “Querido, detrás de todos estas fiestas públicas. Detrás de todo desfile, himnos, despliegue de banderas y elogios. Detrás de toda cermonia oficial, se esconde la intención de estimular tu coeficiente de productividad y de explotación.”

69

Benítez-Rojo 1998: 414, as well as 243. See Galeano 1982: 92: “combustible humano para quemar”. 71 Reinaldo Arenas. 1981. El Central (Poema). Barcelona, Caracas & Mexico: Editorial Seix Barral: 11. 70

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Esto me lo dijo Carlos Marx, haciendo un gracioso giro, soltando una carcajada y marchándose apresurado tras los fondillos de los niños-militares que integraban la retaguardia.72

The sugar plantations also embody all other transtemporal and otherwise nonconcurrent forms of camp in which humans are herded together, tormented and exploited; including the re-education camps of the revolution, to which Arturo, la estrella más brillante, is, both aesthetically and in his frictionality, the most convincing witness: […] y Arturo pensaba que si en algún momento los jefes, los otros, hubiesen determinado que todos ellos debían ser fusilados, se hubiesen dejado, amarrar las manos tranquilamente, hubiesen caminado tranquilamente por el campo, se detendrían a la orden dada y todos, sin protestar, con la ingenuidad típica de los animales, hubiesen reventado en silencio, todos, todos, todos menos él, porque él se iba a rebelar, dando testimonios de todo el horror, comunicándole a alguien, a muchos, al mundo, o aunque fuese, a una sola persona que aún conservara incorruptible su capacidad de pensar, la realidad […].73

The camp has become the modèlé reduit, the mise en abyme, of an island whose historically cumulative camp structures overlap. No other island or locale than Cuba would be more suitable for demonstrating the transnational and transhistorical intermesh of camps. In these camps, the Indian population was wiped out through forced labor and enslaved at the beginning of Spanish colonial rule. What is more, towards the end of the colonial period, when the first campos de concentraciones were set up, this predating even the establishment of their own notorious concentration camps in South Africa by the English.74 The camp, as “biopolitical paradigm of the modern age”,75 is linked with colonial wars and colonialism in general, an aspect that has not received enough attention. The long technological history of

72

Arenas 1981: 15. Reinaldo Arenas. 1984. Arturo, la estrella más brillante. Barcelona: Montesinos: 43. 74 See Giorgio Agamben. 2002. Homo sacer: Die souveräne Macht und das nackte Leben (tr. from the Italian by Hubert Thüring). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp: 175. 75 Agamben 2002: 125. 73

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using fingerprints to identify potential criminals76 shows that many practices first tested in colonies or other dependent territories, sooner or later, in modified form and function, reached the mother countries and economic centers. If the camp can be seen as the structural matrix of the island, the island in its entirety can be conceived as a camp or prison. Such a semantification of the island can be found in the literature of all Caribbean islands, but it is particularly frequent in Cuba, where the coastguard is far busier protecting the coast from the island’s own inhabitants than from any external enemy. Jesús Díaz’s Dime algo sobre Cuba (1998)77 portrays armed conflict on this perimeter at the end of the twentieth century. Even the everyday presence of the “prisoner situation” seems to continue its brutal guarding and subtle surveillance, as is shown in Reinaldo Arenas’ Otra vez el mar (1982) or in Zoé Valdés’ Café Nostalgie (1997). In the latter novel, inner and outer views and past and present alternate so skillfully that Cuba emerges clearly as a prison isle whose omnipresence traverses not only spatial but temporal barriers as well. Howsoever one wishes to judge political developments in postrevolutionary Cuba, the raft has longtime been the theoretical metaphor for an island whose coastline is almost endless from the point of view of both fractal mathematics and more traditional methods of measurement, and for a coastline that for all practical purposes can

76

For the establishment of fingerprinting in Great Britain circa 1900 as a criminological identification system as opposed to anthropometric methods, see Anne M. Joseph. 2001. ‘Anthropometry, the Police Expert, and the Deptford Murders: The Contested Introduction of Fingerprinting for the Identification of Criminals in Late Victorian and Edwardian Britain’ in Caplan, Jane & John Torpey (eds). Documenting Individual Identity: The Development of State Practices in the Modern World. Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press: 164-163. Instructive is Joseph’s observation concerning the transition from the anthropometric totality of a human body to to an isolated or – apropos our theme – insular body part: “Its adoption in late Victorian Britain signaled a changing conception of identity – from a frozen image in a photograph and a string of measurements of body parts to an image of patterned lines and ridges; from a construction that construed identity as emanating from the whole to a formulation of permanent identification from a part” (183). 77 Jesús Díaz. 1998. Dime algo sobre Cuba. Madrid: Espasa Calpe: 1998.

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never be absolutely secured. Cuba as La balsa perpetua.78 Even before the mass emergence of Cuban boat people, Reinaldo Arenas had dreamed that the island could someday move off its territorial plinth and dock onto the coastline of other continents and countries – not that this would have deflected the course of the island’s tragic history in any appreciable way.79 In view of the long and complex relationship between island and camp, it should come as no surprise that a new chapter has been added to this fateful symbiosis recently. I am referring to the US Guantanamo Bay prison camp for those suspected of belonging to the Taliban or active terror networks. In his study of the state of emergency as a paradigm of government in the modern era (2003), Giorgio Agamben investigated the legal, philosophical and biopolitical dimensions of this development: Il significato immediatamente biopolitico della stato di eccezione come struttura originale in cui il diritto include in sé il vivente attraverso la propria sospensione emerge con chiarezza nel ‘military order’ emanato dal presidente degli Stati Uniti il 13 novembre 2001, che autorizza la ‘indefinite detention’ e il processo da parte di ‘military commissions’ (da non confondere con i tribunali militari previsti dal diritto di guerra) dei non-cittadini sospetti di implicazione in attività terroristiche.80

It is worthwhile not only to reflect on the omnipresence of the camp in the modern era and the alarming (and connected) periodic emergence of states of emergency, but also to consider the time-space specifics of Guantanamo itself. Seven hundred people from forty countries81 have been interned now for several years and have forfeited not only their civil rights but also their prisoner-of-war status and protection by the 78 Iván de la Nuez. 1998. La balsa perpetua: Soledad y conexiones de la cultura cubana. Barcelona: Editorial Casiopea. 79 See the illuminating formulation of Reinaldo Arenas in Ottmar Ette. 1992. ‘Los colores de la libertad: Nueva York, 14 de enero de 1990’ in Ette, Ottmar (ed.). La escritura de la memoria: Reinaldo Arenas — Textos, estudios y documentación. Frankfurt am Main: Vervuert Verlag: 88 f. 80 Giorgio Agamben. 2003. Stato di eccezione: Homo sacer. Vol. 2, 1. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri: 12. 81 Presently (May 2005), despite all kinds of international efforts and protests, there are still about six hundred prisoners at Camp Delta.

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Geneva Convention. They are being isolated in wire cages of five square meters for an indefinite period in a camp at a military base that was originally established to supply U.S. naval forces. The fact that this military base originated in American intervention during the colonial war in which the first campos de concentraciones were set up, can be seen as a particularly wry joke of history. This sadly famous prison camp, known as Camp Delta, is an island within an island on an island that belongs to the Caribbean island world. At the same time, it forms part of the military nexus of the United States armed forces. Previously, Guantanamo Bay had made international headlines as a reception camp and shunting yard for, among others, the Haitian boat people, but Camp Delta has now taken on another color. It is an area unregulated by law, whether it be U.S., international or Cuban law. It is obvious that camp practices, which are impossible to distinguish from devious methods of torture, have had a boomerang effect on civil rights and freedom in the United States itself (and far beyond its borders). This requires an intensified discussion with an eye to creating a world order in the actual sense.82 This legal no-man’s-land is indicative of a mise en abyme of the relationship between island and camp, a succession of self-similar relations that, paradoxically – if we are to believe Giorgio Agamben – represent a state of emergency that is no accident in the workshop of history but, instead, of a truly paradigmatic character. The legal isolation of this place of solitary confinement corresponds to an extraterritorial island situation vis-à-vis the continental United States in which the usual military law at Guantanamo has been suspended. That it was necessary in this legal state of emergency to construct a court building speaks to an inherent compulsion to territorialize – with the aid of a normal court building – this legal no-man’s-land in which, according to current plans, the public defenders will be appointed by the Pentagon. Although the intense media interest may have fundamentally contributed to a seemingly architectural normalization, it has failed to shift the trials to the continent. Islands are far more suitable for creating an area unregulated by law. 82

See Tzvetan Todorov. 2003. Le nouveau désordre mondial: réflexions d’un Européen. Paris: Robert Laffont.

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Not less alarming is how this state of emergency – ultimately only seemingly cut off from the continent – can be inscribed in the camp paradigm that runs through Cuban history (and certainly not through Cuban history alone): a fractal pattern that takes on the form of various historical constellations. The island as camp, moreover, as the microcosm of an island world, belongs to a world of islands. The extreme relationality of these islands will be my final focus. Beyond Utopia: The Fractal Dynamics of the Caribbean With regard to internal power relations alone, there would still be much to say concerning the multi-relationality of the Caribbean island world. It would certainly be worthwhile to study the pirates, corsairs and freebooters. They embodied the oscillating transitions from acratic to encratic structures,83 from an in-power to an out-of-power position in their island-aided rule (that is, in a rule that went beyond territory in the narrower sense) over an astoundingly long period of time. It was perhaps the pirates and freebooters who most fully utilized the natural preconditions for developing their own island logic, which was itself conditioned by the mobile territoriality of their ships. The island world they had created moved impressively between chaos and periodicity. In comparison to this flexible system, the Spanish linkage of the Caribbean to the European infrastructure and the formation of what was known as the “Black Atlantic”84 takes on the appearance of a hugely cumbersome machinery built upon innumberable military barracks and batteries, canals, churches, customs checkpoints, fortresses, highways, moles, offices, soldiers, sailors, shipyards, warehouses, watchtowers and weapons.85 This system aimed to sweep up the Caribbean in a forceful and brutal way during the accelerated globalization process of the first phase. In an ever more sustained way, it brought the most diverse regions of the world into contact with it. For 83

For these terms within the (fragmentary) power theory of Roland Barthes, see Ottmar Ette. 1998. Roland Barthes: Eine intellektuelle Biographie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp: 346-349. 84 See Paul Gilroy. 1993. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. London: Verso. 85 See the list of Benítez-Rojo 1998: 22.

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perhaps no other region, for so long a period, did external powers devise biopolitics that were adapted to the natural and cultural conditions of an island world to that extent. To confirm this does not mean that we have to see the Caribbean as a meta-archipelago possessing the virtue as such of having neither borders nor a center,86 for early and sustained globalization in its various phases brought not only a consolidation but a multiplication of borders in both the economic and political sphere and led to that diversity of languages that can presently be seen in the Caribbean. One could perhaps best characterize it as a simultaneous multiplication and lifting of borders, a development that in both the cultural and literary realm is still advancing rapidly. For some time now, Cuban literature has not only been written in Spanish and Haitian literature has not merely been penned in French or français créole. Cuban literature written in the United States, South America, South Africa, Spain, Germany or elsewhere uses several languages just as does Haitian literature, which has found a very productive North American space in Canada in the meantime. There is much to be said for the thesis of Antonio Benítez-Rojo, “que la literatura caribeña es la más universal de todas”.87 This does not mean, however, that Caribbean literature – if it were appropriate to use the singular here – is, so to speak, universal and borderless, but that its borders have changed. In most cases, they have become more porous and at the same time multiplying. The conventional (and trite) talk of the unity and diversity of the Caribbean and of Caribbean literature is certainly true, but it is only partly true. The Caribbean and its literature form a fundamentally complex system that rests on interaction, overlap and self-similarities that show the natural and cultural geometry of the Caribbean to be fractal in nature. Along with the Euclidean discourse on unity and diversity, there should be a fractal discourse and a theory informed by cultural studies. This would do justice to the leaps and discontinuities, the overlaps and incoherencies of the Caribbean and its specific literary and cultural phenomena.

86 87

Benítez-Rojo 1998: 18. Benítez-Rojo 1998: 401.

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Isolation is only one part of the insul-ation that increasingly embraces all Caribbean cultural, literary and artistic developments. Insulation also signifies a broken relationality within a region that is in no respect homogenous. Labeling such a system as fundamentally complex ultimately means that an isolated view of the (national) literature of each individual island must take into account the respective overlapping transnational and transcultural networks. Therefore, transdisciplinary approaches are required. It seems to me that a good way of proceeding would be the aforementioned differentiation between an internal and external relationality, which, of course, overlap in a lot of ways. The references to various regions of Africa and to India or China would stand for the external relationality, whereas the phenomenon of internal relationality would have to be viewed from a hemispherical angle and would consist of the networks that are presently developing, for instance, between the various ethnic groups at the Caribbean level as well as at the level of North and South America. Within the Black Atlantic and with regard to the distribution of African slaves since 1518, the Caribbean island world formed the crucial place of transshipment between an external and internal relationality. It seems to me that the relevance of this island world to – not dominance of – the entire western hemisphere remains unbroken, not only with respect to music and literature but beyond. The Caribbean is an area that cannot be satisfactorily grasped solely by means of traditional Area Studies. As Ana Pizarro emphasized in her successful anthology, the Caribbean island world is one that is constantly moving and experiencing shake-ups: Si las culturas no constituyen formaciones fijas sino procesos, cuando nos aproximamos al Caribe esto queda mayormente en evidencia. Allí, los elementos en movimiento, las emergencias, hibridaciones, solapamientos, configuriaciones en permanente estructuración, desestructuración y reestructuración, esbozan la dinámica de su esplendor y han perfilado también su desgarramiento.88

88 Ana Pizarro. 2002. ‘El archipiélago de fronteras externas’ in Pizarro, Ana. El archipiélago de fronteras externas: Culturas del Caribe hoy. Santiago de Chile: Editorial de la Universidad de Santiago de Chile: 27.

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These constant and at the same time discontinuous movements find their way into highly vectorial literatures that, as storehouses of accumulated life-knowledge, contain a diversity of movements. This, together with rhythm and prosody, is probably the distinguishing characteristic of Caribbean literature. To reduce all of this to specific aspects of a divergent peripheral literature would mean to lapse into the old and discredited (if still observable today) practice of purism, which Derek Walcott castigated in his 1992 Nobel Prize speech: These purists look on such ceremonies like grammarians look at a dialect, as cities look on provinces and empires on their colonies. Memory that yearns to join the centre, a limb remembering the body from which it has been severed, like those bamboo thighs of the god. In other words, the way that the Caribbean is still looked at, illegitimate, rootless, mongrelized […]. Fragments and echoes of real people, unoriginal and broken.89

It is easy, using numerous examples, to substantiate the vectorial constitution of Caribbean literature and its impressive ability to accommodate time and again various cultural logics and directions of movement simultaneously. Yet the island world of the Caribbean is not only a landscape of theory for literary practice but a place for a theoretical practice itself which is not infrequently linked with this theory. Should one wish to understand the Caribbean as a laboratory – as scholars are still wont to do – then one should make note of the fact that, for quite a while now, we have not been dealing with a lab in which externally accumulated knowledge is translated into certain experiments and their resulting explications, but rather with extremely polymorphic and applied knowledge that is produced in the Caribbean itself. For quite some time, the Caribbean has been characterized by a very high concentration of cultural and theoretical production. The theoretical ideas of Antonio Benítez-Rojo, Aimé Césaire, Patrick Chamoiseau, Raphaël Confiant, René Depestre, Frantz Fanon, Roberto Fernández Retamar, Édouard Glissant, Stuart Hall, George Lamming, Iván de la Nuez, Gustavo Pérez-Firmat and Derek Walcott

89

Walcott 1998: 67.

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have spread far beyond the Caribbean and have made the island world of the Caribbean into a landscape of theory in a double sense.90 Today, the Caribbean is one of the most important exporters of cultural and literary theory, along with other products that – by contrast – are subject to external market conditions. An essential contribution has been the ability and need to live in various logics at more or less the same time. Symptomatic of the formation of theory in the Caribbean region is the fact that also in this area one can frequently observe the simultaneity of nonconcurrence insofar as the various islands would seem to generate their ideas within a certain independent mental matrix that uses unique reference points in method and literary history. Thus, for example, did créolité thought develop in the francophone territories half a century after the debates concerning criollismo in the hispanophone parts of the Caribbean, but the real difference here is that it developed in a theoretical sphere that was unmistakeably stamped by post-structuralism and burgeoning postcolonial studies, a discipline which was first conceived by Englishlanguage scholars who seized up on the problem of creoleness and repackaged it in their own theoretical formulations. The Caribbean exceeds the boundaries of its own sea and ensconces itself in a fractal geometry that cannot be reduced to any simple causal relationships. Its shared fundament is rather a complex transcultural life-knowledge and survival savvy that is based on the experience of heterotopic pluralism. It is not only because of its multi-relationality that there is hardly a more advantageous starting point than the Caribbean for transareal studies. For quite some time now, the Caribbean has not only been an object of study but also an active participant in that study. In the dialogue between Caribbean and extra-Caribbean theories, ideas emerge that cast a new light on cultural developments worldwide. From the late-fifteenth to the latter half of the twentieth century, Europeans attempted to turn the Caribbean into a projection screen for their utopian dreams, some of which turned out to be real nightmares. But in Latin America, the power of the Caribbean islands to generate utopias has always been delimited. It was certainly no accident that Fernández 90

For this term, see Ette 2001: 531-538.

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de Lizardi’s El Periquillo Sarniento (1816), which emerged in a period of transition between colonial New Spain and post-colonial Mexico, was probably the first utopian vision by an Hispano-American author that was not set in the Caribbean. It was projected onto an island between Asia and America. This perspective allowed Lizardi to level a fundamental social critique against the viceroy-ruled New Spain. It would seem that the Caribbean no longer served as the site for utopias in the sense of diametrically opposed concepts by the beginning of the nineteenth century. And today, having become an archipelago that vouches for the plurality of islands and of island worlds, it is a world of islands beyond utopia.

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Oriente: Towards a Literary Geography Peter Hulme University of Essex The larger question framing this paper is: What kind of Caribbean literary history might now be written? The tentative answer framing the paper is: a literary geography. The theoretical context of the paper is therefore provided by the idea of ‘place’. Attention to place is hardly new within literary studies. However, to write a literary history based on place is to suggest a different kind of attention to writing and a different angle of approach to questions of intertextuality. The case study here is Oriente, the eastern part of Cuba; and the paper will want to sketch some of the general characteristics of the writing associated with that place in a very preliminary manner, as well as looking more closely at two or three examples, drawn from the 1890s and the 1950s.

This paper is an early sketch of one part of a new collaborative project. The starting point for the larger project is a sense that the principal format for writing literary history over the last two centuries – based around nation and language – might be reaching exhaustion and that we need to investigate other possibilities. Increasing mobility and increasing awareness of past mobility have tended in recent years to undermine the exclusivity both of national and regional boundaries defined in the way the nation state would define them – by birth or later citizenship. In the Caribbean case, the three-volume History of Literature in the Caribbean edited by James Arnold and published by John Benjamins, the final volume of which appeared in 2001, provides what will remain for many years the definitive literary history written in the established format.1 Volume 3 of that History then offers one way forward towards a newer paradigm with its thematic and crosscultural approach, perhaps the inauguration, as the editor suggests, of 1

Arnold, A. James (ed.). 1994, 1997 and 2001. A History of Literature in the Caribbean. 3 vols. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

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a new comparative literary history of the Caribbean.2 The “literary geography” in my title suggests a rather different (though not necessarily incompatible) approach, one which puts place first. This attention to place is not offered as the single approach now needed to write literary history, rather as one approach which might highlight different aspects from those featured in other approaches. In what follows I will outline briefly what some of the advantages might be of this attention to place and what kind of theory might support it, before offering a sketch of a case study of one particular place, Oriente, the east of Cuba. The full version of the collaborative project would aim to articulate at least twenty book-length projects with a view to establishing an extensive literary geography of the Caribbean. The Attention to Place If we are rethinking from first principles – which we need to do every so often – then we should not assume that the Caribbean is a selfevident region. Historically, there has been little agreement as to exactly which territories should be included beyond the Caribbean islands themselves. There are no absolutes here, no given or natural categories. However, from the point of view of cultural geography, it might be argued that the most logical region for wider analysis would stretch from, perhaps, Charleston, on the eastern seaboard of the United States, to Bahia, on the eastern seaboard of northern Brazil, incorporating the Caribbean littoral of Central America as well as the islands of the Caribbean sea, and including at least those portions of the southern USA and northern South America which received African slaves and built the plantations on which they laboured. In other words the region that the sociologist Charles Wagley described in 1960 as Plantation America, and which we might also think of as an extended Caribbean.3 2

Arnold 1997: Vol. 2, 5. See Charles Wagley. 1960. ‘Plantation America: A Culture Sphere’ in Rubin, Vera (ed.). Caribbean Studies: A Symposium. Seattle: University of Washington Press: 3-13. Variations on the idea were developed during the 1960s and 1970s, most significantly by Lloyd Best in 1967: Lloyd Best. 1971 [1967]. ‘Independent Thought and Caribbean Freedom’ in Girwan, Norman & Owen Jefferson (eds). Readings in the Political Economy of the Caribbean. Mona, Jamaica: New World Group: 7-26 (origi3

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Within this extended Caribbean region there are obviously very many different kinds of places. There are cities which have always acted as magnets: New Orleans, Havana, Cartagena. There are islands so small that they could not be further sub-divided into more than one place for these current purposes: Nevis, Barbuda, Roatán. There are geographical features that have the resonance to become places: the Orinoco delta, the Blue Mountains of Jamaica, the Louisiana bayous. There are even political features that have similar resonance: the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, the border between Venezuela and Guyana, the Panama Canal zone. Oriente is probably at the larger end of the size spectrum for a place in this sense. Bigger places can obviously be further divided: Oriente has several cities and mountain-ranges and other features which could themselves constitute places for an even more detailed literary topography. To write a literary history based on place is to suggest a different kind of attention to writing. These are some of the general features of an attention to place: • If place determines, then the nationality and language of the writers involved are secondary: subject matter is paramount. The assumption has often been that a writer needs to be born in the Caribbean in order to be considered a Caribbean writer. That never did make much sense: authors like Raymond Breton, James Phillippo, and Alec Waugh spent large amounts of their lives in the Caribbean, wrote extensively about it, and should be taken seriously as contributing to Caribbean writing. Attention to place never asks to see a passport. • A focus on place makes more visible connections between writing which shares a topography, whether that topography is seen as determining (on writers brought up within it and writing out of it) or whether the topography is described (by writers visiting nally published in 1967. New World Quarterly 3(4)). Useful summaries of these theories are in Cecilia Green. 2001. ‘Caribbean Dependency Theory of the 1970s: A Historical-Materialist-Feminist Revision’ in Meeks, Brian & Folke Lindahl (eds). New Caribbean Thought: A Reader. Kingston: University of the West Indies Press: 40-72, and Antonio Gaztambide-Geigel. 1996. ‘La invención del Caribe en el siglo XX: las definiciones del Caribe como problema histórico y metodológico’ in Revista Mexicana del Caribe 1(1) 75-96.

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from elsewhere). Travel writing certainly offers a rich seam which has been inadequately explored in literary histories. • A focus on place is going to be particularly attentive to landscape in its widest sense, to the meanings of place, whether natural or architectural. • Though always responsive to genre (as all literary history should be), a focus on place is more attentive than most literary history to non-fictional writing, to the chronicles and memoirs and autobiographies that are grounded in place. Arguably, Caribbean writing has suffered from being too often shoe-horned into the traditional European categories of novel, poem, play, and essay. That last category in particular hardly seems adequate to the variety and vibrancy of non-fictional writing in the Caribbean. • Attention to place is probably better attuned to some genres than to others: to the realist novel, say, than to metaphysical poetry; but it avoids no form of writing that might have a topographical dimension – and arguably all writing has some. It certainly pays as much attention to region as to nation. • Within geographical places are literary places (topoi): in the Caribbean, the great house, the traveller’s hotel, the weather, the pleasant place (the classical locus amœnus), the plantation, the map, the slave hut, the mine, the crop grounds, the indigenous reservation, the graveyard, the camp, the market. These topoi provide one set of grounds for comparison between different places. • Attention to place always needs consideration alongside attention to trajectory. The Caribbean region has been characterised by an extraordinary range of voluntary and involuntary movements at least over the last five centuries. Beyond the variety of individual trajectories there are distinct patterns: from provincial city to metropolis – in the Cuban case the very resonant road from Santiago to Havana – or indeed from Havana to Santiago; but also those leading from Cap Haïtien to Santiago or from Baracoa to Boston, trajectories of exile or of commerce which always have cultural implications and consequences. Attention to place is not new in literary studies. The work of Raymond Williams, especially his book The Country and the City, is

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an indispensable reference point.4 Attention to place also draws on recent work within cultural geography and environmental literary studies, and, in particular, on the work of Edward Casey in the history of philosophy, who has done a great deal to reintroduce the idea of place – as opposed to that of space – to contemporary thinking. Casey’s basic argument is that, after Aristotle, the idea of place was slowly assimilated to that of space, a tendency which reached a climax in seventeenth-century physics with the “mathematization of nature”, as Husserl termed it, after which place came to be seen as the mere modification of space. Interestingly, Casey links this demotion of place with the era “in which the domination of native peoples was accomplished by their deplacialization: the systematic destruction of regional landscapes that served as the concrete settings for local culture”.5 In general terms, then, the renewed attention to what he calls “vernacularity of place”6 can be seen as a postcolonial move, appropriate for the study of an area such as the Caribbean. Oriente in General Oriente is the eastern quarter of Cuba and for many years the name of the island’s easternmost province. It includes the island’s second city, Santiago de Cuba, as well as the significant provincial towns of Baracoa, Guantánamo, Bayamo, Puerto Príncipe, and Holguín. It also includes the US Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay, and the largest mountain ranges in Cuba, the Sierra Maestra and the Sierra del Cristal. At the beginning of the sixteenth century Cuba was invaded from the east: its first Spanish city was Baracoa, on the eastern tip of the island. Fairly quickly, however, Havana, on the northwest coast, took over as the most significant city because of the importance of its harbour. From 1550 Havana was developed as one of key cities of the Spanish Empire in the Americas, becoming the capital of the island in 1607. By 1700 half the population of Cuba lived in Havana, leading to 4 Raymond Williams. 1973. The Country and the City. London: Chatto and Windus. 5 Edward S. Casey. 1997. The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History, Berkeley: University of California Press: xii. 6 Casey 1997: 77.

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the relative neglect of the eastern part of the island, which became known simply as Oriente. Even during the development of sugar and tobacco plantations in the nineteenth century, the mountainous sierras of the east restricted economic development there, though smuggling remained rife and profitable. Havana has of course remained the capital city of Cuba after notional independence in 1898, and after the Cuban Revolution in 1959; and consequently therefore has remained the centre of Cuban political and cultural life. Travellers to Cuba have tended to visit Havana first and Oriente afterwards, if at all; except those drawn to Oriente for particular reasons, often to do with the revolutionary wars during the second half of the nineteenth century or during the 1950s. Over the last five centuries, then, Cuban writers have gravitated to Havana, and most Cuban books have been published in Havana. But of course some Cuban writers have been born in Oriente and remained there (the poet Regino E. Boti offers an interesting case7), others have continued to write about it after leaving (such as Reinaldo Arenas8), others Cuban and non-Cuban have travelled to it and written about it, and Oriente and its component parts have had symbolic and mythic and ideological qualities attached to them. Because of its terrain and its distance from Havana, Oriente has often been regarded as emblematic of el campo as opposed to the city, savagery as opposed to civilisation, backwardness as opposed to modernity. But the values attached to these dialectics can often be reversed: when the city, civilisation, and modernity become emblematic of colonialism, decadence, and corruption, then the countryside becomes the source of purity and renewal, a rôle it has increasingly played over the last 150 years because of the revolutionary initiatives begun there in 1878, 1895, and 1956. 7

Little known in his lifetime, Boti – who was born and lived all his adult life in Guantánamo – is now recognised as one of the most significant twentieth-century Cuban poets: see the recent collections of his work: Regino E. Boti. 2004. La visita de los dioses (Selección de poesías de Regino E. Boti). Havana: Letras Cubanas, and the bi-lingual Regino E. Boti. 2005. Kindred Spirits: Poems. Stephen Hart (ed.). London: Mango Publishers. 8 The landscape of Oriente features as a persistent image of lost innocence in works such as Antes que anochezca (1992).

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The phenomenon of regionalism is one example of how places might often need conceiving dialectically: Oriente is in this sense notHavana. But regionalism, developing in response to nationalism, is still defined by that of nationalism, whereas an attention to place is quite as open to global interests. Regionalism is often political inasmuch as its implicit claim is based on its grounding in the autochthonous realities of the country in opposition to a capital city supposedly too open to foreign goods and ideas, too quick to sell itself in some international marketplace. The moral dimension to this opposition is not alien to Cuban history. But attention to place is openly amoral: it observes the dialectic but has no investment in one side or the other. It is endlessly fascinated by the movement of people and ideas which swell onto the shores of its given place, for whatever reason and in whatever form they find expression. Of the defining dialectics for Oriente, modernity and backwardness is perhaps the strongest, based on the actuality not only of the kind of development – financial, cultural, architectural – almost always associated with capital cities, but with the additional factor of Havana’s hinterland seeing the location of the majority of the sugar plantations which drove the country’s economic development during the nineteenth century. Oriente was not – as its equivalent was in many other countries – the rural region which saw the riches it produced syphoned off to support the parasite capital; it was the marginalised and neglected further reaches of the country which was home to sectors of the economy largely irrelevant to the processes of modernisation. It occupied a kind of third space; not even that to the this of Havana, but truly the other.9 The writing of Oriente has a long history. Almost archetypally for places subject to European attention, that history begins with two contrasting pieces of writing: Columbus’s journal entries for November 1492, which he spent on the northern coast of Oriente, where he emphasises the beauty and fertility of the area; and the chapters in Bartolomé de Las Casas’s Historia de Indias in which Las Casas, who served as a soldier in Cuba shortly after Diego Velázquez’s entrada in 9

See John Barrell. 1991. The Infection of Thomas De Quincey: A Psychopathology of Imperialism. New Haven: Yale University Press: 10.

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1511, describes the Spanish brutality against the Cuban natives which first pricked his conscience. If, as has been suggested, the literature of anti-imperialism begins with Las Casas, then it begins in Oriente with his accounts of Spanish soldiers chasing Indians into the sierras, a recurrent motif for the following 450 years.10 Three initial examples will suggest some of the particular resonances Oriente has held for outsiders, stressing its separateness from the rest of the island in general and from Havana in particular. Federico García Lorca’s poem, ‘Son de los negros en Cuba’, written during the six months he spent on the island in 1930, embodies the emblematic significance of Oriente with its incantatory line, “Iré a Santiago”. It seems appropriate that there has been much discussion about whether Lorca actually did go to Santiago from his base in Havana, but what the poem expresses is not an actual intention but a fantasy desire for an ideal place, a landscape which – as one critic has suggested – combines a future utopia with the familiarity of the past. So, arriving in Cuba as he did from the dislocated modernity of New York, Lorca found in Havana a version of his homeland in the south of Spain but with added liberation from Spanish restrictions. But then came the realization that Havana was not Cuba, that the city might have too much of modernity about it, that the essence of the island was to be found elsewhere, in the perhaps darker and older pleasures of Santiago, of which the poet dreams and probably experienced for himself: Cuando llegue la luna llena iré a Santiago de Cuba, iré a Santiago, en un coche de agua negra. Iré a Santiago. Cantarán los techos de palmera.

10

Christopher Columbus. 1989. The Diario of Christopher Columbus’s First Voyage to America: 1492-93. Oliver Dunn & James E. Kelley (ed. and tr.). Norman: University of Oklahoma Press: 116-65, and Bartolomé de las Casas. 1981. Historia de las Indias [1559]. Vol. 2. Agustín Millares Carlo (ed.). Mexico: 522-523.

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Iré a Santiago. Cuando la palma quiere ser cigueña. Iré a Santiago [...].11

Many others had preceded Lorca, not least of course the US Army units that had entered the city in 1898. During the 1890s, the majority of the writing associated with Oriente was produced by reporters writing about Cuba’s struggle for independence and then on US engagement in the war. Some significant figures, not least Stephen Crane, Theodore Roosevelt, and Máximo Gómez, left accounts of the fighting in Oriente. Along with Stephen Crane, the best-known US reporter in 1898 was Richard Harding Davis, who worked for William Randolph Hearst. But Davis knew Oriente well from an earlier visit which he had already drawn on for a best-selling novel called Soldiers of Fortune, published in 1897 in the run-up to the US invasion. What is particularly interesting about Soldiers of Fortune is that although generically a historical romance, it is actually grounded in very material and contemporary issues, not unconnected with US interest in this part of the island. Robert Clay, the hero of the novel, is an engineer from the US west working for a wealthy US entrepreneur. In a letter back to the States Clay writes about the place he’s visiting: I saw great masses of red hematite lying exposed on the side of the mountain, only waiting a pick and shovel, and at one place there were five thousand tons in plain sight. I should call the stuff first-class Bessemer ore, running about sixty-three per cent metallic iron. The people know it is there, but have no knowledge of its value, and are too lazy to ever work it themselves.12

The setting for Soldiers of Fortune is closely modelled on the development of US mining interests on the south-east coast of Cuba, so this is very much a novel of Oriente. From 1880 onwards the Pennsylvania Steel Company developed mines along the Río Juraguá and built a railroad to take the ore to Santiago, from where it was shipped to 11 See Sarah Wright. 2002. ‘Dramatic Encounters: Federico García Lorca’s Trip to Cuba’ in Burdett, Charles & Derek Duncan (eds). Cultural Encounters: European Travel Writing in the 1930s. New York: Berghahn: 131-142. 12 Richard Harding Davis. 1916. Soldiers of Fortune [1897]. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons: 30.

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Philadelphia. By 1898 Philadelphian steel firms owned eleven mines in the region, with an output averaging a quarter of a million tons a year.13 The revolutionary conflict of the 1950s brought a further wave of journalists to Oriente. Early in 1957 the Cuban government was trying to spread a story that Fidel Castro was dead. Castro had in fact been rebuilding his meagre forces in the Sierra Maestra and was now ready for a publicity coup. The US journalist, Herbert Matthews, was chosen for this and he drove all one night and most of the next day from Havana to the Sierra Maestra, to a safe house where Castro came to meet him, leading to the sensational story in the New York Times on 24 February 1957, which played its part in Cuba’s revolutionary struggle, giving the lie to Batista’s assertions of Castro’s death. Matthews’s piece started with the sentence: “Fidel Castro, the rebel leader of Cuba’s youth, is alive and fighting hard and successfully in the rugged, almost impenetrable fastnesses of the Sierra Maestra, at the southern tip of the island”. The adjective “rugged”, poised between Castro and the Sierra, works to describe both. Oriente and Havana are at opposite poles: “The province of Oriente, with its two million inhabitants, its flourishing cities such as Santiago, Holguin, and Manzanillo, is shut off from Havana as surely as if it were another country”. Oriente is a closed book to Havana, which means that neither Batista nor the US intelligence services know what is going on there: “No one in Havana, not even the United States embassy with all its resources for getting information, will know until this report is published that Fidel Castro is really in the Sierra Maestra”.14 Oriente is associated with all the report’s positive adjectives, and the contrast between the guerrilleros and Batista’s soldiers is that, even though both groups are mostly outsiders to the area, the guerrilleros have 13

For more on this see Peter Hulme. 1996. Rescuing Cuba: Adventure and Masculinity in the 1890s (Latin American Studies Center Series 11). College Park, MD: University of Maryland. On Soldiers of Fortune see Amy Kaplan. 1990. ‘Romancing the Empire: The Embodiment of American Masculinity in the Popular Historical Novel of the 1890s’ in American Literary History 2: 659-290. 14 Herbert Matthews. 1957. ‘Cuban Rebel is Visited in Hideout’ in New York Times (24 February 1957). See Matthews’ account (1961) in his The Cuban Story, New York: George Braziller: 15-44.

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made alliances with local people and have gained local knowledge, while Batista’s soldiers have not and therefore do not have a sense of the place in which they are fighting. Guantánamo in particular Attention to place has to give weight both to actuality and to ideas. At different times and in different registers, places may gather particular associations which may have different levels of connection with actuality. Guantánamo offers an interesting current example. In actuality, Guantánamo is a city in Oriente with a not uninteresting cultural and literary history little known outside Cuba. Guantánamo Bay is an important harbour, much but not all of which, for the last hundred years, has been under the control of the US Navy. However, in 2005, the resonance of what has happened to the supposed enemy combatants held in Camp Delta has almost obliterated for the rest of the world any sense of Guantánamo as a Cuban city and Guantánamo Bay as a topographical feature. Guantánamo, tout court, now stands as the naval base with its resonances as a place of torture and illegal process. Any larger literary historical project of the kind being sketched here would need both to recognise and situate those resonances and to provide that broader picture. As it happens, one of the most significant pieces of Cuban writing tells of a journey through Guantánamo Bay’s hinterland. The literary movement known as siboneyismo stemmed from Oriente, where many indigenous towns were established in the eighteeenth century and where an indigenous population still survives today. Arguably, siboneyista writers have been condescended to by metropolitan literary criticism on account of their strong regional identities. An attention to place might bring a fuller appreciation of such writers. The better-known figure of José Martí is not usually seen in this connection: he was obviously a truly continental figure whose modernism makes him a cosmopolitan rather than a regional or provincial writer. Yet Martí’s final and in many ways most powerful piece of writing is about Oriente and links him back to this very particular indigenous tradition. The indigenous reference point was always present in Martí’s writing. His most famous essay, ‘Nuestra América’, has that classi-

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cally American insistence that the continent is at its worst when it tries to imitate European appearance rather than seeking an appearance which corresponds to its own reality.15 The real sign of this failure of the Latin American intellectual class is, Martí says, in a very telling metaphor, the abandonment of their sick mother, a mother of whom they are ashamed, “porque lleva delantal indio”. Martí’s language is always dense and elliptical, but he often uses this kind of familial metaphor to talk about continental issues. “Nuestra” America, he says, has a carpenter for a father and an Indian for a mother, and the continent will make no true progress until it recognises that fact. And all Americans have these metaphorical parents, irrespective of their biological mother and father. Six years before ‘Nuestra América’ Martí had used another version of that familial metaphor to express his own identification with the Carib warriors who fought and died against Spanish invaders, writing of how one may descend from fathers of Valencia and mothers of the Canary Islands (as Martí himself did), and yet still regard as one’s own the spilled blood of heroic Indian warriors. “La inteligencia americana es un penacho indígena,” he wrote.16 Martí’s last Cuban journey was across Oriente from east to west, from Las Playitas to Dos Ríos, near Bayamo, where he was killed on the afternoon of 19 May 1895. His Diario de campaña was written under conditions of extreme hardship while travelling over difficult terrain, constantly in fear of enemy attack. The writing is often almost impossible to read. The text was mutilated after its author’s death and six pages are still missing. It was not published at all until 1940, and thereafter in inadequate and error-strewn editions until 1996 when a critical edition was finally published in Cuba. Martí’s journey across Oriente was a pilgrimage to a Cuban home from which he had been exiled for most of his life, an encounter with a countryside and people to which he had given his life, but which he had rarely visited. His writing is therefore in this dimension at its most American as he expresses the joy of contact with the natu15

José Martí. 1992. ‘Nuestra América’ [1891] in López Ugarte, Ela & Adiala González Naranjo (eds). Obras Escogidas. Vol. 2. Havana: 480-487, at 481. 16 José Martí. 1975. ‘Autores Americanos Aboriginales’ [1884] in Obras completas. Vol. 8. Havana: 336.

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ral world of the Cuban countryside, translated into writing through the often quite particularly Cuban words for certain trees or plants or dishes or places. The diary is marked by an almost obsessive accumulation of terms. Words for plants and objects, country cooking, peasant remedies, creole expressions: Martí’s interest in and celebration of these terms turns the regional language of Oriente into the national language of Cuba. But the linguistic point has another dimension. Some of the names of trees and plants and rivers and animals and household items are: najesí, bagá, yaya, cupey, yagua, yarey, jobo, pajuá, guayabo, jaraguá. Some of the places where Martí camped or otherwise refers to are: Cajobabo, Los Ciguatos, Malabé, Iguanabo, Yateras, Baraguá, Guantánamo. This is the creole language of Cuba and these are all Indian words. Some of the more sophisticated siboneyista poets had included these kinds of words in their writing, but as the language of exoticism. Martí touched the trees and the plants and the animals, and bathed in the rivers. During the last weeks of his life he lived a Cuban indigeneity. Martí himself was keenly aware of the Indian presence in Oriente, not least because Indians were originally employed as mercenaries by the Spanish to fight against the Cuban rebels, although the Indians later changed sides and fought with the rebels. In his diary, Martí writes of spending one of his last nights in the bohío of an Indian woman and her family, and he leaves behind a vivid sketch: “La mujer india [...] de ojos ardientes, rodeada de siete hijos, en traje negro roto, con el pañuelo de tocas atado a lo alto por las tranzas, pila café”.17 So, here, just a few weeks before his death, Martí finds the American intelligence of an Indian headdress not where it might have been expected, in the Yucatán or the Andes or the plains of South Dakota, but on a woman hulling coffee in a small village outside Guantánamo. Cuban scholars have recently identified the woman as Gregoria Rodríguez. A few days before he died, Martí’s long interest in the indigenous reality of the American continent culminated, surprisingly, in his native country, in Oriente, with the vision of a culture which, 17

José Martí. 1996. Diarios de campaña. Mayra Beatriz Martínez & Froilán Escobar (eds). Havana: Casa Editora Abril: 86.

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against all expectations, had survived to offer maternal succour to Cuba”s revolutionary heroes.18 Just before his death Martí famously warned of the territorial ambitions of the USA. The decade of the 1890s marks the beginning of that phase of US extra-continental expansion aimed at the remains of the Spanish Empire: one of the first targets would be Guantánamo Bay. Decrepit as it was by the 1890s, the Spanish Empire had a number of features which made it particularly desirable to the USA, notably its original circumnavigatory ambitions, embodied in Columbus’s thwarted attempt to sail more or less due west from Spain to Japan. By the end of the nineteenth century that truly tropical circumnavigation had finally become almost inevitable: a Central American canal would soon complete the process initiated by De Lesseps with Suez, and the USA would be able to establish for itself a world-wide commercial network supported by coaling stations on the Pacific tropical belt – Hawaii, Midway, Wake, Guam, Manila.19 These US global ambitions were first articulated by Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, not much read nowadays, but a naval historian who became a close associate of Roosevelt’s, and a writer whose theories of cultural conflict still find their neo-conservative echoes. Mahan had always judged the Caribbean to be essential for the development of US sea power, and Cuba to be the most desirable of the “island fortresses”, as he called them, with unique positions and advantages. 18

The fundamental work here is by José Barreiro: José Barreiro. 1994. ‘The Indian in Martí: American Indian Thinking and Issues in the Writing of the Cuban Apostle’ in The Americas Review 22(1-2): 148-167; and Idem. ‘Beyond the Myth of Extinction: The Hatuey Regiment’ [22 paragraphs] in KACIKE: The Journal of Caribbean Amerindian History and Anthropology [On-line Journal]. Available at: http://www.kacike.org/Barreiro.html [accessed 14 November 2005]. 19 See D.W. Meinig. 1998. The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on 500 Years of History. Vol. 3: Transcontinental America 1850-1915. New Haven: Yale University Press: 372-94. These outposts doubled as coaling stations and relay stations for submarine cables: the US victory over Spain in 1898 laid the foundations for global communication, even though the centre of that network remained, temporarily, in London. On US expansionism in the second half of the nineteenth century, see Walter LaFeber. 1963. The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion 1860-1898. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, and Matthew Frye Jacobson. 2000. Barbarian Virtues: The United States Encounters Foreign Peoples at Home and Abroad, 1876-1917. New York: Hill & Wang.

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In a memorandum he wrote on behalf of the Naval War Board in August 1898, Mahan mentioned Guantánamo Bay, along with two other Cuban bays, saying “When Cuba becomes independent, the United States should acquire, as a naval measure, one of these ports, with a portion of adjacent territory”.20 In fact, just before Mahan wrote those words, Guantánamo Bay had become the very first place in Cuba to see a US landing when marines put ashore there in June 1898 to prepare the way for the full-scale US assault on Santiago which followed later that summer and which more or less ended the USA’s short war with Spain. Under the terms of the infamous Platt Amendment which gave Cuba only nominal independence, the USA leased in perpetuity from Cuba land around Guantánamo Bay on which to build a naval facility. This naval base, GITMO, as its marine inhabitants charmlessly call it, has been in the news ever since 650 suspected Taliban and Al-Qaida fighters were brought there, first to Camp X-Ray and then to the newly-built Camp Delta. The building of a prison camp such as Camp Delta contravenes Article II of the treaty by which the USA leases the land, which explicitly states that it should be used “as coaling or naval stations only, and for no other purpose”.21 But this might be considered a minor legal infraction compared to the barbarous treatment of its prisoners, who remain in what a British court has described as a “legal black hole”. GITMO has a growing body of writing associated with it, most remarkably perhaps the powerful play, simply called Guantánamo, compiled by Victoria Brittain and Gillian Slovo from the testimony of judges, transcripts of speeches by politicians, letters from prisoners, which played in London and New York during 2004. 20

Alfred Thayer Mahan. 1975. Letters and Papers of Alfred Thayer Mahan. Vol. 2. Robert Seager II & Doris D. Seager (eds). Anapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press: 588. See Richard W. Turk. 1987. The Ambiguous Relationship: Theodore Roosevelt and Alfred Thayer Mahan. New York: Greenwood Press and David McCullough. 1977. The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal 18701914. New York: Simon & Schuster: 250-257. 21 See ‘Texts of United States – Cuban Agreements and Treaty of 1934’. On line at http://www.nsgtmo.navy.mil/gazette/History_98-64/hisapxd.htm [Consulted 10 November 2005].

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One implicit exchange focuses very direct on matters of place. At one point Donald Rumsfeld voices his infamous defence of conditions in Camp Delta: just for the sake of the listening world, Guantanamo Bay’s climate is different from Afghanistan. To be in an eight-by-eight cell in beautiful sunny Guantanamo Bay, Cuba is not a – inhumane treatment. And it has a roof.

Everything that comes out of GITMO is filtered by US military censorship, which obviously proved impervious to the irony in a letter from one of the detainees to his mother. This is Bisher Al-Rawi, an Iraqi Muslim long resident in the UK, adding his paragraph to the literature of Oriente: I’m writing to you from the seaside resort of Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. After winning first prize in the competition, I was whisked to this nice resort with all expenses paid. I did not have to spend a penny. I and Jamil are in very good health. The neighbours are very well behaved. The food is first class, plenty of sun and pebbles, no sand I’m afraid.22

Santiago de Cuba as a place of dark and forbidden pleasures, but also the exporting centre for the region’s mining industry; Oriente’s sierras as metonymic of revolutionary virtue, but also home to the island’s surviving indigenous population; Guantánamo Bay as the place of the final education of Cuba’s greatest writer into the creole realities of his country, but also the site of one of the greatest human rights abuses of our new century. Even taken together, the six examples offered here can only afford a very limited sketch of what the literary geography of Oriente might look like, let alone a literary geography of the extended Caribbean made up of twenty or more studies of such places. Nonetheless, the significance of place, with the particular resonance given here to that term, should be apparent.

22 Victoria Brittain & Gillian Slovo. 2004. Guantanamo: ‘Honor Bound to Defend Freedom’. London: Oberon Books: 35.

Cultural Memories, Literary Forms, Caribbean Revolutions Theo D’haen Katholieke Universiteit Leuven & Universiteit Leiden The memory of both the French and the Haitian Revolutions haunts literature from and about the Caribbean. In my talk I will explore how such memories take shape in, and shape, such works as William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!, Alejo Carpentier’s El siglo de las luces, and Albert Helman’s De stille plantage. I will argue that these memories have also imposed a revolutionary form upon the works in which they appear.

In volume three of A. James Arnold’s A History of Literature in the Caribbean in the ongoing series of A Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages I argued1 that from its very inception in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries the Western discourse pertaining to the Caribbean inscribes itself within the larger discourse of modernity.2 Intimately tied to the rise of Western Europe’s bourgeoisie as the carrier of modernity’s central ideas, this discourse gradually gains strength over the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and eventually triumphs with the Enlightenment’s celebration of, in the words of Lyotard, “the dialectics of Spirit, the hermeneutics of 1 Mainly by way of Jürgen Habermas. 1990 [1985]. ‘Modernity’s Consciousness of Time and Its Need for Self-Reassurance’ in Habermas, Jürgen. The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press: 1-22; Tzvetan Todorov. 1984. The Conquest of America (tr. Richard Howard). New York: Harper; Immanuel Wallerstein. 1974, 1980 and 1989. The Modern World-System I, II, III. London: Academic Press. 2 This article earlier appeared as Theo D’haen. 2000. ‘Revolutionary Crossings: Caribbean Identities and Caribbean Forms’ in Politou-Marmarinou, Eleni & Sophia Denissi (eds). Identity and Alterity in Literature. Vol. 1: 18th-20th c. Athens: Domos: 335-349.

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meaning, the emancipation of the rational or working subject, [and] the creation of wealth”.3 In the fields of economics and politics this translates into liberal individualism, capitalism and imperialism.4 At the same time, by the systemic process of inversion between center and periphery explored by Wallerstein, those at the periphery of the bourgeois world system, whether geographically or socially so, are progressively marginalized. Rosemary Jackson, in another context, speaks of “the shadow on the edges of bourgeois culture”, which is “variously identified as black, mad, primitive, criminal, socially deprived, deviant, crippled, or (when sexually assertive) female”.5 Modernity, then, posits as normative what Sylvia Winter, 1990, has called the “figure of man” – white, male, middle class – in what Paul Gilroy defines as a “dualistic system that reproduces the dominance of bonded whiteness, masculinity, and rationality”.6 How this relates to European discourse about the Caribbean can easily be seen, as I myself – along with countless others – have tried to demonstrate, from analyses of classical works of English literature dealing with the Caribbean such as Shakepespeare’s The Tempest, Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, and Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.7 In Europe, the full ideological and political empowerment of the discourse of modernity arrives, of course, with the French Revolu3

Jean-François Lyotard. 1993. ‘Excerpts from The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge’ in Natoli, Joseph & Linda Hutcheon (eds). A Postmodern Reader. Albany: State University of New York Press: 72. 4 Ian Watt. 1957. The Rise of the Novel. London: Chatto/Windus; Martin Green. 1980. Dreams of Adventure, Deeds of Empire. London: Routledge/Kegan Paul; Eric Wolf. 1982. Europe and the People Without History. Berkeley: University of California Press; Robert Young. 1990. White Mythologies: Writing History and the West. London: Routledge. 5 Rosemary Jackson. 1981. Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion. London: Methuen: 121. 6 Paul Gilroy. 1993. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consiousness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press: 46. 7 Theo D’haen. 1997. ‘Whose Nature is it Anyway? Empire’s Nature – Nature’s Empire’ in Larsen, Svend-Erik, Morten Nøjgaard & Annelise Ballegaard Petersen (eds). Nature: Literature and its Otherness, La littérature et son autre. Odense: Odense University Press: 154-168; Idem. 1998. ‘Re-Presenting the Caribbean’ in Morel, Michel (ed.). L’exil et l’allégorie dans le roman anglophone contemporain. Paris: Éditions Messene: 103-115.

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tion’s celebrated liberté, egalité, fraternité. At the same time, so stark a formulation of the theoretical underpinnings of this discourse at the center of the bourgeois world system threw into sharp relief the inequalities reigning at the periphery of that same system. Though in France, and in (certainly Western) Europe in general the French Revolution in the short term led to the hegemony of the bourgeoisie, in the long run emancipation also for the other classes in society, and most particularly for the emerging lower or – as it increasingly came to be called – working class, was definitely if remotely on the political horizon. In the colonies, however, and particularly in the Americas, the issue of class was overlaid with that of race. Again, this has been recognized in the literary imagination from the very beginning; in fact, it could be said to be a central point of what Edward Said, in Culture and Imperialism, has termed one of the fables “that stand guard over the imagination of the New World”,8 and a work that certainly stands at the beginning of English-language writing about that New World: Shakespeare’s The Tempest. In Culture and Imperialism, Said argues that Gilroy’s “system” of “bonded whiteness, masculinity, and rationality” reached its apogee in the nineteenth century with the “classic” realist novel, particularly in England and France, both reflecting and contributing to a worldview pervasively marked by colonialism and imperialism. With modernism the self-evidence of the discourse of modernity is coming to be doubted. There are developments internal to the West, particularly relating to shifting class relations, to explain this doubt.9 However, Said argues, in reality many of the most prominent characteristics of modernist culture, which we have tended to derive from purely internal dynamics in Western society and culture, include a response to the external pressures on culture from the imperium.10

Specifically, Said feels that

8

Edward Said. 1993. Culture and Imperialism. London: Chatto/Windus: 256. José B Monléon. 1990. A Specter is Haunting Europe: A Sociohistorical Approach to the Fantastic. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 10 Said 1993: 227. 9

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Jean-Marc Moura the formal dislocations and displacements in modernist culture, and most strikingly its pervasive irony, are influenced by precisely those two disturbing factors Seeley11 mentions as a consequence of imperialism: the contending native and the fact of other empires.12

The result, according to Said, was the “new encylopaedic form”13 of the modernist work of art: circular, spatial, and fragmentary in its yoking together of apparent heterogeneities, and as opposed to realism’s ideal form of transparency, linearity, temporal progressivism, and homogeneity. As examples of modernists whose works exude the kind of irony, as well as embody the kind of “imperial” pressures he thinks of, Said mentions Conrad, E. M. Forster, T. E. Lawrence, and André Malraux among prose writers, and therefore as most immediately refashioning the realist novelistic conventions of modernity. Yet, he also notes that “the impingements of empire on an Irish sensibility are registered in Yeats and Joyce, those on American expatriates in the work of Eliot and Pound”.14 Moreover, Said argues, although “most histories of European aesthetic modernism leave [them] out”, not only were there “massive infusions of non-European cultures into the metropolitan heartland during the early years of this century”,15 but the cross-fertilization between African nationalism as represented by George Padmore, Nkrumah, C.L.R. James on the one hand, and, on the other the emergence of a new literary style in the works of Césaire, Senghor, poets of the Harlem Renaissance like Claude McKay and Langston Hughes, is a central part of the global history of modernism.16

We note that three of the names Said here mentions are Caribbean: C.L.R. James, Césaire and McKay. Said’s “global history of modernism” remains to be written, but here I already want to make a small contribution by looking at three texts 11 J. R. Seeley, a late-nineteenth-century historian of English imperialism in The Expansion of England. 12 Said 1993: 228. 13 Said 1993: 229. 14 Said 1993: 227. 15 Said 1993: 292. 16 Said 1993: 292-293.

