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- Title
From roots to routes: double consciousness in the Francophone Caribbean novel.
- Authors
Heady, Margaret
- Abstract
A comparative treatment of two twentieth-century Francophone Caribbean novelists, Jacques-Stephen Alexis of Haiti and Simone Schwarz-Bart of Guadeloupe, demonstrates how Caribbean authors have been using the discourse of the marvellous to move toward the creation of a sense of identity based on what Paul Gilroy calls 'a process of movement and mediation' as opposed to a search for 'roots and rootedness'. Alexis felt torn between what he perceived as his intellectual debt to Europe and his dedication to the development of a national Haitian literary form. His desire to transcend European literary influences is expressed in his work through issues of authenticity. Schwarz-Bart's work reflects more recent theories of Caribbean identity by demythologizing the very concept of the authentic origin. She uses the narrative technique of magic realism as a way of bringing together opposing discursive systems without evaluating them according to criteria of 'truth' or 'authenticity'. The result is a multiple voice which, like the larger voice of the 'Black Atlantic' as a whole, can be described as a form of antiphony in which, in Gilroy's words, '[t]he original call is becoming harder to locate'.
- Subjects
FRENCH-speaking Caribbean; NOVELISTS; ALEXIS, Jacques-Stephen; SCHWARZ-Bart, Simone; POSTMODERNISM (Literature)
- Publication
International Journal of Francophone Studies, 2005, Vol 8, Issue 2, p147
- ISSN
1368-2679
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1386/ijfs.8.2.147/1