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from the wider Caribbean – i.e. the area historically defined by plantation culture and stretching from the Chesapeake Bay in the United States in the north to Brazilian San Salvador de Bahia in the south by way of the entire Gulf Coast, written in three different languages of the region – English, Spanish, and Dutch, and produced during the period we now increasingly refer to as that of high modernism. The texts in question are, in chronological order, Albert Helman’s De stille plantage,17 William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!,18 and Alejo Carpentier’s El reino de este mundo.19 Traditionally, each of these novels has been primarily considered within its own linguistic and national orbit: Dutch, American i.e. US, and Cuban and in a wider sense Spanish-American literature. Of the three novels concerned, Helman’s, being written by a native of the Dutch Antilles, has in fact received relatively scant attention even in the context of Dutch literature, as is the fate of almost anything written outside of the Netherlands even if in Dutch. On the international screen, of course, Helman’s novel has not even registered a blip. On the contrary, Absalom, Absalom! and El reino de este mundo are famous both within their respective literatures and internationally. Of the three novels, only Absalom, Absalom! would unhesitatingly be classified as modernist, I take it – it certainly has been so by most critics. Indeed, Faulkner’s novel is clearly marked by the pervasive irony as well as the encyclopaedic form Said singles out as peculiarly modernist. Whether many observers offhand would see Absalom, Absalom! as also showing Said’s “pressures [...] from the imperium” is rather more doubtful. It will be my contention, though, that it does. In fact, I will argue that it shares these pressures with De stille plantage and El reino de este mundo, and that it is these same pressures that imbue the three novels in question with a form of modernism distinctive initially for the Caribbean. Finally, I think it is not a coincidence that in all three novels these pressures thematically surface in relation to the French Revolution and its fall-out in the Car17

Albert Helman. 1982 [1931]. De stille plantage. ‘s-Gravenhage: Nijgh en Van Ditmar. 18 William Faulkner. 1971 [1936]. Absalom, Absalom!. Harmondsworth: Penguin. 19 Alejo Carpentier. 1980 [1949]. El reino de este mundo. Barcelona: Seix Barral.

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ibbean. Of course, another novel by Carpentier, El siglo de las luces, of 1962,20 is even more centrally concerned with the French Revolution, as it describes a Guadeloupan merchant effectively bringing the revolution to the French Antilles. However, I have chosen to concentrate on El reino de este mundo because it is also the novel that contains the famous preface in which Carpentier introduced his version of magical realism, and which was later republished, in a considerably augmented version, under the title ‘De lo real maravilloso americano’ in Tientos y diferencias.21 Just as the Caribbean was the first region outside of Europe to be affected by the onset of modernity – its very “discovery” in fact, according to Todorov,22 contributing to that modernity’s take-off – it was also the first region to be directly touched by the moment suprême of modernity’s triumph, the French Revolution. Toussaint L’Ouverture’s 1791 Saint-Domingue rising, the protracted struggle against the French, and Dessalines’s 1804 declaration of Haitian independence, were clearly inspired – both in deeds and in words – by the French example. Directed against the French, however, the Haitian Revolution signals a re-appropriation of the discourse of modernity by the periphery. In fact, the Haitian Revolution cruelly exposed the limits of the emancipatory project of the Enlightenment as modernity’s prise de conscience and as articulated in the French Revolution’s discourse of equality. Whereas class borders in Europe might be at least theoretically fluid, or might be made to become so, in the Americas, where the issue of race from the very beginning had masked that of class, no such elasticity existed. As Gikandi claims in Writing in Limbo: Modernism and Caribbean Literature, “entry into the European terrain of the modern has often demanded that the colonized peoples be denied their subjectivity, language, and history”.23 For transposed and mixed colonial creole populations such as that of Haiti, and by extension of the entire Caribbean, to reclaim all these equals inventing an-Other

20

Alejo Carpentier. 1976 [1962]. El siglo de las luces. Barcelona: Seix Barral. Alejo Carpentier. 1967. Tientos y diferencias. Montevideo: Arca. 22 Todorov 1984. 23 Simon Gikandi. 1992. Writing in Limbo: Modernism and Caribbean Literature. Ithaca: Cornell University Press: 2. 21

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modernity – one which, borrowing a term from Gayatri Spivak,24 we might say to be paradoxically – and ironically – “present” in the discourse of modernity as “text-inscribed blankness”. In Haiti, History and the Gods, Joan Dayan details how this entailed a cultural creolization reminiscent of the physical and linguistic hybridization the term now popularly signals.25 In El reino de este mundo, Carpentier recounts the story of the Haitian Revolution. With its succession of 26 short chapters, unevenly divided over four sections, involving frequent shifts in time and from one character to another, its numerological and chronological intricacies mapped upon real history, the liturgical calendar, and the Bible,26 the novel’s modernist pedigree, at least along the terms of Said’s “encyclopaedic” form, is – I hope – acceptable. In his preface, Carpentier tells how the idea for the “marvelous real” came to him during an extended visit to Haiti, and advocates a hybridization of form (“lo real” standing for the European idea of history and also of Said’s paradigmatic European novel, and “lo maravilloso” accounting for the American input, while the pun on “lo real maravilloso” of course drives home the fact that in America the marvelous precisely is the real, and vice versa) similar to that he also propounds in the plot of the novel and in the main character Ti Noël, and similar to the one we saw emerging from Dayan’s book. As Edwin Williamson puts it in ‘Coming to Terms with Modernity: Magical Realism and the Historical Process in the Novels of Alejo Carpentier’: [In El reino de este mundo] the meaning of things lies beyond any one point of view: the blacks may interpret events from a magical perspective but the novel

24

Gayatri C. Spivak. 1993. ‘Can the Subaltern Speak’ in Williams, Patrick & Laura Chrisman (eds). Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf: 66-111; originally in Nelson, Cary & Lawrence Grossberg (eds). 1988. Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Basingstoke: Macmillan: 271-313. 25 Joan Dayan. 1995. Haiti, History, and the Gods. Berkeley, Los Angeles & London: University of California Press. 26 Roberto González Echeverría. 1990 [1977]. The Pilgrim at Home: Alejo Carpentier. Austin: University of Texas Press.

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never departs from the factual record on which a European might base his understanding of them,27

and: eventually, Ti Noël realizes that voodoo can offer no lasting refuge from the rationalizing power of whites or mulattos in some magically reborn neo-African kingdom […] he therefore places his hopes in `the kingdom of this world’ rather than in a kingdom of heaven,and to that extent is capable of appreciating the universalizing, humanistic value of liberty, equality and fraternity which had emerged from the alien culture of his former white masters.28

Williamson seems to lament this hybrization as a loss of authenticity, and faults Carpentier for it. In light of Williamson’s modernist reading of El reino de este mundo this is perhaps logical. After all, Modernism, certainly in its more central manifestations, in matters of theme if not of form, emphasized a search for purity, whether it be of the existential Sartrean kind or of the more racial or national kind as advocated by for instance T.S. Eliot, Pound or Yeats. In retrospect, however, we can perhaps see the hybridization of El reino de este mundo as pointing in the direction of presentday concepts of creolité as elaborated by Bernabé, Chamoiseau and Confiant,29 or of antillanité as proposed by Glissant.30 Elsewhere,31 I have suggested the possibility that Carpentier’s magic realism as a formula for writing an-Other modernity may have inspired comparable moves in postmodern c.q. postcolonial literature. Just as in El reino de este mundo, the French Revolution is being recycled for native purposes, and more precisely 27

Edwin Williamson. 1987. ‘Coming to Terms with Modernity: Magical Realism and the Historical Process in the Novels of Alejo Carpentier’ in King, John (ed.). Modern Latin American Fiction: A Survey. London & Boston: Faber and Faber: 88. 28 Williamson 1987: 88-89. 29 Jean Bernabé, Patrick Chamoiseau & Raphaël Confiant. 1993 [1989]. Éloge de la créolité/In Praise of Creoleness. Paris: Gallimard. 30 Édouard Glissant. 1981. Le discours antillais. Paris: Seuil. Édouard Glissant. 1989. Caribbean Discourse (tr. J. Michael Dash) (CARAF Books). Charlottesville, NC & London: University Press of Virginia. 31 Theo D’haen. 1997. ‘Postmodernisms: From Fantastic to Magic Realist’ in Bertens, Hans & Douwe Fokkema (eds). International Postmodernism: Theory and Practice. A Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages. Vol. 11. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins: 283-293.

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to ink into existence the Revolution’s “text-inscribed blankness” that is the citizen of color, so the emancipatory project of the Enlightenment as re-oriented in postmodernism comes to incorporate all of modernity’s traditionally excluded minorities. It is perhaps because the magical realist techniques pioneered by Carpentier have so enthusiastically been embraced by contemporary authors invariably labelled postmodernists, in combination with the emancipatory message of their works, that Latin American magical realists are themselves retrospectively almost as frequently categorized as postmodernists as they are ranged with the modernists, among others by myself.32 Or perhaps it would be safest to venture that the hybridity of allegiance they thus testify to results precisely from their specific, “situated”33 susceptibility to Said’s “pressures of imperium”. In any case, there can be little doubt that El reino de este mundo legitimately belongs to what Said in Culture and Imperialism calls the “literature of resistance” or “of opposition”. Elsewhere I have called such literature, precisely in order to emphasize its ambiguous relationship to either modernism or postmodernism – both being of it and yet in important ways differing from its central manifestations “counter”-modernist and “counter”postmodernist, respectively.34 The relationship of the French Revolution to Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! at first sight certainly seems less clear cut than that of Carpentier’s El reino de este mundo. After all, Absalom, Absalom! has most often been read as being about the American South, and about the American Civil War. Yet, we should consider that the Mississippi planter career of the novel’s protagonist, Thomas Sutpen, is the direct 32

Theo D’haen. 1995. ‘Magic Realism and Postmodernism: Decentering Privileged Centers’ in Parkinson Zamora, Lois & Wendy B. Faris (eds). Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community. Durham & London: Duke University Press: 191-208. 33 Patrick McGee. 1992. Telling the Other: The Question of Value in Modern and Postcolonial Writing. Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press. 34 Theo D’haen. 1994. ‘Countering Postmodernism’ in REAL (Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature). Vol. 10. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag: 49-64; Idem. 1997. ‘(Post)Modernity and Caribbean Discourse’ in Arnold, A. James (ed.). A History of Literature in the Caribbean. Vol. 3: Cross-Cultural Studies. A Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins: 303-321.

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result of the Haitian Revolution, which is a direct result of the French Revolution. One should also consider that this novel, as Eric Sundquist convincingly argues in Faulkner: The House Divided,35 is also about the most tragic flaw in the make-up of the nation that in its Constitution guaranteed its citizens the “right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” as an avant-la-lettre American version of liberté, egalité, fraternité; the flaw, of course, being the fact that this guarantee did not extend to the colored population of the newly formed United States. The Civil War, which at least in the popular eye was fought over this very issue, and which eventually led to the righting – in theory if not in fact – of this wrong, is the immediate cause of Sutpen’s downfall. As Faulkner’s biblical title already indicates, however, the root of this downfall is at least as much to be sought in Sutpen’s family – or, as Sundquist’s title suggests, his “house” – as it is in the attendant historical situation. Indeed, Absalom, Absalom! is all about miscegenation. As the South African apartheid regime painfully demonstrated in its laws regarding the consorting of partners from different races, the sexual domain is the first in which prejudices and prohibitions surface, equality inevitably being the victim – as was the case in slavery America, and as largely remained the case even after the abolition of slavery in the United States, at least overwhelmingly so in the South. Therefore, the story of the House of Sutpen is also the story of the House of America, with Sundquist even drawing explicit parallels between Sutpen and Lincoln. Accordingly, Hortense Spillers argues in her ‘Who Cuts the Border’,36 Absalom, Absalom! in the figure of Sutpen as jointly created by the two narrators of the novel, Quentin Compson and Shreve MacCannon, discoursing about Sutpen in their Harvard dormitory on the basis of the stories Quentin heard decades after Sutpen’s death from his father as well as from Sutpen’s sister in law Rosa Coldfield, literally writes, in the ambiguous action of both revealing and hiding, speaking and keeping silent about, the main “culture story” of the United States: that of race. Sutpen, raised – 35 Eric Sundquist. 1983. Faulkner: The House Divided. Baltimore & London: Johns Hopkins University Press. 36 Hortense Spillers. 1993. ‘Who Cuts the Border: Some Readings on “America”‘ in Spillers, Hortense (ed.). Comparative American Identities: Race, Sex, and Nationality in the Modern Text. New York: Routledge: 1-25.

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at least in Quentin and Shreve’s conjectures – by his father shortly after American independence in that part of Virginia later to gain statehood as West Virginia to believe in the equality that is the constitutional birthright of every American, is brutally awakened to class inequality when he is turned away from the front door of the tidewater Virginia mansion where his father is employed, by the black butler. The resultant trauma causes Sutpen tot iconicize blackness as the barrier to be overcome to assert his own equality. Sutpen goes on to become a slave master himself, marrying a slave owner’s daughter in Saint Domingue, the French part of Hispaniola. There, he is caught up in the Haitian Revolution, the local variant of which affecting his own plantation he puts down singlehandedly before emigrating to Mississippi with a number of his slaves. He leaves his wife in Haiti, having come to distrust his creole wife’s racial pedigree. Years later, when Sutpen is succesfully established as a planter in Mississippi, his son by his former wife turns up in New Orleans under the name Charles Bon. Sutpen refuses to acknowledge his son, even after his daughter Judith – unaware of the blood ties – has taken Bon as her suitor. The result is a biblical tragedy that dooms Sutpen and his descendants to the second generation, and that will eventually lead to the burning of Sutpen’s Hundred, the plantation manor Sutpen had built with the help of a French architect and of his wild Haitian slaves. Elsewhere again,37 I have suggested that in Absalom, Absalom! Faulkner, by his references to Haiti and the wider Caribbean – and this in sharp contrast to that other American Modernist master, Hemingway, who in his writings always seems to advocate unmitigated purity as the norm – allowed for at least a horizon where creolizations of language and culture, if not of race, might be possible. Indeed, the fate of Faulkner’s creoles or mixed-bloods themselves leaves little to be guessed at their maker’s evaluation of American realities in the first half of the twentieth century. In this regard, the fate of Bon and his descendants only bears out that of the other mixed-bloods in Faulkner’s 1920s and 30s novels. In fact, even the mere suspicion of mixed 37

Theo D’haen. 1996. ‘American Identities and Postcolonial Theories’ in Ahrens, Rüdiger & Laurenz Volkmann (eds). Why Literature Matters: Theories and Functions of Literature (Anglistische Forschungen 241. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Carl Winter: 183-196.

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blood in a character is enough to guarantee that the character in question will arrive at a gruesome end, suffice it to think of Joe Christmas in Light in August. Clearer indications of despair over the course the discourse of modernity had taken in the United States, and particularly so in the South, would be hard to come by. The French Revolution and the “pressures of empire” are present in Absalom, Absalom! not only on the level of plot and theme; they also manifest themselves on the level of form. Indeed, I would want to argue that Absalom, Absalom! – undisputably one of Faulkner’s supreme achievements – distinguishes itself from the rest of his production by its being the only magical realist work in the Faulkner canon, admittedly so avant-la-lettre. The magical realist quality of Absalom, Absalom! arises, I think, from various factors. There is the manipulation of time, whereby Sutpen’s career, which stretches over some forty years, comes to encapsulate the entire history of the American South. A further element here is the reaching back to American Revolutionary times and to the Haitian Revolution, both of which Sutpen cannot have lived himself, but which somehow blend in with the story of the South and of Sutpen. They do so, particularly, in the oral elaboration of this story, with its layering of narrative encrustations, by Quentin and Shreve. And there is the larger-than-life quality of Sutpen himself, and of his deeds. This latter element particularly pertains to the young Sutpen, and this is also where the magical realist feel is most conspicuously present, especially so in the exploits of the Haitian slaves and of the French architect. Of the three texts under discussion, the earliest, Albert Helman’s De stille plantage38 shows fewest overt modernist traits. In fact, the book – if discussed at all – for a long time was seen as merely an exotic and romantic tale, far removed from the central tradition of Dutch continental fiction. The major body of the book indeed is taken up by the chronological tale of the failed plantation adventure of the minor French aristocratic family de Morhang in Dutch Surinam – with scenes sometimes reminiscent of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, as well as of Oroonoko, a novel by the eighteenth38

Helman 1982 [1931].

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century English author Aphra Behn. In a 1980 postscript to a reissue of De stille plantage Helman himself drew attention to the parallels with Oroonoko – parallels he said he was unaware of at the time of writing as at that moment he had not yet read Behn’s work. The main story of the novel, however, is framed by introductory and concluding paragraphs exuding the pervasive irony Said found to be so characteristic of Modernism. At the same time, these paragraphs, with their invocation of memory and dreams, already open the door to a Carpentierian “real maravilloso” which in the main body of the book also surfaces in the real magic of the black slaves on Bel Exil, the de Morhang plantation, and specifically in that of the noble slave Isidore, or Kofi with his African name. Most particularly, though, “lo real maravilloso americano” surfaces in the magic the land works upon the de Morhangs. Though set well before the French Revolution, and to be more precise in the period immediately following upon Louis XIV’s revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 expropriating all protestants in France, it is the ideals of that Revolution – more than once spelled out in the very terms liberty, egality, fraternity – that inspire the Breton protestant Raoul de Morhang, and with him his wife Josephine and her two younger sisters Agnes and Cécile, in their drive to found an ideal state, a paradise regained, in the American wilderness. The parallels with the North American situation – though nowhere explicitly invoked – are obvious. As in Faulkner’s modernist interpretation of his country’s failure to live up to its promise in Absalom, Absalom!, so in Helman’s De stille plantage too the ideals of the de Morhangs founder upon the issue of race in the Americas, with miscegenation providing the crux of the matter. Various times in the novel Raoul de Morhang and his family express their desire to treat the black slaves, and especially Isidore/Kofi, as their equals. This wish is especially strong with Agnes, who first starts to dream about Isidore and then to openly yearn for him as her partner. Isidore returns her love, though always keeping a respectful distance. He does protect her though from various physical hardships, and he also gives her a protective charm to wear. At the same time, Agnes is coveted by the white overseer Willem Das, a harddrinking and cruel man who rules the slaves with an iron hand. He also is in the habit of gratifying his desires with slave woman, by whom he has at

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least one bastard child. When Agnes rejects Das’s offer of marriage, the latter’s character takes a turn for the worse. When coming upon the sleeping Agnes unexpectedly, the drunken Das prepares to take her by force. Agnes is saved by Isidore. When Das kills a black woman pregnant with his own child, Isidore intervenes once more, this time gravely wounding Das. The Dutch planters living further down the river hear of the episode. Having warned Raoul de Morhang before that his humane ways will merely lead to disaster, they now decide to act decisively. Isidore is mercilessly whipped, and finally summarily executed before the eyes of the de Morhangs. The de Morhang – and therefore also the French Revolution’s – ideals of liberty, egality, fraternity literally perish along with Isidore. Yet, they had symbolically died already earlier in the novel, when Agnes – who is the most vital of the de Morhangs, who is instrumental in the running of the plantation, and upon whom the hope for offspring of the de Morhangs seems to rest, as Raoul and Josephine’s marriage threatens to remain childless and Cécile is far too weak and feeble to even be considered in this regard – had shied away from the possibility of a union with Isidore upon seeing Das’s bastard child, and envisaging what a child of hers with Isidore might look like. Instead of Agnes’s creole offspring continuing the plantation, the suddenly impending birth of an heir to Raoul and Josephine occasions the de Morhangs to quit the plantation and return to Europe, there to live in England. Cécile dies before their date of departure, and is buried on Bel Exil. Agnes remains single. Raoul and Josephine’s son, Gaston, is raised on stories about Bel Exil. When a grown man, he goes to sea. On one of his voyages, he returns to the plantation, only to find that it has been reclaimed by the jungle. An old negro slave on a neighboring plantation tells him that the name of the place where the plantation once was is Misalasi, meaning: ‘I will once be lost’. Upon his return, and out of consideration for their feelings, he tells his aunt and parents that he has been unable to locate the plantation. Here, as in its overall handling of time and place, De stille plantage veers close to Carpentier’s “real maravilloso americano”. All in all, De stille plantage is a powerful indictment of the failure of the French Revolution’s ideals in the colonies, particularly in the Americas, and even more specifically in the Caribbean. Indeed,

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Helman convincingly shows that the continuing success of the colonial world order hinged upon the very denial of that Revolution’s ideals in the imperial periphery. This insight is underscored when we learn that Willem Das, the hateful Dutch overseer, originally went to Surinam cherishing much the same ideals as Raoul de Morhang! Together, De stille plantage, Absalom, Absalom!, and El reino de este mundo provide powerful backing to Said’s claim that Modernism was not just a thing of the West, but also of the West’s most intimate Other, that is to say: its colonial periphery. My claim would be that in the West’s first Other, that is to say: the Caribbean, this Other Modernism took the shape of Carpentier’s magical realism, both avant and après-la-lettre. In the texts discussed, then, the formal interrogation of the discourse of modernity magical realism implies is further thematized in discussions of the impact of the French Revolution as modernity’s momemt suprême de prise de conscience upon the wider Caribbean. In this way cultural memory and literary form both recall and call into question the original monuments of radical modernity, i.e. the accelerated phase of modernity that comes into its own with the novel and the French Revolution.

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Des discours caribéens Jean-Marc Moura Université Charles-de-Gaulle – Lille III Après l’histoire synthétique des lettres caribéennes dirigée par A.J. Arnold, on peut s’interroger sur les possibilités d’un renouveau des études qu’elle apporte. On tentera de le faire à la lumière des récents travaux d’analyse du discours, au carrefour de la sociocritique et des études de pragmatique, notamment grâce au concept de scénographie initialement présenté par D. Maingueneau dans le cadre des études de littérature française et dont on évaluera la pertinence mais aussi les éventuelles limites dans ce domaine.

Au sein de l’immense production de la critique postcoloniale,1 l’une des voies que j’ai privilégiée, est l’étude de la poétique entendue dans le sens limité d’une mise en évidence et d’une analyse de la situation d’énonciation que s’assigne une œuvre, dispositif que Dominique Maingueneau a nommé la scénographie.2 Celui-ci définit ainsi un champ de recherches en analyse du discours3 qui s’intéresse à l’articulation entre le dispositif interne d’une œuvre et la situation de l’écrivain dans l’appareil institutionnel, pour concilier une analyse

1 Cf. Jean-Marc Moura. 1999. Littératures francophones et théorie postcoloniale. Paris: P.U.F.; Idem. 2003. Exotisme et lettres francophones. Paris: P.U.F. 2 Cf. son ouvrage synthétique le plus récent: Dominique Maingueneau. 2004. Le Discours littéraire. Paratopie et scène d’énonciation. Paris: A. Colin. 3 Discours est considéré selon ses significations en linguistique (il peut s’opposer à la langue considérée comme système de valeurs virtuelles – en un sens assez proche de l’opposition saussurienne langue/parole; il peut être proche d’énonciation chez Benveniste…), mais surtout dans la pragmatique lorsqu’on s’attache au concept d’institution discursive (les institutions donc qui donnent sens à une œuvre singulière – structure du champ, statut de l’écrivain, genres du texte… – et le mouvement par lequel s’institue le discours en configurant la scène d’énonciation qui le rend possible).

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centrée sur la prise de position dans le champ avec une étude interne des textes dans leur matérialité. La scénographie d’une œuvre articule ainsi l’œuvre et le monde où elle surgit, constituant par là son inscription légitimante. Avec elle, un texte définit les statuts d’énonciateur et de coénonciateur, l’espace et le temps à partir desquels se développe l’énonciation qu’il se suppose. Édouard Glissant semble d’ailleurs vouloir la définir lorsqu’il évoque: “un texte qui s’enroulait innocemment mais dans une drue manière de triomphe sur lui-même, jusqu’à engendrer au fur et à mesure ses propres sens”.4 L’intérêt d’une mise en évidence et d’une étude des scénographies postcoloniales est manifeste. Les lettres postcoloniales s’inscrivent dans un contexte où coexistent des univers symboliques différents dont l’un a d’abord été imposé et a reçu le statut de modèle. Dans cette situation, la construction par l’œuvre de son propre contexte énonciatif est à la fois plus complexe et plus importante. Pour l’auteur anglophone, francophone, hispanophone, néerlandophone, créolophone, il s’agit d’établir son texte dans un milieu instable (et d’abord au plan linguistique), où les hiérarchies sont fluctuantes, les publics hétérogènes, et souvent de le faire reconnaître sur une scène littéraire lointaine. La scénographie réagit à tant d’incertitudes. À partir de cette situation d’énonciation présupposée par l’œuvre se développent certaines options formelles dont la description et l’étude permettent d’envisager des poétiques postcoloniales.5 En l’occurrence, la question générale sous-jacente à une expression telle que discours caribéen serait celle des possibles traits narratifs d’une scénographie liée aux Caraïbes et de son statut dans les lettres de l’archipel. La difficulté n’est pas uniquement liée à la nouveauté relative du problème mais aussi au délicat transfert des études postcoloniales dans des domaines qui leur demeurent extérieurs, singulièrement les lettres hispanophones et surtout francophones. Comme l’a relevé A. James Arnold,6 les théories postcoloniales rendent compte de la colonisation 4

Édouard Glissant. 2004. ‘Paysage’ in Biondi, C. & E. Pessini. Rêver le monde. Écrire le monde. Théories et narrations d’Édouard Glissant. Bologne: CLUEB: 133. 5 Cf. Moura 1999. 6 In Francophone Postcolonial Studies 1-2: 7 ff.

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britannique de l’Inde, de l’Afrique ou du Proche-Orient. Or, on sait que les Français ont pratiqué une politique d’assimilation culturelle des élites coloniales très différentes des Britanniques. Par ailleurs, les anciennes colonies des Antilles françaises ou du Canada étaient des colonies d’implantation distinctes du modèle indien britannique ou des colonies françaises en Afrique. L’exemple de la plantation des Antilles, microcosme assez autonome dès le XVIIIe siècle, suggère qu’il vaut mieux développer des modèles régionaux que des modèles globaux. Il y a donc pour le moins un travail d’éclaircissement conceptuel à entreprendre.7 L’analyse du discours peut contribuer à éclairer le débat en centrant l’étude sur la relation des œuvres à leur contexte d’énonciation. Dans le domaine francophone, où la situation des œuvres et leur réception ont été infléchies par l’anthropologie et par la parution d’anthologies notoires,8 j’ai relevé les traits généraux de scénographies postcoloniales,9 mais à partir de ces éléments se pose la question d’une scénographie caribéenne.

7

D’ailleurs inauguré par certains chercheurs américains et par la Society For Postcolonial Studies, en Grande-Bretagne. 8 On connaît le rôle de Maurice Delafosse et de Leo Frobenius pour les auteurs africains. Pour Haïti, J. Price-Mars, grand lecteur des ethnologues de son époque, eut l’influence que l’on sait et les revues antillaises ont développé aussi ce que Régis Antoine a nommé une “anthropologie critique”. Les anthologies constituent également un moyen de construire le lieu d’énonciation d’une série d’œuvres. En France, la reconnaissance du fait littéraire négro-africain est liée à cet “effet anthologique”. Cf. Luc Fraisse. 1997. Les Anthologies en France. Paris: P.U.F. 9 A des fins de clarté et en simplifiant beaucoup: une “voix des limites” rapportant le texte à une origine problématique ou à un personnage en marge, une définition forte de l’espace d’énonciation visant simultanément à contrer l’assimilation de l’œuvre à la culture dominante et s’établissant sur une frontière, un espace qui se dérobe et/ou se voit marqué par la crise. La recherche d’une continuité temporelle établissant le texte dans le devenir d’une communauté culturelle est également typique de cette scénographie, tout comme l’hybridité générique. Avec cependant la fréquence de types narratifs, pour les Antilles, la réinterprétation d’anciens combats capables d’inspirer le présent (récits de marrons, de révoltés) et récits de la communauté perdue (centrés sur l’Afrique). Cf. Moura 1999: 120-138.

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Discours constituants Dominique Maingueneau présente la littérature comme un discours constituant. La notion désigne une aire déterminée de la production verbale: “ces discours qui se donnent comme discours d’Origine, validés par une scène d’énonciation qui s’autorise d’elle-même”,10 c’est-àdire les discours religieux, scientifique, philosophique et littéraire. Ceux-ci peuvent être rassemblés au sens où ils impliquent 1) une certaine fonction, ils fondent et ne sont pas fondés par un autre discours; 2) un certain découpage des situations de communication d’une société: il y a des lieux, des genres attachés à ces discours; 3) un certain nombre d’invariants énonciatifs. Ces discours sont en charge de l’archéion d’une société, terme grec associant intimement “le travail de fondation dans et par le discours, la détermination d’un lieu associé à un corps de locuteurs consacrés et une élaboration de la mémoire”.11 Leur statut singulier provient du fait qu’il s’agit de “zones de parole parmi d’autres et [de] paroles qui se prétendent en surplomb de toute autre”. Ces discours auto- et hétéro-constituants se constituent en thématisant leur propre constitution et jouent un rôle constituant à l’égard d’autres discours. C’est dire que l’analyse de la “constituance” de ces discours doit s’attacher à montrer la connexité de l’intradiscursif et de l’extradiscursif, l’intrication d’une organisation textuelle et d’une activité énonciative.12 En théorie, seul le discours philosophique serait réellement autoconstituant, car il s’efforce d’expliciter les conditions de possibilité de toute constitution discursive, y compris la sienne. Mais le discours littéraire est constituant au sens où une œuvre littéraire construit les conditions de sa propre légitimité en proposant un univers de sens et, plus généralement, en offrant des catégories sensibles pour un monde possible. C’est ce que remarque Pierre Macherey lorsqu’il écrit:

10

Maingueneau 2004: 47 ff. Maingueneau 2004: 47 ff. 12 Maingueneau 2004: 48. 11

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Les textes littéraires sont le siège d’une pensée qui s’énonce sans se donner les marques de sa légitimité, parce qu’elle ramène son exposition à sa mise en scène.13

La personne qui énonce à l’intérieur d’un discours constituant ne peut se placer ni à l’extérieur ni à l’intérieur de la société: elle est vouée à nourrir son œuvre du caractère problématique de sa propre appartenance à cette société.14 L’énonciation se constitue à travers l’impossibilité de s’assigner une véritable “place”, cette “paratopie” est “une difficile négociation entre le lieu et le non-lieu, une localisation parasitaire, qui vit de l’impossibilité même de se stabiliser”.15 On pourrait présenter ainsi la question de l’énonciation au début du Cahier d’un retour au pays natal d’Aimé Césaire: d’où parle le moi du poème qui n’est pas européen mais qui ne se sent pas davantage lié à la communauté de son enfance? La question pourrait aussi être posée à propos de A House for Mr Biswas de V.S. Naipaul, au sens où le personnage est perçu à la fois de l’intérieur, comme membre de la communauté indienne de Trinidad, et de l’extérieur dans la mesure où toute sa vie est orientée vers une fuite définitive et impossible hors de celle-ci. Il semble que cette notion de paratopie renvoie à un élément propre à tout écrivain, mais elle est particulièrement adaptée pour décrire la condition de l’auteur caribéen, ce que Dominique Chancé nomme, pour les Antillais francophones, un “auteur en souffrance”, un auteur, un “marqueur de parole” qui n’a pas été entendu par le lecteur idéal auquel il s’adresse, faute d’un langage commun, de repères, faute d’une Histoire commune.16 Ces discours constituants sont élaborés dans des groupes restreints qui les produisent et les gèrent, des communautés discursives qui partagent un ensemble de rites et de normes. C’est ce qu’explique par exemple Naipaul dans ‘Our Universal Civilization’:

13

Pierre Macherey. 1990. À quoi pense la littérature? Paris: P.U.F.: 198. Maingueneau 2004: 52. 15 Maingueneau 2004: 53. 16 Dominique Chancé. 2000. L’Auteur en souffrance. Paris: P.U.F. 14

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On ne crée pas les livres seulement dans son esprit. Ce sont des objets physiques. Pour les écrire, il vous faut un certain type de sensibilité; il vous faut un langage, et un certain don pour le langage; et il vous faut posséder une certaine forme littéraire. Pour mettre votre nom sur le dos de l’objet physique réalisé, il vous faut un vaste appareil en dehors de vous-même. Il vous faut des éditeurs, des directeurs de collection, des dessinateurs, des imprimeurs, des relieurs; des libraires, des critiques, des journaux, des magazines et une télévision où les critiques peuvent dire ce qu’ils pensent du livre; et, bien sûr, des acheteurs et des lecteurs […]. Écrire est un acte privé; mais le livre publié, quand il commence à vivre, suppose la coopération d’un certain type de société.17

Pour les Caraïbes, il s’agit de communautés discursives anglophone, francophone, hispanophone et néerlandophone (sans oublier les communautés créolophones), mais les degrés de cohésion et d’organisation de ces ensembles sont variables. Elles comprennent en tout cas deux types de groupes, ceux qui gèrent le discours (critiques littéraires, enseignants, libraires, bibliothécaires…) et ceux qui le produisent (auteurs). Rien ne sert en tout cas d’imaginer les écrivains indépendamment de ces structures, par exemple pour les auteurs antillais francophones, à l’écard de toute l’organisation des lettres francophones. L’institution des lettres francophones a la structure classique d’un espace littéraire: un réseau d’appareils où les individus peuvent se constituer en écrivains et en publics, un champ, comme lieu de confrontation entre positionnements esthétiques, et une archive, où se mêlent intertexte et légende.18 Mais elle répond en outre à une organisation particulière à l’intérieur de l’ensemble des lettres d’expression française. Les éléments d’analyse qu’en a proposés Pierre Halen me paraissent à cet égard intéressants19 et permettent d’envisager les créations littéraires à l’intérieur d’un système. Il resterait à les développer et à vérifier en quoi cette dernière notion est pertinente pour les autres domaines caribéens.

17

Cité dans Pierre Pachet. 1993. Un à un. De l’individualisme en littérature. Paris: Seuil: 110. 18 Maingueneau 2004: 70-71. 19 Pierre Halen. 2003. ‘Le “système littéraire francophone”: quelques réflexions complémentaires’ in D’hulst, Lieven & Jean-Marc Moura (eds). Les études littéraires francophones: état des lieux. Lille: UL3: 25-37.

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Ainsi, évoquer des interfaces caribéennes, ce sera parler d’un discours constituant caribéen: auto-fondateur, exposant une origine et un devenir des Caraïbes. Ce discours engage un découpage des situations de communication dans la société (aux plans local, caribéen et anglo/franco/hispano/néerlandophone) et se caractérise par un certain nombre de traits énonciatifs associés à la manière d’évoquer les Caraïbes et à leur nature. Par exemple, la négritude d’Aimé Césaire, telle qu’elle est manifestée par Cahier d’un retour au pays natal, fonde un discours antillais puis caribéen associant Caraïbes et Afrique dans un mythe poétique transfigurant l’histoire. Elle détermine un lieu associé à un corps de locuteurs consacrés, à travers revues, articles, livres et prise de positions publiques, au premier rang desquels se trouvent ces “écrivains de la négritude” qui ont nom Césaire, Damas et Senghor. Elle élabore une mémoire liée à la race et à la traite négrière, ressaisie à la fin du Cahier. qui ouvre à un avenir envisagé à nouveaux frais par l’homme noir désormais debout. Les œuvres de Césaire participent, avec des variations20 et parmi bien d’autres, d’un discours sur la société antillaise (caribéenne par extension mais les conditions de cette extension restent à établir), sur ses aspects, ses origines et son devenir. Mais elles se donnent pour l’image retrouvée et véridique de celle-ci. La légitimité de l’exposition de la condition nègre dans Cahier. réside dans son organisation poétique, sa disposition lyrique car aucun argument rationnel n’est avancé par ailleurs. En cela, on peut parler de discours auto-constituant qui (re)constitue du même geste la société où il apparaît. Il est en outre inscrit sur une scène littéraire francophone dont le centre est Paris, ses clercs et ses éditeurs avant même ses lecteurs.21 Cette “constituance” des discours s’établit sur “un mode de diffusion des textes, une distribution de l’autorité énonciative, un type d’exercice du pouvoir revendiqué ou dénoncé par le geste qui instaure l’œuvre”.22 Le processus joue sur trois dimensions: la scénographie, 20

Variations qui commencent dans Cahier d’un retour au pays natal, selon les orientations données par telle ou telle édition de l’œuvre (celle de 1939, les deux de 1947 ou celle, définitive, de 1956). 21 La consécration pour Cahier est d’abord apportée par André Breton, comme la préface de Jean-Paul Sartre à l’Anthologie de L.S. Senghor aura un effet décisif. 22 Maingueneau 2004: 54.

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l’èthos et le code langagier. Je voudrais prendre quelques exemples anglophones et francophones destinés à vérifier comment on peut étudier un discours caribéen selon ces axes. La scène d’énonciation Le projet d’une écriture caribéenne est tenu de se présenter et de s’expliciter dans la mesure où il s’accomplit dans une culture où l’intérêt pour (voire l’existence de) la littérature n’a pas toujours été manifeste. V.S. Naipaul y insiste notamment dans The Middle Passage, récit de ses voyages dans l’archipel23 (c’est l’une des raisons de son exil en Angleterre). Il s’agit pour les œuvres qui s’inscrivent dans ces territoires d’y délimiter l’aire spécifique et déterminée qu’en Europe, à partir du tournant du XVIIIe siècle, on nomme littérature. Le fait explique le fréquent accompagnement théorique des œuvres de fiction ou de poésie, comme le montre le cas d’Édouard Glissant, ou bien le recours à plusieurs types de narrations chargés de préciser des aspects complémentaires d’un projet d’écriture. C’est ce qu’a entrepris Naipaul en publiant romans et récits de voyages, distinguant le romancier, souvent inconscient (“often unaware”) des conclusions de son livre, du voyageur qui analyse et tient un raisonnement.24 Le choix d’un genre correspond à ce fait dans la mesure où ses normes vont être travaillées par une spécificité caribéenne. Glissant place ainsi sa poétique sous le signe de la créolisation, notion née de sa réflexion sur le monde actuel et la situation des Caraïbes dans celuici.25 Les conséquences qu’il en tire sont connues. Elles ont été résumées par Carminella Biondi et Elena Pessini: l’identité bien enracinée dans un lieu, l’identité-racine, fait place à l’identitérhizome, enracinée en plusieurs lieux, géographiques ou culturels, à l’identitérelation, née de l’osmose entre le Moi et l’Autre, osmose qui n’efface pas, tou23

V.S. Naipaul, 1982 [1962]. The Middle Passage. Harmondsworth: Penguin

Books. 24

Naipaul 1982: 5. “La créolisation est la mise en contact de plusieurs cultures ou du moins de plusieurs éléments de cultures distinctes, dans un endroit du monde, avec pour résultante une donnée nouvelle, totalement imprévisibles par rapport à la somme ou à la simple synthèse de ces éléments” (E. Glissant. 1997. Traité du Tout-Monde. Paris: Gallimard: 37). 25

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tefois, ne doit pas effacer les zones d’opacité, d’impénétrabilité qui sont la sauvegarde de toute identité.26

Sans pouvoir entrer dans les détails, ce qu’imposerait une étude de cette importance, la scène générique que se donne l’œuvre de Glissant va dès lors être travaillée par la parenthèse, le détour: Ainsi les littératures de la Caraïbe, qu’elles soient de langue anglaise, espagnole ou française, introduisent-elles volontiers des épaisseurs et des cassures – comme autant de détours – dans la matière dont elles traitent; mettant en pratique, à la manière du conte des plantations, des procédés de redoublement, d’essoufflement, de parenthèse, d’immersion du psychologique dans le drame du devenir commun.27

La fragmentation est au principe de cette écriture caribéenne, comme l’a observé Romuald Fonkoua: Si la fréquentation du Traité du Tout-Monde, de Tout-Monde ou de Sartorius. Le roman des Batoutos laisse le lecteur perplexe c’est bien parce que s’y combinent ces deux éléments qui ne peuvent l’être dans aucune autre réalité: la répétition du fragment et la fragmentation de la chose répétée. C’est bien aussi parce que s’y donnent à lire un entassement, une accumulation, un ‘ressac’ de spécimens de discours, de mondes, de faits, de personnages qui ne peuvent être compris que dans cet entassement, cette accumulation et ce ‘ressac’ mêmes.28

La prise de distance en revanche est au principe de la poétique de Naipaul, distance du romancier, qui ne sait trop où il va, ou du voyageur qui revient observer sa société en visiteur: Mon voyage […] fut un séjour colonial dans les colonies de plantation du Nouveau Monde qui ressemblaient à celles où j’avais grandi. Observer, en visiteur, d’autres communautés délaissées dans des pays pillés, au milieu du grand décor romantique du Nouveau Monde, c’était comme voir, d’une certaine distance, ce à quoi pouvait ressembler sa propre communauté. C’était être projeté hors de soi-même et de ses circonstances personnelles – la matière de la fiction –, pour

26 Carminella Biondi & Elena Pessini. 2004. Rêver le monde. Écrire le monde. Théories et narrations d’Édouard Glissant. Bologne: CLUEB, 28. 27 Édouard Glissant. 1990. Poétique de la Relation. Paris: Gallimard: 85. 28 Romuald Fonkoua. 2002. Essai sur une mesure du monde au XXe siècle. Paris: Champion: 277.

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recevoir une vision nouvelle de ce dans quoi on était né, et entrevoir une série d’événements historiques remontant loin dans le passé.29

Cette distance s’exprime de manière distincte dans le roman (où l’exil de Mr Biswas est pour ainsi évqué de l’intérieur) et le récit de voyage (où l’archipel est envisagé avec une apparente objectivité). Scénographies de l’absence L’étude de la scène générique et de la scène littéraire permet d’aborder celle de la scénographie par laquelle l’œuvre prétend instituer la situation qui la rend pertinente. En l’occurrence, dès l’ouverture, Ormerod aborde la question caribéenne: Qu’y a-t-il de commun entre le souffle, quand même il serait saccadé, sur le point de finir, et les bêtes et le vent, un vonvon, un manicou, un colibri, et Flore Gaillard à Sainte-Lucie en 1793, et la tragédie de Grenade en l’an 1983, et un taureau exaspéré? C’est l’archipel des Caraïbes, qui s’offre là et qui se dérobe, il nous manque et nous lui manquons.30

Les Caraïbes, diversité insulaire à l’avant-scène des Amériques (mais présentée sous le signe de l’absence), ne se plient évidemment pas ici à une intrigue exotique, même si l’on peut reconstituer une histoire principale, celle de Flore Gaillard, marronne qui leva une armée à Sainte-Lucie en 1793 et tint tête aux Anglais, et que la structure ternaire du roman (avec ses trois parties ‘Le Piton Flore’, ‘Les gros mornes’ et ‘Orestile’) semblent répondre à une rassurante régularité. Mais au-delà de la figure de la “guerrière demi-nue”, l’histoire se rompt en une multitude de récits alternant les éclats narratifs selon une discontinuité où apparaissent les réseaux tissés entre les îles caribéennes. Entreprise véritablement postcoloniale au sens où Il s’agit de souligner les relations, les corrélations, les dénominateurs communs qui unissent ces îles pour s’opposer aux efforts accomplis par les différents colonisateurs, francophones, anglophones, hispanophones qui ont alimenté leurs intérêts en les séparant.31

29

Naipaul 1982: 34. Édouard Glissant. 2003. Ormerod. Paris: Gallimard: 13. 31 Biondi & Pessini 2004: 111. 30

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Pourtant la carte des Caraïbes, lacunaire, se définit sur le mode du devenir, pluralités dynamiques en relation, comme il apparaît: Quand elle lui demanda de décrire son pays, […] son premier geste au lieu de mots fut de balancer un cercle avec les deux bras dans l’air, comme s’il réunissait l’arc des îles là-bas et les côtes continentales en un bond du Nordeste du Brésil à la pointe du Yucatàn, un tourbillon de mondes qui se suivent et se répètent et improvisent l’un sur l’autre, et des paroles qui s’enlianent sans datation et multiplient les langues, et de pluies qui divaguent dans des déserts euxmêmes frappés de vertiges insensés.32

L’invention éventuelle d’une communauté à venir passe par la recherche de continuités inaperçues et profondes donnant un sens postcolonial à l’expression archipel des Caraïbes. L’espace est simultanément exploré et constitué, retrouvé par sa métamorphose en lieu d’une recherche: Il nous faut regarder partout alentour, dans les recoins des temps, soulever les forêts des Traces et les sables des Salines pour surprendre ce qui s’agite dessous. Il faut ramer d’un mot créole à l’autre, sautant par-dessus les ombres, d’une île voisine et au-delà, mélangeant les langues orgueilleuses.33

Invitant les lecteurs à se transformer en “butineurs géographiques” (Biondi & Pessini), le récit livre les possibilités de passage d’une île à l’autre: […] et dans chaque île les générations se distinguaient de manière complètement différente, à des dates d’années complètement différentes, mais au bout de l’espace il y avait cette même odeur du vent de l’archipel qui frissonnait dans les mêmes champs de cannes sans boutures et de bananes sans espérance, et sur la peau le même relent du boucan de fumée de la forêt, désormais vide d’aucune profondeur, et les mêmes traces de terre jaune sur les ciments cassés des bouts de bourgs où parfois s’égarait un vieux taureau désespéré, qui regardait dans l’espace du monde au loin et ne voyait pas même un horizon.34

32

Glissant 2003: 111. Glissant 2003: 49. 34 Glissant 2003: 240. 33

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La scénographie caribéenne nous livre aussi une chronologie, donnée à la fin, “Datation”, remontant aux origines de l’archipel, à la fin du Crétacé, et achevant ainsi l’institution de la situation du roman. D’une manière radicalement différente, mais profondément complémentaire, la scénographie de A House for Mr Biswas se construit à partir de l’exil. Elle renvoie à celle de l’auteur séparé de sa communauté indienne hindouiste à Trinidad, isolé des autres Trinidadiens comme des Anglais de Londres, des Indiens en Inde ou des gens qu’il rencontre dans les pays où il voyage. L’exil de Mr Biswas dans sa propre communauté (le personnage, on le sait, a été inspiré à l’auteur par son père), celui qui est montré dans The Mimic Men35 ou dans The Middle Passage (à Trinidad, en Guyane Britannique, au Surinam, en Martinique et en Jamaïque) n’est pas un simple thème mais bien comme le remarque Timothy F. Weiss: Exile, then, as an experience of not-belonging, as an epistemology, and as a manner of perception and encounter informs Naipaul’s works, variously shaping their characters, themes, narration, and view of the world.36

L’unité profonde des Caraïbes se construit alors, mais pour des raisons on le voit profondément différentes de celle de Glissant, sur un manque, une absence habitant et condamnant des hommes pris dans une histoire tragique à un exil intérieur et social sans doute plus perceptible à l’écrivain qui s’est exilé de l’archipel. Ethos et garant du texte L’èthos comme vocalité spécifique rapporte un texte à la caractérisation du corps de l’énonciateur, à un garant qui à travers son ton atteste ce qui est dit.37 A cet égard, Naipaul (et bien d’autres écrivains et critiques) parle de “voix” lorsqu’il raconte la genèse de son premier li35 Reconnu plus tard par Naipaul, lorsqu’il écrit: “ce livre évoquait les hommes des colonies qui singent la condition d’adulte, ces hommes qui ont fini par n’avoir plus confiance en rien qui les concerne […] j’ai compris que j’avais écrit sur la schizophrénie coloniale.” (Naipaul 1962: 34). 36 Timothy F. Weiss. 1992. On the Margins. The Art of Exile in V.S. Naipaul. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press: 17. 37 Maingueneau 2004: 207.

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vre, quand il se trouvait plongé en plein dénuement, en Angleterre, et qu’il eut l’idée d’écrire sur sa vie à Port of Spain: Le langage, le ton et la voix pour en parler se présentèrent presque au même moment, comme si la voix, les matériaux et la forme ne faisaient qu’un. La voix était en partie celle de mon père, dans ses nouvelles de la vie paysanne de notre communauté. En partie celle du Lazarillo anonyme de l’Espagne du XVIe siècle.

Liée à un exil hérité et qui est aussi celle du père, cette “voix” se réfère à un “garant”, un caractère et une corporalité, faisceau de traits psychologiques et physiques définissant le portrait d’un exilé capable, à partir d’une autre culture, de ressaisir certains éléments, certaines carences surtout de la personnalité caribéenne.38 Ainsi, “La qualité de l’èthos renvoie à un garant qui à travers cet èthos se donne une identité à la mesure du monde qu’il est censé faire surgir”.39 Avec A House for Mr Biswas, on peut parler d’une identité à la fois ethnique et personnelle, celle d’abord d’un Indien luttant pour s’éduquer dans une île où, en 1917, 97% des Indiens (arrivés à Trinidad à partir de 1884) étaient illettrés. En second lieu, l’identité d’un fils portant à partir de l’Angleterre un regard sur son père prisonnier de l’île et sur ce que lui-même aurait pu devenir. En ce sens, le livre de V.S. Naipaul réalise le rêve inachevé du père, mais à partir d’un autre exil, anglais cette fois.40 Cette présence en exil a une vertu, mise en évidence par Pachet, elle confère au garant du texte un point de vue par lequel se défait

38 L’èthos pose la question de l’incorporation, entendue comme manière dont le destinataire – lecteur, auditeur — s’approprie cet èthos. Le terme joue sur trois registres: 1) l’énonciation de l’œuvre donne une corporalité au garant, elle lui donne corps; 2) le destinataire incorpore, assimile un ensemble de schèmes qui correspondent à une manière spécifique de se rapporter au monde en habitant son propre corps; 3) ces deux premières incorporations permettent la constitution d’un corps, de la communauté imaginaire de ceux qui adhèrent au même discours (Maingueneau 2004: 208). 39 Maingueneau 2004: 212. 40 C’est ce que Naipaul explique à Pachet: “Pour ma part, j’ai le handicap de ne pas appartenir à la société anglaise, de ne pas être directement en contact avec cette culture. Je n’ai pas de retour, de réponses à mes livres venant de cette société. Je m’y sens assez isolé” (dans Pachet 1993: 85).

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l’uniformité apparente des hommes pour rendre chacun à son individualité. Voir dans qui vous fait face un ouvrier, un indigène, un Noir, un Indien des Caraïbes, un touriste ou un fonctionnaire des douanes, c’est certes satisfaisant puisque cela vous délivre de la charge d’avoir à le comprendre plus en profondeur,

mais ce regard généralisant est mutilant. Le regard de Naipaul – en cela il fait authentiquement partie de l’art littéraire, il hérite d’une dimension essentielle de cet art – reconnaît ou donne de l’individualité autant qu’il s’en donne, autant qu’il en reçoit de ce à quoi il en donne.41

L’exploration par Naipaul de la personnalité caribéenne passe par l’énonciation de diverses individualités rencontrées à l’occasion de ses voyages. Dans Ormerod, l’èthos, lié à l’esprit de révolte, de résistance, renvoie à un fonds commun d’expériences des peuples de l’archipel, et d’abord parce que le voyage le plus fréquent y est celui qui permet de passer d’une île à l’autre.42 L’image qui s’y dessine est celle du garant des dernières œuvres de Glissant, l’écrivain qui a “la vision prophétique du passé” et qui essaie de sonder “le passé de ces régions du monde d’un point de vue autre, différent des sources officielles”. Dès lors, il “devra répondre au silence des registres et des livres de bord par son imagination et son écriture”.43 Cette figure de la “vocalité” de l’œuvre utilise souvent le “nous” selon un mode ambigu, pris tantôt entre “nous” d’auteur, “nous” associant auteur et lecteur et “nous” d’une communauté caribéenne où l’archipel est encore plutôt relié à l’ordre du manque et inscrit comme projet.44

41

Pachet 1993: 89. “Sautez de roche en roche, d’île en île, de temps anciens en temps actuels et déjà futurs, courez au large et embrassez l’entour” (Glissant 2003: 13). 43 Biondi & Pessini 2004: 125. 44 Cf. Glissant 2003: 13. 42

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Le code langagier On peut parler ici d’interlangue:45 une interaction de langues et d’usages, donc “les relations, dans une conjoncture donnée, entre les variétés de la même langue, mais aussi entre cette langue et les autres, passées ou contemporaines”.46 Glissant est particulièrement attentif à ce phénomène. Il a raconté une de ses rencontres en Martinique avec des artistes venant d’autres pays: L’anglophone et deux hispanisants mélangeaient à plaisir les langues […] et cette pratique des dérèglements d’expression préfigurait bien le Tout-monde des idiomes […]. Ces dévirades de langues nous remplissaient d’un contentement terrien et marin.47

Il a théorisé ce mouvement des langues en opposant d’abord “créolisation” à “créolité”, la première se définissant comme “un mouvement perpétuel d’interpénétrabilité culturelle et linguistique qui fait qu’on ne débouche pas sur une définition de l’être”.48 Il a ainsi problématisé ses relations à la langue française et à la création littéraire en français à partir de la Caraïbe, élaborant une poétique appuyée sur des analyses concrètes, celle des rapports de langues vécus et ressentis par diverses collectivités, rapports d’autant plus complexes qu’à la division hiérarchique entre langues écrites et langues orales s’en ajoutent d’autres, dues aux diverses oppressions politiques et économiques.49

Gilles Philippe et D. Maingueneau parlent de “patrons dicursifs” à propos des usages de la langue perçus comme littéraires par une communauté. Ils entendent par là: […] les représentations imaginaires de plusieurs types de production langagière précis, dont la tradition littéraire a figé les spécificités en une sorte de stéréotype. Le déchiffrement des textes romanesques repose en effet, en tout premier

45

Cf. Moura 1999: 81 ff. Maingueneau 2004: 140. 47 Glissant 1997: 488-489. 48 Édouard Glissant. 1996 [1995]. Introduction à une poétique du divers. Paris: Gallimard: 125. 49 Lise Gauvin. 2004. La Fabrique de la langue. Paris: Seuil: 280. 46

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Jean-Marc Moura lieu, sur la reconnaissance de tels “patrons” et exige une compétence interprétative spécifique.50

On pourrait s’interroger sur l’existence de “patrons discursifs littéraires caribéens” et envisager un programme de recherches sur les marques d’appartenance d’un texte aux lettres caribéennes, en deçà de l’idiolecte propre à chaque auteur. Lise Gauvin notamment a montré comment Glissant “archipélise” la langue française et rejoint la dimension d’un “Tout-Langue” à la fois ouvert à l’imaginaire des langues et défini selon des spécificités martiniquaises et caribéennes.51 De l’aveu même du poète, “La langue créole qui m’est naturelle vient à tout moment irriguer ma pratique du français”,52 mais il ajoute “J’écris désormais en présence de toutes les langues du monde, dans la nostalgie poignante de leur devenir menacé”.53 Il me semble que c’est cette confrontation des langues qu’il faudrait étudier chez Naipaul, mais dans un sens tout différent, celle d’une langue littéraire venue du roman anglais de la Great tradition avec les techniques narratives de romanciers contemporains qu’il dédaigne (Graham Greene) ou admire. Lorsqu’il évoque “la voix d’écrivain” qu’il s’est échiné à chercher,54 l’auteur semble faire allusion à ce processus de “tout-langue” littéraire (avec le croisement, si étonnant, entre la “voix” du père et celle de la picaresque espagnole). S’y ajoute toutefois une distinction affirmée à mesure que son œuvre s’est développée: le congé croissant donné à la fiction. Naipaul est très clair là-dessus, dans l’entretien qu’il a accordé à Pierre Pachet: Le roman, au XIXe siècle, était une meilleure façon d’exprimer la vérité du monde que, disons pour la littérature anglaise, la forme qu’avait alors l’essai […] Aujourd’hui, je crois que chacun sait que le roman ne traite pas de la vérité. Il est le lieu d’une exhibition. Il représente l’imagination, celle de cet 50 Dominique Maingueneau & Gilles Philippe. 2002. ‘Les conditions d’exercice du discours littéraire’ dans Roulet, Eddy & Marcel Burger (eds). Les Modèles du discours au défi d’un ‘dialogue romanesque’. Nancy: P.U. de Nancy: 366-367. 51 Gauvin 2004: chapitre VII. 52 Édouard Glissant 1981. Le Discours antillais. Paris: Seuil: 554. 53 Glissant 1997: 26. 54 Naipaul 1982: 31.

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homme-ci ou de celui-là […]. Moi, je m’intéresse à des régions compliquées du monde, à des endroits rendus compliqués par la conquête coloniale, par l’impérialisme, par les rencontres de nombreuses cultures. Les gens y vivent tant d’états d’esprit, d’émotions, qu’il est presque impossible d’écrire des romans sur eux. Il vaut mieux s’en tenir à la vérité littérale telle que les gens euxmêmes la disent, à propos de leurs émotions.55

D’où, chez lui, une interlangue procédant de manière croissante des paroles sans nombre et contradictoires recueillies dans les divers pays où il a voyagé et dont il recherche obstinément le noyau. Aussi pour les deux auteurs, plutôt que de parler d’une écriture caribéenne, serait-il plus judicieux d’évoquer une participation caraïbe à la diversité mondiale, où la langue littéraire entend s’accorder à ce goût du réel dont parle Pachet dans son essai (95). Chacun selon son style réfute les patrons littéraires caribéens, notamment ceux de l’exotisme ou du réalisme conventionnels, pour développer le sens d’un “tout-langue” contemporain ou celui d’un attention à l’individu dans le tiers monde déployé dans le cadre d’un réalisme romanesque anglais ou de récits de voyages à maints égards iconoclastes. La constituance du discours littéraire est particulièrement importante dans les Caraïbes où ses fonctions de détermination d’un lieu associé à un corps de locuteurs consacrés et d’élaboration d’une mémoire sont cardinales. Son étude présente de multiples difficultés, d’ordre et d’importance différents selon que l’on envisage les contextes anglophone, francophone, hispanophone, néerlandophone et créolophones, mais pour le sujet qui nous retient ici, le problème est celui des interfaces caribéennes. À partir des notions de scénographie, d’èthos et de code langagier, on peut mettre en évidence les éléments d’un discours caribéen chez deux auteurs dont l’un se situe dans un système francophone om il revendique une spécificité antillaise et caribéenne et dont le second tente plutôt de se rapprocher du système littéraire britannique en critiquant toute une partie ce qu’on peut appeler l’anglophonie. Cette étude, elle-même située à l’interface des travaux de linguistique, de pragmatique et d’histoire littéraire, permet ainsi de repérer les inter-

55

Dans Pachet 1993: 84.

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faces propres aux littératures de l’archipel et d’envisager quelques aspects nouveaux des recherches sur les Caraïbes.

Postcolonialism, Literary Heteroglossia and Translation Paul Bandia Concordia University, Montréal This communication intends to take stock of the contribution of postcolonial studies and their impact on the domain of translation studies, and to explore the notions of heteroglossia and hybridization at the basis of all postcolonial theories applied to translation. We conceive of translation both in the primary meaning of the word, and on the level of its metaphorical interpretation. The postcolonial author, facing the choice to write either in his native language or in the language of the colonizer, now has a third option. This gives rise to literary heteroglossia in a postcolonial context. The phenomenon is closely linked to the concept of translation as an intercultural or interlinguistic practice, but also to that of translation as a metaphor for the representation of the other.

Introduction The postcolonial text is characterized by a deliberate use of multiple languages within the same discourse, sometimes shaped to conform to the aesthetic requirements of the main language of writing, or at times left as such to reflect their occurrence in everyday discourse in the postcolony, or enhanced to highlight their presence as forms of resistance to the dominant colonial language. The postcolonial context is by nature multilingual as a result of the imposition of colonial languages for use in a context where many indigenous languages already coexist. Although the majority of the world may not be living the postcolonial experience, it is interesting to note that a significant majority of the world’s population speaks or deals with at least two languages. This fact may at times be overlooked given the enormous economic and political power wielded by the small minority of monolingual nations.1 Polylingual writing therefore comes naturally to postcolonial writers for whom multilingualism is a fact of life. It is rather 1 See Jacques Derrida. 1996. Le monolinguisme de l’autre ou la prothèse d’origine. Paris: Galilée.

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interesting to note that the world’s majority of multilingual speakers have been reduced to minorities within various modern nation states, marginalized and obliged to use the dominant world languages and to succumb to the whims of the powerful monolinguals. As a consequence, these marginalized groups engage in all sorts of linguistic and aesthetic practices to reclaim their rights and assert their autonomy. Given their sheer number and imposing presence across the planet, their claims cannot be ignored, and this has contributed to making the issue of multilingualism a major factor in contemporary thought. Aesthetics and Constraints of Literary Heteroglossia According to Édouard Glissant, in our contemporary world, it is no longer possible for a writer to create or write in a monolingual vacuum. We live in a world where there is an ever-presence of languages around us, so that even when a writer is unfamiliar with other languages, he is consciously or unconsciously under their influence in his work. The writer is forced to take account of the “imaginaires des langues”. 2 Although this fact is common to all writers, it is even more so for writers on the periphery whose native language is minoritized and who are forced by historical circumstances and the realities of globalization to write in the dominant language. Yet, in spite of the unavoidable presence of multilingualism and cultural heterogeneity, as well as the “imaginaires des langues,” contemporary literary practice still seeks to locate multilingualism and define its contours within the matrix of the dominant language of writing. Given the tendency toward a dominant monolingual practice, polylingualism becomes an aesthetic means of resistance, contestation and subversion, a means of projecting alterity as a “counter-discourse”3 to an imperialist homogenizing discourse. The use of several languages forces the reader into “an active engagement with the horizon of the culture in which these

2 Édouard Glissant. 1996. ‘L’imaginaire des langues’ (interview by Lise Gauvin) in Glissant, Édouard. Introduction à une poétique du divers. Paris: Gallimard: 112. 3 Helen Tiffin. 1995. ‘Post-Colonial Literatures and Counter-Discourse’ in Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin (eds). The Post-Colonial Studies Reader. London: Routledge: 97. This article was first published in 1987. Kunapipi 9(3): 17-34.

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terms have meaning”.4 But a question that can be raised here is whether the scanty use of minority or marginalized language items within the matrix of a dominant language is enough to ensure resistance to the hegemony of imperial languages, or is it merely an aesthetic device that could be construed as enhancing the exoticism of postcolonial fiction. The coexistence of indigenous languages, locallyderived hybrid forms, and the colonial language in postcolonial writing is based on an unequal, diglossic relationship whereby the dominant colonial language exerts a centripetal force on all other languages in the text. There is a constant attempt to make the signification of these minor languages available to the monolingual reader who is fluent in the dominant language, through various devices, or strategies, including translation, paraphrase, gloss, explanation and so on. The local languages must explain and translate themselves to the imperial language, mirroring a fact of postcolonial existence. What this indicates is that, in spite of its much vaunted qualities of resistance, subversion or assertiveness, polylingual writing in the postcolonial context hasn’t quite succeeded in unlocking the imperial grip of colonial languages. And if this is the case, how do forms of contestation and resistance play themselves out in postcolonial writing, and to what end, besides their aesthetic import and the casual recourse to multilingual representation in contemporary literature? Given their multilingual experience and faced with an unfavourable fact of linguistic hierarchy or diglossia, postcolonial writers are condemned somewhat to think (and breathe) language, to make language an important and indispensable paradigm in their work. This heightened consciousness of language is a fact of life for those authors of what Deleuze and Guattari have referred to as “minor/minority” literature, that is, literature written by a minority in a dominant language (1986), often with a penchant for deterritorializing language. For these writers language is a source of discomfort, of doubt, of a tension between complete integration within the metropolitan norm on the one hand and a potentially exaggerated exoticization of their own socio-historical reality, on the other. Immersed as they are in multilingual and transcultural practices, the writers find themselves in the 4

Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin. 1989. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures. London & New York: Routledge: 65.

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same predicament and impossibilities as Kafka: impossibility of not writing, impossibility of writing in the colonizer’s language, and the impossibility of writing otherwise.5 How do they feel about writing in an imposed imperial tongue, and to what extent is their multilingual writing practice is an accommodation to, or a reaction against, this unfortunate fact of history? How far can they go to ensure that their writing is a reflection of their multiple linguistic experience? Should their contact with many languages and the choice of writing in a nonindigenous language necessarily command a polylingual or heteroglossic practice? These and other related questions can be explored through various theories that have dealt with the topic of multilingualism, literary heteroglossia, and to a certain extent, polylingual writing. Literary Criticism and Heteroglossia There is no doubt that writing in a non-indigenous language, whether as a second language or a first language, has placed the issue of multilingualism in literature at the cutting edge of contemporary literary criticism. A growing interest in the relation between literary criticism and cultural history and the expansion of fields such as cultural studies have highlighted issues of transnationalism, transculturality and so forth, which have in turn brought questions related to multilingual matters in literature and in society to the forefront. This is not to say that interest in multiple language writing is a new phenomenon. Mikhaïl Bakhtin’s œuvres had established the role and significance of language plurality in the development of the modern European novel. Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism paved the way for a discussion of the inherent multilingualism of a literary text. The many translations of his concept of multilingualism – in English by Michael Holquist and Caryl Emerson as heteroglossia and polyglossia;6 in French by Tzvetan Todorov as hétéroglossie (diverse languages), hétérologie (varieties of the same language) and hétérophonie (diversity of individual

5

Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari. 1986. Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature ( tr. Dana Polan). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 6 Mikhail Bakhtin. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination. Four Essays by M.M. Bakhtin (ed. Michael Holquist, tr. Caryl Emerson & Michael Holquist). Austin: University of Texas Press.

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voices7) – have contributed to the spread of the view of the literary text as inherently multilingual. Although his work has given rise to a great variety of research in the field, it should be pointed out that Bakhtin was mainly concerned with heterogeneity within one and the same language, and not necessarily the systematic juxtaposing of several languages within the same discourse. Although for Bakhtin there is no monolingualism in literature given that the latter is inherently heteroglossic, this does not go far enough for current (post-)modernist thinking which seeks to highlight the role of literary heteroglossia in undermining the hegemony of imperial languages. (Post-)modernist approaches seem more interested in polylingualism insofar as it has the potential to disrupt norms or develop an aesthetics of contestation, of displacement or of resistance. The inherent heteroglossia of classical French literature does not share the same roots or objectives as the deliberate heteroglossic practices of the so-called minor literatures, which concern a movement of language towards its extremes.8 Literary heteroglossia in the context of competing languages, placed side by side or used alternately, can be better understood through theories from fields such as postcolonialism and the sociolinguistics of multilingualism. Postcolonialism and Heteroglossia Postcolonial studies, with its emphasis on transnationalism, hybridity and the translating state of culture9 have become a venue for apprehending the aesthetics of polylingualism in literary production. As a corollary of colonization, the displacement and migration of peoples brought about changes that would challenge the notion of a national language and a homogenous culture paving the way for understanding language and culture from the point of view of a transnational experience. According to Bhabha, hybridity, a main characteristic of the postcolonial condition, disrupts the relation between national language and culture, and points to a culture of difference, of displacement of signification, of translation. Postcolonial productions have the subver7

Tzvetan Todorov. 1981. Mikhaïl Bakhtine: Le principe dialogique. Suivi de Écrits du cercle de Bakhtine (Collection ‘Poétique’). Paris: Seuil. 8 Deleuze & Guattari 1986: 41. 9 See Homi Bhabha. 1994. The Location of Culture. London & New York: Routledge.

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sive capacity to transform a dominant discourse into a terrain for intervention, thus creating new realities and identities in an always mutating cultural construction.10 The authors of The Empire Writes Back11 had heralded these new possibilities when they confidently proclaimed the emerging diversity in English literature with the advent of postcolonial literatures written in a wide variety of Englishes. By so doing, they had ushered in a variety of minor literatures in English (in the sense of Deleuze and Guattari) which again seemed to emphasize a Bakhtinian understanding of heteroglossia, that is, the occurrence of languages within the paradigm of a dominant language. As they put it: […] the distinction between English and english will be used throughout our text as an indication of the various ways in which the language has been employed by different linguistic communities in the post-colonial world. […] In practice the history of this distinction between English and the various postcolonial englishes in use today has been the claims of a powerful ‘center’ and a multitude of intersecting usages designed as ‘peripheries’. The language of these ‘peripheries’ was shaped by an oppressive discourse of power. Yet they have been the site of some of the most exciting and innovative literatures of the modern world and this has, at least in part, been the result of the energies uncovered by the political tension between the idea of a normative code and a variety of regional usages.12

Yet innovation and other aesthetic practices in postcolonial literature also includes multiple language use, confronting indigenous languages or locally-derived hybrid forms with the dominant colonial language of writing. The subversive character of polylingual writing in the postcolonial context has been discussed by many critics who see in it the creation of a counter-hegemonic discourse to the imperial/colonial language. For instance, discussing polylingual practices in some contemporary North African Francophone novels, Samia Mehrez points out that the tendency to bring together different symbolic and often unequal representations of the colonizing and the colonized world calls for a more global or pluralistic reading practice which goes beyond the usual, normative reading of monolingual literature. As she puts it, 10

Bhabha 1994: 112. Ashcroft, Griffiths & Tiffin 1989. 12 Ashcroft, Griffiths & Tiffin 1989: 8. 11

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so long as the institutions that form the reader have not changed, the works of francophone North African writers will resist and defy colonial and imperialist monolingualism which continues to believe that it can read the world through its own dominant language.13

In African Europhone literature as well as in Caribbean writing, traces of indigenous languages can be found either in their materiality or in the deep structure of what might seem on the surface to be a discourse written solely in the colonial language. Literary creativity involves movement between languages and alternating between various codes, an aesthetic which seems to have become a mode of writing, an end itself, in the quest for authenticity and autonomy. Yet, as pointed out by Chantal Zabus,14 polylingual writing in African literature which may be used as a strategy to resist the hegemony implied in homogenous linguistic representations, has to contend with the unequal power relations among languages on the international scene. There is always the danger that traces of indigenous languages may be perceived as mere exotic enhancements which in no way jeopardize the supremacy or dominance of the colonial language. The Martinican writer and critic, Édouard Glissant, also cautions against what he calls the “particularismes” and the false optimism engendered by peppering a text written in a dominant language with bits of so-called minority languages. He states: La subversion vient de la créolisation (ici, linguistique) et non des créolismes. Ce que les gens retiennent de la créolisation, c’est le créolisme, c’est-à-dire: introduire dans la langue française des mots créoles, fabriquer des mots français nouveaux à partir des mots créoles. Je trouve que c’est le côté exotique de la question.15

Glissant speaks of a “chaos-monde” in which the meeting of languages will be a conflicting yet felicitous event, a multilingual aesthetic made possible by the “imaginaires des langues”.16 Like Bhabha, 13 Samia Mehrez. 1992. ‘Translation and the Postcolonial Experience: The Francophone North African Text’ in Venuti, Lawrence (ed.). Rethinking Translation: Discourse, Subjectivity, Ideology. London: Routledge: 136-137. 14 Chantal Zabus. 1991. The African Palimpsest: Indigenization of Language in the West African Europhone Novel. Amsterdam & Atlanta: Rodopi. 15 Glissant 1996: 21. 16 Glissant 1996: 114.

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Glissant believes in the perpetual mutation and formation of identities, which he refers to as “créolisation”, and therefore rejects the notion of “créolité” as defined by the authors of Éloge de la créolité because he sees in it an attempt at creating and defining a static créole identity. The blind fetishization of language or culture through a polylingual practice of writing may in the long run only serve to reproduce the same forms of hegemony that it is meant to resist. In fact, Mehrez17 cites an instance where the innovative multilingual strategies employed by Francophone North African writers were not at all perceived as subversive but rather lauded by French President François Mitterand as a testimony to the universality of the French language. The co-opting of postcolonial multilingual practices for the enhancement of the metropolitan language undermines the significance of the linguistic hybridization of colonial languages as a means of contestation. Moreover, the trend in this process of hybridization points towards a systematic usurping of subaltern languages by an imperial language which becomes revitalized “through a most unreciprocal creolization”.18 The French linguist Louis-Jean Calvet has used the term “glottophagie” to refer to this devouring of indigenous languages by the dominant colonial language, which underlines the unequal power relations between languages as used in a literature that seeks to ensure accessibility to a monolingual metropolitan reader.19 Discussing the postcolonial Caribbean context, the authors of Éloge de la créolité proudly extol the virtues of their multilingual heritage (Creole, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, etc.), but equally point out the fact that the terms of linguistic exchange are unequal and indeed biased in favour of metropolitan norms.20 Michael Cronin also raises some concerns about the high expectations of confronting hegemony with hybrid practices when he states: The question is whether in the global system a heteroglossic discourse of translation is not being used to evacuate a polyglossic reality of translation so that

17

Mehrez 1992. Zabus 1991: 183. 19 Louis-Jean Calvet. 1987. La guerre des langues et les politiques linguistiques. Paris: Payot. 20 Jean Bernabé, Patrick Chamoiseau & Raphaël Confiant. 1989. Éloge de la Créolité. Paris: Gallimard/Presses universitaires créoles: 44-50. 18

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eventually heteroglossia and hegemony become synonymous – sameness through difference.21

Nonetheless, accounting for the postcolonial condition in literature has indeed disrupted monolingual writing conventions by emphasizing a multilingual writing practice with far-reaching implications for the understanding of the issues of ideology, identity and power relations in the context of literary and cultural translation. Code-switching and Polylingualism One of the mechanisms of polylingual postcolonial writing is the strategic alternating of languages within the literary text through the sociolinguistic practice of code-switching and code-mixing. This practice is distinct from other multilingual situations such as interference, transfer, borrowing and shifts in that the latter can occur in the speech of monolingual speakers while code-switching is rooted in a multilingual existence. In other words, code-switching is only possible in a context of competing knowledge or command of languages, which of course implies that code-switching is never a neutral act, as it often occurs in situations of unequal power relations between languages, and based on ideologically determined choices in relation to questions of identity, in-group solidarity and national language. By its very definition, code-switching, which necessarily involves more than one distinct code, is more amenable to the understanding of polylingual postcolonial writing practice than the Bakhtinian concept of heterogeneity occurring within the same dominant language. Unlike the Bakhtinian approach which extols linguistic diversity within a monolingual framework, code-switching takes as its starting point the material presence and coexistence of several languages. While literary critics have so far worked on the basis of the language of the text, sociolinguists consider the alternating of languages not as an usual occurrence but rather as a legitimate discoursal practice present in everyday language use. Gumperz highlights this point when he states: In spite of prevailing stereotypes, existing descriptive and historical information on bilingualism provides little support for the contention that code switching is

21 Michael Cronin. 2000. Across the Lines: Travel, Language, Translation. Cork: Cork University Press: 120.

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On the contrary, code-switching is today acknowledged to be inherent to the linguistic pluralism common to most contexts in the current world of globalization. Although much of what has been written on code-switching is based on field work – that is, its spontaneous occurrence in real life situations – rather than on the study of literary texts, the science of code-switching has the potential to enlighten us on the interventionist writing of postcolonial authors as they attempt to fashion a counterhegemonic discourse in a predominantly metropolitan idiom. For Bakhtinian critics, code-switching is of little interest as it is the mere juxtaposing of languages in a text, and therefore does not correspond to Bakhtin’s understanding of multilingualism or heteroglossia. While it is true that literary code-switching is rather calculated, nonspontaneous and often the creation of a particular author, it is also true that some authors seek to emulate the code-switching practices of the linguistic subjects being depicted in fiction, and therefore share similar motivations for their use in society, especially in the postcolonial context. So far, in postcolonial translation studies there has been a preference for the study of the more timid interventionist practices of appropriating or decentering the dominant language, but without the express desire to level the field and confront so-called minor languages with the dominant colonial idiom. In spite of the dramatic conclusions regarding the ultimate assertion of the postcolonial subject’s identity, the paramount authority of the dominant metropolitan idiom is still very much alive as the minor language “remainder”23 seeks its space within the larger territory of the dominant idiom. Yet postcolonial theorists generally see deterritorializing the colonial language as a more significant disruption and renewal, while forms of codeswitching, or the juxtaposition of various codes within a discourse, is considered more conventional and having very little impact on the integrity of the dominant language. In other words, while deterritori22 John Joseph Gumperz. 1982. Discourse Strategies. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press: 20. 23 Jean-Jacques Lecercle. 1990. The Violence of Language. London & New York: Routledge.

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alization, or linguistic hybridization, has the merit of significantly altering the dominant language from within, the juxtaposing of different codes is seen as a normative process which seems to reinforce the boundaries, and inevitably the hierarchy, between languages.24 However, it can be argued that code-switching can also challenge the neat separation of languages and the implied hierarchy, emphasizing through its materiality the collaboration between languages. With respect to African Europhone writing, Bandia points out that although at the surface intrasentential level code-switching is carried out in a rather less intrusive way by conforming to the grammar and syntax of the dominant language, its real impact can be felt in the analysis of the deep structure of meaning where the use of codeswitching foregrounds issues of identity, ideology and unequal power relations.25 This, of course, is in keeping with the views of sociolinguists who have studied code-switching not just as a purely linguistic phenomenon, but also for its potential for insights into social relations within a given linguistic community.26 In her study of Europeanlanguage literature in West Africa, Zabus makes the point that, unlike other multilingual manifestations, code-switching plays certain specific cultural roles in a text.27 For instance, the side-by-side display of indigenous language items and European language ones is an indication of the untransferability of the African logos, and resistance to the colonial language which, in spite of its power and influence, cannot wholly account for African sociocultural reality. It is thus forced to remain an alien language, exerting its influence but never quite achieving total control, its imperial reach kept in check by the elusive nature of the African logos. Zabus cautions that the tendency to “bend” the dominant language to express indigenous language aesthet24 See Mehrez 1992; Lawrence Venuti. 1998. The Scandals of Translation: Towards an Ethics of Difference. London & New York: Routledge; Moradewun Adejunmobi. 1998. ‘Translation and Postcolonial Identity: African Writing and European Languages’ in Translation and Minority. Special issue of The Translator: Studies in Intercultural Communication 4(2): 145-162. 25 Paul Bandia. 1996. ‘Code-switching and Code-mixing in African Creative Writing: Some Insights for Translation Studies’ in TTR 9(1): 139-153. 26 Susan Gal. 1988. ‘The Political Economy of Code Choice’ in Heller, Monica (ed.). Codeswitching: Anthropological and Sociolinguistic Perspectives. Berlin, New York & Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter. 27 Zabus 1991.

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ics would imply an unproblematic (or unfettered) transportation of indigenous cultural material into the territory of an alien dominant language. The various devices or techniques by which such cultural material is integrated into the sphere of the dominant language (such as through translation, paraphrase, or contextualization) often require a degree of compromise that might indeed undermine the power of representation of the indigenous languages. While asserting the presence, either materially or transparently, of indigenous languages, the writing of hybridity may also have the effect of removing indigenous items from their natural space (and used as mere props) and eventually denying them the potential to be the main vehicle for their own literature.28 Thus, European language hybrid writing can be said to have pulled the rug from under indigenous vernacular writing, as it were. However, it can be argued that code-switching, or the traces of vernacular languages within the colonial language space, is a call for the sharing of textual space, and a stalwart to linguistic hegemony or even glottophagia. Although Zabus’ claim that the material presence of other languages vis-à-vis the dominant language of writing is an indication that the latter cannot always account for the cultural connotations of minor languages,29 it should be pointed out that African Europhone writers do not resort to code-switching in the vernacular only when the European language of writing is incapable of expressing an indigenous reality. Apart from what some consider to be its aesthetic appeal, code-switching is sometimes used mainly to generate heterogeneity, and challenge the authority and universalism of the imperial language, underlining the illusion of its transparency. There is a linguistic relativism here which attempts to seize the initiative from the dominant language, while clamouring for the acknowledgment of the intrinsic heterogeneity of the postcolonial world. By creating a discourse whereby different languages or linguistic registers jostle for space, there is a deliberate attempt at a levelling out of languages and a quest for an egalitarian perception of language. However, in the postcolonial context, the gamut for potentially translatable speech is broad and enticing, which highlights the fact that linguistic diversity in a context 28 29

See Adejunmobi 1998. Zabus 1991: 182.

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of unequal encounters cannot be easily resolved by the levelling out of languages. The sociolinguistic study of code-switching has clearly established a link with the political and ideological constraints of alternating languages in the context of unequal power relations. Monica Heller, for instance, discusses the role of code-switching in what she describes as “the politics of language, by which I mean the way in which language practices are bound up in the creation, exercise, maintenance or change of relations of power”.30 In instances where there is confrontation between languages and an implied hierarchy, or where, according to Kathryn Woolard, the linguistic and political economy is subject to ideological concerns, “[the] opposition between linguistic codes is almost always socially and ideologically activated, even as it is challenged”.31 Today, there is an increased use of code-switching in literary texts in an attempt to capture or represent the multilingual or multicultural reality of the postcolonial world. Those literary texts which contain a massive use of code-switching or other forms of heteroglossic expressions often stand out by virtue of their innovative linguistic formalism. Code-switching as a manifestation of linguistic confrontation, connivance or contradiction in the real world can also be played out in the literary text, and sociolinguistics can be credited with establishing a framework for apprehending and conceptualizing this linguistic practice. Heteroglossia and Translation Although much has been written about hybridity and heteroglossia in postcolonial literature, including code-switching as a writing technique, translation studies has paid little attention to these current realities which defy boundaries, probably because translation has often been conceived as a means of bridging the gap between distinct, autonomous and homogenous linguistic entities. Yet, as bilingual or multilingual practitioners, translators should know better since trans30

Monica Heller. 1995. ‘Code-switching and the Politics of Language’ in Milroy, Lesley & Pieter Muysken (eds). One Speaker, Two Languages: CrossDisciplinary Perspectives on Code-Switching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 159. 31 Kathryn A. Woolard. June 1998. ‘Simultaneity and Bivalency as strategies in Bilingualism’ in Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 8(1): 11.

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lated texts both pragmatic and literary often contain forms of codeswitched or code-mixed discourses as well as other more nuanced forms of intertextuality or linguistic blends. In fact, these are some of the textual features that are often more easily gleaned in studies that seek to establish the characteristics of the translated text. The normative practice of translation, whose objective has always been the transparent and unadulterated insertion of an alien text within the discourse of a neatly defined monolithic receptor language culture, is now generally viewed as somewhat limited given the complexity of metatextual issues related to ideology, sociology and even power relations that must be taken into account. In postcolonial contexts, discourses are steeped in intertextuality and hybridity and the boundaries between source and target texts are consequently often blurred. In fact, translating postcolonial minority literature into a major global language often implies dealing with the various cultural and linguistic elements at the basis of its hybridity, including those constituent elements derived from the colonial legacy. The neat or distinct binarism necessary for a normative translation process is challenged by the multidimensional relationship between the source and target language cultures, and translations are generally crafted with some degree of foreignizing and domesticating strategies. In other words, there is no such thing as a completely domesticated translation since the target language culture is called upon to be receptive to the features of an alien hybrid source culture; and there is no such thing as a completely foreignized translation as, by the very nature of things, the receiving culture marks its territory and determines to what extent it can be intelligibly foreignized. Due to its hybridity, blending indigenous and colonial linguistic and cultural practices, the postcolonial text is resistant to stable dualisms and the strict dichotomies that have been at the basis of translation criticism for so long. Translation, by its very nature, is a rich and productive site for understanding postcolonial discourse, as well as the linguistic and socio-cultural practice of codeswitching and mixing and other forms of literary heteroglossia. Polylingualism as Resistance Several postcolonial translation studies have addressed the issue of power inequalities among languages, which have, in effect, raised doubts about the concept of symmetrical reciprocity as a moral or

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ethical obligation of translation.32 According to Georges Steiner, “The enactment of reciprocity in order to restore balance is the crux of the métier and morals of translation”.33 This statement which may be verifiably true in the context of an exchange between symmetrical powers, loses its force in the domain of colonial or postcolonial translation practice where power relations are decidedly unequal between the dominant metropolitan idiom and the dominated languages of the colonized. Postcolonial translation studies have shown that inequality is inherent to the postcolonial situation and that this inequality is played out in a symbolic domination which underlies and directs the movement of translation. In other words, translation into the colonized language will tend to impose the colonizer’s culture, while translation into the colonial language will seek to eradicate differences and minimize the specificity or autonomy of local productions.34 Either way, translation expresses itself as an intrinsically hegemonic activity. Niranjana, in particular, takes issue with Steiner’s hermeneutic approach which seems to overlook the hegemonic face of translation. She states: Steiner suggests that the faithful translator “creates a condition of significant exchange. The arrows of meaning, of cultural, psychological benefaction, move both ways. There is, ideally, exchange without loss.” I need not reiterate the idea of the futility of such remarks in the colonial context, where the “exchange” is far from equal and the “benefaction” highly dubious, where the asymmetry between languages is perpetuated by imperial rule.35

Translation has thus been shown to be both a site for the cultivating and reproduction of hegemonic practices and for enacting resistance to these same practices. Lawrence Venuti discusses power inequalities in the marginal treatment of minority literatures in Anglo-American culture, explaining how the latter is exported to the rest of the world but 32

Cronin 2000: 147. Georges Steiner. 1992 [1975]. After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation. Second edition. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press: 316. 34 See Tejaswini Niranjana. 1992. Siting Translation: History, PostStructuralism and the Colonial Context. Berkeley: California University Press; Vincente Rafael. 1988. Contracting Colonialism: Translation and Christian Conversion in Tagalong Society under Early Spanish Rule. Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press. 35 Niranjana 1988: 59. 33

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remains closed to outside influences by translating very little.36 This power asymmetry is also discussed by Richard Jacquemond who points out the disproportionate amount of translation being carried out between the West and the Third World: Translations from languages of the South represent at best 1 or 2 percent of the translated book market in the North, while in the South 98 or 99 percent of this market is made up of books translated from Northern languages.37

This imbalance in translation practices between the North and the South, between former colonial powers and their ex-colonies, shows how, in spite of a quest for symmetrical reciprocity, translation remains an area where language hierarchy prevails, as “Translation theory itself remains hostage to the perceptions and interests of major languages”.38 Cronin illustrates this point by drawing parallels between the marginalized treatment of minority languages within Europe and such treatment of dominated language cultures in the postcolonial context. Recent theoretical arguments in favour of an enhanced visibility for translators and translation practice39 have explored the possibility of polylingual or heteroglossic literary practice as a site for enhancing the visibility of translation. Confronting languages within the same literary discourse calls for a reading practice based loosely on the concept of translation. In other words, there is a back and forth movement between languages in the reading of polylingual literature which mirrors the act of translating. In fact, multilingual or polylingual writing can be said to be a concrete example of the notion of intercultural writing as translation in terms of its materiality, as well as the processes of its reading and comprehension. Ironically, literary heteroglossia or polylingualism highlights the importance of translation by refusing to translate or assimilate vestiges of minority lan36

Lawrence Venuti. 1995. The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. London & New York: Routledge. 37 Richard Jacquemond. 1992. ‘Translation and Cultural Hegemony: The Case of French-Arabic Translation’ in Venuti 1992: 139. 38 Michael Cronin. 1995. ‘Altered States: Translation and Minority’ in TTR 8(1) 94. 39 See Antoine Berman. 1995. Pour une critique des traductions: John Donne. Paris: Gallimard; Idem. 1984. L’épreuve de l’étranger: culture et traduction dans l’Allemagne romantique (Collection ‘NRF’). Paris: Gallimard; Venuti 1995; Venuti 1998.

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guages into the dominant idiom. Linguistic diversity is thus maintained through a deliberate resistance to translation, or through the transfer of a language item to the domain of another language. As pointedly stated by Cronin: It is resistance to translation, not acceptance, that generates translation. If a group of individuals or a people agree to translate themselves into another language, that is if they accept translation unreservedly, then the need for translation soon disappears. For the translated there is no more translation.40

It can therefore be surmised that postcolonial polylingual writing practice is a deliberate attempt to resist the hegemony of translation, by opposing assimilation to the dominant metropolitan language. The postcolonial subject rejects the totalizing effect of dominant language by refusing to translate himself totally or unreservedly. In other words, by refusing to disappear or to exist only as a translated being, or as the shadow of the métropole. Seen in this light, resistance to translation becomes a means for asserting the plurality of cultures. Translation can thus be conceived as an agent of linguistic diversity and coexistence41 rather than a source for erasure or assimilation of subaltern cultures. Code-switching and mixing as practiced in African and Caribbean literatures provide ample proof of the need to expand translation theory to include such instances of linguistic and cultural transfer whereby there is a need to resist or counter assimilative or hegemonic forces and thus sustain pluralism, which is after all the raison d’être of translation. In a context of power inequalities, alternating codes in creative writing transcends an aesthetic essence or a purely linguistic need to involve deliberate manifestations of subjectivity and identity. Multilingual or polylingual writing seems to flourish in current Francophone literature mainly as a result of a more audacious tampering with the French language in society. After decades of vain attempts at pleasing the colonial métropole or the Académie française by emulating standard European French, Francophone writers, especially those of the younger generation, are aligning themselves with 40

Cronin 2000: 95. Michael Cronin. 1998. ‘The Cracked Looking Glass of Servants: Translation and Minority Languages in a Global Age’ in Translation and Minority. Special issue of The Translator: Studies in Intercultural Communication 4(2): 148-149. 41

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their public and finding inspiration in the linguistic habits of their speech community. The idiom of the postcolony is multilingual and polyphonous, characterized by the plurivocity and the heteronomy of the varied segments of society. Publishing houses, which are mainly located in the metropole, are turning postmodernist heteroglossic practices into a marketable asset, and the phenomenon has proven to be a shot in the arm for the enterprise of literary criticism. In the current climate of globalization, migration and the displacement of peoples and cultures, multilingualism and linguistic polyphony are fast becoming a staple in some quarters of the metropole itself (witness, for example, the littérature beure in France and urban Black English in England). This fast-growing reality can only enhance polylingual practices in society as well as in literature. In his highly acclaimed novel, Texaco,42 Patrick Chamoiseau resorts to the use of heteroglossia as representation of the heterogeneity of postcolonial contexts. The Martinican author peppers his narrative with words and expressions such as the following: l’En-ville (19) / City43 (10); les gens-biens (19) / the ever-so-well-to-do (10); ces huissiers des vieux temps-la-misère (20) / those bailiffs from the old dirt-poor days (10); les nègres de l’en-bas de ses graines […] ses vassaux (21) / those who looked up at his balls […] his vassals (10); tout-devant (21) / in the front row (10); l’avantjour (21) / pre-dawn (11); la ligne devint molle-molle (23) / the line became loose-loose (12); Jackot mulâtre bel-beau-mâle à jabot (23) / Jackot, jabot-wearing mulatto dandy (13); se réfugier dans d’arrièrecabinets (29) / to seek cover behind the file cabinets (17); elle pritcourir du lit […] (30) / she ran out of bed […] (18); elle lut d’un coupblip (30) / she read it in one blip-of-a-glance (18); une troublante arrière-jeunesse (32) / the unsettling backroom of her youth (20); bouledogue sans maître (40) / a mad bulldog without a leash (26). These are hybrid formations and constructions that reflect the specific use of French in Martinique, in a context where a Creole language has evolved as a national language competing with and resisting the imposed metropolitan variety of French. Chamoiseau captures the orality of Martinican culture as expressed in an alien imperial lan42

Patrick Chamoiseau. 1992. Texaco. Paris: Gallimard. All English translations are taken from Patrick Chamoiseau. 1997. Texaco (tr. Rose-Myriam Réjouis & Val Vinokurov). New York: Pantheon Books. 43

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guage, thus highlighting the specificity of Martinican language culture, albeit within the matrix of the dominant metropolitan idiom. The language is hybrid, blending orality and writing, and crafted in what can be described as a process of writing as translation. These words and expressions draw attention to themselves in the novel as instances of the Martinican world-view that refuse to be translated or assimilated into a dominant hegemonic language. Therefore, the reading of Texaco, or its translation, involves accounting for the rich vernacular networks and the orality that enhance the textuality of the novel. Conclusion Postcoloniality is indeed a state of unequal power relations in which the practice of literary heteroglossia reveals the diglossic relationship between the local vernacular and the imposed colonial language. The hybridity characteristic of postcolonial discourse is enacted through a variety of writing strategies including code-switching, code-mixing, as well as through forms of reading and interpretation that mirror the practice of translation. Furthermore, literary heteroglossia in postcolonial writing can be construed as an expression of resistance to the hegemony of the colonial language. Traces of the vernacular resist translation or assimilation into a fluent or transparent metropolitan language, thus enhancing the aesthetic effect of literary heteroglossia while asserting the identity of the dominated language culture. Postcolonial polylingual writing provides fertile ground for understanding the issue of multilingualism and linguistic hierarchy, and the relationship between literary heteroglossia and translation.

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Caribbean Research Projects

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Archives des Littératures de la Caraïbe: un projet, une équipe, une technologie1 Albert-James Arnold University of Virginia Pendant des siècles l’identité de l’auteur est douteuse: Hollandais ou Flamand pour les uns, Français pour les autres; en Allemagne et aux Pays-Bas on l’identifie à H.B. Smeeks, auteur d’une utopie coloniale de 1708. (La Bibliothèque Nationale d’Allemagne affiche toujours cette attribution, tandis que la Bibliothèque Nationale de France affirme qu’A.O. Oexmelin est Flamand.) La communication situera l’auteur dans le conflit sociopolitique qui prolonge les guerres de religion dans les colonies du Nouveau Monde. Médecin huguenot ayant fait ses études à Paris, l’auteur doit quitter la France en 1666. Après bien des péripéties, il sera chirurgien des flibustiers et participera à certains des raids les plus célèbres de l’époque. Les cinq éditions successives qui s’échelonnent de 1678 à 1686 témoignent des préoccupations politiques, militaires et religieuses des pays où le livre est traduit.

Au sein de l’ALC, nous sommes une vingtaine de chercheurs spécialisés dans la région caribéenne. Parmi nous, on trouve des bibliothécaires responsables de collections régionales, des littéraires et des spécialistes de la nouvelle technologie sur laquelle repose le projet. Sur le plan de la technologie, nous ne pouvons que signaler le fait que le produit qu’affichera la bibliothèque virtuelle de notre université, et que l’on pourra consulter de partout dans le monde, ne ressemble ni aux simples photos numérisées de pages que nous propose la Bibliothèque Gallica de la BNF, par exemple, pas plus qu’il ne ressemble au texte figé souvent disséminé par CD-ROM. La Text Encoding Initia1

Au colloque de Lille-Kortrijk j’ai rapidement esquissé ce que l’équipe de l’ALC (Archives des Littératures de la Caraïbe) se propose de réaliser, à court terme, à quelles fins et en utilisant quelle technologie. Il s’agissait de présenter l’une des modalités que la recherche comparatiste pourra emprunter au seuil du 21e siècle.

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tive, consortium international mieux connu sous le sigle TEI, permettra en effet à des chercheurs autorisés à intervenir pour modifier le texte déjà préparé, soit au niveau du contenu soit au niveau de la technologie perfectionnée, afin de le mettre à jour.2 Il s’agit, en somme, de préparer un texte numérisé qui permette la consultation, à des fins de recherche, à partir de catégories et de rubriques que l’équipe de travail aura arrêtées au préalable. Pendant la dernière semaine de juin 2004 l’ALC a organisé un séminaire en Italie, à Bellagio, auquel Kathleen Gyssels a participé avec notre ami regretté Antonio Benítez-Rojo, qui devait nous rejoindre au colloque de Lille-Kortrijk. Jean-Marc Moura a préparé un rapport, après consultation avec les spécialistes des projets numériques de la BNF, que j’ai pu présenter à Bellagio, en son absence. Il s’agissait de rationaliser les projets à entreprendre par l’ALC, pour ne pas empiéter sur ceux envisagés par la bibliothèque Gallica. En un mot, ce sont les textes historiques que la BNF a retenus, tandis que nous nous intéressons au fait littéraire. Au mois de juillet 2004 j’ai pu prendre contact avec la Bibliothèque Nationale Allemande, à Berlin. L’ALC compte coopérer également avec les bibliothèques des trois campus de l’Université des Indes Occidentales (UWI). Frances Salmon assure le lien entre ces bibliothèques et nous-mêmes. À court terme, les projets suivants ont été retenus par l’ALC au séminaire de Bellagio: • Un projet axé sur les Guyanes, animé par Wim Rutgers, de l’université d’Aruba, et Ronnie Severing, du Suriname; • Un projet jumelé entre l’Archivo General de Indias à Séville et l’Université de Porto Rico à Río Piedras, qui examine des relations de missionnaires espagnols au 16e siècle; • Un projet consacré à la poésie populaire de Louise Bennett, de la Jamaïque, centré sur les fonds de la bibliothèque universitaire de Mona; ce projet comprend aussi des éléments télévisuels; • Finalement, un projet, jumelé entre la Bibliothèque du Congrès et celle de mon université, qui préparera des éditions en TEI des cinq textes historiques de Exquemelin (ou Oexmelin), 2

On consultera, pour de plus amples renseignements, le site internet que voici: http://www.tei-c.org/Consortium/.

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qui ont paru en néerlandais, allemand, espagnol, anglais et français entre 1678 et 1686. Il s’agit de l’ancêtre de la tradition littéraire des pirates de la Caraïbe dans chacune de ces langues. C’est ce dernier projet qui retiendra notre attention. En 1678 l’éditeur Ten Hoorn a publié à Amsterdam un ouvrage intitulé De Americaensche Zee-Roovers [...].3 Nous savons depuis 1933 seulement que l’auteur était un Français, Alexandre Olivier Esquemelin, né à Honfleur en 1646.4 Fils d’un apothicaire apparenté à la famille d’Estrées, Alexandre Olivier fit ses études à Rouen, puis à Paris, au Collège de Lisieux, avant de passer quatre ans comme apprenti auprès du chirurgien Gérinier, rue Saint-André-des-Arts. Il a dû couper court à ses études de médicine en avril 1666 à cause de l’ordonnance royale qui interdisait aux Français Réformés de pratiquer la médecine. Son départ fatidique pour les Amériques quelques semaines plus tard fut donc décidé par une ordonnance royale, entre des centaines d’autres, dont l’intention fut de réduire les Réformés à la misère s’ils refusaient d’abjurer. Dans un texte d’étendue limitée, je dois supposer connus les principaux faits et gestes de la ContreRéforme. Ce sur quoi je m’étendrai, par contre, est l’éclairage que ces faits projettent sur le livre qui inaugura la tradition des flibustiers, aventuriers, et autres pirates de la Caraïbe. Qui ils furent, ce que représentèrent leurs activités et, littérairement parlant, le sens que ce livre a revêtu dans ses multiples avatars, selon la politique économique et la culture religieuse du pays où il fut édité. Comment un tel projet pourra-t-il servir à renouveler le comparatisme dans la Caraïbe et, plus généralement, aux Amériques à leur origine? La réponse à cette question est multiple et elle est surtout d’ordre méthodologique. Le post(-)colonialisme prône, à juste titre, l’appropriation et la re-signification de traditions préexistantes. Dans 3

A. O. Exquemelin. 1678. De Americaensche Zee-Roovers [...]. Amsterdam: Jan ten Hoorn. 4 M. Vrijman. 1933. ‘L’identité d’Exquemelin: les premières éditions de l’ “Histoire des Aventuriers”’ dans Bulletin de la section de géographie 48: 43-57; art. cit. dans Le Bris, Michel & Virginie Serna (eds). 2001. Pirates et flibustiers des Caraibes. Paris & Daoulas: Musée de la Marine/Abbaye de Daoulas (Hoëbeke): 11.

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la pratique, la théorie et la critique littéraires se sont penchées sur des faits littéraires relativement récents. Elles traitent le plus souvent d’une seule tradition linguistique et culturelle, en supposant sans le dire que les autres doivent ressembler à celle en question. Somme toute, nous avons pris l’habitude de nous référer à une tradition littéraire et culturelle que nous considérons comme stable et plus ou moins uniforme. Or les faits historiques sont là pour nous dire que ce sont là autant d’hypothèses fausses. La région que nous appelons la Caraïbe est née des luttes entre puissances européennes qui toutes convoitèrent la richesse du roi d’Espagne. Au 17e siècle, La Hollande et le Royaume-Uni avaient déjà rejoint le camp des Réformés. La France ellemême, à la majorité de Louis XIV, renouvelait sous une autre forme – moins militaire mais tout aussi répressive – les Guerres de Religion que l’on avait cru terminées à l’avènement au trône d’Henri IV. Pays officiellement catholique donc, une part importante de la colonisation des Amériques par la France – de l’Acadie au Brésil, en passant par la Floride et l’île de la Tortue, qui nous intéresse ici – fut le fait de seigneurs protestants, dont l’amiral Coligny. C’est précisément dans les années 1660 que tout bascula. De là à la promulgation du Code Noir en 1685 il s’agit d’expulser les Réformés des postes qu’ils avaient occupés dans les colonies d’Amérique. Le projet d’édition numérisée du livre d’Esquemelin (ou Exquemelin, ou Oexmelin, ou encore Esquemeling, toutes ces orthographes sont courantes) comprend un volet qui s’occupe du destinataire. Quel public est visé par l’éditeur? Le plus souvent ce sont les textes extradiégétiques qui nous le disent, à commencer par les notices des éditeurs-libraires eux-mêmes. L’éditeur Ten Hoorn ne nous dit pas autre chose que le narrateur à la 1ère personne: que c’est un Français qui a pratiqué la médecine comme chirurgien à bord de vaisseaux flibustiers vers la fin des années 1660 et au début des années 1670. L’édition de Nürnberg, en 1679, brouille déjà les cartes en reproduisant les initiales de l’auteur (A.O.) mais en taisant son nom.5 C’est là apparemment l’origine de la tradition en Allemagne et aux Pays-Bas que l’auteur fut 5

A. O. Exquemelin. 1679. Piratica America oder die Amerikanischen Seeräuber. Nürnberg: Christoph Riegels.

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un Hollandais du nom de Smeeks, lui aussi chirurgien ayant participé à la flibuste et qui a publié un livre chez le fils Ten Hoorn au début du 18e siècle. Le fichier de la Bibliothèque Nationale d’Allemagne nous dit encore aujourd’hui, au nom d’Exquemelin: “d[as] i[st] Hendrik Berendzoon Smeeks”. Cette confusion a continué pratiquement sans conteste jusqu’en 1933, quand le chercheur Vrijman a retrouvé le nom de Exquemelin dans le livre du guilde des chirurgiens d’Amsterdam. Il a fallu plus de 60 ans avant que cette découverte savante rejoigne la tradition populaire en France. L’édition en langue espagnole, éditée en 1681, nous assure que l’auteur est un Français, mais qui a lu cette édition, dont l’Espagne a refusé l’importation? L’éditeur londonien Crooke refuse de croire que l’auteur est français et il affirme péremptoirement, bien que sans preuves, qu’il devait être Flamand ou Hollandais.6 La situation de l’édition de Paris est plus ambiguë encore, le traducteur ayant tendance à se substituer à l’auteur pour des raisons que nous examinerons plus loin. A qui profitent ces confusions sur l’identité de l’auteur de notre livre? Dans tous les cas, nous pouvons avancer l’hypothèse qu’il s’agit de tirer la couverture à soi. Le destinataire des éditions en langue néerlandaise, allemande et anglaise est protestant; donc, il importait d’associer l’auteur du plus près possible à la politique coloniale des princes protestants du nord de l’Europe. Souvenons-nous qu’au moment des éditions dont nous parlons, il s’agit de littérature contemporaine et qui pouvait influencer la politique extérieure, notamment à l’égard de l’Espagne. L’éditeur londonien Malthus n’y va pas de main morte. Voici ce qu’il dit du livre et des activités des flibustiers: And here I cannot forbear putting the Reader in mind of God’s just Judgment upon the Spaniards for their inhumane usage of the poor and miserable Indians, and look upon our Country-men, how horrid soever some of their Actions may have been, as Instruments of the Divine Vengeance for the punishing those enormous Crimes, and unparallel’d Barbarities committed by that Nation upon a naked, defenceless sort of People, and whose only Crime in their Eyes was their Riches [...] And I must needs add, that how [...] real soever may be the Accusations of our Buccaniers Inhumanity and Barbarism, yet that they are but meer Infants, meer Novices in Cruelty, in comparison of the Spaniards, witness 6

A.O. Exquemelin, [John Esquemeling]. 1684. Bucaniers of America [...]. 2 vols. London: Wm. Crooke.

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all Relations of the American Conquests, which even all the Artifice of Priestcraft, and the plausible pretence of Religion has not been able to varnish over.7

Malthus prétend avoir travaillé à partir des éditions en langue néerlandaise et espagnole. Je le crois volontiers, car la notice que je viens de vous lire pourrait être le commentaire du frontispice allégorique qui a accompagné l’édition d’Amsterdam en 1678. Le livre nous promet le récit véridique et catégorique des actes cruels que les flibustiers anglais et français ont commis contre les Espagnols en Amérique. Deux figures allégoriques, à gauche et à droite du titre descriptif, nous renseignent sur l’attitude à prendre en lisant le livre. À gauche nous voyons un gentilhomme espagnol qui opprime littéralement un sauvage du pied, tandis que l’épée brandie lui prépare une fin expéditive. Les deux images à gauche, supérieures et inférieures à la gravure centrale, illustrent les cruautés pratiquées par les Espagnols contre les Indiens. En haut, des Espagnols dépècent un Indien et nourrissent leurs chiens de ses membres. En bas, des Indiens fuient l’attaque des Espagnols qui brûlent leurs maisons. Passons à la figure allégorique de droite, qui nous montre un flibustier vêtu plus sobrement et tenant à la main une épée plus sérieuse bien que moins élégante, qui a terrassé l’Espagnol de l’allégorie de gauche. En haut à droite nous voyons un Espagnol qu’on rôtit au tournebroche – la spécialité du flibustier dit Roch le Brésilien (en fait un Hollandais originaire de Groningue). En bas à droite un Espagnol se trouve supplicié à terre tandis que son compagnon est suspendu au gibet par les poignets. Le frontispice de l’édition d’Amsterdam, comme la notice de l’imprimeur londonien Malthus, nous dit que les Espagnols l’auront bien mérité. Sans le dire en toutes lettres, le frontispice suggèrent que les See-roovers ou flibustiers dont ce livre relate les faits et gestes, étaient protestants. Dans la mesure où nous pouvons vérifier leur identité, ils le furent. En ce qui concerne les Britanniques, ce furent en plus des dissidents de l’église anglicane.

7

A. O. Exquemelin, [J. Esquemeling]. 1684. The History of the Bucaniers [...]. London: Tho[mas] Malthus: f° 6-7.

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Que dire de la première édition en langue espagnole du livre d’Exquemelin, qui est censée avoir été imprimée à Colonia Agrippina, c’est-à-dire à Cologne, chez Struickmann?8 Notre collaborateur Ineke Phaf-Rheinberger n’a pu trouver un imprimeur du nom de Struickmann à Cologne à cette date. Qui plus est, quand Constant Wessem a donné à Anvers, en 1931, une ré-édition du texte néerlandais de 1678, il a affirmé que c’est à Amsterdam même, et chez Ten Hoorn, que la traduction en espagnol avait été imprimée. Le fait que les gravures de cette édition reproduisent celles de Ten Hoorn renforcent cette théorie. Mais quel serait le sens d’une telle supercherie? Les textes extradiégétiques, fort nombreux d’ailleurs, suggèrent une intention. Le poète Don Miguel de Barrios, ancien capitaine dans les armées du roi Très Catholique, a ajouté au texte, dédicacée au premier ministre de Charles II, un épigramme, un ‘Epilogue Harmonique’ qui déplore la perte de la Jamaïque aux Brittaniques et celle de La Tortue aux Français, ainsi qu’un poème de seize pages, écrit en octavos intitulé ‘DESCRIPCION / De las Islas del / MAR ATHLANTICO / y de/AMERICA’. Nous savons que Barrios était un converso.9 Ses textes signalent-ils la volonté de la communauté sépharade d’Amsterdam à s’accommoder avec le trône d’Espagne? On a pu établir le fait que le traducteur, le Dr. Alonso de Buena-Maison, avait fait sa médecine à Leyde avec Exquemelin au retour de celui-ci après le sac de Panama. Mais quant au destinataire précis, à l’intention duquel on a faussé l’orientation du texte d’Exquemelin, des pans de mystère subsistent. Qui croyait profiter de l’influence que ce livre pouvait avoir sur la cour d’Espagne, où il semble n’être jamais parvenu? Peut-être pourrons-nous percer ce mystère au cours de notre travail d’équipe. Quoi qu’il en soit, c’est la traduction en espagnol de 1681 qui a servi à l’imprimeur Crooke pour réaliser le texte anglais de 1684, d’où découle la tradition anglophone. J’ai cité plus haut un paragraphe de la notice de son concurrent Malthus, qui oriente les deux éditions anglophones de 1684 contre l’Espagne et en faveur de la flibuste britannique, soit tout le contraire de l’orientation du texte en espagnol. 8

A. O. Exquemelin. 1681. Piratas de la America [...] (tr. par le Dr. Alonso de Buena-Maison). Colonia Agrippina: L. Struickman. 9 Ineke Phaf-Rheinberger. 2004. Notes inédites du séminaire de Bellagio, 22-26 juin 2004, 8 p. (s.p.).

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Le dernier texte historique en date, l’édition parisienne de 1686, est aussi le plus ambigu et le plus éloigné du texte néerlandais d’origine.10 Michel le Bris a montré que notre auteur est rentré en France en 1684, sous la protection du conte d’Estrées, qu’il a abjuré la Réforme en l’église Saint-Germain-des-Prés le 23 septembre et qu’il a vécu en France jusqu’en janvier 1686.11 À cette date il a accompagné aux Antilles une vingtaine de huguenots de sa ville natale, qui fuyait les dragonnades. À partir de là mon hypothèse de travail diffère des conclusions de Michel le Bris. Celui-ci croit que l’abondante matière de la première partie du livre intitulé Histoire des aventuriers qui se sont signalez dans les Indes […] est le fait d’Exquemelin lui-même, dont le récit – commun à toutes les éditions antérieures – ne commence qu’à la deuxième partie. Le Bris croit aussi qu’Exquemelin n’a fait qu’accompagner en exil des gens de son pays, Honfleur, dont il ne partageait plus les convictions religieuses. On peut en douter. La révocation de l’Édit de Nantes date d’octobre 1685. Moins de trois mois plus tard, Exquemelin aura quitté la France, laissant les préparatifs de la première édition de son livre entre les mains d’un partisan zélé de la Contre-Réforme, Jean de Frontignières. Que l’auteur ait ou non préparé le manuscrit, nous savons que c’est le traducteur de l’édition en langue espagnole – ainsi que M. de Frontignières se désigne – qui orienta vers un public catholique et colonisateur un texte qui avait été conçu dans une perspective anti-catholique et frondeuse. Ce dernier s’était illustré dans la lutte contre les Calvinistes en donnant, en 1684, une édition du petit ouvrage que Saint Vincent de Lérins avait dirigé contre les Pseudo-Pélagiens du Xe siècle. Les Pseudo-Pélagiens ne posant plus de grande menace à Paris, l’objet théologique de cette réédition ne saurait être en doute.12

10

A. O. Exquemelin [Alexandre Olivier Oexmelin]. 1686. Histoire des aventuriers qui se sont signalez dans les Indes […] (tr. M. de Frontignières). 2 vols. Paris: Jacques Le Febvre. 11 Michel LeBris. 1996. ‘Chirurgien de la flibuste’ dans Oexmelin, A.O. Les Flibustiers du Nouveau Monde. Paris: Phébus: 21-22. 12 Vincent de Lérins? 1684. Avertissements de Vincent de Lérins, touchant l’antiquité et l’universalité de la foy catholique […] (tr. [J.] de Frontignières). Paris: C. Journel, 1684.

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Ce qui différencie la première édition de Paris de toutes les éditions antérieures fut son intention d’appuyer les efforts de la Compagnie des Indes Occidentales, qui renouvelait ses efforts à l’île de La Tortue, en vue de la création de la colonie de Saint-Domingue. Celleci n’existerait officiellement qu’après le traité de Ryswick, 1697, par lequel la France allait recevoir la partie occidentale de l’île d’Hispaniola contre le retour à l’Espagne de Barcelone. Que la centaine de pages de la nouvelle première partie du livre fussent l’œuvre de Exquemelin, comme le croit Michel le Bris, ou qu’elles aient été assemblées et organisées à partir des récits de multiples voyageurs, comme le prétend le traducteur, le résultat est identique. L’édition de l’Histoire des aventuriers qui se sont signalez dans les Indes [...] qu’a donnée le libraire Jacques Le Febvre avec une dédicace à Monsieur, frère du roi, vise un destinataire assez précis: les nobles fortunés et autres aventuriers qui allaient participer à la colonisation de SaintDomingue. Dans cette perspective, il fallait rejeter au second plan l’auteur – huguenot abjuré sans doute, mais qui sentait le fagot – au bénéfice du fidèle serviteur du roi qu’était le traducteur. La même logique obligeait de masquer ce nom – Exquemelin ou Esquemelin – trop flamand, donc trop près des huguenots concentrés autour des ports du nord et de l’ouest. Dans son propre pays il deviendrait Oexmelin et échapperait ainsi à tout soupçon de calvinisme. ContreRéforme oblige. J’ai évoqué tout à l’heure le Code Noir, qui remonte aux années 1667 et à la répression des Réformés. L’édition de 1687 est contemporain de la révocation de l’Édit de Nantes et des préparatifs de la première édition française du livre d’Exquemelin. Dans l’esprit qui guide nos recherches actuelles, ces trois textes relèvent d’une seule et même politique royale. Le texte du Code Noir “enregistré en Conseil souverain de Saint Domingue, le 6 mai 1687” consacre ses neuf premiers articles, soit trente-quatre pages du texte, à l’exécution – dans “les Isles de l’Amérique Françoise” – de la politique de la ContreRéforme.13 Le premier article, au nom du roi, déclare à la première personne et au nom du roi: “enjoignons [...] de chasser hors de nos 13

1687. Le Code noir, […] Touchant la Police des Isles de l’Amérique Françoise [...]. Saint Domingue: Conseil municipal.

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Isles tous les Juifs [...]”. Les articles 2 à 4 se concernent avec le baptême des esclaves dans la seule religion catholique et romaine. À l’article 5 on lit: “Défendons à nos sujets de la Religion prétendue réformée d’apporter aucun trouble ni empêchement à nos autres sujets, même à leurs esclaves [...] à peine de punition exemplaire”. Et, à l’article 8, “Déclarons nos sujets, qui ne sont pas de la Religion Catholique, Apostolique & Romaine, incapables de contracter à l’avenir aucun mariage valable. Déclarons bâtards les enfans qui naîtront de telle conjonction [...]”. D’autres articles sont de la même trempe. La présentation de notre projet lors du colloque de Lille-Kortrijk dans le cadre d’une séance consacrée à de nombreux travaux en cours, n’a pas permis de contraster comme il le faudrait ce qui différencie les deux éditions d’Exquemelin réalisées à Londres en 1684 de celui de Paris, 1686. Entre autres, le rôle de Morgan – héros pour les Britanniques, traître pour les Français – correspond à la politique coloniale et à la culture religieuse des deux pays à l’époque. Nous ne pouvons qu’esquisser ici les orientations fort différentes des éditions de notre auteur, orientations que l’usager de nos éditions numériques pourra étudier à loisir. Parmi les tâches qui attendent notre équipe à l’ALC, se trouve celle d’établir des catégories qui permettront à l’utilisateur éventuel d’interroger les textes afin de faire ressortir les contrastes, parfois très frappants, qui les caractérisent.

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Intra- and Intersystemic Relations in the Caribbean: A Research Project1 Lieven D’hulst Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Campus Kortrijk This paper deals with three types of literary relations that occur in 20th century Caribbean literature, i.e. intercaribbean relations between Francophone and metropolitan literatures, intracaribbean relations between Francophone and other Europhone Caribbean literatures, as well as relations between the two former types of relations. The main hypothesis is that these relations are mutually determined and that the understanding of their content and evolution should take into account the varying cultural constraints exerted on Caribbean literature and culture. Systems theory (I. EvenZohar) offers a model for such an understanding, both from a theoretical and a historiographical viewpoint.

Relations This paper deals with three types of literary relations that occur in Caribbean literature, i.e. intercaribbean relations between Francophone and metropolitan literatures, intracaribbean relations between Francophone and other Europhone Caribbean literatures, as well as 1

This project is funded by the Research Foundation–Flanders and is carried out together with Nadia Lie and Liesbeth De Bleeker, at the University of Leuven (20032006). See also their contributions in this volume, and Lieven D’hulst. 2003. ‘Comment aborder l’étude des relations interlittéraires caribéennes?’ in Delbecque, Nicole, Nadia Lie & Brigitte Adriaensen (eds). Federico García Lorca y otros temas literarios del mundo hispánico. Leuven: Leuven University Press: 551-561; Lieven D’hulst & Liesbeth De Bleeker. 2005. ‘From “Habitation” to “En-Ville”: The play with European models of space in the French Caribbean novel (Zobel and Chamoiseau)’ in The European Review 13(2): 271-282. (An earlier and less elaborated study of the present topic has been published in electronic form: 2005. ‘Interliterary Relations in the Caribbean: A Major Issue?’ in Courtman, Sandra (ed.). The Society for Caribbean Studies Annual Conference Papers. Vol. 4: 1471-2024, http://www.scsonline.freeserve.co.uk/carib.htm).

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relations between the two former types of relations. Given that the Caribbean space seems to be characterized by a high degree of relationality in more than one cultural domain, it may come as a surprise that the study of literary relations has not always received the attention it would deserve. One might wonder whether this is caused by the fact that the methodologies designed for investigating the relations between socalled monolingual literatures are unable to cope with the complexities of literary relations in an area such as the Caribbean space. In the Caribbean, as is conspicuously illustrated by numerous migrant authors, literatures do not match linguistic or geopolitical borders and do not even coincide with the Caribbean space as such. If our assumption is right, it does not make much sense to consider literatures straightforwardly in the usual way, i.e. as highly institutionalized practices with clear borders. Neither does it make much sense to treat one-toone relations between literatures separately, along the formula X and Y, which is well known among European comparatists. In fact, this remark holds for most literatures, the European included: think of diglossic or multilingual literatures such as Belgian or Swiss literatures; think of subsystems of national literatures more invested than other subsystems by translated repertoires such as science-fiction or children’s literature in Dutch literature; think also of literatures that cover more than one geopolitical space, such as French literature during the Classical period (when it had spread over large parts of Europe). A logical step would be to shift our focus away from the source and target poles towards the relations between them. Let us assume, then, that relations applies to a process of contacts that changes in time with respect to its degrees and functions; a process that includes the main parameters of communication processes (e.g. writers and readers, texts and underlying models), as well as the larger constructs to which the latter belong (e.g. genres, movements, literatures...). A process, that also encompasses literary relationality as part of an even broader process. Of course, there is no unbiased supracultural or transcultural point of view from which literary relations in general and literary relations in the Caribbean or in any other region of the world can be ap-

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proached. Every point of view, be it authorial, critical or theoretical, is historically rooted in specific cognitive and institutional structures and in specific types of discourse. Relations generally receive different meanings and values during colonial and postcolonial periods. They may be considered vectors of an intertextual and intercultural openness but also as expressions of geopolitical or geocultural hierarchies and dominance strategies. They are moreover shaped by narrative and poetry as much as by interviews, essays and scholarly writings. And yet, one must face the fact that the assumptions about the content or relevance of such a concept (or of Caribbean itself) are far from explicit, even in those research activities that advocate a comparative approach towards literatures and cultures. What is lacking at this point is a metahistoriographical analysis of the ways in which writers, scholars and critics have constructed relationality while trying to understand and formalize interliterary and intercultural relations in the Caribbean space. In what follows, I will try to come to a more elaborated idea of literary relationality, fully realizing, however, that this is only one preliminary step in a longer research process that encompasses both theory and historical description. Conflicting Viewpoints In a recent interview,2 the Martinican novelist Raphael Confiant recalls that literary relations within the Caribbean are controlled by European, and particularly French, institutional and discursive channels: Nous Antillais, nous sommes complètement isolés par rapport à la littérature des pays qui nous entourent. Nous sommes complètement tournés vers l’Europe, et je connais mieux Sciascia, Tabucchi, Gadda ou Eco – pour citer des auteurs italiens – que les auteurs mexicains ou colombiens […] Nous n’avons même pas de contacts directs avec nos amis les écrivains de la Caraïbe. Pensez que nous ne sommes pas traduits en espagnol ou en portugais […]. Cela dépend selon moi des maisons d’édition, qui s’occupent de la promotion du livre au niveau de la traduction.3 2 Francesca Torchi. Autumn 2004. ‘Un aperçu du roman créole. Entretiens avec Raphaël Confiant et Manuel Norvat’ in Francofonia 47: 119-133. 3 Torchi 2004: 123-124.

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Accordingly, it would seem that, at least with respect to the contemporary French Caribbean, direct contacts (between authors, critics, readers), as well as indirect contacts with surrounding literatures and cultures (by means of translation and other modes of intertextual transfer) are not as common as they were during, and shortly after, the négritude period. At first sight, the historical and institutional context of literary production in the Caribbean, and of intracaribbean literary relations, seems to have profoundly changed, although we have to admit that a detailed analysis of these relations is still lacking. On the other hand, since the 1960’s, contemporary critical discourse on the Caribbean has also tended to emphasize dynamic contacts, shared poetics and world visions, as illustrated by Alejo Carpentier, Édouard Glissant, Román de la Campa, Silvio Torres-Saillant, Antonio Benítez-Rojo and many others. Since it possesses its own dynamics and aesthetic and ideological functions, critical discourse does not only have a descriptive function with regard to literary works and interliterary relations. Even when encompassing interliterary relations, the views expressed by critics often cover a larger number of cultural phenomena. Benítez-Rojo, for instance, in his La isla que se repite,4 finds common ground in social features (plantation societies), cultural features (histories) and discursive or behavioral features (such as rhythm). The same holds – to a certain extent at least – for those who advocate creolisation and see it as a major tool for blending cultures and literatures. Critical discourse, to put it differently, may help to mould cultural relationality, and may simultaneously turn it into an object of observation. When critical discourse becomes the object of the narrator’s or character’s voice, it may feed the topoi of the literary repertoire as well. A recent example of reciprocal echoing can be found in Daniel Maximin’s childhood story Tu, c’est l’enfance5 and in his essay Les fruits du cyclone: une géopoétique de la Caraïbe.6 They help to understand how the interplay between literary discourse and 4 Antonio Benítez-Rojo. 1989. La isla que se repite: el Caribe y la perspectiva posmoderna. Hanover, New Hampshire: Ediciones del Norte. 5 Daniel Maximin. 2004. Tu, c’est l’enfance. Paris: Gallimard. 6 Daniel Maximin. 2006. Les fruits du cyclone: une géopoétique de la Caraïbe. Paris: Seuil.

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discourse on literature, often via metaphorical mappings, produces new concepts; in the longer run, the latter may even be moulded into argumentation structures and even into new theories, such as the ones referred to. The seeming paradox makes us wonder how researchers should approach contacts between literary repertoires as existing cultural artifacts that are understood in quite a number of different ways by actual members of communities. One must confess that tentative answers are at least partially hampered by the fact that the material is not always available,7 that bibliographies are incomplete and that descriptive research on larger corpora is still underdeveloped. As a consequence, more often than not – and this contribution undoubtedly fails to overcome this deficiency as well – the analysis of isolated examples is presented as a synecdoche of the supposed attitudes of larger communities of writers, critics and readers, as if the researcher’s task consists of finding the exact balance between shared features and the singularities of each island, between the recognition of intercultural and interliterary communities and the preservation of the idea of “national specificities”: The demonstration of the richness of this interculturalism between Caribbean islands does not mean erasing the very national specificities which sustain this richness. Being Haitian or Puerto Rican is not the same as being Cuban […] The folklore of each island and the language spoken on each island (whether Creole or not, bilingual or diglot) provide their own measure of singularity.8

Such conflicting viewpoints do not define relations in the same way (contacts or parallels), they do not accept the same degree of relationality (low vs. high) and they do not necessarily refer to the same objects (literature vs. culture). Is it because literary caribeanness is less visible or weaker than other forms of Caribbean identity, that would offer sufficient ground for a truly interdisciplinary approach (music, social geography, gender and social relations, to name but a few)? 7

See the contribution by James Arnold in this volume. Régis Antoine. 1999. ‘The Caribbean: A Multirelational Literary Domain’ in Haigh, Sam (ed.). An Introduction to Caribbean Francophone Writing: Guadeloupe and Martinique. Oxford & New York: Berg: 203. 8

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Whatever the answers are, the coexistence of conflicting viewpoints should not tempt us to return to the more traditional approaches, with their focus on separate languages, genres, themes, authors, critics, texts, etc.9 One of the first things needed is a theoretical frame that helps us to chart the network structure of literary relations. In what follows, a short outline will be given of a candidate frame. Research Procedures Systems theory offers a model for relational thinking in translation studies and in culture research in general. To quote Itamar EvenZohar, the founding father of the so-called polysystem theory: […] the positivistic collection of data, taken bona fide on empiricist grounds and analyzed on the basis of their material substance, has been replaced by a functional approach based on the analysis of relations. Viewing them as systems, i.e., as networks of relations that can be hypothesized for a certain set of assumed observables (‘occurrences’/’phenomena’), made it possible to hypothesize how the various socio-semiotic aggregates operate.10

Such an approach would imply the replacement of an either/either approach by a when/how approach. We had better not start from a priori assumptions about the homogeneity and high relationality of the Caribbean space or about its heterogeneity and low relationality. Instead, we should start from the assumption that it is possible to reconstruct types, contents and degrees of relations on a diachronical axis. When, and under which historical circumstances, did the idea of Caribbean literary relations emerge? How did it materialize in different literary and critical traditions? How did it change and under which constraints? Let us take a closer look. The first property of a system is the latent or overt tension between its constituent strata. Each system has a number of central and peripheral strata, strata being general labels for 9

A perspective recently sketched in a critical overview of current PhD-research on 20th century French and Francophone literatures (Jean-Yves Guérin. JanuaryMarch 2005. ‘La recherche sur le vingtième siècle’ in Revue d’histoire littéraire de la France 1: 3-9). 10 Itamar Even-Zohar. 2005. Papers in Culture Research: 40. http://www.tau. ac.il/~itamarez/works/books/EZ-CR-2005.pdf. (Accessed 17 May 2006.)

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repertoires of different shape and type (genres, macrostructural and microstructural devices): It is the permanent tension between the various strata which constitutes the (dynamic) synchronic state of the system. It is the prevalence of one set of systemic options over another which constitutes the change on the diachronic axis. In this centrifugal vs. centripetal motion, systemic options may be driven from a central position to a marginal one while others may be pushed into the center and prevail.11

These tensions, which change the positions of the several strata, are often caused by the unequal status of the latter. Dominant groups tend to canonize specific strata and to push others towards the margins of the system. If these groups resist renewal or change, however, they may loose their positions in favour of different, often lower ranked, strata, which are supported by other groups of writers and critics. The second property of systems, i.e. relationality, results from the first one. Tensions between strata qualify different types of relations between them. Historical analysis has shown that the type of relation depends on the type of system. As long as the idea of a unified literary system prevails and is steered by a number of constraints (e.g. a center-periphery hierarchy, centrally controlled procedures of canonization and of allocation of genres and writing techniques), the relations between the several strata can be defined as intrasystemic relations, i.e. relations between the strata of a single system. More often than not, the concept of system and the resulting relations are supported by political and/or institutional factors, which may also link the literary system with other cultural systems of that community. For instance, from the 17th up to the early 20th century, the Francophone literature that was produced or distributed in the Caribbean was predominantly conceived as a literary province of French literature (the Antilles françaises). Consequently, it hardly benefited from endogenous institutional structures and it generated lower ranked genres (travel literature, epistolary novels and short prose, short lyrical poetry, etc.) that were largely modeled on metropolitan literature. Yet, these genres simultaneously qualified as members of a subsystem and 11

Even-Zohar 2005: 44.

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this made contacts and exchanges between them possible. A limited number of endogenous repertoire elements (linguistic, textual, historical), even though they were hardly foregrounded, were thus shared by literary and non-literary subgenres.12 With respect to contemporary literature, we can say that French literary institutions continue to exert a strong control on the literary traffic between the French Caribbean and Europe. Only a limited number of authors gain access to the major publishing houses, are being reviewed in literary journals and receive prices and other rewards.13 Few occurrences of creolized literary language or hybridized literary forms are considered to be tokens of a Caribbean niche within the French literary system.14 When the system changes (i.e. when the constraints that determine the positions and functions within the system can no longer control its peripherical strata), relations with other systems may very well expand. This does not mean, however, that they necessarily supersede intrasystemic relations. It should also be mentioned that the functions of intersystemic relations are in fact quite similar to the functions of intrasystemic relations, since peripheral strata within a single system and relations with exogenous systems both try to challenge the dominant strata in order to change or replace the repertoires of the latter. More than once, modern Francophone literature belonging to the Caribbean has strengthened its relations with neighbouring literatures, striving for more autonomy vis-à-vis the French metropole. This applies, for instance, to the Latin American narrative that functioned as a model in the 50’s and 60’s and to its effects on the Francophone novel and on writers such as Jacques Stephen Alexis or Jacques Roumain. Despite the many translations, Caribbean literature 12

Once again, it should be remembered en passant that the history of this intricate process of intrasystemic relations has not yet been fully written. 13 No Caribbean author has so far been elected in the French Academy, unlike writers from other Francophone areas, such as the Algerian Assia Djebar. 14 On techniques to study the relations with other Francophone and nonFrancophone subsystems, see a.o. Pierre Halen. 2003. ‘Le “système littéraire francophone”: quelques réflexions complémentaires’ in D’hulst, Lieven & Jean-Marc Moura (eds). Les études littéraires francophones: état des lieux. Lille: Collection UL3: 2537.

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was rarely isolated from Latin American literatures. In addition, most translations were produced and published in France,15 probably due to the exogenous institutional embeddings of interliterary contacts. By contrast, contacts with lower literary strata (e.g. creole literature), most likely led to more autonomy. In these cases, transfer procedures covered both translations and interference on microstructural (register) and macrostructural levels (genre and medium, esp. orality). Moreover, these procedures became gradually supported within the Caribbean space itself, in view of the intrasystemic promotion of creole literature. Intersystemic relations may also try to challenge the position of the system within a larger framework that is known as the polysystem or macrosystem. Literature, photography, art, music, architecture and other cultural practices are variably interrelated systems within a given community. This means that, when their respective borders weaken, it is possible for them to exchange parts of their repertoires and to come to share beliefs about a common cultural system. In addition, all these practices may interrelate with their counterparts produced by different communities, such as other geopolitical and/or linguistic communities of the Caribbean. One could, for instance, think of the international spread of the negritude movement by means of literary translations and interartistic transpositions (such as the illustrations by Wilfredo Lam accompanying the 1943 translation of Aimé Césaire’s Cahier d’un retour au pays natal). More recently, the creolity movement is another example of such a tendency, with stronger institutional support, like the one provided by the Institut martiniquais d’études founded by Édoudard Glissant in 1967. Similarly, scholarly societies like the Society for Caribbean studies or Internet resources like the Virtual Institute of Caribbean Studies (VICS) have come to support the idea of a more or less unified Caribbean space. Even the physical migration of authors and artists and the adoption of new languages and literary or artistic devices do not always prevent authors, painters or critics from adhering to Caribbean culture. 15

Laurence Malingret. 2002. Stratégies de traduction: les lettres hispaniques en langue française. Arras: Artois Presses Université.

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Contemporary literature in the French Caribbean can be seen as exemplifying the latter evolution. It has tried to become part of a larger network of interfering systems that do not belong to a single community characterized by the same language or by institutional borders. Genres such as autobiography and autofiction, for instance, borrow from historical discourses (memories, testimonies and the like). This also holds for the relations between narrative and disciplines such as geocultural studies,16 and cultural anthropology.17 These relations contribute to the creation of an ambivalent or hybrid space between writing practices that belong to different systems, giving birth to particular devices such as polyphonic narrative and the development of plurilingualism. Such forms of growing interactivity coexist and sometimes supersede intrasystemic relations of the former type, i.e. the relations that were limited to the model of a unified system. And yet, the strength of the relations between systems is rarely identical. It seems that interliterary relations, mediated by means of translation and often depending on exogenous institutions, are nowadays less developed than intermusical, intergeocultural or intersocial relations. This may also imply that, within the concept of a strongly interconnecting Caribbean space, literature may have become a less central system in comparison with other cultural practices. In conclusion, the bottom line of our hypothesis is that repertoires are interconnected on many all levels, intrasystemic as well as intersystemic, and that an understanding of their contents and functions goes hand in hand with the understanding of the processes that underpin the relations between them. The main question, it seems, is no longer whether we should study relations in the Caribbean, but how we should study them in a diachronical perspective. When faced with this task, one might easily privilege small-scale interdisciplinary research programmes, with limited but precise goals.18 This could be a good 16

As exemplified in Patrick Chamoiseau. 1992. Texaco. Paris: Gallimard. See Édouard Glissant. 1995. Tout-Monde. Paris: Gallimard. 18 For a study on translations within the Caribbean, see Lieven D’hulst. 2005. ‘Les fonctions littéraires de la traduction intratextuelle: l’exemple des littératures francophones’ in Clavaron, Yves & Bernard Dieterle (eds). Métissages littéraires. 17

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way to help us to overcome the shortcomings of well-known intradisciplinary approaches and the study of rather fortuitous parallels between different cultural domains and practices.

Actes du XXXIIe Congrès de la Société Française de Littérature Générale et Comparée. Saint-Étienne: Publications de l’Université de Saint-Étienne: 353-361.

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Revolutionary Self-Fashioning: Rewriting Strategies in the Cuban Magazine Casa de las Américas (1989-1999) Nadia Lie Katholieke Universiteit Leuven As one of the leading Latin American magazines in the nineteen sixties, Casa de las Américas turned to a concept of Caribbean cultural identity in the nineteen seventies and eighties. This article looks at what happens in the succeeding decade, in which the magazine implictly drops the idea of Caribbean unity. Critics hold that this period is characterized by a gap between literary criticism, supposedly struck by ideological blindness and stagnation, and literary values in Cuba, that underwent a remarkable renewal. However, a discursive analysis of the articles published in the magazine shows that literary criticism followed international trends allowing an implicit revision of the cultural orthodoxy, very much in line with the transformation of literary models. The position taken in by Roberto Fernández Retamar, the director of the magazine, exemplifies the fundamentally ambivalent stance of a generation of organic intellectuals regarding these transformations. This stance is set in the context of the more general discourse on intellectuals since the beginning of the Cuban Revolution.

In the 1990’s, the Cuban literary field is said to have been characterized by a gap between writers and literary critics. Whereas literature went through a remarkable renewal, leading to a kind of boom,1 literary criticism on the island supposedly suffered from stagnation and ideological blindness with respect to this transformation.2 As can be deduced from an article by Zurbano Torres published in 1999, the Cuban literary critic Roberto Fernández Retamar occupies 1 Janett Reinstädler & Ottmar Ette (eds). 2000. Todas las islas la isla. Nuevas y novísimas tendencias en la literatura y cultura de Cuba. Madrid & Frankfurt am Main: Iberoamericana/Vervuert: 7. 2 Víctor Fowler. April-June 1999. ‘La tarea del poeta y su lenguaje en la poesía cubana reciente’ in Casa de las Américas 215: 19; Roberto Zurbano Torres. AprilJune 1999. ‘La crítica literaria cubana: hacia una búsqueda de sí y de la(s) poética(s) del fin de siglo’ in Casa de las Américas 215: 37.

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a double position in this context. On the one hand, the renewal of literature implied not only the creation of new values, but also the critical revision of orthodox literary aesthetics as it was forged in the 1970’s by intellectuals such as Retamar. On the other hand, the magazine Casa de las Américas, which is basically Retamar’s spiritual child,3 is listed by the same Zurbano in a series of publications that might have been an interesting source of inspiration for a new literary criticism on the island. If only Cuban critics would have paid more attention to this magazine, they would have been better prepared at their task, so Zurbano argues.4 Fernández Retamar then is both linked to the old guard of revolutionary dogmatism, as well as to the desirable theoretical approaches the new aesthetics seems to beg for. Seen in this light, he is both old and young. In this contribution, I would like to take a closer look at this supposedly ambiguous position by studying the discourse of Casa de las Américas as it travels through the nineties. More precisely I will focus on the magazine in the period of the ten years that run from the 30th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution to the 40th, i.e. from 1989 till 1999. For those who are not familiar with the magazine, let me briefly recall that Casa was founded in 1960 and was at the centre of ideological and artistic debates in the 1960’s, when Julio Cortázar and Mario Vargas Llosa belonged to its editorial board and first-rate Latin American critics such as Angel Rama intensely collaborated with it. The magazine lost its appeal in the years surrounding the well known Padilla affair (1971), after which the editorial board was dissolved and Retamar stayed on as its sole director. This incident shows how profoundly events and discussions on the Cuban scene have an impact on what is supposed to be mainly a Latin American, international publication. For this reason, I will start with an analysis of the comments on Cuban literature in the magazine, and then proceed to its discourse on (Latin American) literary theory. In a third point I will show how the two discourses intertwine. 3 The magazine was directed by Antón Arrufat during the first 5 years. For a detailed study of this period, see Nadia Lie. 1996. Transición y transacción. La revista cubana ‘Casa de las Américas’ (1960-1976). Gaithersburg, Md. & Leuven: Ed. Hispamérica & Leuven University Press. 4 Zurbano Torres 1999: 39-40.

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Cuban Literary Criticism A first important observation to be made is that Cuban literature is definitely not ignored by the magazine, as the general assumption about the existence of a gap between writers and critics in Cuba might lead us to expect. From the first issue of 1989 onwards, the rise of a new generation of writers is registered by a foreign visitor, the Uruguayan critic Hugo Achugar, whose testimony is published extensively in the section ‘Al Pie de la Letra’.5 At the end of the period, Casa even dedicates an entire issue (N° 215) to the new Cuban literature. The appearance of this new literature in the pages of Casa de las Américas, however, might have been influenced by a change at the head of the magazine: from 1989 until 1991 the young writer Arturo Arango, one of the representatives of the new literature, takes over the magazine. Retamar introduces Arango to his readers in a short note, and presents the change as a logical one, since he had himself been promoted to president of the institution. The article by Hugo Achugar, however, makes mention of similar changes in other organisms that all point at a liberalization of cultural politics. The fact that this commentary is made by a foreign visitor to Cuba, and not by the magazine itself, shows the still delicate nature of the transformation. On the other hand, the use of eye-witness reports in the section ‘Al Pie de La Letra – which summarizes articles published elsewhere – in order to comment safely on shifts in Cuban politics is a strategy familiar to readers of Casa.6 The liberalization, also present in the official call at the IVth Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) in 1989 that more ‘intellectual courage’ (audacia intelectual) is needed, goes hand in hand with the so-called “rectificación” of former mistakes in cultural politics.7 The term “Quinquenio Gris” (1970-1975), coined by Ambrosio Fornet in a footnote of an article published in Casa de las Américas in 1987,8 widely circulates in texts on Cuban literature as a 5

1989. ‘Achugar en busca de Las Iniciales’ in Casa de las Américas 172-173: 145-147. 6 Lie 1996: 189 et passim. 7 Casa de las Américas 181: 96. 8 Ambrosio Fornet. 1987. ‘A propósito de Las Iniciales de la Tierra’ in Casa de las Américas 164: 148-153.

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self-critical meditation on what went wrong in the seventies. And even after Arturo Arango is replaced again by Retamar in 1991, new topics in literary criticism on Cuban authors continue to see the light: homosexuality, religion and catholicism, the baroque, cosmopolitanism, urban (especially Havana) culture. The removal of Arango from the direction of Casa de las Américas occurred in the context of a return to a more repressive climate, which was a reaction to the presentation and rapid removal of the very critical film Alicia en el pueblo de Maravillas (1991) in Cuban cinemas. Nevertheless, the discourse on Cuban literature in Casa had changed and continued to do so, though in more subtle and imperceptible ways. Ambrosio Fornet, for instance, continues to appear in the pages of Casa with ironic remarks on his reception in the Cuban Academy (CA, 207), or with lucid analyses of the representation of historical time in the Cuban novel (CA, 191). A relative delay in the publication of texts on controversial authors such as Jesús Díaz9 or Luis Manuel García is noticeable, but it would be incorrect to say that this alone testifies to the more repressive climate surrounding the magazine. A more appropriate word to qualify the magazine’s politics in these years would be prudencia (‘caution’), as opposed to the former audacia of the Arango period. Whereas in the Arango period the magazine was not afraid to put questions about dissident writers to Cuban interviewees, or to allot space to a polemic on the baroque, or even to ironize on the seriousness of canonized texts and critics by adorning them with frivolous illustrations,10 Casa now integrates critical comments in more indirect ways. An example is the ending of an article on Habanecer by Luis Manuel García, which runs as follows:11 And now comes a page of very confused writing, though decipherable if I really try, in which appears the thesis of the ‘writer-outsider’ (escritor outsider), who 9

‘Jesús Díaz y la interrogación’ (Casa de las Américas 182) by Francisco López Sacha was written in 1988 and published in 1991. 10 Officially, an incident produced by one of this illustrations led to the removal of Arango at the head of Casa: he was accused of having portrayed a well-known critic under the guise of a clown in one of the issues of Casa. 11 Another example is the way in which Ambrosio Fornet reminds his readers, through a footnote, that not everybody shares his definition of the “Cuban revolutionary novel” as written by authors who live in Cuba (Casa de las Américas 196: 12).

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is not a writer representative of his country, nor of an ideology, nor of an idea of literature, in short, who is the most horrible thing that can happen to your neighbour’s son, and there are also some lines left on history as a collective theme, the human being as a theme of the navel [NL: egocentric theme], if you can speak about navel in this context, and passion, which is the only thing that matters. But no. I will stop here, because working makes us tired, and I already have more pages than I should have, and besides, I see that ‘Havana time’ is falling [habanece – word play]. (Ahora viene una página de letra confusísima, aunque descifrable si me esmero, donde aparece la tesis del escritor outsider, que no es un escritor representante de su país, ni de una ideología, ni de una idea de la literatura, en fin, que es lo más horrible que le puede pasar a cualquier hijo de vecino, y también quedan unas cuantas líneas sobre la historia como tema colectivo, el hombre como tema del ombligo, si es que ahí dice ombligo, y la pasión que es lo único que vale la pena. Pero no. Termino aquí mismo, que trabajar cansa, y ya estoy pasado de cuartillas, y además, noto que habanece).12

The notion of the “escritor outsider” in the quotation and the definition of the phenomenon is symptomatic for what occurs in these same years at a more profound discursive level, behind the rereading of authors and appearance of new topics and names. I am referring to the opening up of a third space within Cuban cultural discourse, or at least the attempt to do so. Cuban cultural discourse has always structured itself according to the famous adagium Fidel Castro formulated in 1961 in his landmark speech on the intellectuals in Cuba: “Dentro de la Revolución, todo, contra la revolución, nada”: ‘Within the Revolution: everything; against the revolution: nothing’.13 The fact that a non-exclusive opposition was made through the two prepositions (dentro/contra, instead of dentro/fuera, or a favor/en contra) has largely escaped attention, but in my view it was related to another passage in Castro’s speech. Intellectuals were classified by him according to three categories: the revolutionary, the counterrevolutionary and the non-revolutionary. There was no binary structure, then, but a threefold one, or – one could say that inside the Revolution might represent two positions: one completely identifying with the 12

Reinaldo Montero. July-September 1994. ‘De La Habana y su crónica’ in Casa de las Américas 196: 128. 13 Fidel Castro Ruiz. 1991 [1961]. Palabras a los intelectuales. La Habana: Biblioteca Nacional José Martí.

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regime; the other one more aloof of the ideological project. Castro explicitly stated that the first category represented only 1% of all creators, so that most of them were non-revolutionary and should receive enough space to create. This intermediate position also allowed foreign left-wing intellectuals (such as Sartre) to occupy the position of fellow-travellers. However, even before the outburst of the Padilla affair, the end of the 1960’s shows the silent restriction of the three discursive possibilities to a two-fold model. From 1969 onwards the message is that he or she who is not clearly in favour of the revolution, is automatically against it, and so an enemy. At the same time, the notion of the fellow-traveller disappears from Cuban discourse. Publications such as Casa either close down or reread their own discourse in a conformist (revisionist) light in order to demonstrate their unflinching orthodoxy. What one sees in the decade of the nineteen nineties in texts on Cuba and on more general topics (such as socialism or homosexuality) is an almost systematic critique of binary oppositions of several kinds, though the word revolutionary itself is rarely used in these contexts. González Roy, for instance, deconstructs the opposition between individual/society in a text critical of bureaucratism (CA, 178), Emilio Bejel questions the borderlines between homosexuals and heterosexuals in Cuba and beyond (CA, 196), Fornet queries the chronological distinction between those who write before or after the revolution (CA, 191), Pablo Armando Fernández relativizes the difference between the EEUU and Cuba (the outside and the inside),14 Fernando Ainsa interrogates the limits between history and fiction (CA, 202), John Beverley uses the notion of casta to show how the converso Rojas occupied an intermediate position in the Spain of the Inquisition (CA, 178), and so on. In all these cases, the principal target is the rigid binary oppositions that had characterized the discourse on Cuban aesthetics in the two preceding decades and, whether intentional or not, practically all texts published in Casa in the nineteen nineties either handle these distinctions with care or openly reject them. Two other concepts can be associated with this indirect critique of revolutionary orthodoxy. The first one is sinflictismo, once again a 14

Casa de las Américas 181: 104.

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term proposed by Ambrosio Fornet15 in order to refer to the supposed absence of internal conflicts in the revolutionary subject. This subject, or hombre nuevo as he was called in the sixties, was supposed to follow the revolutionary guidelines without doubts or psychological tensions (“desgarramientos”); it was this illusion, Fornet believes, which led both to practices of self-censorship in the nineteen seventies, and to a more sociological turn in literature (see the testimonio genre). In contrast to this, one of the striking features of the new aesthetics is the preference for a more intimist style that pays attention to the complex inner life of the subject, which, moreover, now receives a body with sexual and irrational desires. These evolutions, then, are completely in line with the defence of the individual in the essay by González Roy (CA, 178) and point to the same deconstruction of revolutionary orthodoxy as we saw above, but now at the level of the subject. Another – the second – concept is posibilismo, which refers to the exploration of the limits of censorship16 and was imported into literature from the analysis of literature under the Franco-regime in Spain. On the one hand, the notion implies an open acknowledgment of practices of censorship in Cuba (that were denied during the seventies), while on the other hand, it points at the relative character of the lines that are drawn between what can and what cannot be said. Posibilismo, in this sense, is the exploration (and corrosion) of the dividing line between revolutionary and counterrevolutionary statements, and so, once again, a deconstruction of the dual model that was installed in the Quinquenio Gris. Finally, the intrinsic ambiguities of the article on Luis Manuel García, the reappearance of interviews with genuinely critical questions to the guests, titles such as ‘Jesús Díaz y la interrogación’, and – at the literary level – the preference for open endings in the work of the new writers (see the volume on new Cuban literature in 1999), illustrate a new and more open attention to the role of the reader, who is now approached in a more dialogic way. Though these shifts in discursive configurations are subtle, they do have their effect. If Ambrosio Fornet still limited his reference to

15 16

Casa de las Américas 191: 16. Emilio Bejel in Casa de las Américas 196: 18.

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the existence of a Cuban novel outside the island to a footnote,17 five years later Víctor Fowler defends his own restriction to Cuban poetry as produced in Cuba almost in the reverse way. It would have been logical, Fowler says in 1999, to expand the selection of poets he discusses in his essay to those living outside the island, but what at first sight appears to be only a stupid nationalist criterion or an exaggeration of the ideological differences, receives a completely distinct meaning once one realizes that one of the mayor shortcomings in the information on Cuban culture concerns the work of the young creators.18

What was still a dangerous and exceptional suggestion in 1994 – to apply the notion of Cuban to the diaspora as well – , is openly admitted in 1999 as the normal solution to a problem of literary criticism. The distinguishing feature of the period under examination, then, is the slow reappearance of a third discursive position in the Cuban cultural field, in which also the new kind of writer – intensely self-critical and self-analytical – can write and be discovered. Literary Theory in the Nineteen nineties While Cuban culture is slowly trying to find a way out of the former revolutionary aesthetics, the decade of the nineties brings Retamar international academic acclaim, but paradoxically enough, he owes this success to an early essay of his, the essay Caliban that was published in Casa in 1971.19 In fact, the main theme of this essay, which sharply opposes Caliban (as a symbol of the revolution) to Prospero (as a symbol of the West), was part of the emergence and legitimation of the new dual model that arose in Cuba around 1970 – a model Cu17

Casa de las Américas 196: 12. “[...] esto que, a primera vista puede parecer un necio prurito nacionalista o insistencia en el enconamiento ideológico, cambia por completo de signo si se piensa que uno de los vacíos mayores en lo que respecta a la información acerca del desarrollo cultural en Cuba, es relacionado con lo que pueda estar sucediendo entre sus creadores jóvenes” (1999. Casa de las Américas 215: 11). 19 For a detailed analysis of the postcolonial interpretation of this essay, see Nadia Lie. 1997. ‘Countering Caliban: Roberto Fernández Retamar and the postcolonial debate’ in Lie, Nadia & Theo D’haen (eds). Constellation Caliban: Figurations of a Character. Amsterdam & Atlanta: Rodopi: 245-270. 18

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ban writers are now trying to abandon, criticize or revise. Outside of Cuba, however, the essay on Caliban was read from the start as an invitation to develop a new kind of literary criticism: less formalist, more historical. It is this dimension that will gain new actuality in the nineteen nineties, and that will bring to the magazine a whole set of prestigious new names: John Beverley, Walter Mignolo, David Saldívar, Beatriz González Stephan, González Echevarría, Josefina Ludmer are but a few of them. At the same time, Said, Hulme, MaryLouise Pratt are translated into Spanish.20 With the exception of Roberto González Echevarría and some other critics, these names can easily be identified with North American and British left-wing academia. Publishing in a Cuban magazine, the title of which still refers to former revolutionary dreams, might therefore have been a smaller step for them than for other critics. What is more, several of the texts published by them in Casa de las Américas contain references to Retamar and especially to his interpretation of The Tempest. Said associates the name of Retamar with “the culture of resistance” in Culture and Imperialism in a chapter that is translated by Casa (CA, 200), González Stephan applies the concept of “calibanesque” culture to women’s literature (CA, 185), Saldívar rewrites American studies with the inspiration of “the school of Caliban” (CA, 204) and Peter Hulme states that America is generally lacking in the postcolonial debate, with the notable exception of the Caribbean critics (CA, 202). As for Mignolo, he legitimizes the use of his own concept of “posoccidentalismo” by referring to another essay of the same Retamar (CA, 204). Caliban, then, which was once symbolic of the revolutionary cursing of the bourgeois intellectuals outside Cuba, now seems to function as a conceptual magnet that attracts (of allows to attract) a whole set of new theoretical approaches to the magazine: feminism, subaltern studies, postcolonialism, interamerican studies and postmodernism. What slips into the pages of Casa, 20

And the English translation of Retamar’s Caliban appears in a new edition with a foreword by Fredric Jameson in 1989. For an analysis of this translation, see Nadia Lie. 2003. ‘Translation Studies and the Other Cannibal: the English version of Fernández Retamar’s “Calibán”’ in Entertext. An interdisciplinary e-journal for cultural and historical studies and creative work 2(2): 39-50. (See also: www.brunel.uk/faculty/arts.EnterText/home.htm).

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through the backdoor of Caliban, is, in other words, poststructuralist thinking. Though dealing with other topics, sometimes general, sometimes specific, and though unaware of what is going on in the Cuban literary field at the moment of publication, the post-structuralist thinkers that enter Casa seem to share, in more theoretical ways, basic concerns of contemporary Cuban literary criticism: a suspicion regarding hierarchical categories and logocentric thinking, a rejection of the subject as a transparent category, a stress on the constructedness of conceptual categories, taking the nation as one of its main targets. At the same time, the reception of poststructuralism within the magazine shows a certain evolution from its more militant forms (feminism, subaltern studies ...) to a less political reception (deconstruction, border thinking). In spite of John Beverley’s severe criticism of the apolitical attitude of González Echevarría (CA, 199), this Cuban critic-in-exile shortly afterwards enters the pages of Casa with an analysis of the socalled “books of the selva” (CA, 201). And if postmodernism was still a delicate topic to deal with at the beginning of the nineties (as we see in Sanchez Vázquez’ essay on socialism and postmodernism (CA, 175)), Walter Mignolo’s concept of post-occidentalist nondichotomist border thinking seems to open the door to Ofelia Schutte’s unreserved defence of postmodernism as a constructive discourse by the end of the same decade (CA, 210). Poststructuralist deconstruction of the notion of the subject, the nation, and – the thing that lies at the basis of these – modernity, leads to a new critical comprehension of the Casa-project as it was articulated in the nineteen sixties altogether. The association between the artistic vanguard (or the boom) and the political one is presented by Beverley, in a more general picture (that is, not restricted to only Casa), as a problematic association caused by the logic of modernity and its belief in the emancipatory role of literature (CA, 190). More profoundly, the thinking of Spivak, and her critique of a representational politics of the “subaltern” subject (as in Can the Subaltern speak?) of course goes to the heart of Casa’s discursive agenda: to be the voice of the those who are oppressed, silenced, ignored.

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Syntactical Gestures and Revolutionary Self-Fashioning Small wonder then that one of the last texts by Retamar, published in the period I am discussing on the occasion of Casa’s 40th anniversary, carries the title ‘On the right and the (plight) obligation to start all over again’.21 In this text, Retamar alludes to former mistakes but concludes that “since we have been ourselves and others, we have the right to start all over again”.22 It is not clear what this new project would entail, neither to us nor to Retamar, who quotes Borges saying that “all we know about the future is that it will be different from today”.23 Most of all, it is a reflection of a change of times and the vindication of a more basic project: the one to survive or to keep on trying. At the same time, it echoes poststructuralist thinking by the typical allusion to the interaction between self and other. The same kind of allusion had occurred years before in Retamar’s own rereading of the Caliban-essay, in which he considered it, far from a polemic reply to the kind of writer and intellectual he despised (Borges, Rodríguez Monegal, Fuentes, Sarmiento...), as a dialogue with himself.24 At the same time, the title of the essay of 1999 is a clue to Cuban readers and literary critics, who recognize in it an allusion to one of the founding essays on the new Cuban literature: ‘Del derecho de nacer’ (‘On the right to be born’/‘On the right to see the light’). Published in 1992 in La Gaceta de Cuba by Leonardo Padura, it claimed for the younger generation the right to be different, and especially more critical, than the previous ones. This last essay by Retamar in our set of texts, then, is a syntactical gesture between the two discourses – the one on Cuban literature and the one on literary theory – that had come together in the pages of his magazine. It closes a circle of republications of older documents on Casa in the nineteen sixties in the section ‘Páginas salvadas’, that all had reinscribed the notion of freedom and friendship in its discourse whereas the Quinquenio Gris 21

Roberto Fernández Retamar. 1999. ‘Del derecho y el deber de volver a empezar’ in Casa de las Américas 214: 143-145. 22 Casa de las Américas 214: 145. 23 Casa de las Américas 214: 144. 24 Roberto Fernández Retamar. 1993. ‘Adiós a Calibán’ in Casa de las Américas 191: 116-122.

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seemed to have driven people apart. Reflections on Roque Dalton, Angel Rama, Julio Cortázar… illustrate this line. In the same vein, Retamar restyles himself in the 1990 interview at the occasion of his 60th birthday (CA, 181), as a poet rather than an intellectual, and as a young disciple of Lezama Lima in the years preceding the revolution. As a major influence on Cuban poetry, Lezama Lima thus connects Retamar not to the old but to the new aesthetics of the nineteen nineties. In a different way, Zurbano detects in the pages of Casa de las Américas important material for an updating of literary criticism on Cuban literature outside the magazine (CA, 215). Among the alleged influences on the young poets are the names of Derrida, Barthes, Foucault… post-structuralist thinkers, then, who do not appear directly in Casa, but who are nevertheless at the basis of the theoretical sensibility that characterizes Casa in the nineteen nineties. No wonder then, that Víctor Fowler, while presenting the new poetry to Casa’s audience in 1999, inadvertently uses the same cannibal metaphor as Retamar did in 1971. Literary critics in Cuba, he states, should go on reading literary theory wildly, cannibalizing it, and thereby decolonizing themselves from the old marxist literary categories that no longer hold when confronted with the new poetics of the nineteen nineties.25 Conclusion In an interview of March 2005, Luis Manuel García, director of the Madrid based Cuban magazine Encuentro – which tries to foster a dialogue between Cuban writers on the island and in the diaspora – distinguishes between 3 kinds of intellectuals living under the Castroregime: there are the organic intellectuals, who clearly support the regime, there are the openly dissenting ones, who because of their criticisms suffer severe consequences of repression, and then there are the tricksters (“los que se hacen los bobos”), who in ingenious ways explore the limits of expression by pretending to ignore them; when

25

Casa de las Américas 215: 12.

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they are caught, they humbly admit their mistake and so escape political persecution.26 Retamar is listed as an example of the “organic intellectual” in the same interview.27 However, as this analysis of Casa de las Américas has shown, one might associate him with the trickster figure as well. If openly dissenting with the regime is still a dangerous enterprise, the same goes for openly agreeing with it at a moment when a post-Castro Cuba is announcing itself and when the political and the cultural climate are marked by reversals of fortune. In this context, “organic intellectuals” might develop the same strategies of survival as the so-called tricksters, exploring the zones of the sayable and the thinkable, practising the discourse of posibilismo that allows the trickster to survive repression, and the organic intellectual to survive himself in an unforseeable future. The importation of articles and essays written by prestigious literary theorists living abroad not only brings prestige to the medium in which they are published: they also allow its director to update his own image and gain academic prestige abroad. At the same time, the publication of poststructuralist thinking in the magazine opens up new discursive spaces in the Cuban context and allows for strategic alliances. The awareness that crucial concepts subtending revolutionary orthodoxy (transparency of the subject, realism, nationalism etc.) are basically constructions and thus open to be re-constructed or dissociated from well-defined social practices is an awareness that permeates both Cuban literary works of the new kind and the theoretical discourse in the pages of Casa. For this reason, the general idea that the Cuban literary field in the nineteen nineties is characterized by a clear gap between literature and criticism must allow for exception or even revision: the gap between literature, on the one hand, and discourses on literature and theory in general on the other is, at least in the case of Casa de las Américas, much smaller than one might expect.

26

Annelien De Greef. 2005. ‘Entrevista con Luis Manuel García sobre la revista Encuentro de la cultura cubana’ in Romaneske 4: 33-34. One may consult the review in http://www.kuleuven.ac.be/vlr/054encuentro.htm. 27 De Greef 2005: 33.

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Vers une étude de la scénographie et de l’espace romanesque dans l’œuvre de Patrick Chamoiseau Liesbeth De Bleeker Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Campus Kortrijk Dans cet article, nous étudions la façon dont, dans l’œuvre de Patrick Chamoiseau, les possibilités créatrices offertes par la catégorie de l’espace sont mobilisées pour renforcer la prise de position affichée par l’énonciateur. Tout d’abord, nous esquissons de façon sommaire les caractéristiques les plus importantes du champ littéraire antillais francophone, avant de prêter attention aux scénographies créées par Chamoiseau en réaction à ce contexte complexe. Ensuite, nous focalisons les manières dont la représentation de l’espace romanesque peut étayer la posture énonciative de l’auteur, en insistant sur deux cas particuliers: l’enrichissement du répertoire par le recours à des échanges intersystémiques, et l’exploitation des fonctions symboliques et idéologiques de l’imaginaire spatial du texte.

À partir des années 1990 environ, les critiques littéraires européens et nord-américains ont prêté une attention remarquable au renouveau de la littérature antillaise de langue française, renouveau scellé par la publication du bref manifeste Éloge de la créolité.1 Depuis cette date, d’innombrables chercheurs se sont penchés sur la “nouvelle littérature antillaise”2 telle qu’elle a pris forme sous la plume d’auteurs martiniquais et guadeloupéens comme Patrick Chamoiseau, Raphaël Confiant, Ernest Pépin ou Gisèle Pineau. La plupart des chercheurs se sont concentrés sur la dynamique interne de la littérature antillaise: beaucoup ont cherché à déterminer les continuités ou discontinuités entre les mouvements littéraires successifs de la Négritude, de l’Antillanité et de la Créolité; d’autres se sont attachés à souligner la 1

Jean Bernabé, P. Chamoiseau & R. Confiant. 1996 [1989]. Éloge de la Créolité. Paris: Gallimard. 2 Ralph Ludwig (ed.). 1994. Écrire la parole de nuit. La nouvelle littérature antillaise. Paris: Gallimard.

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divergence d’opinions au sein de la littérature antillaise contemporaine, notamment entre les créolistes, d’une part, et des auteurs comme Maryse Condé ou Daniel Maximin, de l’autre. Peu de chercheurs, par contre, se sont donné pour but d’examiner l’interaction entre la dynamique interne et la dynamique externe de la littérature antillaise francophone. Un projet de recherches mis en route à la K.U.Leuven depuis 2003 essaie de combler cette lacune. Les lignes de force du projet ayant été exposés par Lieven D’hulst dans son texte inclus dans ce même volume, je ne reprendrai pas ici les idées majeures de la théorie des (poly)systèmes qui m’ont guidée au long de ce travail.3 Deux questions Au cours de mes recherches, j’ai essayé de fournir quelques réponses – fussent-elles provisoires et partielles – à deux questions étroitement liées entre elles. La première question porte sur les scénographies créées par Patrick Chamoiseau en réponse au contexte discursif dans lequel il s’insère; la deuxième concerne la représentation de l’espace romanesque dans les romans de Chamoiseau et la façon dont elle renforce (ou contredit) la prise de position énonciative qui s’affiche dans la scénographie correspondante. La première question, que je développerai dans les pages qui suivent, a trait à la façon dont les auteurs antillais ont essayé de s’aménager une place dans la république des lettres. Comme il est bien connu, l’écrivain martiniquais ou guadeloupéen travaille dans un contexte de production extraordinairement dynamique, dont la complexité est renforcée par les relations de pouvoir très inégales, sombre héritage du passé colonial. À partir de ce constat, je me suis attachée à examiner la façon dont la complexité de ce contexte énonciatif se trouve reflétée dans les textes de Patrick Chamoiseau, au niveau de leur fonctionnement pragmatique. Guidée par la pensée de Dominique

3 Voir aussi Itamar Even-Zohar. 1990. Polysystem Studies. Tel Aviv & Durham: The Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics & Duke University Press. Numéro spécial de Poetics Today 11(1).

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Maingueneau,4 je suis partie de l’hypothèse que l’ensemble des conditions de production qui régissent la communication littéraire aux Antilles ne sauraient être sans conséquences pour la poétique des œuvres nées dans ce contexte. Bien au contraire, je considère avec Maingueneau que les contraintes exercées par le contexte obligent l’auteur à développer des scénographies5 appropriées: des mises en scène de son propre statut en tant qu’énonciateur, qui se montrent tant à l’intérieur du texte qu’à ses abords paratextuels. C’est donc en me concentrant sur les lieux textuels où la scénographie sous-jacente se montre, que j’espère découvrir la posture prise par Chamoiseau vis-à-vis du système littéraire antillais. Le contexte discursif des auteurs antillais Mais avant d’entreprendre l’étude des prises de positions mises en scène par Chamoiseau, esquissons les caractéristiques générales du contexte discursif par rapport auquel elles prennent leur sens. Depuis une vingtaine d’années, la créativité littéraire en Martinique et en Guadeloupe est en plein essor. Toutefois, la croissance soudaine de la productivité littéraire ne saurait suffire à satisfaire tous les besoins du lectorat antillais: la gamme des genres littéraires couverts par la production locale étant assez restreinte, les Antillais sont toujours très consommateurs de livres. La majorité des livres qui circulent dans les librairies antillaises ont été publiés – ou éventuellement traduits – en Europe, et ont été ensuite importés par des éditeurs français. L’importation d’ouvrages étrangers est en soi une chose saine pour le dynamisme d’une culture. Pourtant, cela est beaucoup moins le cas aux Antilles, parce que le déséquilibre très net entre production endogène et importation y tend à étouffer la culture de réception plutôt qu’à la revitaliser. De plus, ce déséquilibre est aggravé par le fait que les livres importés sont majoritairement de facture européenne, et risquent d’isoler les Antillais de leur environnement culturel en les éloignant des littératures voisines. 4

Dominique Maingueneau. 2004. Le discours littéraire. Paratopie et scène d’énonciation. Paris: Armand Colin. Voir aussi la contribution de Jean-Marc Moura dans ce même volume. 5 Maingueneau 2004: 192.

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Mais la dépendance du monde littéraire antillais vis-à-vis de l’Europe ne se fait pas seulement sentir au niveau de la consommation, bien au contraire: comme le champ littéraire antillais manque d’institutions littéraires locales, cette dépendance se fait aussi sentir au niveau de la production endogène et de sa réception. Elle se manifeste déjà au moment où l’auteur martiniquais ou guadeloupéen choisit sa langue d’écriture. Même pour ces écrivains qui ont le créole comme langue maternelle, le choix s’arrête dans la plupart des cas sur la langue française, parce que cette langue leur offre plus de perspectives, grâce à sa tradition écrite séculaire, son lectorat plus large et ses maisons d’édition plus compétitives. De plus, selon les dires de Raphaël Confiant, les auteurs antillais ne sont lus par leurs concitoyens qu’à condition d’avoir acquis leurs lettres de noblesse à Paris: “En Martinique, il n’y a pas d’opinion locale en littérature; il n’y a pas de critiques littéraires ou très peu. On attend que Paris donne le Prix Goncourt ou le prix Renaudot, et puis, on se forge une opinion”.6 Ainsi, même s’il est possible d’affirmer qu’aujourd’hui Paris n’est plus l’unique centre autour duquel gravitent les littératures francophones, la Ville Lumière demeure le lieu de consécration pour tout auteur antillais qui aspire à se constituer un public, et – à plus forte raison – pour celui qui cherche à se faire reconnaître en dehors de son contexte régional. Tout bien considéré, il apparaît que la littérature antillaise francophone contemporaine est toujours tributaire de l’Europe, tant au niveau de la consommation (importations), qu’au niveau de la production (choix de la langue, éditeurs); tant au niveau de la médiation (distribution, comptes rendus) que de la réception (lectorat, prix littéraires). Il manque toutefois un élément-clé dans cette énumération: le texte même. Longtemps – et jusqu’à aujourd’hui – la dominance française ne s’exerçait pas seulement dans le domaine de l’institutionnel, mais se faisait aussi sentir dans le texte même, tant au niveau du répertoire utilisé, qu’à celui de l’imaginaire recréé. Jusqu’au milieu du 20e siècle, les auteurs antillais ont essayé de s’inscrire dans la tradition littéraire française, en mimant ses topoi, ses conventions génériques, ses règles du bon goût littéraire, et en assimilant ses concepts, ses

6

Entretien inédit avec Raphaël Confiant (3/12/2005).

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valeurs et ses images mentales.7 Si cette forme de dépendance est moins visible que l’autre – plus “silencieuse” ou “furtive” pour utiliser les mots de Chamoiseau8 – elle n’en est pas moins la cible première de tous ceux qui, à commencer par Aimé Césaire, ont voulu créer une littérature vraie, authentique et originale. Et en effet, si la dépendance institutionnelle vis-à-vis de la France perdure jusqu’à aujourd’hui, la littérature elle-même – ses conventions, ses thèmes, ses images – a emprunté d’autres chemins qui ne conduisent plus nécessairement vers la France. Dans le lent cheminement vers la constitution d’un répertoire et d’un imaginaire littéraire endogènes, les auteurs ont fait appel à plusieurs sources. En premier lieu, ils ont renforcé les échanges avec des strates littéraires périphériques. Ainsi, pour se distancer de la culture dominante, les auteurs antillais ont resserré les liens avec les strates littéraires les moins institutionnalisées et les plus authentiques: celles occupées par les diverses manifestations de l’orature créole (contes, chansons, tim-tim ou devinettes, proverbes). Mais ils se sont aussi tournés vers des genres littéraires considérés comme mineurs: nombreux sont les écrivains antillais qui ont pratiqué des genres comme le récit d’enfance, le roman policier ou le conte populaire, genres qui par leur position périphérique dans le système littéraire français ont un certain pouvoir subversif vis-à-vis de la littérature française canonisée. De plus, ils se sont approprié certains éléments et procédures qui avaient leur origine dans des littératures non-européennes. Dans leur tentative d’acquérir une certaine autonomie vis-à-vis de la France, les Antillais ont surtout puisé dans les littératures africaines, latinoaméricaines et caribéennes. Mais ils ont aussi prêté une attention particulière à des expressions culturelles non-littéraires – caribéennes ou autres – telles que la musique, l’architecture, la peinture ou le cinéma. Il n’est d’ailleurs pas aisé de distinguer les divers types de transferts, vu qu’ils se renforcent souvent mutuellement. Ainsi, l’importance qu’accorde Patrick Chamoiseau à la ville créole, notam7 Même à cette époque, les textes antillais partageaient un certain nombre de caractéristiques qui les séparaient des textes français, mais ces différences étaient plutôt dissimulées qu’accentuées. 8 Patrick Chamoiseau. 2002 [1997]. Écrire en pays dominé. Paris: Gallimard: 21-23.

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ment au marché et au quartier d’habitat spontané, semble s’inspirer tant de la réalité foyalaise que d’ouvrages d’urbanisation caribéenne,9 mais est aussi appuyée par les écrits d’un auteur caribéen comme Derek Walcott.10 Même si Chamoiseau n’emprunte pas ses idées majeures à un ouvrage caribéen particulier (ou à un ensemble d’ouvrages), l’on constate qu’il existe une certaine tradition d’écrire la ville caribéenne, et que celle-ci crée au moins un contexte de production favorable à l’apparition d’un roman comme Texaco. De la même façon, la présence souvent abondante d’éléments empruntés à l’oralité porte en premier lieu l’empreinte de l’oralité créole, mais est aussi encouragée par les interférences avec de nombreux autres systèmes littéraires qui manifestent un même goût prononcé pour l’art des conteurs. En somme, même si l’idée d’une parenté entre littérature française et antillaise prévaut encore, et justifie ainsi l’emploi du mot intrasystémique pour définir les relations entre ces deux littératures, les auteurs antillais cherchent aussi à fortifier leurs rapports intersystémiques avec d’autres littératures, avec d’autres strates littéraires et avec d’autres disciplines, artistiques ou scientifiques, afin de consolider l’existence d’une tradition littéraire autonome. Vers une scénographie créole Rappelons que le but des paragraphes précédentes n’était pas tant d’examiner les multiples relations interlittéraires qui traversent le champ littéraire antillais, mais de dessiner dans les grandes lignes le contexte de production dans lequel écrivent les auteurs antillais, afin de mieux pouvoir estimer comment ils se créent, dans ce contexte complexe, une place d’énonciation. Abordons donc à présent le vif de la question, et essayons d’étudier la façon dont les auteurs antillais mettent en scène leur propre prise de position vis-à-vis de ce contexte discursif. Pour ce faire, je ferai appel au concept de scénographie, tel 9 Notamment des écrits de Serge Letchimy. (Voir par exemple Serge Letchimy. 1984. ‘Tradition et créativité: les mangroves urbaines de Fort-de-France’ dans Carbet. Revue martiniquaise de sciences humaines et de littérature 2: 83-101. 10 Derek Walcott. 1998. What the Twilight Says. London: Faber & Faber; ‘The Antilles: Fragments of Epic Memory (1992)’, 65-84, 71-74. Cf. aussi Elena Lawton de Torruella. 2002. ‘Caribbean Domestic Spaces in Four Modes: Walcott, Hippolyte, Brathwaite and Rhys’ dans La Torre 26: 657-662, 657-658.

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qu’il a été développé par Dominique Maingueneau. Celui-ci a démontré que toute œuvre littéraire est une “énonciation par essence menacée”,11 et est obligée de légitimer son propre dire. Elle le fait en définissant, dans son sein même, les conditions d’énonciation qu’elle présuppose. Et c’est précisément dans la scénographie, qui pourrait être définie comme la “scène narrative construite par le texte”, “que se valident les statuts d’énonciateur et de co-énonciateur, mais aussi l’espace (topographie) et le temps (chronographie) à partir desquels se développe l’énonciation”.12 On comprend que cette légitimation de l’œuvre par la mise en scène d’une situation d’énonciation qui la rend pertinente est d’autant plus importante – mais aussi d’autant plus difficile – pour l’auteur antillais francophone, qui écrit dans un contexte changeant et complexe, où se rencontrent plusieurs systèmes culturels, dont l’un dispose d’un prestige et d’un pouvoir nettement supérieurs aux autres. La scénographie n’existe pas en dehors de l’œuvre, et pourtant l’œuvre ne saurait exister sans elle. Elle forme une sorte d’embrayeur entre l’œuvre et le monde, “un dispositif qui permet d’articuler l’œuvre sur ce dont elle surgit”.13 Mais comment la repérer dans le texte? Selon Maingueneau, elle “s’identifie sur la base d’indices variés repérables dans le texte ou le paratexte”.14 Lors de sa lecture d’un texte romanesque ou autre, le lecteur attentif peut donc trouver des références à la posture prise par l’auteur vis-à-vis de son contexte. Ainsi, dans le cas de la littérature antillaise, la négociation périlleuse qu’engage le texte antillais avec le champ discursif dans lequel il se situe, devient visible dans les œuvres mêmes, tant au niveau des seuils du texte15 – le paratexte – que dans le corps du texte.16 Une analyse du 11

Maingueneau 2004: 193. Maingueneau 2004: 192. 13 Jean-Marc Moura. 1990. Littératures francophones et théorie postcoloniale. Paris: PUF: 109-110. 14 Maingueneau 2004: 192. 15 Cf. Richard Watts. 2005. Packaging Post/Coloniality: The Manufacture of Literary Identity in the Francophone World. Lanham: Lexington Books. 16 Ou selon les mots de Maingueneau: “‘le contenu’ d’une œuvre est en réalité traversé par le renvoi à ses conditions d’énonciation”, “les conditions du dire y traversent le dit et le dit renvoie à ses propres conditions d’énonciation” (Maingueneau 2004: 34-35). 12

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dispositif pragmatique17 de quelques textes de Patrick Chamoiseau nous permettra donc d’examiner comment ce dernier met en scène sa propre position d’auteur, et comment il essaie de légitimer sa prise de parole à partir des marges par la création d’un espace d’énonciation inédit et hybride. Dans ce qui suit, afin de ne pas dépasser les bornes imposées à ce type de contribution, je me limiterai nécessairement à une ébauche d’une telle analyse. La lecture de quelques textes-clés de Patrick Chamoiseau pourrait suffire pour se rendre compte que l’auteur antillais se positionne en premier lieu comme différent, et cherche à se singulariser par rapport à la France.18 L’une des stratégies utilisées pour échapper à l’emprise de la tradition littérature française, est la mise en scène d’un narrateur qui, bien qu’il s’appelle Chamoiseau et qu’il se dise parfois “écrivain”, se situe délibérément dans les marges du système littéraire: le “marqueur de paroles”. Ce narrateur refuse de s’inscrire dans la tradition littéraire écrite et tâche vainement de sauver la parole des conteurs créoles: Non, pas écrivain: marqueur de paroles, ça change tout, inspectère, l’écrivain est d’un autre monde, il rumine, élabore ou prospecte, le marqueur refuse une agonie: celle de ‘oraliture, il recueille et transmet.19

Ainsi, Chamoiseau refuse la posture prise par l’énonciateur césairien: “Je viendrais à ce pays mien et je lui dirais: ‘Embrassez-moi sans crainte [...]. Et si je ne sais que parler, c’est pour vous que je par-

17 Pour plus d’informations sur les diverses façons dont le contexte pragmatique sous-jacent se manifeste au niveau du texte, voir Teun A. van Dijk. 1981. ‘The Pragmatics of Literary Communication’ in Studies in the Pragmatics of Discourse. The Hague, Paris & New York: Mouton: 243-263, 260. 18 Lors d’un entretien inédit (7/12/2005), à la question “Votre écriture a-t-elle des affinités avec la francophonie littéraire?”, Chamoiseau répondait de la façon suivante: “Non, ce n’est pas la langue qui va donner la famille. D’ailleurs, la preuve: moi, je n’ai rien à voir avec la littérature française. Il faut voir l’imaginaire qui est derrière, c’est-à-dire le rapport profond, mythique ou naturel, que l’on entretient avec l’identité, avec la diversité, avec le monde.” 19 Patrick Chamoiseau. 1991 [1988]. Solibo Magnifique. Paris: Gallimard: 169170.

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lerai’”.20 Là où le je poétique de Césaire se considérait comme le porte-parole du peuple, Patrick Chamoiseau ne parle pas pour, mais avec le peuple, non pas au nom du peuple mais avec les mots du peuple: […] non pas tant afin d’être la voix de ceux qui n’ont pas de voix, que de parachever la voix collective qui tonne sans écoute dans notre être, d’en participer lucidement et de l’écouter jusqu’à l’inévitable cristallisation d’une conscience commune.21

Il se met à l’écoute des conteurs, et tâche de faire revivre les contes et les proverbes, les devinettes et les jeux de mots de la parole créole. Il s’agit donc de sauver par l’écriture une langue qui – ô paradoxe – risque précisément de crouler sous la pression de l’écriture. Mais Chamoiseau est bien conscient de l’ambigüité d’une telle position, et n’hésite pas à qualifier son narrateur comme un “dérisoire cueilleur de choses fuyantes”.22 Toutefois, cette ambiguïté n’enlève rien à l’efficacité de la posture prise par Chamoiseau. Là réside précisément la force performative de toute scénographie: elle n’est pas nécessairement le reflet d’une position réelle de l’auteur, mais permet précisément de créer symboliquement un espace d’énonciation virtuel et performant, si impossible soit-il en réalité. Cependant, pour que la scénographie du marqueur de la parole puisse fonctionner, elle doit être reconnue comme légitime par le lecteur. Pour Chamoiseau, il est donc utile d’appuyer sa prise de position par d’autres moyens. À cet effet, il a choisi d’inscrire sa posture individuelle dans une posture collective, celle de la créolité. Et c’est bien vu, car une collectivité est plus visible que l’ensemble des individus qui le composent, un tout est plus fort que la somme de ses parties. Lorsque Patrick Chamoiseau et ses compagnons d’armes Raphaël Confiant et Jean Bernabé publiaient en 1989 leur manifeste Éloge de la créolité et signaient l’acte de naissance de leur mouvement, ils insistaient sur le fait que: “La littérature antillaise n’existe pas encore. 20

Aimé Césaire. 1995 [1939/1956]. Cahier d’un retour au pays natal. Paris & Dakar: Présence Africaine: 22. 21 Bernabé et al. 1996: 39. 22 Chamoiseau 1991: 225.

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Nous sommes encore dans un état de prélittérature [...]”.23 Même s’il est toujours impossible de parler d’un champ antillais entièrement autonome à cause de la dépendance persistante au niveau institutionnel, les choses se sont mises à bouger: petit à petit, les critiques ont commencé à concevoir le corpus de romans antillais comme une littérature à part entière. Comment Chamoiseau, Confiant et Bernabé ontils donc réussi ce tour de force? Tout d’abord, par la publication d’articles, de manifestes et d’ouvrages théoriques, ils se sont donné un nom – la Créolité – et un programme, auquel adhèrent aussi des auteurs guadeloupéens comme Gisèle Pineau et Ernest Pépin. Par la proposition d’un nouveau programme esthétique et idéologique, et par la mise en pratique de ce programme dans leurs textes romanesques, ils ont créé une nouvelle dynamique dans un champ qui languissait et gardait la nostalgie des éclats de la Négritude. Que le contenu de leur manifeste Éloge de la créolité ait été l’objet de nombreuses critiques,24 n’a en réalité que peu d’importance: il vaut mieux être critiqué qu’être ignoré, et même les détracteurs du mouvement ont contribué à la reconnaissance du corpus antillais comme une littérature spécifique. Une fois établis les objectifs de la créolité, il fallait encore tracer les limites du corpus qui ressortissait aux lettres créoles. Ainsi, dans leur histoire littéraire, significativement appelée Lettres créoles, Confiant et Chamoiseau ont délimité le corpus créole en définissant son point de départ, et ont relevé ses tournants majeurs. Ainsi, ils identifient les écritures silencieuses des pierres caraïbes – et non pas les chroniques des voyageurs et des colonisateurs européens que l’on cite généralement – comme les premières manifestations de la littérature antillaise. Ils y soulignent également leur proximité avec des au23

Bernabé et al. 1996: 14. Voir, parmi d’autres, Maryse Condé & Madeleine Cottenet-Hage (eds). 1995. Penser la créolité. Paris: Karthala; Michel Giraud. 1997. ‘La créolité: une rupture en trompe-l’œil’ dans Cahiers d’Études africaines 148(4): 795-811; A. James Arnold. 1998. ‘Créolité: Cultural Nation-Building or Cultural Dependence?’ dans Theo D’haen, Theo (ed.). (Un)Writing Empire. Amsterdam: Rodopi: 37-48; Rafaël Lucas. 2000. ‘L’Aventure ambiguë d’une certaine Créolité’ dans Dérades 5: 93-112; Silvio Torres-Saillant. 2006. An Intellectual History of the Caribbean. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan: 154. 24

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teurs fondateurs comme Aimé Césaire, Édouard Glissant ou Frankétienne, mais ils mentionnent peu d’auteurs contemporains ou minimisent leur apport (Maryse Condé). Aboutissant à une glorification de la créolité, cette histoire littéraire semble porter les traces d’une vision que l’on pourrait presque qualifier de téléologique. L’œuvre se termine par une revendication de leur particularité: Maintenant, nous nous savons Créoles. Ni Français, ni Européens, ni Africains, ni Asiatiques, ni Levantins, mais un mélange mouvant, toujours mouvant, dont le point de départ est un abîme et dont l’évolution demeure imprévisible.25

Plus avant dans le texte, j’ai souligné que la figure du marqueur de paroles ne se démarque pas seulement de la littérature dominante, mais prend aussi ses distances vis-à-vis de la prise de position énonciative choisie par Aimé Césaire. Cette référence à Césaire nous met sur la trace d’un autre aspect crucial de la posture prise par Chamoiseau: son attitude à l’égard des auteurs antillais des générations précédentes. Dans ses romans, Chamoiseau exploite avec habileté les possibilités offertes par la paratextualité et l’intertextualité: il renforce de cette façon ses rapports avec des auteurs antillais comme Glissant ou Césaire, et profite ainsi de leur renommée internationale. Chacun des romans de Chamoiseau est précédé par une série d’épigraphes où apparaît presque toujours le nom de Glissant. De plus, depuis sa réimpression de 1988, Chronique des sept misères est précédée d’une préface de Glissant,26 qui cautionne de cette façon l’œuvre de son disciple, tandis que L’Esclave vieil homme et le molosse27 inclut un entre-dire de la main du maître, qui va ainsi jusqu’à s’impliquer lui-même dans l’aventure de la créolité.28 25 Patrick Chamoiseau & Raphaël Confiant. 1991. Lettres créoles. Tracées antillaises et continentales de la littérature. Haïti, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Guyane 1635-1975. Paris: Hatier: 204. 26 Édouard Glissant. 2002 [1986]. ‘Un marqueur de paroles’ dans Chamoiseau, Patrick. Chronique des sept misères. Suivi de Paroles de djobeurs. Paris: Gallimard: 3-6. 27 Patrick Chamoiseau. 1999 [1997]. L’Esclave vieil homme et le molosse. (Avec un entre-dire d’Édouard Glissant). Paris: Gallimard. 28 Pour une analyse comparée de cette préface et de ces entredires, voir Watts 2005: 132-134.

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Aimé Césaire, de son côté, fait souvent son apparition dans l’œuvre de Chamoiseau en tant que personnage, dans son double rôle de poète et de maire de Fort-de-France. Toutefois, si Glissant est revendiqué comme le père spirituel de la créolité, le rôle attribué à Aimé Césaire est plus ambigu. Que l’œuvre de Césaire constitue indéniablement un tournant dans l’histoire des lettres antillaises, les créolistes le reconnaissent sans réserve: “La Négritude césairienne est un baptême, l’acte primal de notre dignité restituée. Nous sommes à jamais fils d’Aimé Césaire”.29 Pourtant, ils n’hésitent pas à “tuer le père” afin de mieux faire ressortir la nouveauté de leur programme esthétique et idéologique.30 Ainsi, dans son premier roman déjà, Chamoiseau mettait en scène un Césaire qui semble avoir perdu le contact avec la réalité antillaise: Voyant Aimé Césaire lui-même marcher à sa rencontre, l’embrasser, le déclarer martiniquais fondamental, Pipi devint ababa. Bégayant, transpirant, il ne comprit plus rien à ce qu’on lui demandait. […] Césaire, patient, questionnait gentiment. - Mais comment faites-vous pour conserver les tubercules d’ignames aussi longtemps sans qu’ils ne germent? - Hein. Quoi? Kessi ti di misié limè? (que dis-tu?) Pipi grommelait. Bafouillait. Tentait de haler un bon coup de français.31

Le langage de Césaire, extrêmement riche, mais éloigné du français parlé aux îles, est jugé comme faux et aliénant par la nouvelle génération. Dans le fragment cité, Chamoiseau montre le gouffre qui se creuse entre le poète et son peuple, et définit du même trait de

29

Bernabé et al. 1996: 18. Cf. la réponse de Raphaël Confiant à une question posée par Raphaël Lucas (“J’aimerais que vous nous précisiez si le Raphaël Confiant d’Une traversée paradoxale du siècle a révisé la cruauté de ses jugements sur Césaire”): “[...], non, je ne renie rien, car je suis contre la tradition africaine du respect béat des pères: il faut tuer les pères, symboliquement, tuer les ancêtres [...]. Non, je ne regrette pas cet ouvrage; j’estime qu’il fait partie des guerres littéraires qui sont nécessaires à la vie d’une collectivité littéraire.” (2003. ‘Discussions’ dans Cahiers de l’Association Internationale des Études Françaises 55: 215-218, 216-217). 31 Patrick Chamoiseau. 2002 [1986]. Chronique des sept misères. Suivi de Paroles de djobeurs. Paris: Gallimard: 200. 30

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plume sa propre position énonciative comme radicalement opposée, c’est-à-dire enracinée dans la parole du peuple créole. En somme, par la création d’un réseau de discours théoriques, par l’usage abondant de références intertextuelles internes (c’est-à-dire antillaises), et par la mise en scène de leur prise de position dans leurs romans, Chamoiseau et Confiant ont créé une dynamique nouvelle dans le champ littéraire antillais. De cette façon, et grâce aux pouvoirs performatifs de la langue, les créolistes ont créé leur propre contexte énonciatif, dont on peut affirmer qu’il jouit d’une certaine autonomie, si ce n’est dans les faits, du moins dans les esprits. Espace romanesque La deuxième question qui s’impose, est de savoir si – et comment – Patrick Chamoiseau mobilise certains éléments narratifs dans ses textes romanesques pour renforcer la prise de position énonciative qui s’affiche dans ses scénographies. L’analyse scénographique esquissée ci-dessus confirme que Chamoiseau se positionne en premier lieu comme différent par rapport au champ littéraire français. Dans cette perspective, il se voit contraint de négocier le rapport difficile entre une dépendance institutionnelle persistante vis-à-vis de la France, et une volonté de subvertir les règles et les images véhiculées par la tradition littéraire française. Or, dans ses romans, cet exercice d’équilibre s’affiche à l’intérieur de l’œuvre même, et s’y appuie sur un ensemble de caractéristiques hétérogènes, parmi lesquelles l’espace occupe indéniablement une place cruciale. Comme la colonisation était en premier lieu une entreprise d’expansion territoriale, il n’est guère surprenant que l’espace et le lieu revêtent une importance fondamentale dans les littératures postcoloniales. Dans le classique The Empire Writes back, on peut lire à ce propos: A major feature of post-colonial literatures is the concern with place and displacement. It is here that the special post-colonial crisis of identity comes

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into being; the concern with the development or recovery of an effective identifying relationship between self and place.32

En effet, comme l’ont souligné presque tous les théoriciens majeurs des études postcoloniales – je pense par exemple à Ashcroft, Tiffin, Said et Bhabha –, le paysage et l’environnement constituent des symboles primordiaux de l’identité culturelle ou nationale des peuples anciennement colonisés. La littérature devient alors le locus d’une reconquête symbolique de l’espace propre, reconquête jugée indispensable dans le processus de décolonisation culturelle. Même si la littérature antillaise francophone ne relève pas, à strictement parler, des littératures post-coloniales, elle ne constitue pas une exception à cette règle générale, bien au contraire. Pour les auteurs antillais – en majorité des descendants d’esclaves – la noncorrespondance entre leur carte d’identité, d’une part, et leur identité géographique et anthropologique, de l’autre, a exacerbé leur désir de reconquérir – symboliquement, bien sûr – le pays qui leur a toujours été refusé. Pour Chamoiseau, Confiant et Bernabé, ce désir de s’approprier l’espace antillais va de pair avec la volonté de reconstituer l’histoire des petites gens qui ont peuplé cet espace depuis la mise en marche de la machine esclavagiste aux Caraïbes. L’espace, contrairement aux Histoires officielles, porte l’empreinte du peuple antillais, et permet ainsi de découvrir les souffrances des esclaves qui ont été cachées par les chroniqueurs coloniaux: “Les paysages, rappelle Glissant, sont les seuls à inscrire, à leur façon non anthropomorphe, un peu de notre tragédie, de notre vouloir exister”.33 Toutefois, les paysages ne parlent pas, ils gardent le silence. Il incombe donc aux écrivains de raconter à voix haute ce que leur susurrent les paysages: [...] notre histoire (ou nos histoires) n’est pas totalement accessible aux historiens. Leur méthodologie ne leur donne accès qu’à la Chronique coloniale.

32

Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths & Helen Tiffin. 2002 [1986]. The Empire Writes Back. Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures. London: Routledge: 8. 33 Bernabé et al. 1996: 37.

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[…] Seule la connaissance poétique, la connaissance romanesque, la connaissance littéraire, bref, la connaissance artistique, pourra nous déceler, nous percevoir […].34

Les créolistes refusent par conséquent la topographie des écrivains de la Négritude, qui caressaient l’idée d’un retour aux sources africaines de la culture antillaise, et qui regardaient avec un mélange d’effroi et de pitié la réalité antillaise. Pensons par exemple à la façon dont le jeune Césaire décrivait son quartier natal: Au bout du petit matin, cette ville plate – étalée [...] Elle rampe sur les mains sans jamais aucune envie de vriller le ciel d’une st des noyades du sol, elles ont opté de se poser superficielles entre les surprises et les perfidies. [...] Et de petits scandales étouffés, de petites hontes tues, de petites haines immenses pétrissent en bosses et creux les rues étroites où le ruisseau grimace longitudinalement parmi l’étron [...].35

Pour Césaire, le délabrement physique de son pays ne fait que renforcer la déchéance spirituelle. Les créolistes, par contre, célèbrent et glorifient l’espace martiniquais (ou guadeloupéen): Nous faisons corps avec notre monde. Nous voulons, en vraie créolité, y nommer chaque chose et dire qu’elle est belle. Voir la grandeur humaine des djobeurs. Saisir l’épaisseur de la vie du Morne Pichevin. Comprendre les marchés aux légumes. Élucider le fonctionnement des conteurs.36

Pour eux, seule l’immersion dans l’espace antillais saurait être gage d’une littérature antillaise, particulière et authentique. Renouant avec les questions soulevées dans la première partie de ce texte, il convient maintenant d’examiner comment les auteurs antillais francophones contemporains exploitent dans leurs romans les possibilités créatrices offertes par la catégorie narrative de l’espace pour renforcer leur prise de position énonciative. Aux Caraïbes, depuis la découverte, les paysages, la flore et la faune, et même les hommes, ont arrêté d’exister pour eux-mêmes pour 34

Bernabé et al. 1996: 37-38. Césaire 1995: 17. 36 Bernabé et al. 1996: 39. 35

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être transformés en objets de regard, décrits par des écrivains européens pour satisfaire aux besoins d’exotisme des lecteurs européens. Seulement vers le milieu du siècle précédent les premiers écrivains antillais ont entrepris de contester et de défier cette représentation exogène de l’espace caribéen. Jusqu’à ce jour, les auteurs martiniquais et guadeloupéens francophones façonnent et modèlent la langue française, afin de la rendre apte à traduire leur expérience spatiale. Pour ce faire, ils enrichissent en premier lieu le répertoire français/créole en puisant dans l’imaginaire des contes créoles et dans les répertoires d’autres disciplines (architecture, musique...) et d’autres cultures (Caraïbes, Amérique Latine...). Pensons par exemple aux interventions de l’urbaniste dans Texaco: Elle m’apprit à relire les deux espaces de notre ville créole: le centre historique vivant des exigences neuves de la consommation; les couronnes d’occupation populaire, riches du fond de nos histoires. Entre ces lieux, la palpitation humaine qui circule. Au centre, on détruit le souvenir pour s’inspirer des villes occidentales et rénover. Ici, dans la couronne, on survit de mémoire. Au centre, on se perd dans le moderne du monde, ici, on ramène de très vieilles racines, non profondes et rigides, mais diffuses, profuses, épandues sur le temps avec cette légèreté que confère la parole. Ces pôles, reliés au gré des forces sociales, structurent de leurs conflits les visages de la ville. Note de l’urbaniste au Marqueur de paroles.37

De cette façon, c’est-à-dire par l’intégration d’éléments intersystémiques hétérogènes, l’espace romanesque fonctionne pleinement comme un élément qui permet de mettre en scène la spécificité de la culture antillaise et étaye de cette manière la prise de position de l’auteur vis-à-vis du contexte discursif. Mais Chamoiseau ne fait pas qu’enrichir et renouveler le répertoire antillais pour appuyer sa prise de position. L’espace romanesque permet aussi de représenter de façon imagée et symbolique son imaginaire et son idéologie, sur lesquels s’appuie sa posture d’écrivain. En effet, selon l’enseignement de Lotman,38 même si le texte romanesque n’est qu’un reflet indirect et infidèle de la réalité, la structure spatiale 37 38

311.

Patrick Chamoiseau. 2003 [1992]. Texaco. Paris: Gallimard: 218. Iouri Lotman. 1973. La structure du texte artistique. Paris: Gallimard: 309-

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du roman nous informe sur la façon dont l’auteur se représente le monde. Il ne s’agit donc point de regarder l’espace représenté dans le texte comme une imitation immédiate de l’espace réel: loin de se laisser guider par une confiance aveugle dans les pouvoirs mimétiques de la littérature, il convient de considérer le roman comme un ensemble de codes et d’éléments qui permettent à l’auteur de traduire – ne fût-ce que de manière déformée – non pas le monde réel, mais le monde tel qu’il se le représente, tel qu’il l’organise et l’investit de valeurs. Dans cette perspective, je conçois l’espace du texte comme un ensemble de relations dynamiques entre des polarités changeantes, lesquelles peuvent acquérir une dimension axiologique et idéologique. Pensons par exemple à la structuration de l’espace dans Solibo Magnifique. Dans ce roman, l’histoire se déroule à partir de la rencontre conflictuelle entre deux espaces: la savane et le bureau de police. Chacune de ces deux polarités représente symboliquement une face de l’identité martiniquaise: la culture créole et la culture française. Le pôle assimilé, qui détient le pouvoir, est associé à des caractéristiques comme la violence ou l’inauthenticité, tandis que le pole créole est investi de valeurs majoritairement positives. Toutefois, les rapports entre les deux pôles ne sont pas univoques ni statiques. À maintes reprises, Chamoiseau souligne l’ambiguïté de l’opposition créole-français, par exemple en introduisant des agents de police qui se mettent à parler créole, ou en mettant en scène une Doudou-Ménar, personnage associé au pôle créole, qui n’hésite pas à recourir à la violence généralement associée au pôle opposé. De plus, vers la fin du roman, les rapports entre les deux pôles se modifient, lorsque le narrateur Chamoiseau, lié au pôle créole, et l’inspecteur Pilon, représentant du pôle assimilé, se rapprochent l’un de l’autre et semblent nourrir un même espoir: sauver la parole du conteur Solibo. Dans Solibo Magnifique, l’espace narré par le narrateur Chamoiseau est donc structuré de façon similaire au contexte discursif dans lequel s’inscrit l’auteur Chamoiseau, et est traversé par des relations de pouvoir semblables. Tout comme l’écrivain réel, le narrateur Chamoiseau se situe dans l’entre-deux où les deux pôles spatiaux se rencontrent: empreint de la culture créole, mais obligé de trahir la vivacité de l’oralité créole par son recours à l’écriture française, il semble appartenir aux deux mondes à la fois, ou n’appartenir à aucun des

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deux. De cette façon, le “marqueur de paroles” essaie d’échapper à toute tentative de classification, et se positionne en premier lieu comme différent et insaisissable. Conclusion Poussés par leur désir d’échapper aux contraintes imposées par le système littéraire français, Chamoiseau, Confiant et Bernabé ont essayé – et essaient toujours – de créer une dynamique nouvelle dans la littérature antillaise. Dans ce processus d’autonomisation, ils n’ont pas seulement proposé un programme esthétique et créé un réseau de filiations avec des écrivains des générations précédentes, mais ils ont aussi enrichi le répertoire antillais avec des éléments provenant de nombreuses sources. Dans ses romans, Chamoiseau met en pratique la posture prise par le mouvement de la créolité. Ses narrateurs proclament leur créolité afin de subvertir la domination par le centre, et se situent de préférence dans l’entre-deux indécis entre l’écriture et l’oralité pour échapper à toute tentative de définition ou de cloisonnement. L’espace romanesque, de son côté, appuie ces scénographies, par une mise en scène du contexte de production antillais comme traversé par des rapports de pouvoir inébranlables mais néanmoins profondément dynamiques et ambigus. Toutefois, ces postures – d’individu ou de groupe – par lesquelles les auteurs antillais cherchent à s’aménager une place dans le monde de la littérature, ne sauraient nous faire oublier leur position réelle, qui est relativement contrainte. À première vue, la contrainte est double: répondre aux urgences de leur société d’origine,39 et plaire au centre afin d’acquérir le droit d’être publié et de réunir le capital culturel nécessaire à conquérir le public antillais. En réalité, ces deux contraintes n’en font qu’une, car au point où en sont les choses, ce n’est qu’à 39

Chamoiseau: “L’écrivain antillais contemporain, s’il est vraiment sincère et s’il a vraiment une intuition de la situation dans laquelle nous sommes, est relativement contraint. Et quand il y a des contraintes, il n’y a pas de littérature pleine: nous devons répondre à un certain nombre d’urgences. [...] Nous sommes forcés de prendre en compte un certain nombre de difficultés concernant l’identité, l’exploration de l’histoire, la mémoire, les mutations identitaires, la question de la diversité, etc. […] Ce sont des problèmes qui, en quelque sorte, ne nous permettent pas de ‘liberté littéraire’”. Entretien inédit (7/12/2005).

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condition de rester fidèles à la problématique identitaire que les auteurs antillais gagnent accès au marché littéraire français. En effet, pour obtenir la reconnaissance par le centre parisien, les auteurs antillais n’ont le choix qu’entre deux options: “celle de l’assimilation, qui suppose la disparition des marques identitaires étrangères [...], ou au contraire celle de la spécification, qui suppose la production et l’exploitation de marqueurs ad hoc”.40 Depuis la Négritude, les auteurs antillais francophones ont majoritairement emprunté la deuxième voie. Ce faisant, ils ont contribué à créer un certain horizon d’attente auprès des lecteurs métropolitains, qui auraient des difficultés à concevoir une littérature antillaise qui ne s’intéresserait pas aux problématiques de l’esclavage, de l’oralité ou de la récupération du passé. Le marché du livre se plie aux attentes du public, et n’accepte donc que les produits qui répondent à ces critères. Par conséquent, les auteurs antillais, pour qui la proclamation de leur différence constituait d’abord une stratégie de libération, sont peut-être devenus victimes de leur propre succès, et sont désormais censés reproduire à l’infini les mêmes problématiques: Die Autoren der ehemaligen französischen – und das gilt analog ebenso für die englischen – Kolonien sind seither auf ein bestimmtes Marktsegment festgelegt, die postkoloniale Identitätsproblematik. Die postkolonialen Literaturen haben nicht die Freiheit, interesselose Schönheit oder auch nur eine Thematik, die sich nicht ausdrücklich mit ihren Lebensumständen beschäftigt, zum Gegenstand ihres Werks zu machen, das unterscheidet sie von den traditionellen westlichen Literaturen.41

40

Pierre Halen. 2001. ‘Notes pour une topologie institutionnelle du système littéraire francophone’ dans Lüsebrink, Hans-Jürgen & Papa Samba Diop (eds). Littératures et Sociétés Africaines. Regards comparatistes et perspectives interculturelles. (Mélanges offerts à János Riesz à l’occasion de son soixantième anniversaire). Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag: 55-67, 66. Cf. aussi Arnold: “L’écrivain minoritaire a essentiellement deux choix, plaire ou s’opposer ouvertement à l’institution littéraire dominante, de telle sorte que celle-ci veuille bien condescendre à faire une place à sa différence.” (A. James Arnold. 2003. ‘Institution littéraire, discours identitaire, supercherie littéraire’ dans Cahiers de l’Association Internationale des Études Françaises 55: 123-138, 126-127). 41 Michael Einfalt. 2005. ‘Die Enquête in Patrick Chamoiseaus Solibo Magnifique. Postavantgardistisches Schreiben in postkolonialen Literaturen’ dans Arcadia 40(2): 286-299, 287.

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Récemment, Chamoiseau a trouvé une nouvelle voie pour échapper aux restrictions du système. Sans abandonner la stratégie antérieure, celle de l’ironie, Chamoiseau semble vouloir dépasser les anciennes dichotomies centre-périphérie / écriture-oralité / françaiscréole par un retour vers l’essence de la littérature, c’est-à-dire la question même de la littérature: Je n’étais plus un Marqueur de paroles dans une assise maintenant balisée entre l’écrit et l’oral, mais un Guerrier dans un champ de bataille dont le point de vue d’ensemble était inexistant, et la fin improbable. J’étais devenu un doute vivant, développant une activité de connaissance dite littérature qui n’avait plus les moyens de tout embrasser, tout dire ou tout comprendre. 42

Afin de reconquérir la liberté, qui avait été bornée par les pressions du marché littéraire, Chamoiseau essaie désormais d’habiter l’espace atopique (et utopique) appelé Littérature,43 sans toutefois renier ses prises de position antérieures.44

42 Patrick Chamoiseau. 2003 [2002]. Biblique des derniers gestes. Paris: Gallimard: 762. 43 Cela est confirmé par Chamoiseau pendant un entretien inédit (7/12/2005): “À un moment donné, à partir de Biblique des derniers gestes, à force de fréquenter l’exigence de l’écriture, j’ai compris que l’objet de la littérature, c’était de comprendre ce qu’est la littérature. Auparavant, c’était plus un traitement de difficultés personnelles et de difficultés collectives. Je commence peut-être à devenir un écrivain, au sens où ma littérature se regarde, se pose de plus en plus la question de la littérature.” Cf. aussi l’exhortation prononcée par Roger Toumson: “Nous sommes encore en train d’apporter au Maître sa jouissance quotidienne en accordant une importance à cette fausse question du langage et de la langue, de l’oral et de l’écrit. Sortons des fausses singularités en ouvrant les enjeux de cette littérature aux enjeux de la littérature en général.” (2003. ‘Discussions’ dans Cahiers de l’Association Internationale des Études Françaises 55: 215-218, 218). 44 Chamoiseau: “En fait, tout ce que j’ai écrit, c’est aussi la trajectoire d’une conscience. Je crois que si un artiste est sincère, chaque livre accompagne – sans annuler les autres – le développement de cet artiste.” (Entretien inédit, 7/12/2005).

Neo-Baroque Poetics. A Latin American Affair Biagio D’Angelo Universidad Católica Sedes Sapientiae, Lima The last decades have witnessed numerous cultural revisions. In the transition (not too evident) from modernity to postmodernity, a new cultural periodization has found its justification in the concept neo-baroque. This paper outlines the neo-baroque as one of the most relevant cultural discourses in the Caribbean and Latin America. From Haroldo de Campos to Severo Sarduy, oscillating between a fusion of styles and forms, extensions and subversions, Caribbean and Latin American literature present a rich and varied neo-baroque frame.

La diferencia y la repetición sólo se oponen en apariencia. No existe ningún gran artista cuya obra no nos haga decir: ‘la misma y sin embargo otra’. (Gilles Deleuze, Proust y los signos) No me joda con la historia en materia de teatro. Lo que cuenta aquí es la ilusión poética. (Alejo Carpentier, Concierto barroco)

The last decades have witnessed numerous re-readings, reconsiderations and revisions. In the transition from modernity to postmodernity – a transition that was not very easy – they have observed a compact creative universe – a new cultural periodization – that has found its justification in the concept neo-baroque. The eagerness to redefine neo-romanticism, neo-enlightenment, neo-everything reflects the conscience of an art that is characterized by a continuous succession and improvement, by a permanent unsettled feeling with respect to its own nature and realization, and by a constant dynamic of search and subversion. The neo-baroque does not escape the recycling of traditional models. Relying on musical variation, it more or less unconsciously accepts or reconsiders themes, styles and ideologies. Not without reason, music was one of Alejo

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Carpentier’s favourite artistic principles. His neo-baroque visionary views on the mixture of cultures in Hispanic America can be found in Los pasos perdidos (1953) and in Concierto barroco (1974). The term neo-baroque, coined by Omar Calabrese in his essay L’etá neobarocca (‘The Neo-baroque Age’, 1987), has been supported by several theoretical contributions. From Christine BuciGlucksmann’s La raison baroque (1984) to Gilles Deleuze’s Le pli (1988), Europe has reread the neo-baroque affair as an epistemological correlative of the crisis of faith, politics and ideals. The Baroque suggests an essentially metaphorical writing. It has come to be seen as a plural refuge, an irrational and reactionary anthropological experience, at a time when Reason was subversive. In this sense, to accept the Baroque means to accept that the foolish and the dissident have become subversive.1 The Cuban Severo Sarduy is probably the first subversive Latin American writer to theorize the renovation of the Baroque episteme. In his Ensayos generales sobre el barroco (1987), he observes that authors belonging to the Latin American literary tradition (Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz) have always been fascinated by a “cosmological” vocation. As Carlos Real de Azúa points out, they have been interested in the attempt to plunge into the unknown, by the calling of a “transatlantic origin”. The metaphor describes an origin that alludes to regions, worlds and cultures on the other side of the ocean; a “long boat destined to cross every sea”. The port of Montevideo stands for the launch into a world that desires to be rediscovered, longed for and mysteriously recognised. This “transatlantic” looks for a spiritual and idealist origin in a Europe that Real de Azúa calls “the great presence”. According to the Uruguayan critic, the European empire is “absolute” with regard to the economic, cultural and human spheres. The ideas that circulate in Latin America are fundamentally European and depend upon the alternatives to their cycles and modes. This is a real blow for all those intellectuals who reject the Eurocentric derivation. In line with Real de Azúa, Rafael de la Fuente Benavides, who will become the “culterano, gongorine” Martín Adán (according to 1

Cf. Baltasar Gracián. 1983. Art et figures de l’esprit. Agudeza y arte de ingenio, 1647. (Traduction, introduction et notes de Benito Pelegrín.) Paris: Seuil.

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Mirko Lauer’s definition), wrote in his doctoral dissertation De lo barroco en el Perú (1938) that Peruvian and Hispano-American literature prolong Spanish baroque culture.2 It stands to reason that Latin American literary studies concentrate on the obsessive thematization of the problem of cultural identity (cf. Luisa Campuzano). The relationship with Europe and with the Baroque cultural world is observed from the point of view of a dichotomy that tends to put the old continent off-centre and to favour the “indigenous” contribution made by the “colonized” countries. Para algunos, esa subjetividad transcultural encarna una herencia colonial de alienación; para otros, constituye la esencia misma de la cultura en América. Elegir un lado u otro de esta dicotomía determina lecturas muy diferentes.3

According to Sarduy, however, there are two baroque periods and both of them are related to the way the concept “universe” is interpreted. The first baroque is the “Galilean” one. Characteristic of this baroque is not only its cosmological criticism, but also the idea that the perceptible aspect of a phenomenon or an object does not explain its ontology. The observation and existence of “invisible” phenomena are the philosophical strategies Sarduy irreverently applies to the reading of neo-baroque art: La cosmología actual y su posible retombée en un neobarroco [tiene] la misma estrategia discursiva de Galileo: la subversión, o la desintegración de una imagen coherente del universo, tal y como la acepta en un momento dado la humanidad entera, en algo tan abrupto e inaceptable que no puede realizarse más que bajo los auspicios de una demostración legal, de una demanda jurídica basada en la eficacia de los signos y en su mayor alcance: la nueva ley como teatralidad.4

2

Cf. Rafael De la Fuente Benavides. 1968. De lo barroco en el Perú. Lima: Universidad Nacional Mayor San Marcos. 3 Luisa Campuzano. 1999. ‘Traducir América: el código clásico en cinco novelas de Alejo Carpentier’ in Bañuls, J.V., J. Sánchez & J. Sanmartín (eds) Literatura iberoamericana y tradición clásica. Valencia: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona-Universitat de València: 100. 4 Severo Sarduy. 1974. Ensayos generales sobre el Barroco. México: Siglo XXI: 20.

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This passage deals with the scenic mechanism that is also used by Calderón. Calderón’s characters question and destabilize the vertical axis man-God, creature-creator. The parallel to the crisis of modernity is obvious. The Baroque is a decentralized world that reflects allegory, illusion and dreams. In this precarious system, the sun is no longer the centre of the universe. This unsettled nature is expressed by means of a neo-baroque model, which is tailored to the needs of the twentieth century. According to Sarduy, the traditional baroque will always appeal more to the writers of the new continent. It comes to being in a “different”, unofficial notion of the cosmos, which represents the “second” baroque period: the baroque turns the world into an artistic, contemporary challenge for the imagination. Sarduy’s irreverence, which was influenced by his interpretations of Lacan and Derrida, comes to a deconstructive criticism of the unification or unity of the world (“la violenta pulsión de unificación, el feroz deseo del Uno”5): Se trata, en la ciencia, de compaginar lo diverso y, paralelamente, en el mundo de los símbolos, de escindir cada vez mas: por una parte la sed del Uno; por la otra su deconstrucción.6

Due to a movement of intercontinental lending and donation, José Lezama Lima vindicates the Baroque nature of Latin American art as well. With the help of a program or a local American content, European Baroque forms become autonomous in Latin America. According to Lezama Lima, literary identity is born within this prolific interchange. The search for the universal paragon belongs to the new baroque episteme, which was first recognized by Lezama Lima and later on by Carpentier. Lezama Lima ironically emphasizes that “the Baroque is ours”: something Cuban and Latin American at the same time. Paradiso’s author does not intend to dissociate the Latin American Baroque from its European cultural origin. In La expresión americana (1957), a pamphlet published in 1953 and probably his theoreti5 6

Sarduy 1974: 24. Sarduy 1974: 24.

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cal masterpiece, Lezama Lima focuses on the maturity of the Latin American Baroque. He defines Latin American Baroque culture as a combination of creation and pain: “Una cultura asimilada o desasimilada por otra no es una comodidad…sino un hecho doloroso, igualmente creador, creado”.7 It is also in La expresión americana, however, that Lezama Lima declares the Baroque paradigm to be an expressive model of Latin American continental art. The European Baroque is considered to be based on a “curiosity” that manifested itself in literary circles from the seventeenth century until the mid-twentieth century. With great intellectual agudeza, Lezama Lima does not identify this “curiosity” with the “Creole sensibility”, but localizes it in a game of symbiosis and creative tension that grants the formal unity of the new Latin American art. To this end, Lezama Lima coins the term plutonism. This is interesting with respect to certain comparative readings, because plutonism is said to represent “el fuego originario que rompe los fragmentos y los unifica”.8 The rupture and synthesis of this mysterious and nocturnal barroquismo results in a new continental artistic conscience that teems with authentic orphic and religious connotations. The Brazilian artist Aleijadinho, Sor Juana and El Lunarejo are representatives of this renewed culture, a culture that is both local and universal. Whereas Lezama Lima perceives the Baroque as “our metahistory”, Oswald de Andrade, who theorized on the Brazilian Baroque, equals it with a utopian, anachronistic style that is characteristic of Latin American writing. Unlike the creator of João Miramar, Lezama Lima accepts the European origin of his own art. Without that origin, no historical development would have occurred. Carpentier concludes the introduction to El reino de este mundo (1949) with a compelling question: “Pero qué es la historia de América toda sino una crónica de lo real-maravilloso?”.9 He argues that the Marvellous consists of a supreme inversion of reality and an 7

José Lezama Lima. 1953. Analecta del reloj. La Habana: Orígenes: 63. José Lezama Lima. 1993. La expresión americana. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica: 80. 9 Alejo Carpentier. 1958. El reino de este mundo. Lima: Editora Latinoamericana: 11. 8

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unchained exaltation of the spirit. The Marvellous and the Baroque are strictly linked. Carpentier admits that the Baroque art has always been Latin American, i.e. an art that consists of altarpieces and luxuriant trees, of wood and alters.10 According to him, the new art should teach, show and communicate how prodigious the things natural to Latin America are. Carpentier, en suma, eleva lo real maravilloso a la categoría del ‘ser’, mientras que Lezama Lima insiste en la idea de lo americano como un devenir (un ser y uno no ser), en permanente mutación. Ello ayuda a explicar, acaso, por qué Carpentier habla de retomar el barroco como ‘estilo’ por parte del escritor latinoamericano, como tarea consciente para representar ‘nuestras esencias’, en tanto Lezama Lima convierte lo barroco en una ‘forma en devenir’, un paradigma continuo, desde ‘los orígenes’ en el siglo XVII hasta la actualidad.11

Carpentier acknowledges the cyclic return of the Baroque as a “human constant”. His Baroque is similar to the Hegelian concept of a mutating transcendent being. According to Lezama Lima, however, the Baroque is an idea in progress, a paradigm that consists in the incarnation of the Ideal. Carpentier entiende por Barroco la mezcla de estilos en una misma obra, mezcla que corresponde a los diversos orígenes de cada estilo. El arte americano, que tiende siempre hacia el Barroco, exhibe esta mezcla de estilos, que es a la vez una especie de desfase temporal; lo neoclásico convive en la arquitectura de nuestras ciudades con vestigios mudéjares y el modern style. La mezcla desjerarquizada hace imposible que cada obra está centrada en una idea que domine las demás. No es una amalgama cuya base metafórica sea la naturaleza, una especie de caos genésico de origen romántico, sino una convivencia de formas cuyo origen son las diversas culturas que ocupan el espacio americano. De ahí la aparente desproporción permanente del arte americano, no sólo en cuanto al tamaño, sino en cuanto a la falta de equilibrio de las diversas partes.12

10

Alejo Carpentier. 1964. Tientos y diferencias. Montevideo: Arca: 37-38. Irlemar Chiampi. 2000. Barroco y modernidad. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica: 26. 12 Roberto González Echevarría. 1985. Introducción’ in Carpentier, Alejo. Los pasos perdidos. Madrid: Cátedra: 37. 11

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According to Octavio Paz, “cada obra latinoamericana es una prolongación y una trasgresión de Occidente”.13 Oscillating between a fusion of styles and forms, extensions and subversions – from which, however, the history of human thought is knitted – Latin American literature presents a very rich and varied neo-baroque frame. The Latin American author “es un ser que ha vivido en los suburbios de Occidente, en las afueras de la historia. Al mismo tiempo, se siente (y es) parte de una tradición que, hasta hace poco, lo desdeñaba” (135). From Miguel Ángel Asturias to Carlos Fuentes, from Carlos Germán Belli to Guillermo Cabrera Infante, from Haroldo de Campos to Brazilian Concrete Poetry, the literary vegetation that transgresses the Occident is luxuriant. According to Borges: Barroco es aquel estilo que deliberadamente agota (o quiere agotar) sus posibilidades y que linda con su propia caricatura […] Barroco (Baroco) es el nombre de uno de los métodos del silogismo; el siglo XVIII lo aplicó a determinados abusos de la arquitectura y de la pintura del XVII; yo diría que es barroca la etapa final de todo arte, cuando éste exhibe y dilapida sus medios. El barroquismo es intelectual.14

Whereas, according to Borges, the Baroque represents the final stage of every aesthetic period, Sarduy stresses that the Baroque and the neo-baroque are strongly related: El barroco actual, el neobarroco, refleja estructuralmente la inarmonía, la ruptura de la homogeneidad, del logos en tanto absoluto, la carencia que constituye nuestro fundamento epistémico. Neobarroco del desequilibrio, reflejo estructural de un deseo que no puede alcanzar a su objeto, deseo para el cual el logos no ha organizado más que una pantalla que esconde la carencia […] Neobarroco: reflejo necesariamente pulverizado de un saber que sabe ya que no está ‘apaciblemente’ cerrado sobre sí mismo. Arte del destronamiento y de la discusión.15

Sarduy’s visionary reading shows the Baroque as a copy of the crisis of modernity. This appraisal is confirmed by the distinguished Brazilian critic Affonso Ávila. In his aesthetic and historical analyses, 13

Octavio Paz. 1992. El signo y el garabato. México: Joaquín Mortiz: 135. Jorge Luis Borges. 1980. Prosa completa. Vol. 1. Barcelona: Bruguera: 243. 15 Severo Sarduy. 1976. ‘El Barroco y el neobarroco’ in Fernández-Moreno, César (ed.). América Latina en su literatura. México: Siglo XXI: 183. 14

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Ávila tries to specify the role played by the Baroque in the formation of “national singularity” and observes the literary relationships with modernity: Gongora is “surprised” in the pages of James Joyce and Padre Antonio Vieira’s sermons, the zenith of Portuguese Baroque prose, present a technique that is very close to that of the nouveau roman.16 If the Baroque was an art of propaganda, a didactic art of morals, an almost catechist art, a profoundly religious experience, and at the same time dramatically doubtful, the Neo-baroque represents the crisis of a cultural system that does no longer accept a unique and invincible truth. Asturias, Infante, Carpentier, Fuentes and Roa Bastos – so as not to forget the Brazilian cannibalistic experience – are authors who stumble when faced with the modern crisis. They analyse it without being able to detach themselves from the shadow of the European tradition. Lezama Lima, Belli and Paz are possibly the only ones who have critically accepted the neo-baroque universe as an answer expressing philosophical doubt and artistic generation or creation. It would perhaps be better to take postmannerism into account as well. Postmannerism is determined by a brutal crisis of humanism. The term neo-baroque, however – as Omar Calabrese notes –, probably turns out to be more comfortable and à la mode than postmannerism. In order to justify the importance of mannerism and its surprising proximity to the disturbed static canons of twentieth century art, Arnold Hauser has written on the problematic of mannerism and baroque, and on the revalorisation of mannerism: En el nuevo arte, que rompe con los principios del Renacimiento y del humanismo, lo espiritual se expresa desfigurado, haciendo saltar, disolviendo lo material, la forma sensible, la fenomenalidad inmediata; es decir, por la deformación de lo material. Cuando, al contrario, hay que subrayar lo material, la belleza corporal, la armonía ornamental, la forma se independiza y entonces es el espíritu el que es violentado, encadenado y esquematizado.17

16

Affonso Ávila. 1994. O lúdico e as projeções do mundo barroco. Vol. 1: Uma linguagem a dos cortes. Uma consciência a dos luces. São Paulo: Perspectiva: 31. 17 Arnold Hauser. 1969. Literatura y manierismo. Madrid: Guadarrama: 27-28.

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It can be said that the Baroque syndrome reaches our own world. The Baroque moves on to the neo-baroque stage by way of a new function: Espacio de dialogismo, de la polifonía, de la carnavalización, de la parodia y la intertextualidad […]. Red de conexiones, de sucesivas filigranas, cuya expresión gráfica no sería lineal, bidimensional, plana, sino en volumen, espacial y dinámica.18

Sarduy’s theoretical-poetic analysis, however, permits ulterior reflections. The Cuban writer interprets the neo-baroque as another name for the postmodern experience. Sarduy sees in post-war Latin American literature the same signs of defeat. His use of polyphony or carnival, parody or intertextuality, however, does not show the philosophical openness that characterised Bakhtin’s investigation of these concepts. Sarduy irreverently upsets all systems of thought and refuses any conventional resolution. If polyphony or dialogue is also an act of knowing the other and – according to the bakhtinian reading of Dostoyevski – a recognition of one’s own mysterious Other, in Sarduy it is reduced to an empty, useless and sterile dialogue. If parody is both challenge and artistic creation; an unchained competition in which the imitated master is recognized, in Sarduy it is an artefact that is emptied of the codes of knowledge, “a blank parody”, as Jameson would suggest. It is a sign that is only simulation (i.e. it is not properly a sign) because, according to Baudrillard, it has no bond with any reality outside itself. Carnival is turned into a symbolic trick, a pastiche, a transvestism, an operation “of the contrary” for the simple pleasure of going against the rules. Sarduy defines the new Baroque reading and applies it to Latin American art and culture: Lectura barroca: ni concha ni cráneo – meditación sin soporte –, sólo cuenta la energía de conversión y la astucia en el desciframiento del reverso – el otro de la representación –; la pulsión de simulacro que en Los Embajadores, emblemáticamente, se desenmascara y resuelve en la muerte.19

18 19

Sarduy 1976: 175. Severo Sarduy. 1974. Barroco. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana: 66.

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Sarduy’s works are dates with the scandalous, with the degenerative impetus, and, ultimately, with death. They are neo-baroque acts of doubt and erotic tension as an infinite cupio dissolvi. In line with the baroque desengaño, Sarduy affirms that there is no answer and that the delusion is so enormous that, as the Italian poet Montale would say, “suddenly everything disappears, houses, things, all reality”. In De donde son los cantantes (1967) and Cobra (1972), Sarduy violently modifies Vargas Llosa’s and García Márquez’s “regular”, “modern” universe. De donde son los cantantes is a “postmannerist” parody of the social conventions of sex, language, peoples and nations. In Cobra, the two protagonists are transvestites who have turned their own lives into a sexual Bildungsroman. It deals with a search for the other and with the violation of the nature of Being. Cobra can be considered as a parody of the novel of the jungle. It features dwarves, homosexuals, sadomasochists and monstrous creatures; figures of perversion and plutonism. The controversial Overdose (1972) camouflages texts and verses by Gongora and Quevedo. The baroque prosody and the corporal references, which are typical of the scientific discourse of the seventeenth century, are turned into explicit homosexual references. Maitreya (1978) and Colibrí (1988) as well represent verbal and linguistic orgies, a “fiesta barroca”, as Irlemar Chiampi would say. We would call it a neo-baroque feast, which can no longer be seen as continuity and needs to be interpreted as the rupture of theoretical and anthropological models. Even though some poets (e.g. Carlos Germán Belli) have used poetic and ancient forms as the silva and the madrigal, and even though they present a mixed lexis, Neo-baroque narrative writing generally imitates the theatrical model. The modernity of Baroque theatre is summarized by the fact that the literature of the second half of the twentieth century is still characterized by theatricality.20 Contemporary culture has rejected any romantic and idealist reading and has ridiculed the modernist avant-garde in favour of a solipsist and narcis-

20

Cf. José Maria Pozuelo Yvancos. 2000. ‘Calderón, el mundo como teatro’ in ABC Cultural (21 April 2000): 7-8.

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sistic figuration and a new use of simulacrum. In this sense, the space of literary representation is configured as a theatrical discourse. According to a polemic process that Sarduy defines as “arte de descomponer un orden y componer un desorden”,21 the neo-baroque language opens itself to the effects of saturation and absurdities, chaotic confusion, systematic doubt and moral disorientation. Luis Rafael Sánchez’s La guaracha del Macho Camacho continues to decompose order. The Puerto Rican author puts the text of a bolero in an ironic light (“la vida es una cosa maravillosa”): Previo y colectivo y consciente reconocimiento de la inutilidad de la protesta pero: un coro de claxones procedía, todos a una como Fuenteovejuna. Volátil encielado de bocinas. Y, sepultado por el claxónico desafinado, sorteado entre el vocinglerío, culebrea el guaracheo que libertan las trescientas estaciones radiales, grito de purísima salsería: La vida es una cosa fenomenal.22

The same bitter irony is present in Alejo Carpentier’s Concierto barroco (1974). The return of history is synthesized in dramatic scenes: Scarlatti’s harpsichord plays while slaves are being hit and Louis Armstrong takes the place of Vivaldi in a heterogeneous and strange combination, “neo-baroquely” singing I can’t give anything but love, baby. Carpentier attempts to construct an autochthonous source of Latin American identity. […] Armed with neo-baroque literary language and a vision of Latin American cultural hybridity as his tools, Carpentier erects new ideological edifices that he hopes will replace the repressive cultural architecture left in place by colonialism.23

It is a cannibalistic, “anthropophagical” return, as Oswald de Andrade points out. The nostalgia of lost times hardly helps us to live and profusely questions the tragically ironic and almost parodic emptiness of

21

Severo Sarduy. 1973. Cobra. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana: 20. Luis Rafael Sánchez. 2000. La guaracha del Macho Camacho. Madrid: Cátedra: 155. 23 Cf. Sophia McClennen. ‘Así fue: Anti-Colonial Narrative in Alejo Carpentier’s Concierto barroco and Reinaldo Arenas’s El mundo alucinante’. On line at: http://www.ncsu.edu/project/acontracorriente/fall_03/McClennen.pdf. 22

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existence. Literature only reflects chimeras, comic illusions and allegorical spaces. En todas partes se dibujan las quimeras de la similitud, pero se sabe que son quimeras; es el tiempo privilegiado del trompe-l’oeil, de la ilusión cómica, del teatro que se desdobla y representa un teatro, del quid pro quo, de los sueños y de las visones; es el tiempo de los sentidos engañosos; es el tiempo en el que las metáforas, las comparaciones y las alegorías definen el espacio poético del lenguaje.24

The neo-baroque criticizes the possibility of art as a value that is offered and added to the human spirit: “la obra de arte nos deja entrever, por un instante, el allá en el aquí, el siempre en el ahora”.25 Hence, the neo-baroque represents a system of thought and an ideology that are indispensable in order to determine the assemblage of cultural-morphological necessities of contemporary artistic expressions. Rereading Gregorio de Mattos’s Brazilian case, Haroldo de Campos rejects the idea of a Baroque episteme as the founder of a national conscience. At the same time, he recognizes the distinctive mark left by Latin American literature with respect to the origin of the Baroque. For him, this discourse profoundly unites “experimentation” and “experimentalism”, fictional game and compromise.26 This synthesis, which, on a creative level, results in utopian solutions, fictional models, imaginary worlds and linguistic recreations, is the authentic starting point of the notion of Latinoamericanidad. The neo-baroque is the result of a triple assemblage: (1) of a local perception of the Latin American substance; (2) of a universal and historic rebellion against the romantic archetypes; (3) of a utopian impulse that was generated, on the one hand, by the old image of colonization, and on the other, by the constant dream of local autonomy. The neobaroque reveals itself, therefore, in this structure of combat and dichotomies. 24

Michel Foucault. 1984. Las palabras y las cosas. Una arqueología de las ciencias humanas. Barcelona: Planeta-De Agostini: 58. 25 Octavio Paz. 1983. ‘Pintado en Mexico’ in El País (7 November 1983): 21. 26 Cf. H. de Campos. 1989. O seqüestro do barroco na formação da literatura brasileira: o caso Gregório de Mattos. Salvador da Bahia: Fundação ‘Casa de Jorge Amado’.

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¿Y por qué es América latina la tierra de elección del barroco? Porque toda simbiosis, todo mestizaje, engendra un barroquismo. El barroquismo americano se acrece con la criolledad, con el sentido del criollo, con la conciencia que cobra el hombre americano, sea hijo de blanco venido de Europa, sea hijo de negro africano, sea hijo de indio nacido en el continente – y eso lo ha visto admirablemente Simón Rodríguez – la conciencia de ser otra cosa, de ser una cosa nueva, de ser una simbiosis, de ser un criollo; y el espíritu criollo de por sí es un espíritu barroco.27

In conclusion, the neo-baroque only presents a shared origin. It is an origin that was discussed and transformed until it could no longer be recognized. Sarduy’s literary works can be considered as examples. Not even the work of Lezama Lima, however, escapes this labyrinthine and conflictive mentality. Lima’s work as well intends to reform what has already been deformed by means of a saturated and omnivorous linguistic system (e.g. his masterpiece Paradiso). The utopian design of Lima’s Latin American myth resides in a creative absence that forms the historical and cultural fundaments of Latin America. Like a river, the Baroque history of America pushes Latin America “to the doors of paradise”, as Lezama Lima would say. That neobaroque is, however, a baroque excess that, contrary to the original baroque, does not find transcendence in this excess, but a utopian project. The origin is shared. The outcome is the sad and desperate rupture of a distant origin.

27

Alejo Carpentier. 1987. ‘Lo barroco y lo real maravilloso’ in Tientos, diferencias y otros ensayos. Barcelona: Plaza y Janés: 112.

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“Histoires de femme et de chien cannibales”: Réécritures et intertextualités inaperçues ou inavouées (Condé/Chamoiseau) Kathleen Gyssels Universiteit Antwerpen À travers quelques exemples de réécritures postcoloniales d’œuvres canoniques (Une tempête d’Aimé Césaire (1967), La migration des cœurs (1995) de Maryse Condé, et surtout Omeros (1990) de Derek Walcott), nous illustrerons trois cas de réécriture postcoloniale, d’intertextualités explicites. Dans quelle mesure la réécriture permetelle de passer outre la “balkanisation” de la littérature caribéenne (Glissant), d’en finir avec les impasses d’un comparatisme caribéen? Comment Walcott bâtit-il des ponts entre littératures anglo- et francophones caribéennes?

Dans cet article, je me propose de réfléchir sur le cannibalisme littéraire qui, à côté de la créolisation, de l’hybridité au niveau de la forme et du genre, caractérise la littérature caribéenne et qui prend des formes et fonctions toujours plus éloignées par rapport au Centre, d’une part, et par rapport aux auteurs afro-caribéens, de l’autre. Si l’intertextualité prend aux Antilles françaises exceptionnellement la forme d’une réécriture totale d’un chef d’œuvre canonique,1 c’est cependant avec beaucoup de liberté et d’ironie postmoderne. En général, les clins d’oeil aux auteurs et aux œuvres, les imitations, voire plagiats auxquels la narration renvoie sont loin d’être seulement français, caribéens, mais il s’agit de la World literature. Également, il est question de métisser la grande littérature avec la littérature populaire. Illustrant deux cas d’intertextualité inaperçue, voire inavouée (de la part des auteurs), je me pose la question de savoir où commence2 et 1

Maryse Condé. 1995. La migration des cœurs. Paris: Laffont. Une phrase comme: “Le Foyer des métis lui [à Hakim] rappelait trop de mauvais souvenirs. C’était toute une partie de son enfance qui lui remontait dans un ho2

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finit l’intertextualité, à quelles fins les auteurs l’emploient? Quelle place réservent-ils au lecteur-interprète qui, lui, peut détecter des connexions, soit à l’intérieur d’une seule écriture (hypertexte), soit entre romans successifs rappelant étrangement d’autres œuvres du mainstream de la diaspora noire? Se pourrait-il que la critique découvre des liens que les auteurs ignorent, voire nient, tant l’intertextualité suggère aussi la frilosité de la part des créateurs (“l’anxiété de l’influence” de Harold Bloom), ou à l’autre extrême, se veut projection d’une haute parenté? Enfin, la réécriture (minimale ou maximale) se doit d’être interrogée dans une critique caribéenne comparatiste. L’on “balkanise” encore les lettres, si bien qu’on risque de passer outre des modèles et influences caribéens ou non, ressortissants d’autres zones linguistiques. Condé et l’Histoire de la femme cannibale Maryse Condé a la réputation d’être une “nomade inconvenante”, titre d’un collectif publié par Cottenet-Hage et Moudileno,3 ou encore dérangeante, défiant toute catégorisation: Maryse Condé. A Writer of Her Own, titrent Barbour et Herndon.4 Ces sous-titres disent assez le caractère rebelle et iconoclaste de la romancière. Hewitt intitule avec justesse sa postface à la traduction anglaise des Derniers rois mages, ‘Maryse Condé and the “f(r)ictions” with America’5 pendant qu’un autre article s’intitule ‘Condé’s critical seesaw’,6 réglant son différend avec sa société d’adoption dans ce livre de désenchantement multiracial américain. Ailleurs, Condé se dit pourtant être mieux comprise quet.” (Maryse Condé. 2000a. Célanire cou-coupé. Paris: Laffont: “Press Pocket”: 36) me rappelle le poème le plus célèbre de toute la poésie damassienne. Dans ‘Hoquet’, le poète Damas s’exprime: “me revient mon enfance, dans un hoquet, Parlez-m’en du désastre, parlez-m’en” (Léon-Gontran Damas. 1983. Pigments. Névralgies. Paris: Présence Africaine). 3 M. Cottenet-Hage & L. Moudileno (eds). 2001. Maryse Condé. Une nomade ‘inconvenante’. Matouri: Ibis Rouge. 4 Sarah Barbour & Denise Herndon. 2006. Emerging Perspectives on Maryse Condé, a Writer of Her Own. Trenton: Africa World Press. 5 Leah Hewitt. 1997. ‘Maryse Condé and the “f(r)ictions” with America”’, afterword to Condé, Marysse. 1997. The Last of the African Kings (tr. de Richard Philcox). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 6 Leah Hewitt. 1995. ‘Condé’s Critical Seesaw’ dans Callaloo 18(3): 641-651.

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aux États-Unis qu’en France. C’est là un des multiples paradoxes relevés tout au long de ses péritextes (entretiens et discussions, interviews et bavardages en marge de colloques, etc). Condé entretient le mythe de l’“Étrangère aux États-Unis”,7 mais déclare ailleurs8 que les auteurs africains-américains ont la chance d’être considérés comme des auteurs à part entière, insistant toutefois sur l’important corps de “critique africaine-américaine”. Condé transgresse non seulement toutes les conventions romanesques et brise à cœur joie tous les tabous,9 introduisant l’élément queer. Depuis les années ’90, elle se livre à une anthropophagie littéraire assez sauvage. Certes, l’intertextualité fut déjà une composante centrale dans Moi, Tituba (1986), porteuse d’une imagination hybride (ou métissée),10 mais elle restait toutefois encore contrôlée. Après avoir publié plusieurs articles sur la “liberté totale” de l’auteur et plus particulièrement sur le cannibalisme littéraire, un double tournant se manifeste: aussi important que la migration qui emmène narrateur et narrataire toujours plus loin de sa Guadeloupe ou de sa Caraïbe natale, tantôt en Amérique latine (le Pérou, Célanire Cou-Coupé), en Colombie (Colonie du Nouveau Monde), ou en Afrique du sud, avec Histoire de la femme cannibale, s’avère la rapine et une tendance nette vers le roman populaire, sûr d’atteindre un plus grand nombre de lecteurs, comme le constate Chris Bongie.11 Par ce mot “rapine”, employé par Glissant pour désigner le pillage intertextuel de Césaire,12 j’aimerais 7

Maryse Condé. Janvier 2002. ‘Une étrangère à New York’ dans New York noire (numéro spécial de Africultures 44; http://www.africultures.com). 8 Voir, par exemple, Françoise Pfaff. 1993. Entretiens avec Maryse Condé. Paris: Karthala. Traduction anglaise: Françoise Pfaff. 1996. Conversations with Maryse Condé. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 9 Si au début elle se tenait sagement à l’amour interracial, au rapport conflictuel entre Antillais de France et Africains du continent, ses récentes fictions s’attaquent pêle-mêle à la vie de secte, à l’homosexualité et à la pédophilie, à l’excision féminine en Afrique, et ceci sur les traces d’Alice Walker, etc. 10 María Laimdota Ducats. Février 1995. ‘The Hybrid Terrain of Literary Imagination: M Condé’s Black Witch of Salem, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Hester Prynne, and Aimé Césaire’s Heroic Poetic Voice’ dans College Literature 22: 51-61. 11 Chris Bongie. 2003. ‘Exiles on Main Stream. Valuing the Popularity of Postcolonial Literature’ dans Postmodern Culture (consultable en ligne: http://www3.iath.virginia.edu/pmc/issue.903/14.1bongie.html). 12 Édouard Glissant. 2005. La Cohée du Lamentin. Paris: Seuil: 117.

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aborder une posture d’écrivaine qui s’accroît vertigineusement et exponentiellement. Procédé que le Brésilien Oswaldo de Andrade dans son Manifeste cannibale (1928) célébra sur le mode dadaïste, le cannibalisme gagne une place croissante dans des romans qui se succèdent à vive allure (un nouveau sortira en mai chez Mercure de France). Se pourrait-il que les emprunts et les (en)jeux intertextuels soient désormais une pratique tellement courante que… dénuée d’interrogation et de circonspection? Si dans les années ’80, on criait au scandale (l’affaire Ouologuem,13 l’affaire Beyala, qui après avoir copié Ben Okri, récidiverait dans Femme nue, femme noire, où je reconnais des emprunts à Danticat (notamment l’examen de la virginité imposé à Irène, et la voleuse de bébé mort, sujet dans ‘Entre la piscine et les gardénias’)), les années ’90 se caractérisent par l’indulgence de la critique à l’égard de cette pratique. Célanire cou-coupé (2000) annonce dès le titre l’emprunt à Césaire, mais s’offre comme un roman démembré, décomposé, à l’image des cadavres qui rôdent dans cet amalgame de roman policier et d’investigation de la terreur postcoloniale (indiquée par le sigle d’abréviation CCC, désignant une cellule terroriste active dans le Brabant wallon et la Flandre, qui résonnent dans le nom de Thomas de Brabant?), de tract féministe et de romance interraciale une fois de plus assez invraisemblable. Comme sa protagoniste au corps segmenté, le lecteur devra réassembler les morceaux épars, tirer sens des différentes cultures et ères qui s’y entre-déchirent et s’entre-tissent. Truffé de renvois à des sources les plus diverses, voire opposées, – le cheval du docteur Pinceau s’appelle d’Artagnan,14 et il lit un certain ro-

13

Yambo Ouologuem salue André Schwarz-Bart lorsqu’il termine Le devoir de violence (1968. Paris: Seuil: 207) comme suit: “Souvent il est vrai, l’âme veut rêver l’écho sans passé du bonheur. Mais jeté dans le monde, l’on ne peut s’empêcher de songer que Saïf, pleuré trois millions de fois, renaît sans cesse à l’Histoire, sous les cendres chaudes de plus de trente Républiques africaines [...]. Ce soir, tandis qu’ils se cherchaient l’un l’autre jusqu’à ce que la terrasse fût salie des hauteurs noirâtres de l’aurore, une poussière chut d’en haut sur l’échiquier; mais à cette heure où le regard de Nakem vole autour des souvenirs, la brousse comme la côte était fertile et brûlante de pitié. Dans l’air, l’eau et le feu, aussi, la terre des hommes fit n’y avoir qu’un jeu […]”. 14 Condé 2000a: 147.

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man d’une Anglaise, Frankenstein15. Au Pérou, Célanire se console de son ennui avec Pérégrinations d’une paria de la métisse française Floria Tristan,16 et des Africains illustres (Hampate Ba17) voisinent les titres de valses de Richard Strauss (Le Beau Danube bleu18) et des prières (le Veni Creator19). Cette intertextualité d’apparat, assez fragmentaire et dispersée, supplante la réécriture telle qu’entreprise par Jean Rhys du chefd’œuvre brontéen. L’autre sœur élue est bien sûr Emily Brontë, que Condé va réécrire au point d’être l’exception franco-antillaise qui confirme la règle des réécritures totales. Dans la revue martiniquaise Portulan (oct. 2000),20 Condé souligne d’abord que la pratique de la “réécriture” totale d’un chef d’œuvre serait plutôt rare (à l’exception de La Tempête de Césaire). Sans qu’elle n’offre une explication, Condé observe que le “rewrite” caractériserait davantage la littérature caribéenne anglophone,21 (l’exemple du Trinidadien George Lamming, le premier à “réécrire” The Tempest, vient à l’esprit) et certainement hispanophone. En fait, Condé se base ici sur – s’approprie, dirions-nous presque – un article d’Eugenio Matibag,22 et qui avait amplement illustré les nombreuses histoires d’anthropophagie dans la littérature cubaine et portoricaine. Bien que Glissant, dans Le discours antillais, prétende que l’Antillais écrit avec un complexe de Caliban, il 15

Troisième texte analysé par Gayatri Spivak (1985) dans ‘Three Women’s Text and a Critique of Imperialism’, publié dans Critical Inquiry 12(1): 243-261. Notons que Condé a pris part à la Cornell Summer School avec entre autres Spivak, qui a pu lui révéler cette figure du colonisé, monstrueux, créature sortie de la fabrique colonialiste. 16 Condé 2000a: 273. 17 Condé 2000a: 58. 18 Condé 2000a: 82. 19 Condé 2000a: 280. 20 Maryse Condé. Octobre 2000b. ‘Des héros et des cannibales: Réécriture et transgression dans la littérature des Petites Antilles de langue française’ dans Esthétique noire (numéro spécial de Portulan 3: 29-38). 21 Theo D’haen. 1997. ‘Post Modernity and Caribbean Discourse’ dans Arnold, A. James (ed.). A history of literature in the Caribbean. Vol. 3. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins: 303-321. 22 Eugenio Matibag. 1992. ‘Cannibalisme tenace. Anthropophagic Fictions in Caribbean Writing’ dans Condé, Maryse (ed.). L’Héritage de Caliban. Pointe-à-Pitre: Jasor: 147-164.

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faudrait donc attendre les créolistes pour pleinement voir la contestation et la réfutation intertextuelles: N’en déplaise à Édouard Glissant, le cannibalisme littéraire est peu à l’œuvre dans les Petites Antilles de langue française. Eugenio Matibag23 ne cite guère que des auteurs de langue espagnole ou anglaise.24

Et elle poursuit: “Césaire et Confiant exceptés, les appropriations sont rares dans les Petites Antilles de langue française. Il m’est difficile de commenter le roman que m’inspira le chef-d’œuvre d’Emily Brontë”.25 Cette dernière phrase ou aveu renvoie le critique à l’indécidabilité de l’acte intertextuel condéen: comme le montre Fumagalli,26 il s’agit simplement de transposer le conflit des classes sociales britanniques à la Carïbe où la pyramide se complique encore par le facteur race et gender. Dans Célanire cou-coupé, l’on a du mal à cerner le pourquoi de la mixité et de l’hybridté intertextuelle, et le même embarras nous saisit devant La femme cannibale (comme le constate Rosello,27 s’interrogeant sur le sens d’une transgression aussi audacieuse que l’introduction d’un nom d’étudiant de Condé dans ce roman, et de suggérer qu’il fut l’amant du mari de Rosalie, Stephen (en qui le lecteur reconnaît bien sûr Richard Philcox, himself!)). Dans un tohu bohu de lieux et de personnages, de noms fictifs les uns plus 23 Professeur et critique afro-cubain qui travaille sur la religion. Matibag survole les différentes œuvres hispanophones caribéennes où le primitivisme s’allie au cannibalisme, notamment chez Carpentier, Lydia Cabrera, Ana Lydia Vega. Notons qu’il donne l’exemple des Leyandas portorrequenas (1924-25) où il est question d’une caverne avec des ossements (comme dans Le Vieil Homme). ‘La cueva de las muertos’ est un monument dans l’imaginaire du marronnage: une fête cannibale aurait eu lieu dans une grotte et des ossements animaux et humains en attesteraient (Matibag 1992: 156). Condé renvoie à sa contribution dans son collectif L’Héritage de Caliban (Condé 1992): ‘Cannibalisme tenace: Anthropophagic Fictions in Caribbean Writing’ (Matibag 1992). 24 Condé 2000b: 32. 25 Condé 2000b: 38. 26 Cristina Fumagalli. 2006. ‘Creolizing the Canon: Maryse Condé’s Wuthering Heights’ dans Barbour & Herndon (2006). 27 Mireille Rosello. Novembre-Décembre 2005. ‘Le congélateur de la femme cannibale. Un texte caribéen anthropophage, Histoire de la femme cannibale de Maryse Condé’ dans Interculturel Francophonies 8: 207-220.

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dépaysants que les autres (Fouques de Brabant (la Flandre médiévale), Hakim (l’Orient), Kung Fui (l’Asie) et Pisket), ce roman semble en fin de compte surtout et essentiellement thématiser la vengeance d’une enfant indésirée de ses géniteurs infanticides et d’une société qui produit de pareils malfaiteurs. L’arbitraire de l’onomastique semble ailleurs appeller une note en bas de page: cheval alezan, pour désigner une prostituée dominicaine.28 Bien que les unes plus masquées que d’autres, j’entends pas mal d’échos à quelques grands monuments vivants et décédés de la littérature canoniques. De plus en plus éclectique, cette décalcomanie littéraire élit des partenaires de plus en plus variés. Parmi ses partenairessœurs, bien qu’elle désavoue l’influence, Toni Morrison me semble occuper une place prépondérante. D’ailleurs, modèle pour beaucoup d’auteurs hommes et femmes, originaires de la Caraïbe (Edwidge Danticat, Gisèle Pineau, Caryl Phillips), ou non, Morrison laisse une marque indélébile à Célanire cou-coupé, une tache si visible que l’auteure dissimulerait sous le titre césairien29 et le fait-divers, au même titre que le foulard que porte l’oblat Célanire. Il est bien sûr facile de motiver le piratage débridé par l’esthétique postmoderne, comme le soutient Timotey Cox dans sa thèse Postmodern Tales of Slavery, From Alejo Carpentier to Charles Johnson.30 Le rapport de Condé à Morrison m’intrigue. D’abord, dans ses entretiens à Pfaff,31 Condé se prononça sur la difficulté pour elle, “une 28

Condé 2000a. Dans Moi, Laminaire, Aimé Césaire, qui reste le père des lettres pour Condé, emprunta “Soleil cou coupé” à Apollinaire; délibérément, Condé oriente la critique sur Césaire, ajoutant un prénom dans lequel l’ire me paraît pleinement significatif: Cela/ire (qui pourrait se lire comme ‘C’est la haine’, faisant de Célanire une misovire, selon la terminologie de Werewere Liking, une féministe africaine radicale). En effet, l’expression “cou-coupé” désigne la mort violente, l’élimination brusque par les armes, bref, la “malemort” qui incombera aux “créatures angéliques” que sont les filles qui n’ont pas vécu, les bébés de sexe féminin égorgés par leurs mères meurtries. Dans ‘Zone’, Apollinaire souffrant de “névralgies” qu’éternel alcoolique et amoureux inassouvi, il tenta d’alléger par ses calligrammes. 30 Timotey Cox. 2000. Postmodern Tales of Slavery, From Alejo Carpentier to Charles Johnson. New York: Garland Publishing. Charles Johnson avec Middle Passage est souvent sélectionné pour inclure la tradition africaine-américaine. Peter Hallward opte pour Sarduy, Glissant, Johnson et Mohammed Dib. 31 Pfaff 1993. 29

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étrangère”, de comprendre les romans du prix Nobel de 1993: à part ses premiers romans, The Bluest Eye (dont elle saisit le titre pour un de ses contes d’enfance!32) et Sula, les romans la laisseraient pantoise. Dans ces mêmes entretiens, Condé doit réitérer son problème avec Morrison: elle déclare à Pfaff: “this may appear a bit critical, but I find her very ‘politically correct’. In my opinion, she doesn’t disturb anybody”.33 Non seulement Condé lit autrement des romans comme Beloved et Jazz – à mes yeux bien plus dérangeants que certains de ses propres romans, mais je suis alors perplexe que précisément Beloved et Jazz reviennent sous la plume condéenne dans Célanire cou-coupé. Dans ces mêmes causeries à la critique caribéenne Pfaff, Condé revient sur de grands modèles et grands auteurs qui doivent précisément leur célébrité à l’intertextualité. Significativement, dans la toute dernière “causerie”, Condé insinue que le prix Nobel en 1992 au poète de Sainte-Lucie soit lié à son “poème magnifique”, c’est-à-dire à son entreprise de réécriture homérique qu’est Omeros (1990). Tout en protestant que Césaire aurait mérité le Nobel,34 Condé précise que pareille “rewrite” avait été dûment accomplie par le poète et dramaturge martiniquais dans sa pièce Une tempête (1969). On le sait, en 1995, Condé elle-même réécrira le chef-d’œuvre d’une des quatre sœurs Brontë, dans une geste similaire à celle de Jean Rhys vis-à-vis de Charlotte Brontë. En d’autres mots, Condé s’autoproclamerait-elle nobélisable, tant il est vrai qu’un Coetzee (Foe) et avant lui Naipaul (A Bend in the River) excellaient dans le procédé? Wuthering Heights d’Emily Brontë, deviendra La migration des cœurs, titre qui dès la quatrième de couverture, s’explique comme une réécriture des Hauts de Hurlevent. Un exergue, lieu de déclaration de filiation prestigieuse (voir Pulvar,35 e.a.), légitime cette réécriture 32 Maryse Condé. 1999. ‘The bluest eye’ dans Le cœur à rire et à pleurer - Contes vrais de mon enfance. Paris: Laffont: 53-56. 33 C.r. Kevin Meehan. Automne 2000. ‘Conversation with Maryse Condé. Book Review’ dans African American Review (en ligne à http://aar.slu.edu/). 34 Pfaff avance alors l’hypothèse que la poésie du Martiniquais serait moins connue que celle de Walcott au moment de l’attribution du prix (Pfaff 1993: 163). 35 J’en prends comme exemple le deuxième roman d’Audrey Pulvar. 2004. L’enfant-bois. Paris: Mercure de France. Ce roman emprunte l’exergue à Beloved, et à côté de cet élément paratextuel, dessine le personnage de l’Haïtienne Nou sur Sethe, en même temps qu’Eva, la fille, ressemble à s’y méprendre à Beloved elle-même: il

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comme un geste d’hommage postmortem à la grande romancière victorienne qui par plusieurs aspects rappelle d’ailleurs le roman de sa sœur, Charlotte Brontë. Jane Eyre comme Wuthering Heights parlent du mariage comme transaction, l’importance des alliances, l’hypocrisie, l’indicible sexualité et corporalité des personnages, l’élément gothique, etc. Comme dans Tituba et dans Traversée, l’exergue indique le prétexte, trace l’intertexte: “A Emily Brontë qui, je l’espère, agréera cette lecture de son chef-d’œuvre. Honneur et respect!” “Les Hauts de Hurlevent”, titre d’une propriété dans le Yorkshire, devient à présent le nom d’une habitation antillaise, mais est gardé subtilement et partiellement dans la traduction anglaise (Windward Heights), de la main de son mari et traducteur, Richard Philcox. Il est hautement significatif que son mari traducteur ressente le besoin de s’exprimer, dans sa préface à la traduction anglaise des Derniers Rois Mages,36 sur l’acte cannibale qu’est la traduction, dans la mesure où on s’approprie, s’incorpore, le texte de l’Autre tout en le transformant, le rendant plus digeste, transparent à l’audience américaine et anglophone. Tout traducteur est aussi, réciproquement, mangé par le texte de l’Autre, car non seulement il n’a pas le dernier mot à dire quant à l’imagination débridée de son épouse, mais encore est-il acculé à traduire des fictions où lui-même figure, déguisé sous les traits par ailleurs saillants de tel ou tel personnage (par exemple Stephen, le prof de littérature anglaise, dans Histoire de la femme cannibale37). Ne n’y a pas que l’allusion au vol de lait (“les jeunes accouchées se voyaient voler leur lait” (64) qui frappe, mais encore l’ode aux mains de la grand-mère experte en arts culinaires et thérapeutiques, rappel de Baby Suggs. L’enfant-bois paraît moins original par les nombreuses isotopies antillaises que l’auteure égrène, tel le “sous-bois”, dôme forestière où a lieu la prise de conscience de la haine maternelle (qui rappelle Pluie et vent sur Télumée Miracle). 36 Dans ses romans, elle déverse l’incompréhension et l’incommunication entre les différentes communautés d’origine caribéenne et entre celles-ci et la grande minorité visible que sont les Africains-Américains. Elle s’attaquera au sujet épineux qu’est le couple mixte, et montre l’échec d’un mariage par ailleurs en effet rare aux États-Unis, entre une Africaine-Américaine (Debbie) et un Antillais francophone (Spéro). En d’autres mots, ce roman règle ses rapports avec l’Amérique noire dont elle se sent exclue. 37 Maryse Condé. 2003. Histoire de la femme cannibale. Paris: Laffont.

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doit-il pas se résigner que celle-ci introduise le portrait de sa mère nonagénaire (qui vit dans le Kent et qui lit chacun des romans de Condé) sous forme d’une Française installée à “Verberie, dans l’Oise”.38 Célanire cou-coupé, mauve et mauvaise J’ai montré ailleurs39 les ressemblances frappantes entre Moi, Tituba et Beloved: la similitude au niveau du message romanesque, les mêmes archétypes et structures imaginaires, comme la figure récurrente de la Médée noire. Surtout, la réplique à un même auteur canonique, Nathaniel Hawthorne,40 retint mon attention. Or, les dates respectives de publication infirment tout soupçon d’emprunt ou d’inspiration. Le contraire vaut pour les emprunts schwarz-barttiens: la “quimboiseuse” parmi les Puritains, la “sorcière noire” dans plusieurs passages donnent à penser qu’il s’agit d’une réécriture de Pluie et vent, d’une part, de La mulâtresse Solitude, de l’autre. Concordantes sur le plan des portraits de “négresses” exceptionnelles qui résistent au pouvoir colonial et à l’Univers de plantation, saboteuses de la maternité et donc du système esclavagiste, Beloved et Tituba sont des narrations gémellaires. Étrangement, le même phénomène se reproduit avec Jazz, suite de Beloved, et dans Célanire coucoupé, qui se conçoit également comme une nouvelle improvisation sur la sorcière noire. Cette fois-ci, il s’agit d’une femme fatale qui se venge contre les injustices et qui, insubordonnée, dispose de forces surhumaines, voire surréelles, pour sucer la vie (telle une succube ou 38

Condé 2003: 55 et 161. Stephen déclare son amour à Rosélie comme suit: “Si je te perds, mon existence redeviendra ce qu’elle était avant toi: une désolation. Je n’avais rien à moi. Je vivais à travers d’autres hommes. Comme un Indien Tupinamba, je dévorais leur foie, leur rate, leur cœur. Mais ces âcres festins me laissaient plus morose encore” (161). 39 Kathleen Gyssels. 2001. Sages sorcières? Révision de la mauvaise mère dans Beloved, Praisesong for the Widow, et Moi, Tituba, sorcière noire de Salem. New York and Lanham: University Press of America. 40 Toutes deux répliquent au Scarlet Letter, pour en retenir deux aspects différents, voire divergents. Dans Beloved, Schoolteacher serait calqué sur Surveyor Pue, un personnage secondaire dans l’œuvre hawthornienne, mais l’alter ego de l’auteur. Condé, quant à elle, s’intéresse à Hester Prynne comme première féministe qui n’eut pas de voix propre.

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un vampire) de ses victimes mâles. Dans Trauma Fiction,41 Anne Whitehead appelle intertextualité la cyclicité de mêmes lieux et de mêmes figures lancinantes au sein d’une même œuvre fictive. À partir d’une analyse très fine de The Nature of Blood de Caryl Phillips et Beloved, précisément, parmi d’autres fictions de l’holocauste (Cynthia Ozik), elle prête au recyclage autotextuel une fonction imaginaire centrale. Pareille intertexualité (je préfère le terme autotextualité) déblaierait en profondeur les obsessions personnelles des auteurs. Morrison comme Condé, contre elles ou malgré elles, reviennent toujours sur la mère noire, meurtrière et infanticide. Niant tout emprunt au cycle morrisonien,42 il me semble que celle qui exprima son admiration pour l’Africaine-Américaine, ait été marquée par le cinquième roman, par ailleurs adapté à l’écran sous le même titre, Beloved, par Jonathan Demme. Célanire cou-coupé non seulement s’inspire d’une histoire réelle analogue à celle qui fut le point de départ de Beloved, à savoir une mère désespérée et outragée qui tue son bébé, mais encore l’histoire d’une pauvre enfant égorgée en Guadeloupe se transmue en histoire de revenante: le bébé assassiné revient hanter son entourage, se venge de la malemort, ce qui est exactement le cas dans Beloved. Pourtant, en 1993, Condé, rappelons-le, eut ses mots troublants sur sa consœur: “[Morrison] est allée tellement loin dans sa recherche d’une écriture spécifique que, pour une étrangère comme moi, ces œuvres restent d’accès difficile”.43 Dans Contes vrais de mon enfance, nous l’avons dit, un des contes porte le titre anglais The Bluest Eye.44 Condé pousse les emprunts morrisoniens encore plus loin dans Célanire cou-coupé où le catalyseur externe, souligné dans l’exergue, est un infanticide, mais où cette victime, des années après, revient en femme fatale, Erzulie la déesse de l’amour en vaudou, zombie et succube, semer la discorde et la 41

Anne Whitehead. 2004. Trauma Fiction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University

Press. 42

Lorsque je les interroge (à Anvers, Zuiderpershuis, le 27 avril 2005) sur l’éventuelle intertextualité avec l’œuvre de Toni Morrison, Maryse nie catégoriquement toute influence. De son côté, Richard souligne la singularité de Beloved et confirme l’importance de Morrison aux États-Unis. 43 Pfaff 1993: 167. 44 Toni Morrison. 1970. The Bluest Eye. New York: Holt- Rinehart.

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mort. De même que la “cicatrice” (toujours cachée sous un foulard) fait penser à Beloved, où Sethe reconnaîtra l’étrangère le jour où elle découvre la trace de ses propres mains sur le cou de sa bien-aimé, de même la blessure du couteau devient “passeport”, marque d’identité, nécrose qui identifie la morte-vivante. Sans résumer une narration ubuesque, qui souffre de défauts majeurs,45 de péripéties irréalistes, souvenons-nous que Célanire est une intrigante qui garde tout son secret, jusqu’à ce qu’une de ses victimes lui arrache le ruban qu’elle garde en toutes heures autour de son cou. Se défendant du viol, puisque inclinant pour le même sexe, “[Hakim] se sentit aspiré par la caverne humide [de sa bouche]”,46 et découvre ce qu’il a mis à nu: Une monstrueuse cicatrice. Un garrot de caoutchoux violacé, épais comme un bourrelet, repoussé, ravaudé, tavelé, enserrait le cou. On aurait dit que celui-ci avait été coupé en deux parties égales, puis rafistolé tant bien que mal, les chairs rapprochées par force et bourgeonnant dans tous les sens comme elles voulaient.47

45 Chaque nouveau personnage est introduit selon la même formule: rencontre de type la plupart du temps amoureuse, sans transition et avec cependant une annonce d’une relation malheureuse, contrariée, prétexte de séparation. Par exemple, l’amour entre Pisket et Kung Fui, fumeurs d’opium, se terminera lorsque Kung Fui, qui voulait d’ailleurs que sa femme enceinte se débarasse de “la calebasse de son ventre sous ses golles” (Condé 2000a: 305), par la “violence du choc” à la vue d’une “china-chola d’Urumbamba” de seize ans, la “peau noire brillante. Les yeux bridés. La chevelure, une coulée de soie” (306), c’est-à-dire exactement les mêmes atouts que Pisket. Non seulement Condé multiplie les liaisons mais prend même pas la peine de “changer” les traits physiques des femmes fatales. Encore, les descriptions de paysages et de la nature sont inutilement annonciatrices de malheur, et Condé s’y montre délibérément choquante et déplaisante, reprenant les éternels stéréotypes: “[Hakim] se leva et sortit. Jamais il n’avait vu pareille nuit. Noire comme le cul d’un esclave kongo. La-haut, le misérable croissant de l’une n’éclairait rien” (307). Suit alors le meurtre (un des énièmes qui se suivent et tous se ressemblent) de Kung Fui qui gît “aussi mort qu’il est possible d’être mort. Aucune blessure apparente” (307). 46 Condé 2000a: 96. 47 Condé 2000a: 96-97. Les lecteurs de Beloved reconnaîtront encore l’arbre de texture dermique que porte Sethe sur son dos: nécrose et croix qu’elle porte à jamais dans sa chair, et sans qu’elle puisse le voir, une cicatrice qui porte des fleurs, qui semble ramifier, bourgeonner, comme le dira la folle Amy Denver, la rousse rouée qui s’échappe comme Sethe de l’univers patriarcal.

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Cette image hallucinante résonne avec la langue rouge pendant de la bouche de la suppliciée, dans Tituba (la mère de la narratrice, qui commente cette empreinte indélébile par une comparaison avec “le sexe de Darnell” pendant hors de la bouche d’Abena), que dans Beloved (où Numéro Six, aussi noir qu’indigo, sera brûlé vif tout en se moquant encore de Maître d’école, sa langue telle une flamme sortant d’un corps indistinctement noir). Dans Beloved, la cicatrice est pareillement “vilaine”, monstrueuse, décrite avec la métaphore botanique du “bourgeon” (mérisier/cérisier). Ces cicatrices indélébiles inscrivent les violences physiques et plus particulièrement sexuelles sur les corps des AfricainesAméricaines qui sont par euphémisme désignées comme les “filles noires qui ont perdu leur ruban”.48 Il est frappant à quel point d’une part Beloved et Tituba et d’autre part Jazz et Célanire cou-coupé sortent “du même moule”.49 Violette a un prénom de fleur, mais devient une figure extrêmement violente (violet/violent), habitée de cette rage qu’on prête à sa race, de cette colère ou ire qui caractérise aussi Célanire. Le prénom n’est pas sans rappeller The Color Purple,50 couleur pars pro toto pour la “négritude” américaine, puisqu’on dit de quelqu’un de très noir qu’il était “violet” et, on l’a vu avec Condé, le “violacé” renvoie à un noir très foncé. Le portrait de Célanire est alors un calque de Violette: “un fichu de soie noué à pois roulé autour du cou. Sa bouche généreuse était fardée en mauve, ses paupières en bleu”.51 Il n’y a pas que le Foyer 48 “Beloved chérie, c’est ce que tu es pour moi et je n’ai pas à me désoler de n’avoir obtenu qu’un mot […]. Maintenant, je peux tout oublier, parce que, dès que la pierre tombale a été mise en place, tu as fait connaître ta présence dans la maison et tu nous a tracassées à nous rendre folle. Je n’ai pas compris alors. Je croyais que tu étais en colère contre moi […] j’ai seulement besoin de savoir une chose. Est-ce que la cicatrice est très vilaine?” (Toni Morrison. 1987. Beloved (tr. Sylviane Rué). Paris: Bourgois: 256). “Le peuple des cous brisés, du sang cuit dans les flammes et les filles noires qui avaient perdu leur ruban. Quel vacarme!” (Morrison 1987: 252) 49 Dans le film anti-hollywoodien du même nom, avec, dans le rôle de Sethe, Oprah Winfrey et dans le rôle de Paul D, Danny Glover, et durant le tournage duquel Morrison assista, Jonathan Demme choisit à dessein un cadrage sur Sethe malaxant la pâte, pendant qu’elle accouche de son histoire, le dos tourné à Paul D. 50 Alice Walker. 1983. The Color Purple. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch. 51 Condé 2000a: 31.

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qui rappelle le “Couvent” d’un autre roman, Paradise (1998). Jusqu’à rapprocher cette couleur de son chromatisme opposé, le rose et le rouge, aux “private parts”, au sexe52 et de la cicatrice dermique: dans Célanire, le docteur Pinceau coud littéralement le cou tranché et à l’image de Frankenstein, il se prend à haïr le monstre et le démon sorti de ses mains. Il se dit dégoûté par la vue de cette flétrissure: Moi, comme Frankenstein, je n’avais pas tardé à prendre ma créature en horreur. […] je ne pouvais pas regarder sa cicatrice, obscène, violacée comme un sexe infibulé, qui me rappelait à chaque instant ce que j’avais fait!53 (C’est moi qui souligne).

Bref, il me semble bien que l’auteure se soit inspirée de Morrison, bien que les interviews mettent la critique sur d’autres pistes. Quant à Traversée de la mangrove (1989),54 consacré comme le roman du retour de Condé à son île natale – roman de la “réconciliation” titraient les comptes rendus dans la presse locale (Antilla) et internationale (French Review) – beaucoup soulignèrent l’emprunt à As I lay Dying (1930) de Faulkner. Étrangement, personne,55 sauf Jean Jonassaint, n’y a vu une réécriture d’un autre classique caribéen, Gouverneurs de la rosée (1944) de Jacques Roumain. Dans ‘For a Caribbean Intertext. On Some Readings of Maryse Condé’s Crossing the Man-

52 Couleur obsédante dans l’écriture condéenne, toujours associée à la mort, la langue mauve lui fait de surcroît l’impression d’un pénis, alors que dans Beloved, Numéro Six est si noir qu’il ne semble avoir qu’un organe non noir, sa langue qui pointe hors de sa bouche de supplicié: image qui nous intéresse dans la mesure où d’une part elle renvoie directement au rapport violent entre le Maître et l’esclave qui se sert de son sexe pour rendre muette la femme, et que nous la retrouverions texto dans Célanire cou coupé (Condé 2000a: 164). 53 Condé 2000a: 164. 54 Maryse Condé. 1987. Traversée de la mangrove. Paris: Mercure. 55 Ni Renée Larrier, Christine Ndiaye, Lydie Moudileno, ni Françoise Lionnet. Voir pour cette dernière: Françcoise Lionnet. 1989. Autobiographical Voices. Race, Gender, Self-Portraiture. Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press. Elle publia aussi Idem. 1994. ‘Parcours narratif, Itinéraire culturel’ in Etudes romanesques. Vol 2. Paris: Lettres modernes; and Idem. 1995. ‘Toward a New Antillean Humanism: Maryse Condé’s Traversée de la mangrove’ in Postcolonial Representations. Women. Literature. Identity. Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press: 69-86 (Cf. 1993. French Review 66(3): 475-486).

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grove’,56 Jonassaint démontre que Condé réécrit le classique haïtien par lequel les lettres haïtiennes sont entrées dans l’arène métropolitaine et internationale.57 De cette inadvertance, Jonassaint conclut donc à une déplorable myopie critique: a blindness to the Caribbean and Francophone intertexts, a phenomenon which remains prevalent even among many critics of Francophone and postcolonial literatures suggests the extent to which literary criticism itself is not yet postcolonial in its thinking. We can only wonder at the way such literary critical blindness itself mirrors the unique economic dependence of Martinique and Guadeloupe as overseas departments […] while setting powerful barriers between them and adjacent Caribbean nations, including Cuba and Haiti.58

Chamoiseau vs Carpentier et Hemingway Dans Écrire en pays dominé,59 Chamoiseau se plaint de voir son mental “confisqué” mais réserve à travers des paratextes sériels, ses éloges pour les grands de la République des Lettres, tous siècles, nations et langues confondues. Ceux qui l’ont influencé figurent dans sa Sentimenthèque qui à vrai dire se conçoit comme une galerie de la World Literature.60 Plusieurs catégories s’y entre-tissent, d’auteurs connus aux auteurs fort inconnus, voire introuvables dans une espèce de “paratexte sériel”.61 Je m’attarde particulièrement sur le Cubain 56

Jean Jonassaint. 2003. ‘For a Caribbean Intertext. On Some Readings of Maryse Condé’s Crossing the Mangrove’ dans Stovall, Tyler & Georges Van Den Abeele (eds). French Civilization and its Discontents. Nationalism, Colonialism, Race. London: Lexington Books: 147-171. 57 Traduit par l’Africain-Américain, chef de file de la Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes, avec Mercer Cook, à qui Léon Damas va dédier son poème ‘Hoquet’. 58 Jonassaint 2003: 13. 59 Patrick Chamoiseau. 1997. Écrire en pays dominé. Paris: Gallimard. 60 Kathleen Gyssels. 1999-2000. ‘D’une littérature insulaire à une World Literature: Chamoiseau’ dans Anales del Caribe 19-20: 236-250. 61 Parmi les modèles qui ont guerroyé comme lui contre toutes sortes de domination, nous trouvons des noms ignorés du public, fût-il féru de lettres: Monchoachi (37), Pa Kin (69), Natsume Sôseki (49), Séféris (64), Nazim Hikmet (58). D’autres sont un peu mieux connus, tels que John Donne (126), le prêtre anglican et poète du 17e siècle qui nous rappelle qu’“aucun homme n’est une île”. Une deuxième catégorie comprend des auteurs célèbres: Platon (176), Pétrarque (176), Villon (113), Rabelais (127, 185, 193), Racine (194), Agrippa d’Aubigné (177), Montaigne (84, 220), La Fontaine (37), Stendhal (141), Verlaine (181), Zola (67), Nietzsche (139), Faulkner

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Alejo Carpentier, mentionné page 53, d’une part, et l’Américain, lauréat du prix Nobel en 1954, Ernest Hemingway, mentionné à la page 72. Avec Melville, Faulkner et Twain, Hemingway figure comme le modèle pour plusieurs grands écrivains de la diaspora noire. Morrison leur rend hommage dans Whiteness, montrant le rôle subalterne des Noirs dans ces grandes narrations. Dans L’esclave vieil homme et le molosse,62 avatar de la slave narrative, la quatrième de couverture indique d’emblée l’intertexte: ‘L’Esclave Vieil Homme et le molosse, avec un entre-dire d’E. Glissant’. Le “marqueur de paroles” s’inscrit, une fois de plus, dans la lignée de Glissant, si bien que Marie-Christine Rochmann soutient avec raison que ce récit chamoiseauoisien est une “véritable incarnation de l’Ecriture palimpseste”.63 “Ecriture de la quintessence”,64 “jamais texte sur le marronnage n’a été aussi ouvertement contre le déjàdit, le déjà écrit et en même temps, autant à son écoute”.65 Si Rochmann a raison d’illustrer le dialogisme glissantien qu’opère “Cham” dans ce conte philosophique sur la mort et la “peur de mourir” que traverse le fugitif, deux autres nouvelles s’imposent à moi. The Old Man and the Sea d’Ernest Hemingway et ‘Los fugitivos’ d’Alejo Car(179), Camus (37), Steinbeck (74), Brecht (102), etc. À côté de la Bible (181), le Coran (81), les Mille et une Nuits (116), le Kalevala (50), le Kawabata (44), Chamoiseau n’oublie pas le “Cri de la cale négrière”, “le Nègre marron”, “les Amérindiens”. – Une place à part doit être faite aux Antillais, d’abord Césaire et Glissant, juxtaposés à la page 68 et ensuite plusieurs fois rappelés (78, 100, 137). Parmi ceux-ci, certains sont peu connus, même de chercheurs antillais: Sony Rupaire (39), Tony Delsham (69), Gilbert Gratiant (93). D’autres sont par contre canonisés: Damas (107), Fanon (170), et les Haïtiens, Emile Ollivier (235), Jacques Roumain (123), J.S. Alexis (156), Frankétienne (137). Des auteurs anglophones y figurent aussi, tels Derek Walcott (49), E. K. Brathwaite (42), le Cubain Nicolas Guillén (73), D’autres encore ont des racines caribéennes souvent ignorées, tels que Saint-John Perse (99), Heredia (50), García Márquez (27). Alejo Carpentier est apprécié pour “le verbe magique, et la musique, sur le trouble du Divers” (53). 62 Patrick Chamoiseau. 1997. L’esclave vieil homme et le molosse. Paris: Seuil. 63 Marie-Christine Rochmann. 2005. ‘L’esclave vieil homme et le molosse, roman de la réécriture’ dans Misrahi-Barak, Judith (ed.). Revisiting the Slave narratives/Les avatars contemporains des récits d’esclaves (Collection ‘Les carnets du Cerpac’ 2). Montpellier: Montpellier III, Service des publications: 455-470; ici p. 464. 64 Rochmann 2005: 458. 65 Rochamnn 2005: 456.

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pentier. Pour Le vieil homme et la mer,66 Chamoiseau me confirme avec enthousiasme dans un courriel (23 juin 2005) qu’il lui a servi d’exemple, mais me détrompe carrément pour le second intertexte. Quant à l’histoire du fugitif et du molosse, Chamoiseau parle pour le second de “la transversalité des archétypes”, dont le chien à vrai dire est incontournable. Il n’empêche que les deux nouvelles se veulent un parabole sur l’animosité et l’amitié entre l’homme et l’animal domestiqué dans un contexte particulier, l’Univers de Plantation. La même structure donne à induire la même morale: il s’agit d’un animal chassé par l’humain ou d’un humain chassé par l’animal, dans une situation qui va s’inverser et donc mettre à nu la vulnérabilité de l’homme. Remplaçons, dans The Old Man and the Sea, “Marlin” par (le) Chien, et nous avons la même poursuite impitoyable qui révèle au pêcheur sa petitesse et l’impitoyable force de la Nature (la Mer et tous les monstres qu’elle abrite, dont dépend pourtant la survie du marin). Contrairement au poisson traqué par le vieux Cubain qui rêve encore de l’Afrique,67 pourchassé par le monstre, c’est le Chien qui sans relâche chassera le Vieil Homme. De même que le pêcheur Santiago traverse une nuit atroce à combattre les requins, à lutter contre les crampes et l’épuisement, à méditer sur “la mar”, appelé par de jeunes pêcheurs “el mar”,68 de même notre “Esclave Vieil Homme” connaît les affres devant l’inéluctable fin, le fait d’être la proie du Monstre, le marron dépecé par le Chien. Tous deux s’en sortiront pourtant “indemnes”, saufs, car un miracle se produit: le Molosse lèche la joue du fugitif épuisé, qui est tombé dans un puits (et y mourra quand même). De 66

Ernest Hemingway. 1954. Le vieil homme et la mer (tr. par Jean Dutourd). Paris: Hachette. 67 “Bientôt, il rêva de l’Afrique de sa jeunesse, des longues plages dorées, des plages éclatantes, si éclatantes qu’elles font mal aux yeux, des caps altiers, des grandes montagnes brunes. Toutes ses nuits, il les passait sur cette côte africaine; le mugissement des vagues emplissait ses rêves, il voyait les pirogues des nègres courir sur les brisants” (Hemingway 1954: 30). 68 “Il appelait l’océan la mar […]. Quelques pêcheurs, parmi les plus jeunes […] parlent de l’océan en disant el mar, qui est masculin. Ils en font un adversaire, un lieu, même un ennemi. Mais pour le vieux, l’océan c’était toujours la mar, quelque chose qui dispense ou refuse de grandes faveurs; et si la mar se conduit comme une folle, comme une mégère, c’est parce qu’elle ne peut pas faire autrement” (Hemingway 1954: 38-39).

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même que le Cubain passe tout près de la mort, poursuivi par “Marlin” (l’espadon géant, toujours avec majuscule dans la nouvelle), de même le Vieil Homme traqué par le Molosse affronte le trépas. L’océan est au pêcheur ce que la forêt et son obscurité seront au fugitif. Méditation philosophique sur le combat entre l’animal et l’homme, entre l’esclave et le substitut du maître, l’animal dressé pour l’éliminer, le chien, L’esclave vieil homme et le molosse se décline dès le titre comme un conte où pour une fois, il ne s’agit plus de ruse du marron, du côté trickster du rebelle, mais d’un conte commémorant de nombreux inconnus qui périrent sans laisser des traces. Épilogue de l’histoire tragique, le narrateur aurait trouvé des ossements dans cette “caverne” et à partir de là s’est mis à recréer son histoire inédite et restée celée, ce qui nous fait rejoindre les “leyendas portorrequeñas” et la “caverna de los muertos” signalées par Matibag.69 Ce qui compte est la lisière entre deux règnes (animal/humain), entre deux registres (mort/vie), entre deux univers (celui de l’esclave/celui du maître). Parallèlement, L’Esclave Vieil Homme et le Molosse fait écho à une nouvelle de Carpentier, ‘Los fugitivos’. Intuition qu’il a cependant contredite. Chamoiseau soutient que le “chien” est en effet omniprésent dans l’imaginaire afro-caribéen. De fait, rappelons-nous l’incipit de La Lézarde,70 sous le signe de la menace de mort (“Un jour, je vous tuerais”, s’écrie Thaël). Dans la nouvelle sublime de Carpentier, la haine et l’aversion se meuvent en amitié et fidélité entre l’animal et l’homme, pour ensuite, dans l’état sauvage, s’inverser: le molosse redevient alors le pire ennemi du marron, qu’il croquera. Là encore il s’agit de montrer les limites du “dressage” d’un animal pour quelque chose qui ne lui est pas naturel, à savoir, tuer l’homme. Inversement, il s’agit de montrer à quel point l’homme avili, abruti, animalisé peut retrouver son humanité et sa dignité d’homme dans le périlleux marronnage. Transposition fidèle de l’intrigue comme de sa morale, leçon sur la réciprocité hégélienne du rapport maître-esclave, la distinction entre l’homme et l’animal (domestiqué) se trouve tour à tour annulée. Pour Fanon, l’esclave aux colonies antillaises était réduit au rang d’animal. Se peut-il que Chamoiseau soit malgré lui travaillé 69 70

Matibag 1992. Édouard Glissant. 1958. La Lézarde. Paris: Seuil.

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par cette nouvelle de Guerra del Tiempo y otros relatos,71 disponible aux francophones? C’est la thèse soutenue par Hoeller à propos de la réécriture d’Ama Ata Aidoo de Heart of Darkness.72 Ce roman de Conrad a été réécrit de manière diverse par au moins quinze auteurs postcoloniaux de langue anglaise, surtout caribéens, mais également nigérian. Certaines intertextualités seraient le fruit de l’impact inconscient, voire du hasard, tous les écrivains étant nourris du terreau qu’est la Littérature (Julien Gracq). L’incipit nous oblige à prendre en compte l’ambiguïté totale entre l’esclave traqué par la bête, tous deux apeurés et poursuivis, tous deux hésitants à nouer une amitié interdite par le Maître (avec majuscule dans L’Esclave Vieil Homme comme chez Carpentier): La trace venait mourir au pied d’un arbre. Certes, il y avait dans l’air une forte odeur de nègre, toutes les fois que la brise soulevait les essaims de mouches qui s’affairaient dans les cavités de fruits pourris. Mais le chien – on ne lui avait jamais donné d’autre nom que Chien – était fatigué. Il se roula dans l’herbe pour s’étirer et détendre ses muscles. Très loin, les cris des archers se perdaient dans le crépuscule… Cependant Chien ne pensait plus à la battue. Il y avait une autre odeur, là, sur la terre tapissée de lianes qu’un frôlement allait bientôt effacer peut-être à jamais. Odeurs de femelle. Odeur que Chien collait à son dos, en se tortillant pattes en l’air, en riant de tous ses crocs… Chien se mit à courir vers la brousse, la queue basse, comme poursuivi par le fouet du commandeur, contrariant son propre sens de l’orientation. Le corps de Chien sentait la femelle.73 (C’est moi qui souligne74) 71

Alejo Carpentier. 1967. Guerra del Tiempo (tr. par René L. F. Durand. 1967. Guerre du Temps et autres nouvelles. Paris: Gallimard: “Folio”). 72 “All these and other reversals, parallels, and echoes between Heart of Darkness and Our Sister Killjoy are the more remarkable for the fact that there are no statements on Aidoo’s part that she intended Our Sister Killjoy to be a revision of Heart of Darkness […]. There is no evidence to suggest that Aidoo intentionally stressed parallels and reversals between her and Conrad’s text. It is possible then that these echoes are to some degree unconscious, or better, are an inevitable, integral part of the haunted landscape of Aidoo’s novel” (H. Hoeller. Spring 2004. ‘Ama Ata Aidoo’s Heart of Darkness’ in RAI 35(1): 130-147; ici 133.) 73 Alejo Carpentier. 1989. ‘Les fugitifs’ in Les élus et autres nouvelles. Paris: Gallimard: 129-130. 74 Des mots comme “archers” (‘tireurs à l’arc’) et “battue” actualisent une lecture toute médiévale (la chasse au renard, la chasse au cerf), le mot “archer” surtout surprend, tant il est rare dans la littérature caribéenne où on ne tirait point à l’arc mais où l’outil de poursuite était le fusil, la machette, le fouet …

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Trois “répétitions”, mais “avec une différence” (Henry Louis Gates, Jr.) se produisent ici dans la libre transposition chamoisienne. D’abord, l’excitation sexuelle qui fait intégralement partie de l’imaginaire carpentien (et qui fait dire à Charles Scheel qu’il a un “style baroque viril (sic), volontiers choquant”75) disparaît sous la plume de Chamoiseau. Maints exemples d’un masculinisme (pour ne pas employer machisme) se repèrent chez Carpentier qui, malgré les meilleures intentions, dénigre les Noirs. Etres lubriques, guidés et surtout perdus, par leur besoins sexuels, Ti Noël comme Mackandal incitent, qui sait, à une réécriture de la part du Martiniquais. Ensuite, le Marron “pensera” pour lui-même, de lui-même, il aura une riche vie intérieure; il vaincra sa peur de la mort. Enfin, Chien ne le tuera pas, il mourra là dans la source, au mitan de la forêt, près de la Roche gravée, après avoir connu la réconciliation avec son ennemi, le Molosse. Chamoiseau évacue aussi la pulsion vitale qui explique l’évasion, son Esclave est un stoïque qui connaîtra une “évangélique sensation”76 quand il rôdera dans la forêt, à l’écoute d’“échos de sépulture” de ceux qui, avant lui, ont cédé à la “décharge”. Le Molosse ne poursuivra nullement une odeur de femelle en rut, mais: Le molosse avait perçu des remugles-cimetières de chairs en défaisance et de sueurs déterrées. Il n’eut aucun mal à suivre une crise olfactive épaisse comme une corde. Elle ressemblait tant à de la chair à la fois vive et morte, que le Molosse avait senti sa course s’accélérer.77

‘Les fugitifs’ insiste sur le fait que, quand bien même le maître a dressé le chien à faire quelque chose auquel il n’était pas instinctivement destiné, ce règne bestial finira par se tourner contre lui. L’esclavage, comme l’avaient bien vu Memmi, Fanon, et d’autres, était voué à s’auto-détruire puisque réciproquement maître et esclave se déshumanisaient; il n’y avait pas que la bête qui était dénaturalisée. Car le chien n’est pas un “bouffeur de nègres”, à moins qu’on lui apprenne à devenir un égorgeur d’hommes: 75

Charles Scheel. 2005. Réalisme magique et réalisme merveilleux. Des théories aux poétiques. Paris: L’Harmattan: 167. 76 Chamoiseau 1997: 82. 77 Chamoiseau 1997: 87.

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Le Maître-béké le nourrissait de manière étrange, surtout secrète. De la viande palpitante. Des os à la moelle enflammée. Des charnelleries sanguinolentes qu’il malaxait lui-même dans un crâne de guerrier caraïbe.78

La pointe de la nouvelle de Carpentier réside bien sûr dans le brusque revirement de l’histoire que le narrateur omniscient se passe d’ailleurs de tout commentaire: alors que le chien est dressé pour tuer les marrons, il redeviendra sauvage dans la forêt et capable d’amitié et de fidélité avec l’esclave marron, son nouveau maître. Or, ce dernier se fera ressaisir et rattraper lorsque, dévoré de désir, il va coucher avec une négresse. L’“instinct” mène le marron à sa perte79. Seul, Chien continuera sa route d’errance, alors que lui et le Nègre avaient fait tandem (uriner, s’accoupler, dormir et voler, etc), jusqu’à ce que le Molosse rejoigne une meute sauvage. Lorsque, après des années, le marron qui récidive rencontre par hasard Chien à l’oreille coupée, créature vorace, il reconnaît instantanément son fidèle compagnon. Hélas, celui-ci saute à la gorge du nègre, le croque vif tellement le monstre, dans un ultime sursaut (réflexe de Pavlov) répond à une “décharge” apprise il y a des lunes et des lunes. L’excipit (mot que je m’approprie après Glissant) attire notre attention sur un détail vestimentaire: Chien et la chienne grise s’amusaient comme des fous, jouant avec la chemise rayée de Nègre marron. Chacun tirant de son côté, pour éprouver la solidité de ses crocs. Lorsqu’une couture cédait, tous deux roulaient dans la poussière. Et ils recommençaient, le lambeau de tissu de plus en plus réduit, se regardant dans les yeux, les museaux se touchant presque. 80

Animal domestiqué par le maître comme instrument à asservir et à pratiquer la terreur la plus carnassière et cannibale de ce dernier, le chien trahit son ancien maître chez Carpentier, alors que chez Cha78

Chamoiseau 1997: 37. Dans Beloved, Morrison comme Chamoiseau montrent que le seul homme noir qui s’en sortira, qui survivra à la poursuite insensée et à la vie dans la forêt, est celui qui maîtrise toutes ses impulsions animales. Symboliquement, il s’appelle Paul D (“the last of the Sweet Home Men”) et il “connaissait le secret: il n’y avait rien d’intéressant entre ses jambes, mais il se souvenait du temps où il en allait autrement, - le temps où cette aspiration asservissait l’asservi […]” (Morrison 1987: 236). 80 Carpentier 1989. 79

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moiseau, rien, à la fin, ne les distingue. Si le fugitif “cubain” succombe parce qu’il cède à son besoin de “femelle”,81 Chamoiseau, lui, évoque un stoïque, parti au tréfond de la forêt. Judicieusement et poétiquement, tous deux décrivent l’ordre de l’habitation: Le rouache du fouet. La déchirée des cris. Morts explosives. Famines […]. Déportations de peuples différents forcés de vivre ensemble sans les morales et les lois du Vieux-monde; ils survivent, leurs ‘mémoires décomposées’, vaguement se rappelant un temps ‘sans rythmes d’horloge’.82

Comme dans El reino de este mundo, le carnivore a été importé du Vieux Monde: le narrateur Chamoiseauoisien nous décrit le voyageur terrifiant dans la cale du bateau, à côté de l’Africain déporté. Le premier deviendra “l’âme du Maître, il est le double souffert de l’esclave”,83 pendant que l’esclave “antique”, qui avait tout supporté, portant secours par son âge et sa sagesse et connaissait les remèdes, cède à la décharge. Pendant sa fuite, il va devoir affronter “la peur sans rémission”.84 Mais la liberté réveille aussi ses vieux os, lui permet de jouir après la longue somnolence qu’il s’était imposée pour résister. Si tous les organes, tous les membres, bref, tout le corps jubilent à la re-découverte de la liberté, lui rendant l’esprit guerrier, il n’est jamais question, chez Chamoiseau, de “rut” tel qu’il affleure maintes fois chez Carpentier, ou encore chez Confiant: cette impulsion animalière renforcerait le cliché absolument à éviter pour Chamoiseau, selon lequel le Noir est “pur corps”, dirigé par une libido incontrôlable.

81

Pensons à la seconde épouse de Lenormand de Mézy, qui sera (on le saura avec certitude) violée par Ti Noël et ses fils (Le Royaume de ce monde), et qui se décline bien sûr sur l’animal domestique, le “chien de Cuba”, dogue dressé à “bouffer du nègre” (réf). L’énigmatique fidélité d’un monstre d’abord dressé pour “bouffer du nègre”, et qui à présent se lie d’amitié avec ce résidu humain qu’il rencontre dans la forêt (Carpentier préfère le terme de “brousse”), a fasciné maint lecteur. Car il s’agit du revers de la situation esclavagiste: le maître peut devenir esclave, comme l’esclave (le fugitif) peut devenir maître (Kojève, Gramsci, Fanon, Sartre). 82 Chamoiseau 1997: 20. 83 Chamoiseau 1997: 46-47. 84 Chamoiseau 1997: 86.

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Aux prises avec un désir longtemps refoulé (“le coco turgescent, la graine chargée”85), l’“Esclave antique” mourra, mais après avoir connu cette “décharge éblouissante”, de “manière sépulcrale”, au mitan d’une “voûte végétale”.86 Petit à petit, alors même qu’il se rend compte qu’il s’approche de la mort, qu’il trouve “la Caverne des Ages perdus. Personne ne semble avoir foulé ces lieux”,87 alors même que “la hurlade du molosse se met à […] provoquer les mille-douze cirques dont narration fut faite”,88 ce fuyard qui, chez Carpentier, avait à peine une psyché, telle un os dégarni que Chamoiseau se propose de revêtir, retrouve sa pleine humanité: l’homme travesti en bête, obligé de faire appel à son odeur, à sa vue, à son toucher, rampant comme une bête, redevient seul et connaît l’Innommable (“A ce point je ne saurais décrire. Le reste est impossible à décrire dans cette langue, que l’on m’amène des sons et des langages anciens, des vocaliques plurielles, des gerbes tonales et des liaisons effervescentes […].89

Si le Chien prend dans le nez une odeur de femelle, le “nègre marron”, dans son sommeil, l’embrassera, scellant ainsi entre eux deux, vieux ennemis devenus alliés, mieux, amis, un pacte de survie contre l’ennemi commun, le Maître, la meute de chiens sauvages. Tandis que la bête dirige la narration carpentienne, et que le “Nègre marron” n’accède pas à la pleine subjectivité (il dit exceptionnellement: “viens, Chien!”), il se transmue sous la plume de Chamoiseau en témoin de l’Innommable, en narrateur auto- et intradiégétique. L’on sait que Carpentier affectionne le glissement entre l’animal et l’humain depuis ses premiers écrits sur “l’univers de la Plantation” (Glissant), le rapport hégélien mettant sens dessus-dessous l’ordre de l’univers esclavagiste. Chez Chamoiseau, tout est décrit à travers les yeux de l’esclave fugitif: Je m’agenouillai pour mieux le regarder… Fallait l’impressionner… Nous restâmes ainsi dans un temps sans longueur. Yeux dans yeux… Lui, de plus en 85

Chamoiseau 1997: 77. Chamoiseau 1997: 83-85. 87 Chamoiseau 1997: 68. 88 Chamoiseau 1997: 51. 89 Chamoiseau 1997: 78. 86

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Kathleen Gyssels plus calme; moi, pétrifié par mon jeu de vaillant et par une cacarelle.90 Les Grands-Bois bougeaient autour de moi. Tout s’indifférenciait. Je flottais dans un tournis de présences agaçantes… Pas ciller. Tenir ça. Tenir raide. Je m’instituais chasseur, le transformais en proie. Lui (je le sentais) se conservait opaque; moi, un trouble affectait ma conscience… Il était plus fort que moi. J’entendis cogner ma poitrine. Mon cœur voulait me défoncer les côtes. Je tremblai. Je gémis. Le monstre hurla…91

Chez Chamoiseau, le dénouement, pour invraisemblable qu’il soit, est heureux. Le monstre se prouve capable d’humanité, si bien que le Maître, à son retour, “pleura sur son monstre perdu”.92 C’est le fugitif qui parle, qui décrit la confrontation avec Chien. Le dénouement est certes surprenant, près de la Pierre (amérindienne) qui deviendra le sépulcre du marron: La débâcle ouverte en moi par la blessure s’était dissipée: elle ne m’effrayait plus. Je m’en occupai tel un plan familier. Ma reptation continuait de m’éloigner de mon corps. Je le traînais en chrysalide défaite. J’allais vers un autre monde.93

Pendant que le marron agonise, au fond d’une ravine, sur une pierre couverte de mousses, le Monstre se montre capable d’un retournement, là où Carpentier suggéra l’issue tragique d’une amitié aussi dénaturée sous le régime esclavagiste. Intertextualités inaperçues et (im-)passes Dans un domaine de recherche exponentiel comme les études caribéennes et postcoloniales, il convient de plaider pour un comparatisme translinguistique, au lieu de le confiner, comme c’est encore trop souvent le cas, à une seule langue, à une sphère linguistique (le Com90 Non attesté dans Le Petit Robert. Corse pour “problème”, voire “la merde”. “Etre dans les problèmes”, selon un dictionnaire en ligne sur: http://www.lexilogos.com/corse_mots.htm. Chamoiseau l’employait déjà dans ‘Les Dits de Solibo’, texte sans ponctuation, qui déborde d’assonances et d’allitérations, de créole et de grands mots français: “pièce nègre z’habitants ne peut aborder sans cacarelle ni djidjite ni léfrangite polyphonique à l’évangile tou moun douboute en pique quand c’est critique pour les chiques et les moustiques é kriik”. 91 Chamoiseau 1997: 102-103. 92 Chamoiseau 1997: 125. 93 Chamoiseau 1997: 112.

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monwealth, la francophonie). Si Döring étudie des “passages caribéens-anglais” et plaide pour des “cross-cultural European canons”, Condé et Chamoiseau montrent bien qu’il y a un “intertextuel network(s) of exchanges”.94 Il me semble que Condé, qui par ailleurs dans La Belle Créole parodie L’esclave vieil homme,95 comme Chamoiseau, incorporent toujours plus de (traces de) textes, débordant largement le cadre caribéen. Ils se montrent particulièrement démangés par des Hemingway, Morrison et Faulkner. Prend alors pleinement sens le titre de Dash, ‘The Caribbean, the Other America’, car ces littératures sont viscéralement liées par le système de plantation et leurs imaginaires apparentés, comme le mesure aussi Toumson dans son dernier essai en date.96 Tous deux désenclavent la Caraïbe en s’appropriant des littératures de la Plantation en différentes langues, les rhizomes qui se font corps dans les narrations, mais que le comparatiste risque de ne pas découvrir s’il “balkanise” les littératures caribéennes.

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T. Döring. 2002. Caribbean-English Passages. Intertextuality in a Postcolonial Tradition. New York: Routledge: 7. 95 Voir P. Higginson. Mai-Novembre 2003. ‘Of dogs and men: La belle créole and the Global Subject’ in The Romanic Review 3-4: 291-307. 96 R. Toumson. 2004. L’Utopie perdue des Iles d’Amérique. Paris: Honoré Champion.

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La littérature caribéenne francophone en Italie Carla Fratta & Francesca Torchi Università di Bologna Notre propos est d’illustrer le type de recherche qui se fait en Italie dans un domaine somme toute encore assez circonscrit, où il n’existe pas, à notre connaissance, de groupe de travail reconnu ou structuré; les études sur la littérature de la Caraïbe sont donc plutôt le produit de chercheurs isolés, rarement en contact, en plus, avec leurs homologues dont les recherches portent sur l’aire hispanophone, anglophone, néerlandophone ou créolophone. Un volet ultérieur, mais non moins important de ce panorama, vu le stade où en est la connaissance de la littérature caribéenne in Italie, portera sur le niveau de diffusion de la littérature elle-même; il s’agira donc d’illustrer et de commenter le travail fait par les maisons d’édition, les revues et autres media.

Le présent article se propose d’établir un état des lieux de la littérature caribéenne francophone en territoire italien. À la partie concernant la recherche universitaire (rédigée par Carla Fratta) fera suite celle consacrée à la diffusion des œuvres (rédigée par Francesca Torchi): deux volets de la question qui visent à donner un aperçu sur les rapports entre recherche et diffusion. Panorama des recherches universitaires Considérées sous l’aspect de leur autonomie institutionnelle par rapport aux études littéraires françaises, les études universitaires sur la littérature caribéenne voient le jour en Italie au début des années ’70 du siècle dernier, dans le cadre d’un intérêt naissant pour l’ensemble des littératures francophones. Nous rendrons compte ici de ces recherches en présentant une sorte d’inventaire succinctement commenté des publications, des groupes et des centres de recherche, des colloques et des revues scientifiques. Par contre nous ne prendrons pas en considération les articles, les comptes rendus parus dans les quotidiens, les entrées d’encyclopédies ou de dictionnaires littéraires (qui commen-

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cent cependant à paraître dès les années 50), ainsi que les textes scolaires. Les données du présent panorama étant le fruit d’une recherche artisanale, elles sont évidemment susceptibles de lacunes involontaires. Par souci d’honnêteté scientifique nous tenons en outre à préciser que pour les recherches de l’année 2005 nous avons eu soin d’interpeller, par l’intermédiaire de la Société universitaire pour les études en langue et littérature françaises, nos collègues afin qu’ils nous communiquent leurs derniers travaux, sans pour autant recevoir de réponses satisfaisantes. Nous rendons compte en premier lieu des publications en volume (abstraction faite des Actes de Colloques, que nous présenterons à part) car elles nous semblent donner la véritable mesure et le véritable poids d’un intérêt soutenu et de longue haleine. Depuis les années ’70, 13 volumes ont donc été publiés. Si au début ces études ont surtout la couleur de la Négritude, on remarquera que progressivement l’horizon s’élargit non seulement à d’autres auteurs et mouvements, mais aussi à d’autres latitudes linguistiques et culturelles de l’univers caribéen. Ainsi que pour les autres formes de la recherche que nous allons prendre en considération, il nous paraît utile de fournir (par ordre chronologique) les données bibliographiques répertoriées, afin de mieux illustrer le type de travail qui se fait en Italie: C. Brambilla. 1972. La Negritudine. Bologna: Nigrizia. P. Battista. 1974. L’acculturazione ‘formale’ in tre miti di lingua francese. L.-S. Senghor, Y. Ouloguem, A. Césaire. Napoli: Liguori. G. Benelli. 1975. Aimé Césaire. Firenze: La Nuova Italia. V. Santangelo. 1976. Poesia, ideologia, storia nell’opera di Aimé Césaire. Palermo: Vittorietti. F. Rodriguez Amaya. 1993. Letteratura caraibica. Milano: Jaca Book. G. Benelli. 1995. La Negritudine in Italia. Césaire, L.-G. Damas, L.S. Senghor (1950-1994). Roma: Bulzoni. C. Fratta. 1996. La letteratura caraibica francofona fra immaginario e realtà. Roma: Bulzoni. A. Pessini. 2000. Itinéraires d’exil: Emile Ollivier, un parcours haïtien. Parma: Istituto di Lingue e Letterature Romanze. A. Costantini. 2002. Fantasmi narrativi e sovversione linguistica nel romanzo haitiano moderno e contemporaneo. Milano: Cisalpino-Istituto Ed. Universitario.

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I. Mininni. 2002. Ombre di realtà e ladri di anime. Modelli di narrativa haitiana. Torino: Tirrenia. A. Pessini. 2002. Villes d’île et villes d’exil. Paysage urbain dans la littérature haïtienne contemporaine. Parma: Dipartimento di lingue e letterature straniere. M. P. De Angelis, C. Fiallega & C. Fratta. 2003. I Caraibi: la cultura contemporanea. Roma: Carocci. C. Biondi & E. Pessini. 2004. Rêver le monde écrire le monde. Théorie et narrations d’Édouard Glissant. Bologna: CLUEB.

Pendant la même période, on compte environ 140 articles – qui deviennent facilement 150 si on considère que plusieurs entrées ont dû nous échapper. On remarquera que certains noms de chercheurs reviennent souvent, et souvent à propos de sujets dont ces chercheurs sont désormais les spécialistes en Italie: tels par exemple Graziano Benelli pour Césaire et la Négritude et Carminella Biondi pour Glissant (voir Annexe). Aussi bien pour les volumes que pour les articles cités, on pourra noter que les études sur les auteurs privilégiés par la critique italienne se distribuent de la manière suivante sur l’axe chronologique: les années ’70 voient une convergence vers Césaire (et la Négritude); dans les années ’80 les auteurs les plus étudiés sont Glissant, Depestre, Roumain et Damas; dans les années ’90 c’est le tour de Métellus, Chamoiseau (et la Créolité) et Maran; à partir des années 2000 les préférences vont à Ollivier, Phelps et Laferrière, alors que Glissant est constamment présent. Les travaux les plus nombreux pour ces mêmes auteurs sont consacrés, par ordre décroissant, à Glissant, Césaire, Chamoiseau, Depestre, Ollivier, Roumain, Phelps, Métellus, Laferrière, Maran. Juste pour donner une idée, depuis 1984 on compte 28 travaux (entre articles et volumes, plus un colloque) portant sur Glissant: un tel phénomène est dû en partie à l’équipe bolonaise (formée par Biondi, Pessini et moimême) qui a en outre appuyé la proposition d’une laurea ad honorem à l’écrivain martiniquais, décernée par l’Université de Bologne en juin 2004. Si entre les années ’70 et ’90 les publications portent le plus souvent sur des auteurs pris de manière individuelle, selon un processus d’évolution tout à fait naturel à partir des années ’90, tout en continuant à travailler sur l’œuvre de certains auteurs, on commence à ou-

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vrir des perspectives plus vastes, à embrasser des problématiques de plus grande envergure. Des travaux paraissent qui essaient de produire une réflexion sur le phénomène littéraire caribéen francophone dans son ensemble, voire dans sa dimension plurilingue, tandis que d’autres travaux tracent des bilans, des inventaires et des considérations générales au sujet de l’intérêt italien vis-à-vis de cette nouvelle littérature. Quant aux sujets et aux thématiques les plus fréquentés, on trouve la Négritude, la Creolité et la créolisation, l’identité, la migration et l’exil, l’histoire, la violence, le paysage, l’érotisme, le sacré. Pour ce qui est des genres littéraires, c’est la prose qui l’emporte nettement sur la poésie, l’essai et le théâtre. Ce sont sans doute les approches thématique, historique, stylistique, et parfois aussi anthropologique, qui dominent dans ces travaux. La critique comparatiste (qui a une tradition assez récente en Italie) est relativement peu pratiquée du point de vue interne à la littérature caribéenne francophone, alors que dans quelques cas elle est appliquée à l’ensemble de l’espace caribéen multilingue. La perspective critique proprement postcoloniale, quant à elle, semble avoir encore du mal à prendre pied dans notre panorama. On peut également observer quelques cas d’approche linguistique ou linguistico-culturelle (timides cependant, vu que généralement pour le chercheur italien n’ayant pas le français comme langue maternelle, l’analyse d’une variété du français représente un terrain somme toute piégé); soulignons que, de toute façon, quelques considérations sur la dimension linguistique figurent souvent aussi dans les travaux de caractère littéraire. Il faut également inclure dans la dimension linguistique de la réflexion critique la préparation au travail de traduction (voir infra) – souvent fait par des universitaires – ainsi que les quelques articles ou commentaires portant sur les traductions. Une autre réalité est représentée dans ce panorama par les Groupes et les Centres de recherche. Motivés par la volonté de ne pas vivre la recherche dans la séparation des langues d’expression des différentes littératures, à partir des années ’80 des Groupes et des Centres sont nés qui font figure d’institutions novatrices. S’ils n’œuvrent pas nécessairement selon des critères comparatistes, ils se proposent néan-

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moins de discuter et de partager de différentes manières les résultats des travaux des sous-groupes linguistiques qui les composent. Entre les années ’80 et ’90 le Gruppo nazionale di coordinamento per lo studio delle culture letterarie dei paesi emergenti del CNR (né en fait en 1982 et ayant terminé sa mission en 1995) a produit des séminaires, colloques, publications, deux revues, deux collections (I Quattro Continenti et Dal Mondo Intero, Rome: Bulzoni). Le Groupe rassemblait des francophonisants, des anglophonisants, des hispanophonisants et des lusophonisants qui travaillaient en synergie dans le domaine des études caribéennes et plus généralement des littératures émergentes. À partir de ce Groupe est né au début des années ’90 (plus exactement en 1993) le Centro per lo studio delle letterature e delle culture delle aree emergenti del CNR, installé à Turin et à Milan. Ayant d’une certaine manière pris, au niveau local, la relève du Centre CNR, un Centro studi sulle letterature omeoglotte dei paesi extra europei a été créé à Bologne au milieu des années ’90 (en 1996). Il coordonne des séminaires portant sur des sujets qui intéressent toutes les aires postcoloniales (y compris donc la Caraïbe) et publie les résultats dans sa propre collection (Biblioteca di letterature omeoglotte, Macerata: Quodlibet); il organise des colloques dont il édite les Actes; il accueille des conférenciers (auteurs et critiques) de niveau international; il traduit et diffuse des ouvrages critiques jugés importants. Le Centre est en outre lié à un diplôme de deuxième cycle (en Littératures comparées et postcoloniales) et à trois doctorats (en Littératures francophones, anglophones, ibérophones) de l’Université de Bologne. Nous ne sommes malheureusement pas en mesure de rendre compte ici des recherches ou des groupes de recherche financés au niveau national ou local par le Ministère de l’Éducation, de l’Université et de la Recherche scientifique ou par les différentes Universités, n’ayant pas accès à leurs banques des données. Un des indicateurs de la vitalité d’une discipline est sans doute constitué par la vitrine que sont les colloques. Depuis les années ’80 – mis à part les colloques de littérature française dans lesquels figurent parfois des communications sur la littérature caribéenne – quatre colloques internationaux ont eu lieu en Italie entièrement consacrés à la Caraïbe

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francophone, alors que cinq avaient pour objet la francophonie dans son ensemble, avec une section caribéenne. La liste des titres des Actes de ces Colloques que nous reproduisons ci-dessous, donnera un aperçu des optiques choisies: Congrès mondial des littératures de langue française négro-africaine, nordafricaine et québécoise en Méditerranée: lieu de rencontre de l’art poétique. Actes du Congrès de Padoue, 23-27 mai 1983, Università degli Studi di Padova. 1984. Padova: Centro stampa di Palazzo Maldura. C. Fratta (ed.). 1992. Figures et fantasmes de la violence dans les littératures francophones de l’Afrique subsaharienne et des Antilles, Atti dei seminari annuali di Letterature Francofone diretti da F. Marcato Falzoni, Istituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli, 29-30 nov.-1 dic. 1990. Vol. 2: Les Antilles. Bologna: CLUEB. A.P. Mossetto. Novembre 1995. ‘La littérature francophone des Antilles’ dans Italie Francophonies, Actes de la journée de Paris (22 juin 1995), Haut Conseil de la Francophonie (Numéro spécial de: Les cahiers de la Francophonie 3: 41-43). E. Pessini (ed.). 1998. Du Pays au Tout-monde, écritures d’Édouard Glissant, Actes du Colloque de Parme (18 mai 1995). Parma: Istituto di Lingue e Letterature Romanze. L.-P. Dalembert (ed.). 2000. Haiti attraverso la sua letteratura, Atti del Convegno (4-7 maggio 1998). Roma: Istituto Italo-Latinoamericano. M. Baraldi & M.C. Gnocchi (eds). 2001. Scrivere = Incontrare. Migrazione, multiculturalità, scrittura. In dialogo con Anthony Phelps, Peter Carey, Driss Chraïbi, Vikram Chandra, Atti della Giornata d’incontri con scrittori delle letterature postcoloniali all’Università di Bologna, “Scrivere = Incontrare. Migrazione, multiculturalità, scrittura” (27 maggio 2000). Macerata: Quodlibet. A.P. Mossetto (ed.). 2001. I colori dello spirito, Atti del Convegno di Cesenatico (19-21 ottobre 2000). Vol. 3: Antille. Bologna: CLUEB. P. Oppici (ed.). 2003. Stereotipi culturali a confronto nella letteratura caraibica, Atti della Giornata di Studi dell’Università di Macerata “Lo sguardo dell’altro: stereotipi culturali a confronto nella letteratura caraibica” (7 marzo 2002). Bologna: CLUEB. 2004. Astres et désastres, Actes du colloque international de langues, littératures et civilisations des Pays francophones à Milan (8-11 juin 2004). (Numéro spécial de Ponts/Ponti 4).

Compte tenu du type de travail et des moyens que demande l’existence d’une revue, il est assez surprenant de remarquer qu’il existe en Italie 6 revues littéraires qui traitent régulièrement de la Caraïbe. Parmi celles-ci, une seule est exclusivement consacrée à la litté-

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rature caribéenne, dans son acception plurilingue: il s’agit de Caribana, née en 1990 au sein du Groupe CNR. Deux autres revues, qui s’occupent de littératures postcoloniales de différentes expressions linguistiques, consacrent régulièrement un espace au volet caribéen: il s’agit de Africa, America, Asia, Australia, créée en 1985 par le Groupe CNR, et de Il Tolomeo créée en 1995 à Venise. Trois autres revues traitent de la Caraïbe, parmi les différentes aires de la francophonie: c’est le cas de Studi francesi, née en 1957 à Turin, de Francofonia, créée en 1981 à Bologne, et de Ponts/Ponti, née en 2001 à Milan. Ce bilan, assez riche nous semble-t-il, le serait encore davantage si l’on pouvait dresser l’inventaire national des thèses de doctorat en littérature caribéenne francophone, que nous savons nombreuses; mais ceci n’est malheureusement pas possible pour l’instant. De la recherche à la diffusion La communication entre domaines strictement universitaire et nonuniversitaire est très importante pour comprendre les canaux de diffusion de la littérature caribéenne francophone en Italie et leurs modalités privilégiées. Comme le montre une série d’essais, qui constituent un véritable état des lieux des travaux consacrés à la littérature de la Caraïbe, publiés dès 1995,1 les traductions et les recensions ont commencé à être publiées dès les années ’50, mais elles sont devenues plus nombreuses et régulières des années ’70 à nos jours. Une étude publiée sur la revue Francofonia rend compte de l’attitude de l’Italie envers les littératures de la Caraïbe francophone périphérique.2 À par-

1

G. Benelli. 1995. ‘Da un Mediterraneo all’altro. La letteratura caraibica francofona in Italia (1950-1978)’ in Africa America Asia Australia 18: 149-159; Idem. 1995. La Negritudine in Italia: A. Césaire, L.-G. Damas, L. S. Senghor, 1950-1994. Roma: Bulzoni; A. Costantini. 2000. ‘Per un’introduzione alla letteratura haitiana: le opere tradotte in italiano’ dans Dalembert, L.-Ph. (ed.). Haiti attraverso la sua letteratura. Atti del Convegno del 4-7 maggio 1998. Roma: Istituto Italo-Latinoamericano: 9-31; Idem. 2002. Fantasmi narrativi e sovversione linguistica nel romanzo haitiano contemporaneo. Milano: Cisalpino: 24-26; 29-30. 2 F. Torchi. Printemps 2004. ‘La letteraratura francofona dei Caraibi in Italia’ dans Francofonia 46: 49-66 (numéro spécial de: Le letterature francofone in Italia). Cet article intègre une bibliographie des ouvrages traduits en italien jusqu’à 2003. La

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tir de ce travail, on essayera ici de focaliser l’attention sur les nouvelles publications, indices de l’évolution des modalités de diffusion et de réception de cette littérature. Le rôle des universitaires est déterminant; leurs noms reviennent régulièrement dans les différents lieux – ou média – où le public italien qui ne maîtrise pas nécessairement le français peut accéder à cette littérature: ouvrages traduits, essais, manuels, anthologies, revues. En nous limitant à l’observation des textes entièrement rédigés en italien, nous nous sommes rendu compte du fait que, à cause du filtre opéré par la traduction, pour le lectorat italien le fait linguistique n’est pas une donnée importante. Cet aspect éloigne le public italien des problématiques qui apparaissent comme évidentes au lecteur français: les œuvres qui se présentent sous forme de traductions effacent en effet en grande partie la question linguistique. La littérature caribéenne francophone en Italie est donc traitée de façon complètement différente par ceux qui la distribuent et qui la proposent au public et, par conséquent, elle est aussi reçue de façon différente par les Italiens à travers la création d’autres catégories de représentation: la littérature caribéenne francophone devient alors l’une des littératures émergentes, postcoloniales, caribéennes (au pluriel). Les ouvrages des écrivains caribéens francophones sont publiés par les grandes, les moyennes et les petites maisons d’édition.3 Cependant, seulement les petites intègrent le texte avec un paratexte qui présente au lecteur italien les aspects – linguistiques et culturels – spécifiques de cette littérature. Un travail de repérage des volumes pourvus de paratextes nous a montré que le travail d’explication du texte et du contexte est opéré par les spécialistes qui – en connaissant le texte auquel ils accèdent dans la version originale – se consacrent à la diffusion des œuvres à travers la traduction. Bien plus fréquente, en revanche, est la présence d’un glossaire des mots créoles ou des expressions relatives à la réalité culturelle des Caraïbes, y compris dans les textes sans paratexte. Ces glossaires montrent la difficulté de tra-

liste des traductions, dont nous donnons les nouvelles acquisitions de 2004-2005, est mise à jour constamment sur le site www.lingue.unibo/francofone.it. 3 Torchi 2004: 51-57.

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duire et de rendre accessible le monde linguistique caché dans le texte original.4 Il est très difficile de repérer un critère motivant les choix des textes à traduire, qui dépendent très souvent des goûts des traducteurs et des universitaires qui dirigent les collections ou bien des prix reçus par l’ouvrage. Les écrivains les plus traduits en Italie sont Aimé Césaire, surtout jusqu’aux années ’80, Maryse Condé, René Depestre, Dany Laferrière et – publié mais peu lu et peu vendu – Patrick Chamoiseau. Un écrivain important comme Édouard Glissant n’a été traduit que très récemment: en 1998 (réédité en 2004) Introduction à une poétique du divers5 et en 2003 Le quatrième siècle.6 On peut distinguer deux types de revues non-universitaires qui abordent la littérature caribéenne francophone: des revues comme Nigrizia, consacrées non seulement à la littérature et à des revues comme Pagine, plus strictement littéraires. Bien qu’elles soient très différentes quant à la structure, aux finalités et aux destinataires, elles révèlent toutes les deux que la littérature de la Caraïbe d’expression française est toujours proposée à l’intérieur de catégories plus sociologiques, anthropologiques et culturelles que linguistico-culturelles. Nigrizia est une revue consacrée principalement à l’Afrique, aux différents aspects qui la caractérisent. La culture de l’espace de la Caraïbe est ici présentée comme l’une des cultures liées à l’Afrique. On peut y lire régulièrement des articles sur la littérature, des recensions d’ouvrages ou des articles plus généraux sur les problèmes des différentes régions africaines. Cette revue est promue par des réligieux très actifs du point de vue humanitaire et est présente aussi sur Internet.7 Pagine, au contraire, est une revue de poésie consacrée aux nouvelles expressions littéraires, non seulement postcoloniales mais aussi de l’Europe Centrale, par exemple, ou des pays dont la littérature est très peu traduite ou méconnue en Italie. On y publie des inédits et des arti4 Certains textes contiennent un avertissement pour le lecteur à propos des simplifications opérées dans le travail de traduction pour rendre le texte plus lisible, sans l’alourdir d’une quantité excessive de notes en complément de celles que, assez fréquemment, le texte original possède déjà. 5 Édouard Glissant. 2004 [1998]. Poetica del diverso. Roma: Meltemi. 6 Idem. 2003. Il quarto secolo. Roma: Ed. Lavoro. 7 www.nigrizia.it.

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cles pour présenter tel ou tel auteur. Toutes les deux ne s’achètent que par correspondance, ce qui révèle que la plupart de lecteurs de ces revues doivent sans doute manifester déjà un intérêt spécifique pour ces cultures et ces littératures. En ce qui concerne la Caraïbe francophone, dans les deux revues apparaissent les mêmes noms d’universitaires – comme, par exemple, celui de Marie-José Hoyet – qui consacrent toute une partie de leur activité de recherche littéraire à la diffusion de cette littérature. De façon générale, l’intérêt pour ces nouvelles littératures – y compris pour celle qui nous intéresse – augmente de jour en jour en Italie, un phénomène qui est souligné par la récente publication de volumes qui visent à diffuser la culture et/ou littérature de la Caraïbe auprès d’un public plus vaste: I Caraibi: la cultura contemporanea8 de Maria Pia de Angelis, Cristina Fiallega et Carla Fratta, Arcipelago mangrovia9 de Rita di Gregorio, Anna Di Sapio et Camilla Martinenghi et Voci dalle isole. Narrativa delle aree insulari francofone de Marie-José Hoyet.10 Les auteurs de ces ouvrages visent à réveiller l’intérêt du public italien et d’un point de vue historique et culturel et d’un point de vue littéraire et linguistique. Un long dossier de Nigrizia,11 rédigé par Marie-José Hoyet, confirme cet intérêt croissant. En rapprochant les voix des plus importants écrivains de chaque domaine linguistique, Marie-José Hoyet aborde les différentes facettes du discours culturel caribéen.12 La complexité et la multiplicité de l’univers caribéen sont mises en relief à partir de l’aperçu historique qui ouvre le dossier, où l’auteur souligne ceci à propos de la Caraïbe: Si tratta di interrogarsi sulla natura sociale, politica e culturale della regione caraibica, marcata – malgrado una estensione geografica limitata (soprattutto se si 8

Maria Pia de Angelis, Cristina Fiallega & Carla Fratta (eds). 2003. I Caraibi: la cultura contemporanea. Roma: Carocci. 9 Rita di Gregorio, Anna Di Sapio & Camilla Martinenghi (eds). 2003. Arcipelago mangrovia. Bologna: EMI. 10 Marie-José Hoyet (ed.). 2005. Voci dalle isole. Narrativa delle aree insulari francofone. Isernia: Cosimo Iannone. 11 Avril 2005. Nigrizia 123(4). 12 Marie-José Hoyet. Avril 2005. ‘L’arcipelago perduto’ dans Nigrizia 123(4): 33.

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considera solo la zona insulare) – da numerose esperienze multiculturali comuni, anche se in condizioni diverse le une dalle altre.13

Le discours littéraire aborde aussi bien les écrivains anglophones, hispanophones que francophones, les prix Nobel (traduits en italien) Derek Walcott et V. Surajprasad Naipaul, comme l’auteur martiniquais, de plus en plus apprécié et connu, Édouard Glissant, qui théorise cette vision archipélique de la Caraïbe, sans oublier les voix de femmes telles que Maryse Condé, Edwidge Danticat, Jamaica Kincaid, Rosario Ferré et Julia Álvarez. Une place importante est consacrée à Haïti, où les spécificités de cette île sont mises en évidence ainsi que les liens entre histoire, politique, société et littérature. Bien évidemment à cause des événements politiques, des dictatures dont elle est le théâtre depuis des décennies, Haïti est peut-être la seule île caribéenne de langue française qui possède une représentation définie dans l’imaginaire des Italiens. Une maison d’édition très connue, Feltrinelli, a édité le DVD du film américain The Agronomist de Jonathan Demme. Le film-documentaire sur le fondateur de Radio Haïti-Inter, Jean Dominique, a été l’occasion pour parler d’Haïti et des différentes facettes de sa culture à travers un petit volume: L’isola d’acqua, vendu avec le DVD et qui, en le complétant, s’ajoute aux spéciaux du DVD lui-même. Cette publication a été une occasion en plus pour affirmer les spécificités d’Haïti aux yeux du public italien. Parmi les différents aspects (musique, arts, religion, histoire), ce volume pluridisciplinaire parle aussi de la littérature haïtienne, souvent engagée sur le plan politique. Dans un discours culturel plus vaste, la littérature haïtienne trouve une autonomie propre en Italie par rapport à la littérature de Martinique et de Guadeloupe, entre autres. 14

13 ‘Il s’agit de s’interroger sur la nature sociale, politique et culturelle de la région caribéenne, marquée – malgré une extension géographique limitée (surtout si on considère seulement la zone insulaire) – par de nombreuses expériences multiculturelles communes, bien que dans des conditions différentes les unes des autres’ (notre traduction). 14 D. Manera (ed.). 2005. L’isola d’acqua. Haiti: storie e musica, ferite e sogni. Milano: Feltrinelli, ‘Real Cinema’: 149.

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Marco Modenesi15 présente la partie du volume de littérature, Racconti, leggende e romanzi. L’auteur donne un aperçu le plus possible complet de l’histoire littéraire haïtienne; en même temps, en s’adressant tout particulièrement au lecteur italien, il se préoccupe de dévoiler certains clichés que le mot Haïti pourrait évoquer, comme le voudou, par exemple. La question de la langue utilisée par les écrivains haïtiens est prise en charge avec les problématiques de l’exil et de la diaspora. La condition des écrivains haïtiens est souvent de déplacement. Exilés, émigrés, intégrés dans un autre pays qui les a accueillis comme le Québec, la France ou les États-Unis, ou fortement liés à leur propre île, les écrivains haïtiens sont considérés pas l’auteur comme exemplaires de la nature de la Caraïbe: [è] difficile poter inserire la totalità della letteratura haitiana nella grande famiglia delle letterature francofone. Il quadro generale della letteratura di Haiti si compone, piuttosto, sotto il segno della molteplicità. Tale letteratura rivela come tratto fermo della sua essenza, a livello formale e contenutistico, una varietà nell’unità che è spesso stata riconosciuta come cifra del mondo caraibico cui la cultura e la letteratura di Haiti appartengono.16

Cette section contient des récits brefs de différents écrivains haïtiens traduits en italien, souvent extraits d’autres textes, revues ou recueils plus spécialisés et avec une diffusion beaucoup plus réduite, en démontrant une fois de plus la communication entre domaines universitaire et non-universitaire. Il faut ajouter que les écrivains haïtiens sont très prolifiques et sont publiés par des maisons d’édition françaises aussi bien que québécoises, le Québec étant l’une des patries d’adoption privilégiées des écrivains haïtiens exilés. Le succès d’écrivains comme Dany Laferrière est dû à cette double consécration. 15

M. Modenesi. 2005. ‘Racconti, leggende e romanzi’ dans Manera 2005: 29-

44. 16

‘Il est difficile de situer la totalité de la littérature haïtienne à l’intérieur de la famille des littératures francophones. Le cadre général de la littérature d’Haïti est plutôt placé sous le signe de la multiplicité. Cette littérature révèle comme trait caractéristique, au niveau de la forme et du contenu, la variété dans l’unité qu’on attribue souvent au monde caribéen, auquel appartiennent la culture et la littérature d’Haïti’ (notre traduction) (Modenesi 2005: 44).

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Des quatre romans caribéens francophones traduits en 2005, quatre sont haïtiens, Rosalie l’infame d’Évelyne Trouillot, Bicentenario et Teresa in mille pezzi de Lionel Trouillot,17 et un de l’écrivain martiniquais Patrick Chamoiseau, Il vecchio schiavo e il molosso.18 Ajoutons aussi la présence d’une section à la Fiera Internazionale del Libro di Torino 2005 qui a concerné entièrement la Caraïbe francophone et où étaient présents des écrivains comme Chamoiseau et Raphaël Confiant. Parmi les ouvrages publiés ces deux dernières années, mentionnons une fois de plus le n° 46 de la revue universitaire Francofonia, conçu Per capire perché le letterature francofone risultino essere poco conosciute in Italia; per verificare se è esatto dire che sono poco diffuse; per apprendere in che modo giungono in Italia, seguendo quali percorsi; per vedere come vengono recepite, da chi, grazie a chi; infine per provare a fare un bilancio di quanto è stato fatto finora per e intorno ad esse.19

Ce travail témoigne aujourd’hui, de la continuation et de l’évolution des études institutionnelles sur la réception de la Caraïbe en Italie, preuve d’un intérêt spécifique de ce qui lie monde universitaire et monde non-universitaire.

17 Évelyne Trouillot. 2005. Rosalie l’infame (tr. de P. D’Antonio. Rosalie l’infâme). Siena: Gorée; Lionel Trouillot. 2005. Bicentenario (tr. de M. Ferrara; titre orig. Bicentenaire). Roma: Ed. Lavoro; Idem. 2005. Teresa in mille pezzi (titre orig. Thérèse en mille morceaux). Milano: Epoché. 18 Patrick Chamoiseau. 2005. Il vecchio schiavo e il molosso (tr. de P. Ghinelli; titre orig. L’esclave vieil homme et le molosse). Nuoro: Il Maestrale. 19 ‘Pour comprendre les raisons pour lesquelles les littératures francophones sont peu connues en Italie; pour vérifier s’il est exact de dire qu’elles sont peu diffusées; pour apprendre de quelle façon elles arrivent en Italie, par quels chemins; pour voir de quelle manière elles sont reçues, par qui et grâce à qui; enfin, pour essayer de faire un bilan de ce qu’on a fait jusqu’à présent pour et autour d’elles’ (notre traduction); M. C. Gnocchi. Printemps 2004. ‘Introduzione’ dans Francofonia 46: 13.

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Annexe Articles italiens sur les lettres caribéennes parus depuis 1970: U. Salati. 1969. ‘Gouverneurs de la rosée, un chef-d’œuvre de la littérature haïtienne’ dans Studi di letteratura ispano-americana 2: 121-135. G. Benelli. Avril 1972. ‘Il teatro di A. Césaire’ dans Letture 26(4): 277-296. -- Septembre 1972. ‘A. Césaire: un teatro per la Negritudine’ dans Il Lettore di Provincia 3(10): 51-56. -- Décembre 1972. ‘L’evoluzione del concetto di Négritude in A. Césaire’ dans Annali della Facoltà di Lingue e letterature Straniere di Cà Foscari 11(1): 37-57. -- 1972. ‘Dalla Negritudine all’Africanismo’ dans Letture 12: 837-864. -- 1973. ‘Verso una letteratura per il Terzo Mondo’ dans Le Ragioni Critiche 8: 153159. -- Printemps 1974. ‘L’œuvre de Césaire en Italie’ dans Cahiers Césairiens 1: 9-19. -- 1974. ‘Césaire rilegge Shakespeare’ dans Annali dell’Istituto Universitario di Lingue Moderne, Sede di Feltre: 321-328. -- 1977. ‘Il movimento della négritude come occasione per un lavoro interdisciplinare’ dans Lingue e didattica 30: 1-5. C. Ferrandes. 1979. ‘Da una Tempesta all’altra: il surplus di magia in Césaire (Note sur Une Tempête)’ dans Lectures 1(1): 141-151. C. Biondi. 1979-1980. ‘Le soleil des Antilles: réflexions et problèmes’ dans Neohelicon 7(2): 143-168. A. C. Tacoli. 1979-1980. ‘La struttura triplice nel Cahier d’un retour au pays natal di Césaire’ dans Atti dell’Accademia delle Scienze dell’Istituto di Bologna. Classe di Scienze morali. Rendiconti 68: 237-249. G. Benelli. 1981. ‘L’Africa a teatro’ dans Il Cristallo 1: 129-142. -- 1981. ‘Sipario negro’ dans Annali dell’Istituto Universitario di Lingue Moderne di Feltre. Ravenna: Longo: 317-330. A. C. Tacoli. 1981. ‘Limbé di L.-G. Damas: proposta di lettura’ dans Francofonia 1: 91-103. S. Gavronsky. 1983. ‘Écrire noir sur blanc: Aimé Césaire’ dans Gavronsky, S. Culture Écriture. Essais critiques. Roma: Bulzoni: 149-175. G. Benelli. 1984. ‘René Dépestre. L’Érotisme comme carrefour culturel’ dans Congrès mondial des littératures de langue française négro-africaine, nordafricaine et québécoise en Méditerranée: lieu de rencontre de l’art poétique, Università degli Studi di Padova. Padova: Centro stampa di Palazzo Maldura: 295-298. C. Fratta. 1984. ‘Storia, identità e coscienza collettiva ne La case du commandeur di Édouard Glissant’ dans Critica testuale ed esegesi del testo. Bologna: Patron: 447-454. C. Biondi. Premier trimestre 1985. ‘Césaire contro Romains: processo all’umanesimo borghese’ dans Studi Francesi: 85-90. -- Janvier-Mars 1986. ‘Lettre sur un voyage aux Antilles de Nicolas-Germain Léonard’ dans Revue de l’Université d’Ottawa: 107-113.

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M.-J. Hoyet. Avril 2005. ‘L’arcipelago perduto’ dans Nigrizia 123(4): 33-42. M. Modenesi. 2005. ‘Racconti, leggende e romanzi’ dans Manera, D. (ed.). L’isola d’acqua. Haiti: storie e musica, ferite e sogni. Milano: Feltrinelli: 29-42.

The Contemporary Dominican Literature in the Caribbean Perspective1 Rita De Maeseneer Universiteit Antwerpen To broach the study of little-known recent Dominican prose, I have opted for a comparatist approach by analysing Dominican texts in their dialogical relationship with books from the Caribbean region. I have studied in depth mainly those themes which are very typical for the Caribbean such as, for example, migration, in the works of Dominican (Alcántara Almanzar) and Portorican (Vega, García Ramis) authors, or historical traumas such as the 1937 massacre in the works of the Dominican authors Prestol Castillo, Ligia Minaya, Veloz Maggiolo, and of Danticat and Philoctète. These concrete analyses lead me to formulate some contradictions, parallelisms and complementarities which continue to characterize Caribbean studies.

Meeting the Contemporary Dominican Literature The title of my recently completed study on contemporary Dominican literature is Encuentro con la narrativa dominicana contemporánea.2 While I was doing research on the Literatura Quisqueyana – the literature of the Dominican Republic – I found that the subject had been given little attention. The last decade, publishers only promoted Dominican Diaspora writers because they had found a new niche in Latino/a writers.3 Cuban literature, for instance, received a completely different treatment. As it is backed by a more established literary tradition and due to its politically controversial nature, it is much more popular and thus more marketable. 1

I would like to thank Marika Preziuso for translating my text from Spanish and Tom Hannes for the final touch. 2 Rita De Maeseneer. 2006. Encuentro con la narrativa dominicana contemporánea. Madrid/Frankfurt: Iberoamericana/Vervuert. 3 Luisa Campuzano. September-October 1998. ‘Identidad, lengua y mercado. Narradoras latinas en los Estados Unidos’ in Revolución y cultura 4(5): 19-23.

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In this article, I will highlight the main contents of my study in order to indicate its relevance to the whole of the Caribbean. It is not my aim to formulate complicated theories, but to focus on the various contradictions within the literary dynamics of Dominican prose fiction. It is these dynamics that, in my opinion, can be applied to the Caribbean as a whole. My study concentrates on three elements that often recur in contemporary Caribbean and Latin American literature. A first element, dealt with in the first chapter “La Hispaniola en la brega con el pasado” (‘Hispaniola struggling with the past’), is the obsession with history (the temporal axis). In the second chapter, “La media isla en expansión” (‘Half of the island in expansion’), I analyse the issue of (dis)location (the spatial axis). The third chapter, “Quisqueya a ritmo de bolero” (‘Quisqueya beating to the bolero rhythm’), deals with the presence and impact of popular music, especially the bolero, on literary texts. I particularly focus on certain Dominican texts and their interaction with non-Dominican Caribbean texts, that are usually written in Spanish. This implies that these texts might more easily clash than meet. My intention is not to mediate them via some external normative parameters and characteristics, but rather to start from the specificity of each text in dialogue with other texts and external currents. However, I do not subordinate Dominican literature to foreign standards. Neither do I want to conduct a mimetic analysis, which I consider to be a real threat to Dominican literature, especially as Dominican literature is not widely known or studied. Hispaniola Struggling with the Past The first chapter of my study focuses on the fact that for a long time the literary representation of history was dominated by the Trujillo regime (1930-1961). The Hispanic-Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa made the topic internationally visible with his novel La fiesta del chivo.4 The Dominican-American writer Julia Álvarez drew attention to the resistance against Trujillo by evoking the Mirabal sisters in

4

Mario Vargas Llosa. 2000. La Fiesta del Chivo. Madrid: Alfaguara.

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her In the Time of the Butterflies.5 However the novel offers a filtered vision of the complexity of Dominican history that was conceived for the sake of presenting a supposedly ‘woman’s writing’ to a US audience. One only needs to go to a Dominican bookshop to see that Dominican literature is strongly haunted by the ghosts of Trujillo and Balaguer (1966-1978; 1986-1996). Although the latter was known as ‘the Father of Democracy’, he was a dictator in his own way. Numerous novels concentrate on issues of despotism and/or resistance. In my analysis of the short stories ‘Pormenores de una servidumbre’ by Pedro Peix6 and El personero by Efraím Castillo, I note that these Dominican writers think of servility and rape in a dictatorial context as two of their central themes, long before Vargas Llosa treated these issues in his successful book on Trujillo. In his short story, Peix tells the story of a man who works for Trujillo and who becomes destitute. Castillo,7 on the other hand, describes how Trujillo’s secretary falls in love with one of the dictator’s lovers. Rejected by the regime, he then decides to imprison himself for the rest of his life. Although these interesting texts were written before La fiesta del chivo, they are almost unknown. This makes us wonder how peripheral locations are swept up by the centre, in this case by a Latin American author who is already well-integrated in the literary canon. All of this influences the standards one must come to terms with when writing the Caribbean. At the same time, it raises the question of the place of writing (locus), which is apparently further and further away from the archipelago. Another historical event that has been extensively fictionalised, is the Massacre of 15.000 Haitians in 1937. The Massacre was ordered by Trujillo and took place on the border between the Dominican Republic and Haiti. Again, the best-known fictional rendering was written by a non-Dominican and had a large impact on the way in which the historical event was perceived. The novel I am referring to is The

5

Julia Álvarez. 1995. In the Time of the Butterflies. New York: Plume, Penguin

Group. 6 Pedro Peix. 2002. ‘Pormenores de una servidumbre’ in Manera, Danilo (ed.). Cuentos dominicanos (una antología). Madrid: Siruela: 27-42. 7 Efraím Castillo. 2000. El Personero. Santo Domingo: Manatí.

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Farming of Bones by Haitian-American Edwidge Danticat,8 the Caribbean Magic Realist Black Woman Writer in the Diaspora. Very much in line with trauma theory, Haitian novelists obsessively reexperience the genocide (see also René Philoctète’s Le peuple des terres mêlées9). Among the numerous studies on the Massacre, I have only encountered a few analyses of how Dominican authors dealt with the event. Silence must have been their way of coping with the genocide. Even after the “Padre de la Patria”’s (Trujillo’s) death, fictional renditions of the Massacre remained scarce. An intriguing exception is Freddy Prestol Castillo’s testimonio El masacre se pasa a pie. Prestol Castillo was a lawyer who worked for Trujillo. After the Massacre, he was sent to the border in order to make it look like a series of disputes between individual peasants. In 1973, he published a testimonio in which he gives voice to soldiers, “crime labourers”,10 and subalterns. Prestol Castillo’s cathartic text shows a rare mixture of condemnation and defence when it comes to the Massacre. The Massacre River, described as a connecting and separating element, illustrates the author’s ambiguous attitude. Despite the questionable literary quality of the text, I agree with Frauke Gewecke’s remark that Prestol Castillo shows “the complexities of the relationships between Dominicans and Haitians”, and “the specific expression of the border as a living space”.11 Due to the lack of Dominican literary texts about the Massacre, I was obliged to resort to other media. I found the same cathartic intention in a documentary of the 90’s El Poder del Jefe I by director René Fortunato.12 Whereas other events are told quite neutrally, Fortunato evokes the Massacre in a heartrending way. He inserts screams, shows images of wounded Haitians and highlights the Massacre’s signifi8

Edwidge Danticat. 2000. The Farming of Bones. London: Abacus. René Philoctète. 1989. Le peuple des terres mêlées. Port-au-Prince: Deschamps. 10 Freddy Prestol Castillo. 1993. El Masacre se pasa a pie. Santo Domingo: Taller: 43. 11 Frauke Gewecke. 1996. Der Wille zur Nation. Nationsbildung und Entwürfe nationaler Identität in der Dominikanischen Republik. Frankfurt: Vervuert: 196; my translation. 12 René Fortunato. 1991. El poder del Jefe I. Santo Domingo: Cinematográfica Palau Inc. 9

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cance to the Dominican collective consciousness through the reiterated sentence “The assassin’s truth lies in the group”. Recent texts such as El hombre del acordeón by Marcio Veloz Maggiolo,13 and ‘Llanto de cactus en una noche interminable’ by Ligia Minaya,14 have led me to suppose that Dominican authors face the Massacre tangentially. The aforementioned texts are located in the border region and address the Massacre without making it the core of the narrative. The protagonist of ‘Llanto de cactus de una noche interminable’ is a seer who was born during a deluge after the Massacre and whose supernatural powers managed to subjugate Trujillo. Without being at the centre of the text, the allusions to the Massacre criticize the ideologies that disregard the multicultural complexity and the mythical/magical dimension of the island. El hombre del acordeón, written by Marcio Veloz Maggiolo – one of the most acclaimed writers in Quisqueya – , tells the story of a merengue musician who was in favour of Trujillo but who began to sing merengues against the dictator after his friend died in the Massacre. Ligia Minaya’s and Marcio Veloz Maggiolo’s texts show an awareness of the resistance that can be found in popular music and beliefs. The Massacre is portrayed as the reason for the protest that is expressed through the merengue and the use of magic. A comparison of the different renditions of the Massacre offers an image of the Caribbean in a nutshell. Just as the Caribbean, Quisqueya, with its cultural and geographical complexities, is always already a precarious unity, with different languages, positionings and interests clashing.The portraits of the Massacre allow us to analyse the question of the fluidity of borders, the transgressions, the definition of in-between identities and positionings, which defy the idea of the border as “the epic line of Dominicanness”.15 Releasing Dominican literature from the crushing weight of Trujillo, seems an arduous task. A novel by Carlos Esteban Deive drew my attention and shed another light on the tangled web of the Haitian Revolution. Deive, a historian, is the author of many studies 13

Marcio Veloz Maggiolo. 2003. El hombre del acordeón. Madrid: Siruela. Ligia Minaya. 1999. ‘Llanto de cactus en una noche interminable’; document put at my disposal by the author. 15 Andrés L. Mateo. 1996. Al filo de la dominicanidad. Santo Domingo: Colores: 122. 14

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on the Haitian Revolution, and published Viento Negro, bosque del caimán in 2002.16 The novel starts in 1790 and goes on until 1801, when the Eastern Spanish half of the island got completely mixed up in the bustle of its Western French neighbour. Deive addresses the experiences of the white upper class (the few Caucasians who lived on the Eastern side of the island) and – to a lesser extent – those of black leaders such as Toussaint or Biassou with a good deal of scepsis. He describes their weaknesses, their desire for power, their efforts to please their materialistic aspirations and their feeling of disorientation in the light of historical events. He reveals the ambiguous shift from alliance to opposition among the different groups who were struggling to either obtain or maintain power. He also evokes the people’s mean reactions, the ambiguous attitude of the Spanish towards the French refugees and the importance of individual profit, along with a desire to forget problems. I believe Deive’s human perspective to be the strength of his novel. The author moreover often resorts to humour, which is not at all common in Dominican literature. Deive also portrays a time in which the vicissitudes of the two halves of the island were intimately interrelated. He rejects the mutual silencing that characterises the two countries, a situation that seems to be emblematic of the multiple short-circuits that exist among the various linguistic and geographic areas in the whole of the Caribbean. It is interesting that Viento Negro, bosque del caimán represents the “primitive other”.17 Dominican literature either harshly despises or neglects its neighbouring Other, which it sees as the abject, the one with “bad (kinky) hair”, the one who inspires fear. Very few Dominican novels integrate the Haitian in a constructive way, because he was annihilated by Trujillo and is still the victim of ethnic prejudices on the island. According to some experts, this Negrophobic attitude can be traced back to the turbulence surrounding the struggles for independence that led to the Haitian occupation of the Spanish side of the island from 1822 to 16

Carlos Esteban Deive. 2002. Viento Negro, bosque del caimán. Santo Domingo: Editora Centenario. 17 A term coined by Fernando Valerio-Holguín. 2000. ‘Primitive Borders. Cultural Identity and Ethnic Cleansing in the Dominican Republic’ in Camayd-Freixas, Erik & José Eduardo González (eds). Primitivism and Identity in Latin America. Essays on Art, Literature, and Culture. Tucson: University of Arizona Press: 75-88.

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1844.18 The recreation of a colonial period that perceived the fates of the two countries – nowadays sometimes struggling to coexist – as extremely interconnected is, in my opinion, quite significant. In contrast to the Haitian motto, Une et indivisible, the island is not very united nor indivisible. And as a a matter of fact, neither is the Caribbean. The novel displays another interesting feature. Despite the numerous links with a fictional corpus set in this period (Smart-Bell, Césaire, Lamming, Walcott, Métellus...), Deive’s work sets up an interesting (in the author’s comment “unconscious”) dialogue with El reino de este mundo, written by the Cuban Alejo Carpentier.19 It is not surprising that one of the most obvious and ubiquitous intertexts should be Carpentier’s novel. I have often remarked that many Dominican authors are inspired by Latin American writers. The Uruguayan writer Onetti casts a long shadow over Andrés L. Mateo’s novel Balada para Alfonsina Bairán,20 set in a brothel at the time of

18

The origins of Anti-Haitianism are still being debated: Despradel (1972) traces them back to the birth of the colony, Torres-Saillant (1997; 2000) insists on the relevance of the Trujillo regime for the increase in negrophoby. For the anti-Haitian ideology, see also Néstor Rodríguez (2003; 2004; 2005), Sagás (2000) and Howard (2001). References: Lil Despradel. 1972. ‘Les étapes de l’anti-haïtianisme en République Dominicaine. Le rôle des historiens’ in Nouvelle Optique 8: 65-92; Silvio Torres-Saillant. 1997. ‘Dominican Literature and Its Criticism. Anatomy of a Troubled Identity’ in Arnold, James (ed.). A History of Literature in the Caribbean. Vol. 1: Hispanic and Francophone Regions. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company: 49-64; Idem. 2000. ‘The Tribulations of Blackness. Stages in Dominican Racial Identity’ in Calalloo 23(3): 1086-1111; Néstor Rodríguez. 2003. La isla y su envés: representaciones de lo nacional en el ensayo dominicano contemporáneo. San Juan: Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña; Idem. April-June 2004. ‘El rasero de la raza en la ensayística dominicana’ in Revista Iberoamericana 70(207): 473-490; Ernesto Sagás. 2000. Race and Politics in the Dominican Republic. Gainesville: University Press of Florida; David Howard. 2001. Coloring the Nation. Race and Ethnicity in the Dominican Republic. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers. 19 Alejo Carpentier. 1991. El reino de este mundo. Vol. 2. Mexico: Siglo XXI Editores: 9-119. 20 Andrés L. Mateo. 1998. La balada de Alfonsina Bairán. Santo Domingo: Colores.

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the suffocating Trujillo regime.21 García Márquez can also count upon a retinue of Dominican authors. Enriquillo Sánchez published Musiquito. Anales de un déspota y un bolerista in 199322 and told me that he had written the novel to exorcise the paralysing influence of magical realism. The dictator in Sánchez’s novel and the Patriarch in García Márquez’s El otoño del Patriarca have both their erotic obsessions and the eccentricity of their orders in common .The title of a short story by Avelino Stanley about Balaguer speaks for itself: ‘Cien años de osuridad’.23 Therefore, it can be said that the Dominican Republic not only carries the weight of the West, but also of the Latin American writers. Dominican artists are often considered to pertain to the “periphery of the periphery”.24 Whereas some leading Caribbean artists managed to absorb or subvert the canon, Dominican authors often seem to be crushed by the weight of tradition. One could also say that the writers from the Diaspora (especially women) are epigones of the magical realism à la Isabel Allende (and not à la García Márquez) and dissolve the complexity of the magic that is strongly present in Dominican everyday life and imaginary realm. Half of the Island in Expansion My second focus of attention is of a spatial nature. In this part I address two major themes. First of all, I describe how the province and the magic of the countryside are still a strong presence. It is interesting to notice how many Dominican Diaspora writers who write in English tend to reduce the countryside to its poverty and to a kind of magic that is exclusively attributed to clairvoyant women. Occasionally the supposed authenticity of the countryside is celebrated as the location of solidarity. A critical detachment can sometimes be perceived 21

Maryse Renaud. 2005. ‘Melancolía criolla y pasión justiciera en La balada de Alfonsina Bairán de Andrés L. Mateo’ in República Dominicana ¿Tierra incógnita? Poitiers: Centre de Recherches Latino-Américaines/Archivos: 113-123. 22 Enriquillo Sánchez. 1993. Musiquito. Anales de un déspota y de un bolerista. Santo Domingo: Taller. 23 Avelino Stanley. 2003. ‘Cien años de oscuridad’ in La máscara del tiempo. Cuentos. Santo Domingo: Cocolo Editorial: 91-98. 24 Silvio Torres-Saillant. 1997. Caribbean Poetics. Toward an Aesthetic of West Indian Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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among some of the Dominican authors in diaspora (e.g. Drown by Junot Díaz25). Some texts that originated on the island recover the rural, the magical and the provincialism in ways that subvert traditional approaches. Pedro Antonio Valdez, for instance, has already published two novels with a heteroclite structure in which he evokes a provincial town, but his approach is neither folkloric, nor Eden-like or bucolic. In Carnaval de Sodoma,26 for instance, traditionalism, typical of the province (for instance, the priests’ influence), reigns. At certain times however, the province provides the opportunity to contest la gran Nación and to integrate elements that we normally associate with urban space (its dirtiness, people’s escape in drugs). Urban literature in the Dominican context has generated interesting phenomena as well. In two novels, I have analysed themes such as alienation and globalisation, which are characteristic of ‘urban’ literature. I am referring to the stories Invi’s Paradise by Aurora Arias,27 about the life of young people in the 80’s, and to La estrategia de Chochueca by Rita Indiana Hernández.28 The latter evokes a group of young people in the 90’s, who have gone astray and are living on the border of illegality. The confused expression of urban space that is found with both writers differs greatly from the previous visions produced by the supposed coherence of the Trujillo regime. That is why Néstor Rodríguez refers to a “counter-narrative of the nation” and of a “drive towards a subversive cartography of the Dominican topography of identity”.29 Aurora Arias’s texts moreover interact with chronicles by Monsiváis, Lemebel or Rodríguez Juliá, to name but three. Hernández’s La estrategia de Chochueca can be read as a Dominican Psycho. The novel resembles texts by followers of Bret Easton Ellis and his American Psycho. Allusions to Kerouac or Burroughs can also 25

Junot Díaz. 1997. Drown. London: Faber & Faber. Pedro Antonio Valdez. 2002. Carnaval de Sodoma. Santo Domingo: Alfaguara. 27 Aurora Arias. 1998. Invi’s Paradise y otros relatos. Montréal: Concordia University. 28 Rita Indiana Hernández. 2004. La estrategia de Chochueca. San Juan & Santo Domingo: Isla Negra Editores. 29 Néstor Rodríguez. 2005. Escrituras de desencuentro en la República Dominicana. Mexico: Siglo XXI Editores: 95. 26

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be found. But the wanderings in the capital need to be seen in the Dominican context; a context which both authors capture in its racial, political, social and familial complexity. These texts demonstrate a way of blending in with general literary currents without losing their own specificity. Interweaving the global(ising) with the local(ist) is a dichotomy that has generated numerous debates in the 20th century, in the Caribbean as well as in Latin America. My second focus of attention is the theme of migration, another key word for understanding the Caribbean. I have studied the literary representation of people who try to cross the Mona channel by boat in order to reach Puerto Rico. Puerto Rican texts (Ana Lydia Vega, Magali García Ramis, Lizette Gratacós Wys...)30 show a development from a rather stereotypical portrait of the Dominicans towards a more human approach. The scarce Dominican texts on the subject deal with it in a moralising (Canoas de falso piso by Ludín Lugo, a text of poor artistic quality) 31 or universalising way (‘En alta mar’ by José Alcántara Almánzar)32 in order to come to terms with its harsh reality. These texts allow us to reflect on the “guagua aérea” (airbus) situation33 that characterises Caribbean people. Not only does this displace Caribbean people from a geographical point of view, but it also forces them to constantly (re)think their identity in relation to the environment that they are confronted with. This kind of in-betweenness leads the migrant to a ceaseless redefinition of the self from a racial, social, ethnic, ontological and even linguistic point of view. The texts themselves reveal exclusion and discrimination, along with stereotypes, as the easiest way of containing the Other (in both senses of incorporating and dominating).

30

Ana Lydia Vega. 1983. Encancaranublado. Río Piedras: Antillana; Magali García Ramis. 1995. Las noches del Riel de Oro. San Juan: Editorial Cultural; Lizette Gratacós Wys. 1998. Tortícolis. San Juan: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico. 31 Ludín Lugo. 1993. Canoas de falso piso. Novela de los Ilegales. Santo Domingo: Taller. 32 José Alcántara Almánzar. 2000. ‘En alta mar’ in La carne estremecida. Santo Domingo: Fundación Cultural Dominicana: 97-98. 33 Luis Rafael Sánchez. 1994. La guagua aérea. San Juan: Editorial Cultural.

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Quisqueya Beating to the Bolero Rhythm My last focus of attention is the integration of popular music, more precisely bolero music, in Dominican literature. I have deliberately opted for a Pan-Latin genre and not for the merengue or bachata genres, which are somewhat more vernacular. The insertion of boleros in literature involves both amputations and rewritings of the songs and entails a series of connotations. My analysis contributes to the already stunning corpus of Caribbean bolero-texts, which suggests that Latin America and the Caribbean not only have foundational novels, but foundational rhythms as well. In my analysis of Pedro Vergés’s excellent novel Sólo cenizas hallarás (bolero), I demonstrate that popular music is a form of resistance reflecting upon the subaltern’s voicelessness. The novel explains its title – which is a verse taken from the never-mentioned bolero Cenizas – in its anaesthetising and pessimistic vision of the period following Trujillo’s death. It also hides a boleroleitmotif for the servant Lucila, “Bájate de esta nube”, which invites us to reflect on her subaltern position in all its contradictions of submission and rebelliousness. A sui generis use of bolero consists in a consideration of the power of voice; of his master’s Voice.34 In Musiquito. Anales de un déspota y de un bolerista by Enriquillo Sánchez,35 Musiquito composes boleros about events that are worth being remembered in the Annals. “El bolero de la carne transparente” supports the whitening campaign with the “Albor” lotion, which was inspired by the “nivea passion” of El Poblador-Trujillo himself,36 another obsession that haunts the Dominican realm of the imaginary. The bolero is used at the dictator’s service. The juxtaposition in the subtitle, Annals of a despot and a bolero singer, suggests a parallel between singers and dictators/populist leaders: both use the same techniques, despite their different aims; both use their voice to manipulate the masses and to deflect their attention towards less conflictive grounds. It seems more34

Roberto González Echevarría. 1988. ‘The Dictatorship of Rhetoric/The Rhetoric of Dictatorship’ in The Voice of the Masters. Writing and Authority in Modern Latin American Literature. Austin: University of Texas Press: 64-85. 35 Sánchez 1993. 36 The term “El Poblador” refers to Trujillo’s official title as the founder of the Fatherland and his supposed virility (translator’s note).

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over very interesting that a Dominican author should use the bolero, a Pan-Caribbean and Pan-Latin genre, as the merengue, celebrated by Trujillo as a sign of Dominican identity, would involve a much more local and reduced approach. A more frequent use of the bolero is illustrated by the short story ‘Vellonera de sueños’ by Luis Martín Gómez.37 The differences traditionally ascribed to men and women seem to be confirmed: although the man uses his bolero songs to cry over the loss of his wife, his status is never at stake. Much more belligerent is the short story by Puerto Rican writers Ana Lydia Vega and Carmen Lugo Filippi, ‘Cuatro selecciones por una peseta’,38 in which the authors fiercely satirise precisely those men who are suffering from the loss of their wives. Apparently, the battle of the sexes (as well as eroticism) is evoked modestly and cautiously in Dominican literature. This supposed difference with Puerto Rican and other Caribbean literature leads me to the question of the eroticised image of the Caribbean, as a place of reckless sexuality, bordering on the pornographic, as can be found in literature. Anyway, the inclusion of popular music, so typical of the Caribbean, destabilises and subverts our sacred culture. Aparicio informs us that it is often the case that “the intertext implies an ideal of a supposedly middle-class reader, familiar with the European, North-American and Latin-American literary canons”. By introducing codes from popular music, however, “the opening up or democratization of the ideal Puerto-Rican or Caribbean reader”39 is a fact. At the same time, the impressive corpus of bolero-texts makes us wonder to what extent it is accepted by the canon and by a common encyclopaedia. This brings us to one of the bedrocks of Caribbean literature, oral tradition,

37 Luis Martín Gómez. 1998. ‘Vellonera de sueños’ in Dialecto. Santo Domingo: El Arco y la Lira: 91-96. 38 In Ana Lydia Vega & Carmen Lugo Filippi. 1981. Vírgenes y mártires. Río Piedras: Editorial Antillana. 39 Frances Aparicio. January-June 1993. ‘Entre la guaracha y el bolero: un ciclo de intertextos musicales en la nueva narrativa puertorriqueña’ in Revista Iberoamericana 59(162-163): 77.

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and its problematic relationship with literature (see Benítez-Rojo40 and Édouard Glissant41). Emerging Questions All this has led me to a very cautious approach of Dominican literature. Although not all the works that are discussed here excel in literary talent, my analyses reveal an unexpected richness and a confrontation with problems that are very much Caribbean and not only Dominican. Even when the texts do not succeed in overcoming their insularity, the issues they raise (e.g. the silences of history, history and fiction, centre (capital) and periphery (province), precarious identity, racism, the Diaspora, the role of popular music) will remain of interest in the Caribbean context. The three focuses I have suggested here have led me to a series of questions that characterise the Caribbean as a whole, this oscillating ghost between unity and fragmentation, which critics such as Hostos and Martí – and more recently Benítez-Rojo and Glissant – have tried to define and discuss. It looks as if the Dominican Republic synthesises many of the problematic questions that haunt the Caribbean archipelago. I am thinking of its peripheral location, its well-rooted hybridity, its potential for resistance, its clashing cultures, ethnicities, languages and religions, its frail borders, the commercial exploitation of certain stereotypes in the area, the struggle between oral and written culture. On a wider level, Dominican literature confronts issues that are dealt with by other Caribbean literatures (and by the literatures of other Latin American countries). Crushed under the weight of many celebrated authors like Vargas Llosa and García Márquez, or more commodified authors, the Dominican writers cannot get out of their fenced borders. (Self)praise does not favour their distribution either. At the same time, I have realised that the analysis from a nonliterary perspective often offers an amazing richness of interpretations and can be helpful in finding answers to those unfinished and empty 40 Antonio Benítez-Rojo. 1989. La isla que se repite. El Caribe y la perspectiva posmoderna. Hanover: Ediciones del Norte. 41 Édouard Glissant. 1991. Le discours antillais. Paris: Seuil.

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spaces that I have encountered in Dominican literature. Therefore, I have included some other artistic forms of expression, although I am aware that those are not sufficient. What certainly does not lack is a dialogue with other fields of human science. The back-and-forth between history and fiction in the first chapter, the comparison with the anthropological analysis in my study of the boatpeople, the reflection from the point of view of communicative science and anthropology in addressing popular music, have all allowed me to transcend the literary field, a sine qua non condition to study Caribbean literature. My comparative approach confirms and questions the concept of national literature that still haunts the title of the book: Encuentro con la narrativa dominicana contemporánea. On the one hand, every author is a world, but the dialogue, especially with Hispanic texts from the neighbouring islands, has taught me that Quisqueya presents a series of historical, geographical and ethnic characteristics that nourish its literature and that distinguishes it from other islands. On the other hand, I have often found convergencies with other Caribbean texts. The Dominican Republic represents numerous contradictions and questions that characterise the Caribbean in more than one aspect. This awareness only intensifies the challenge to continue to study this still emerging literature and all its hidden treasures.

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Achugar, Hugo 89-91, 95, 106, 251 Adán, Martín 284 Adejunmobi, Moradewun 213 n.24, 214 n.28 Adorno, Theodor W. 63 n.48 Agamben, Giorgio 142 n.74, 75, 144146 Agrippa d’Aubigné, Th. 311 n.61 Aidoo, Ama Ata 315 Ainsa, Fernando 254 Albert, Matthias 131 n.53 Alcántara Almánzar, José 345, 354 Aldama, Arturo 106 Alexis, Jacques Stephen 11, 100, 244, 312 n.61 Allende, Isabel 352 Althusser, Louis 95 Álvarez, Julia 333, 346-347 Amselle, Jean-Loup 68 n.3 Anderson, Benedict 37, 74 n.18, 99 Andrade, Oswald de 287, 293, 300 Antoine, Régis 187 n.8, 241 n.8, 299 n.8 Antoni, Robert 36 Aparicio, Frances 356 Apollinaire, Guillaume 303 n.29 Appadurai, Arjun 103 Arango, Arturo 250-251 Arenas, Reinaldo 141-144, 158 Arias, Aurora 353 Arion, Frank Martinus 30 Arnold, Albert-James 11, 12, 19, 24 n.5, 27, 28 n.9, 32 n.15, 153, 154 n.2, 169, 177 n.34, 185-186, 225, 241 n.7, 272 n.24, 281 n.40 Arrufat, Antón 250 n.3 Ashcroft, Bill 205 n.4, 275 Asturias, Miguel Ángel 289-291 Auerbach, Erich 130-131 Ávila, Affonso 290 Bakhtin, Mikhaïl 206-208, 211-212, 291 Bandia, Paul 203, 213 Bansart, Andrés 48 n.2 Baraldi, M. 328 Barbour, Sarah 298 Barnet, Miguel 24

Barreiro, José 166 n.18 Barrell, John 159 n.9 Barrios, Miguel de 232 Barthes, Roland 112, 146 n.83, 260 Battista, P. 324 Baudrillard, J. 291 Beckett, Samuel 42 Beecher Stowe, Harriet 180 Behn, Aphra 181 Bejel, Emilio 254, 255 n.16 Belli, Carlos Germán 289-291, 292 Benelli, Graziano 324-325, 329 n.1, 336-339 Benítez-Rojo, Antonio 10, 12, 24-25, 28, 47 n.1, 91-92, 133, 141, 146 n.85, 147, 149, 226, 240, 357 Benjamin, Walter 96, 125 Bennett, Louise 226 Benveniste, Émile 185 n.3 Berman, Antoine 218 n.39 Berman, Marshall 55 n.21 Bernabé, Jean 67, 68 n.1, 69 n.4, 70, 73, 80, 83, 134, 176, 210 n.20, 263 n.1, 271-272, 276, 279 Best, Lloyd 154 n.3 Beverley, John 254, 257-258 Beyala, Calixthe 300 Bhabha, Homi 26, 89, 93, 207, 208 n.10, 209, 275 Biondi, Carminella 192-195, 198, 325, 336-341, 343 Bloom, Harold 298 Bolívar, Simón 128 Bolland, O. Nigel 29 Bongie, Chris 135-136, 299 Borges, Jorge Luis 94, 259, 289 Borrero, Juana 135 Boti, Regino E. 158 Bourdieu, Pierre 78, 80 Brambilla, C. 324 Brand, Dionne 36 Brathwaite, Kamau 24, 25, 30, 268 n.10, 312 n.61 Brecht, Berthold 312 n.61 Breton, André 191 n.21 Breton, Raymond 155 Brincourt, André 71-73, 77, 83

362

Name Index

Brittain, Victoria 167-168 Britton, Celia 28 Broek, Aart 32 Brontë, Charlotte 170, 304-305 Brontë, Emily 299-300, 304-305 Buci-Glucksmann, Christine 284 Burroughs, W.S. 353 Butler, Judith 36 n.4, 42 n.11, 95-96 Cabrera Infante, Guillermo 289 Cabrera, Lydia 302 n.23 Calabrese, Omar 284, 290 Calderón de la Barca, P. 286 Calì, A. 339, 343 Calvet, Louis-Jean 210 Campa, Román de la 10, 24 26, 91, 92, 164, 240 Campagnoli, R. 339 Campos, Haroldo de 283, 289, 294 Campuzano, Luisa 285, 345 n.3 Camus, Albert 312 n.61 Capécia, Mayotte 27 Carpentier, Alejo 10, 47-65, 87, 88 n.2, 99-100, 102, 169, 173-177, 181-183, 240, 283-284, 285 n.3, 286-288, 290, 293, 295 n.27, 302 n.23, 311-320, 351 Casal, Julián del 135 Casey, Edward 157 Castillo, Efraím 347 Castoriadis, Cornélius 74 n.18, 94 Castro Ruiz, Fidel 141, 162, 253-254, 260-261 Cervantes, Miguel de 94 Césaire, Aimé 23-24, 33, 101, 149, 172, 189, 191, 245, 267, 270, 272-274, 277, 297, 299, 300-304, 312, 325, 331, 351 Chamoiseau, Patrick 67, 68 n.1, 7072, 77-80, 83, 134, 138 n.63, 151, 176, 210 n.20, 220, 246 n.16, 263-282, 297, 311-321, 325, 331, 335 Chanady, Amaryll 10, 23, 87, 89 n.5, 97 n.20, 100 n.25 Chancé, Dominique 189

Chiampi, Irlemar 288 n.11, 292 Chin, Timothy 37 n.6 Chow, Rey 93 Clemencia, Joceline 21 Cliff, Michelle 36, 43 n.12, 98 Clifford, James 88-89 Coetzee, J.M. 304 Columbus, Christopher 87, 117-120, 159, 160 n.10, 166 Condé, Maryse 136, 140, 264, 272, 297-311, 321, 331, 333 Confiant, Raphaël 67, 68 n.1, 70-73, 77-78, 80-83, 134, 138 n.63, 151, 176, 210 n.20, 239, 263, 266, 271-276, 279, 302, 318, 335 Conrad, Joseph 172, 315 Cook, Mercer 311 n.57 Cortázar, Julio 250, 260 Cosa, Juan de la 120-121, 126 Costantini, A. 324, 329 n.1, 337, 340341 Cottenet-Hage, Madeleine 272 n.24, 298 Cox, Timotey 303 Cramer, Friedrich 109-111, 113 n.10, 123 n.26, 133 n.56 Cronin, Michael 210-211, 218-219 D’Angelo, Biagio 283 D’haen, Theo 11, 16, 23, 24, 169 170 n.7, 176 n.31, 177, 179 n.37, 301 n.21 D’hulst, Lieven 69 n.5, 237, 246 n.18, 264 Dalembert, L.-P. 328 Dalton, Roque 260 Damas, Léon-Gontran 191, 298 n.2, 311 n.57, 312 n.61, 325 Damsteegt, Theo 21 Danticat, Edwidge 300, 303, 333, 345, 348 Dash, J. Michael 11 n.6, 19, 28, 31, 176, 321 Davis, Richard Harding 161 Dayan, Joan 175 De Angelis, Maria Pia 325, 332

Name Index De Bleeker, Liesbeth 237 n.1, 263 De Greef, Annelien 261 n.26 De Maeseneer, Rita 345 Defoe, Daniel 170 Dehaybe, Roger 74-75 Deive, Carlos Esteban 349-351 Delafosse, Maurice 187 n.8 Delbourg, Patrice 71 n.9, 78 Delden, Maarten van 47, 49 n.4 Deleuze, Gilles 24-25, 104, 126, 205208, 283, 284 Delsham, Tony 312 n.61 Depestre, René 149, 325, 331 Derrida, Jacques 23, 203 n.1, 260, 286 Despradel, Lil 351 n.18 Di Gregorio, Rita 332 Di Sapio, Anna 332 Díaz, Jesús 143, 252, 255 Díaz, Junot 353 Dib, Mohammed 303 n.30 Diéguez, Manuel del 71 n.7 Djebar, Assia 244 n.13 Donne, John 311 n.61 Donnell, Alison 36 Döring, T. 321 Dostoyevski, F. 291 Dubois, Jacques 78 n.27 Easton Ellis, Bret 353 Einfalt, Michael 281 n.41 Elia, Nada 43 n.12 Eliot, T.S. 172, 176 Emerson, Caryl 206 Emina, A. 337-340 Engélibert, J.P. 9 Esquemelin see Exquemelin Esquemeling see Exquemelin Ette, Ottmar 109, 126 n.35, 136 n.60, 137 n.61, 140 n.68, 146 n.83, 150 n.90, 249 n.1 Even-Zohar, Itamar 237, 242-243, 264 n.3 Exquemelin, Alexandre Olivier 225235 Fanon, Frantz 11, 95, 149, 312 n.61,

363

314, 316, 318 n.81 Faris, Wendy B. 48 n.2 Faulkner, William 169, 173, 177-181, 310, 311 n.61, 312, 321 Fernández Retamar, Roberto 24, 87, 90-92, 94, 100-101, 149, 249-261 Fernández, Pablo Armando 254 Ferrandes, C. 336 Ferrarini, M. 338 Ferré, Rosario 333 Fiallega, Cristina 325, 332 Flaubert, Gustave 61-63 Fonkoua, Romuald 193 Fornet, Ambrosio 250-252, 254-255 Forster, E.M. 172 Fortunato, René 348 Foucault, Michel 260, 294 n.24 Fowler, Víctor 249 n.2, 256, 260 Fraisse, Luc 187 n.8 Frankétienne 272, 312 n.61 Fratta, Carla 323, 324-325, 328, 332, 336-339, 341-342 Frobenius, Leo 187 n.8 Fuente Benavides, Rafael de la 284285 Fuentes, Carlos 259, 289-290 Fumagalli, Cristina 302 Gal, Susan 213 n.26 Galeano, Eduardo 117, 122, 141 n.70 García Lorca, Federico 160-161 García Márquez, Gabriel 292, 312 n.61, 352, 357 García Ramis, Magali 345, 354 García, Luis Manuel 252-253, 255, 260 Gates, Henry Louis 316 Gauvin, Lise 199-200, 204 n.2 Gavronsky, S. 336 Gaztambide-Geigel, Antonio 155 n.3 Geerdink-Jesurun Pinto, Nilda 21 Gerbi, Antonello 127 n.38 Gewecke, Frauke 348 Ghinelli, P. 343 Gide, André 114 Gikandi, Simon 174

364

Name Index

Gilroy, Paul 146 n.84, 170-171 Giraud, Michel 272 n.24 Glissant, Édouard 10, 15, 24-26, 28, 35, 37, 68, 71, 88 n.2, 104-106, 109, 125-126, 135, 138, 149, 176, 186, 192-196, 198, 199-200, 204, 209-210, 240, 245-246, 272-273, 276, 297, 299, 301, 302, 303 n.30, 312, 314, 317, 319, 325, 331, 333, 357 Gnocchi, M.C. 328, 335 n.19 Gómez de Avellaneda, Gertrudis 135 Gómez, Luis Martín 356 Góngora, L. de 292 González Echevarría, Roberto 47 n.1, 49 n.3, 60 n.37, 257-258, 288 n.12, 355 n.34 González Roy 254-255 González Stephan, Beatriz 257 Gracián, Baltasar 284 n.1 Gracq, Julien 315 Gramsci, A. 318 n.81 Gratacós Wys, Lizette 354 Gratiant, Gilbert 312 n.61 Green, Cecilia 155 n.3 Green, Martin 170 n.4 Greene, Graham 200 Griffiths, Gareth 205 n.4, 275 n.32 Grüttemeier, Ralf 80 n.30 Guattari, Félix 25, 104, 126, 205-208 Guérin, Jean-Yves 242 n.9 Guillén, Nicolás 31, 312 n.61 Gumperz, John Joseph 211-212 Gyssels, Kathleen 226, 297, 306 n.39, 311 n.60 Habermas, Jürgen 169 n.1 Halen, Pierre 77, 190, 244 n.14, 281 n.40 Hall, Stuart 149 Hallward, Peter 303 n.30 Harris, Geraldine 36 n.4 Harris, Wilson 28, 35, 37, 105 Hauser, Arnold 290 Hawthorne, Nathaniel 306 Heller, Monica 215

Helman, Albert 169, 173, 180-182 Hemingway, Ernst 179, 311-313, 321 Heredia, José María 135, 312 n. 61 Hernández, Rita Indiana 353 Herndon, Denise 298 Hewitt, Leah 298 Higginson, P. 321 n.95 Hikmet, Nazim 311 n.61 Hoeller, H. 315 Holquist, Michael 206 Howard, David 351 n.18 Hoyet, Marie-José 332, 339-341, 344 Hughes, Langston 172, 311 n.57 Hulme, Peter 153, 162 n.13, 257 Humboldt, Alexander von 119 Jackson, Rosemary 170 Jacobson, Matthew Frye 166 n.19 Jacquemond, Richard 218 Jahn, Bernhard 121 n.23 James, C.L.R. 24, 172 Jameson, Fredric 257 n.20, 291 Johnson, Charles 303 n.30 Jonassaint, Jean 310-311 Joseph, Anne M. 143 n.76 Joyce, James 172, 290 Juan-Navarro, Santiago 50 n.5 Kafka, F. 206 Kant, Immanuel 110-112 Kaplan, Amy 162 n.13 Kempadoo, Kamala 37 n.6 Kerouac, J. 353 Kincaid, Jamaica 43, 333 Kosofsky, Eve 36 n.4 Kutzinski, Vera 20, 23, 30, 35, 37 n.8 La Cruz, Sor Juana Inés de 284, 287 La Fontaine, J. de 311 n.61 Lacan, Jacques 286 LaFeber, Walter 166 n.19 Laferrière, Dany 325, 331, 334 Laguerre, Enrique 22 Lahens, Yanick 139-141 Laimdota Ducats, María 299 n.10 Lamming, George 135, 149, 301, 351 Larraín, Jorge 65 n.51 Larrier, Renée 310 n.55

Name Index Las Casas, Bartelomé de 159-161 Latour, M.D. 21 Lauer, Mirko 285 Lawrence, T.E. 172 Lawson Welsh, Sarah 36 Lawton de Torruella, Elena 268 n.10 le Bris, Michel 233-234 Lecercle, Jean-Jacques 212 n.23 Lérins, Vincent de 233 Letchimy, Serge 267 n.9 Levesque, Katia 81 Lévi-Strauss, Claude 114 Lewis, Linden 35 Lezama Lima, José 47, 260, 286-288, 290, 295 Lie, Nadia 24, 237 n.1, 249, 250 n.3, 256 n.19, 257 n.20 Lionnet, Françoise 310 n.55 Lizardi, J.J. Fernández de 150-151 López Sacha, Francisco 252 n.9 Lotman, Iouri 278 Lucas, Rafaël 272 n.24, 274 n.30 Ludmer, Josefina 257 Ludwig, Ralph 263 n.2 Lugo Filippi, Carmen 356 Lugo, Ludín 354 Lyotard, Jean-François 23, 169, 170 n.3 Mabille, Pierre 100 Macherey, Pierre 188-189 Mahan, Alfred Thayer 166-167 Maihold, Günther 130-132 Maingueneau, Dominique 185, 188191, 196 n.37, 197 n.38, 199-200, 264-265, 268-269 Malingret, Laurence 245 n.15 Malraux, André 172 Mandelbrot, Benoît B. 112-114, 124 n.24 Manera, D. 333 n.14 Maran, R. 325 Marazza, C. 340, 342 Marchetti, M. 338, 340 Márquez, Roberto 23 Martí, José 91-92, 97-99, 101-102,

365

109, 130, 135, 163-166, 357 Martinenghi, Camilla 332 Mateo, Andrés L. 349 n.15, 351-352 Matibag, Eugenio 301-302, 314 Matthews, Herbert 162 Mattos, Gregório de 294 Maximin, Daniel 240, 264 Mbembe, A. 26 McClennen, Sophia 293 n.23 McCullough, David 167 n.20 McGee, Patrick 177 n.33 McKay, Claude 172 Meehan, Kevin 304 n.33 Mehrez, Samia 208-210, 213 n.24 Meinig, D.W. 166 n.19 Melville, H. 312 Métellus, Jean 325 Mignolo, Walter D. 64 n.50, 87n.1, 257-258 Millington, Mark I. 49 n.3 Minaya, Ligia 345, 349 Mininni, I. 325, 341-342 Mintz, Sidney W. 12 Modenesi, Marco 334, 342-344 Molinari, C. 342-343 Monchoachi 311 n.61 Monléon, José B. 171 n.9 Montaigne, Michel de 311 n.61 Montejo, Esteban 24 Montero, Reinaldo 253 n.12 Mootoo, Shani 35-45 More, Thomas 111 Morrison, Toni 303-304, 307, 309310, 312, 317 n.79, 321 Mossetto, A.P. 328, 339-343 Moudileno, Lydie 298, 310 n.55 Moura, Jean-Marc 185, 226, 264 n.4, 269 n.13 Naipaul, V.S. 28, 31, 89, 93, 137-139, 189, 192-194, 196-198, 200, 304, 333 Nancy, Jean-Luc 106 Natsume Sôseki 311 n.61 Ndiaye, Christine 310 n.55 Nebrija, Elio Antonio de 87

366

Name Index

Neruda, Pablo 101 Nietzsche, Friedrich 311 n.61 Niranjana, Tejaswini 217 Nuez, Iván de la 144 n.78, 149 Oexmelin see Exquemelin Okri, Ben 300 Ollivier, Emile 10, 312 n.61, 325 Onetti, J.C. 351 Oppici, P. 328, 338-340, 343 Ortiz, Fernando 31, 94 Ortwin, Cart 121 n.23 Ouologuem, Yambo 300 Ozik, Cynthia 307 Pa Kin 311 n.61 Pachet, Pierre 190 n.17, 197-198, 200-201 Padura, Leonardo 259 Pageaux, Daniel-Henri 49 n.3 Palencia-Roth, Michael 22 Parker, Andrew 36 n.4 Paz, Octavio 289-290, 293 n.25 Peix, Pedro 347 Pépin, Ernest 263, 272 Pérez Firmat, Gustavo 149 Perse, Saint-John 124, 312 n.61 Pessini, A. 324-325, 341, 343 Pessini, Elena 192-195, 198, 325, 328, 340-342 Petrarca, F. 311 n.61 Pfaff, Françoise 299 n.8, 303-304, 307 n.43 Phaf-Rheinberger, Ineke 20, 232 Phelps, A. 325 Philcox, Richard 302, 305 Philippe, Gilles 199-200 Phillippo, James 155 Phillips, Caryl 303, 307 Philoctète, René 345, 348 Pile, Steve 101 Pineau, Gisèle 138-140, 263, 272, 303 Pita Rodríguez, Félix 22 Pivot, Bernard 77 Pizarro, Ana 148 Platon 311 n.61

Ponce, Néstor 48 n.2 Porra, Véronique 67, 77 n.26 Pound, Ezra 172, 176 Powell, Patricia 36, 43 Pozuelo Yvancos, José María 292 n.20 Prada Oropeza, Renato 63 n.49 Pratt, Mary-Louise 257 Prestol Castillo, Freddy 345, 348 Price-Mars, Jean 31, 187 n.8 Proïa, F. 338 Puccini, P. 342 Pulvar, Audrey 304 Puri, Shalini 33 Quevedo, F. de 292 Rabelais, F. 311 n.61 Racine, J. 311 n.61 Rafael, Vicente 217 n.34 Rama, Angel 250, 260 Raschi, N. 339-340 Real de Azúa, Carlos 284 Reinstädler, Janett 249 n.1 Renaud, Maryse 352 n.21 Restori, E. 340 Restuccia, L. 341 Rhys, Jean 301, 304 Ribeiro, Darcy 116, 122 Richard, Nelly 93, 95-97, 104 Roa Bastos, A. 290 Rochmann, Marie-Christine 312 Rodó, E. 24 Rodriguez Amaya, F. 324 Rodríguez Monegal, E. 259 Rodríguez, Luis Felipe 22 Rodríguez, Néstor 351 n.18, 353 Rodríguez-Luis, Julio 19 Rosello, Mireille 84, 302 Roumain, Jacques 244, 310, 312 n.61, 325 Rowe, William 99 Ruby, C. 9 Rupaire, Sony 312 n.61 Rutgers, Wim 20, 226 Sagar, Aparajíta 35 n.2 Sagás, Ernesto 351 n.18

Name Index Said, Edward 171-173, 175, 177, 181, 183, 257, 275 Salati, U. 336 Saldívar, David 257 Salmon, Frances 226 Sanchez Vázquez, A. 258 Sánchez, Enriquillo 352, 355 Sánchez, Luis Rafael 293, 354 n.33 Santangelo, V. 324 Sarduy, Severo 47, 283-286, 289, 291-293, 295, 303 n.30 Sarmiento, Domingo Faustino 91, 259 Sartre, Jean-Paul 176, 191 n.21, 254, 318 n.81 Scheel, C. 316 Schelling, Vivian 99 Schutte, Ofelia 258 Schwarz, Roberto 102 Schwarz-Bart, André 300 n.13 Scott, Lawrence 36, 43 Seeley, J.R. 172 Séféris, G. 311 n.61 Selvon, Samuel 98-99 Senghor, Léopold Sédar 172, 191 Severing, Ronnie 226 Shakespeare, William 88, 100, 171 Shaw, Donald L. 48 n.2 Slovo, Gillian 167-168 Smart-Bell, M. 351 Smeeks, H.B. 225, 229 Smyth, Heather 39 n.10 Spillers, Hortense 178 Spivak, Gayatri 97, 175, 258, 301 n.15 Sprouse, Keith 24 Stanley, Avelino 352 Steinbeck, John 312 n.61 Steiner, Georges 217 Stendhal 311 n.61 Sundquist, Eric 178 Tacoli, A.C. 336 Taguieff, Pierre-André 74 n.17 Thomas, H. Nigel 36 Tiffin, Helen 204 n.3, 205 n.4, 275 Tillinac, Denis 75-76

367

Todorov, Tzvetan 145 n.82, 169 n.1, 174, 206-207 Torchi, Francesca 239 n.2, 323, 329 n.2, 343 Torres-Saillant, Silvio 11, 240, 272 n.24, 351 n.18, 352 n.24 Toumson, Roger 23, 27, 282 n.43, 321 Trouillot, Évelyne 335 Trouillot, Lionel 335 Turk, Richard W. 167 n.20 Twain, Marc 312 Valantin, Christian 76 Valdés, Zoé 109 n.1, 143 Valdez, Pedro Antonio 353 Valerio-Holguín, Fernando 350 n.17 Van den Berg, Hubert 80 n.30 van Dijk, Teun A. 269-270 n.17 Vargas Llosa, Mario 250, 292, 346347, 357 Vega, Ana Lydia 302 n.23, 345, 354, 356 Veloz Maggiolo, Marcio 345, 349 Venuti, Lawrence 213 n.24, 217-218 Vergés, Pedro 355 Verlaine, Paul 311 n.61 Vespucci, Amerigo 118-119 Vieira, António 290 Villaverde, Cirilo 135 Villon, F. 311 n.61 Voisset, Georges 9 Vrijman, M. 227 n.4, 229 Wagley, Charles 154 Walcott, Derek 123-124, 149, 268, 297, 304 n.34, 312 n.61, 333, 351 Waldseemüller, Martin 119 Walker, Alice 299 n.9, 309 n.50 Wallerstein, Immanuel 169 n.1, 170 Warner, Marina 23 Watt, Ian 170 n.4 Watts, Richard 269 n.15, 273 n.28 Waugh, Alec 155 Wehler, Hans-Ulrich 129 n.49 Weiss, Timothy F. 196 Whitehead, Anne 307

368

Name Index

Williams, Lawson 35 n.2 Williams, Raymond 155-157 Williamson, Edwin 175-176 Winter, Sylvia 170 Wolf, Eric 170 n.4 Woolard, Kathryn 215 Wright, Sarah 161 n.11 Wyers, Frances 49 n.3 Yeats, William Butler 172, 176 Young, Robert 170 n.4 Zabus, Chantal 209-210, 213-214 Zarotti, S. 340 Zito, M. 338 Zola, Emile 311 n.61 Zoppi, S. 337 Zurbano Torres, Roberto 249-250, 260 Zweig, Stefan 119-120