Journal articles: 'Jamaica in fiction' – Grafiati (2024)

Abstract:

When South African–born Peter Abrahams moved to Jamaica in 1956, he thought he had found a racial paradise. Over the next six decades as a Jamaican, his understanding of race in Jamaica was complicated after independence. His last two novels—This Island Now (1966) and The View from Coyaba (1985)—fictionalize the transition to independence in the anglophone Caribbean and how that transition related to the set of concerns unfolding across the rest of the black world. This essay traces Abrahams’s thought on questions of race and decolonization through a close reading of his Caribbean fiction and how he came to theorize the literal and conceptual space of the Caribbean—the island—as a strategy for freedom. In so doing, the author asks, What are the limits of the Caribbean novel of the era of decolonization (1960s–80s) in the anglophone Caribbean? What constitutes it? And how does it articulate liberation?

Abstract:

In this essay, Isis Semaj-Hall explores the intersections of being Jamaican, American, black, woman, and mother. Using what she terms a dub aesthetic, Semaj-Hall juxtaposes her circular migration with the Dominican characters in Junot Diaz’s fiction as well as the autobiographical story told by Jamaican author Anthony Winkler. Using Trinidadian-Canadian author Ramabai Espinet as a literary anchor, Semaj-Hall questions how the familiar memory becomes unfamiliar in the moment that it collides with present reality. Finally, Claudia Rankine is brought in as a way for the author to honor the impact that her black American experience with racism shades her perspective on Jamaican colorism. This article takes readers on an unexpected walk through Kingston, Jamaica, revealing Semaj-Hall’s daily negotiations with what it means to be “Back Home” in the place she had for so long nostalgiaized.

Abstract:

Olive Senior has become a significant literary voice within Caribbean literature and the Caribbean diaspora, often providing light, sharp, subtle, and emotionally laden stories and poems of childhood and belonging. As she describes here, her work remains “embedded” in Jamaica, including its soundscape and its ecology, and stretches across fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and children’s literature. For decades she has enjoyed a growing international audience, and her work is taught in schools in the Caribbean as part of an evolving literary curriculum. Senior’s short stories, the primary focus of this discussion, are especially well known for their enchanting, vibrant, and insightful children and child narrators — a trait that situates Senior’s work in relation to other famed Caribbean authors (Sam Selvon, Michael Anthony, Jamaica Kincaid, Merle Collins, and many more). In this interview, explorations of some of her young female voices are set within Denise DeCairns Narain’s sense of Senior’s “oral poetics”, and are also explored in relation to issues of wealth, privilege, and emotional sincerity. Senior’s work — fictional and non-fictional — is also heavily invested in ideas of land, labour, and migrancy, and so her recent and striking short story “Coal”, from her latest collection The Pain Tree (2015), is considered alongside her enormously impressive historical study of the role of West Indian migrant labourers in the building of the Panama Canal, entitled Dying to Better Themselves (2014).

Abstract:

Study of the evolution of the character of the Obeah practioner in a selection of novels set in Jamaica and written in the late 19th and 20th c. Author relates the changing image of the Obeah practioner to changes in social outlook and demonstrates one way in which literature responds to changing social relationships. Portraits of the Obeah practioner became increasingly complex as fiction was placed in an historical revisionist framework.

Abstract:

Kincaid’s fiction focused on the Caribbean dislocation and displacement which relates to racism, colonialism, and trans-culturality with little or no consideration of the role of the autotelic self in contesting these cultural forces. This study examines the extent to which the Julia Kristeva’s principles of language and subject formation and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s principles of autotelic personality could intersect with this autotelic self. Using the postcolonial feminist literary theory and the Csikszentmihalyi’s principles of autotelic personality, it seeks to ascertain the degree to which Jamaica Kincaid’s selected fiction violate or adhere to Kristeva’s principles of language and subject formation and Csikszentmihalyi’s principles of autotelic personality. It applied the cultural and novel of the Julia Kristeva’s principles and the Csikszentmihalyi’s principles to Kincaid’s selected poetic novella. The study depicts that Kincaid in the selected novella violates the Kristeva’s principles as well both in the same cadre.

Abstract:

The paper intends to reread Jamaica Kincaid’s short story, ‘Girl’ (1978) and provide new insights into its understanding. It aims to analyse the poetic qualities, word choice, and structure of the text that are left not fully discussed by recent scholarship. The structure as well as the poetic language of ‘Girl’ make it an unconventional piece of writing falling between two literary categories and so hard to classify. ‘Girl’ apparently violates rules and transgresses conventions by being both poetic and going beyond the traditional fictional structure of a short story. The paper argues that ‘Girl’ is an unconventional piece of literature that crosses the borders of a short story to poetry. First, it obviously lacks the traditional structure to be classified as a short story. Second, the text embraces several poetic techniques which reveal it as poetry written in prose. Therefore, the paper purports to carefully consider the poetic techniques and rhetorical devices found in ‘Girl’ and make it much closer to a prose poem than a short story. The story depicts a pre-adolescent female being dictated by the instructions of a sharp-tongued mother who teaches her how to become a lady- both in the private setting of the house as well as in public- in contrast to what it is like for a woman growing up in Antigua. The paper’s considerations of Kincaid’s depictions of mother, daughter, and their relationship illuminate the poetic traits found including repetition, sound devices and word choice. The paper’s interpretation of ‘Girl’ reveals its poetic nature for being thoroughly repetitive and alliterative piece. The text’s repetitive quality does not only stimulate the reader’s intellectual appreciation of the text’s thematic notions and meanings but also promotes an overall unifying effect.

Abstract:

The aim of this paper is to analyze two of Roald Dahl’s short stories, “Poison” and “Man from the South”, beyond the classical approach to Dahl’s fiction. If Dahl’s adult fiction is most often read in terms of its extraordinary plots, as well as its macabre nature and unexpected endings, my intention is to look into both stories in the light of postcolonial studies. Not only is this approach justified on account of the setting where the stories take place, India and Jamaica, once part of the British Empire; the pertinence of such a reading is underlined by the presence of a number of elements that are commonly found in colonial travel narratives and which therefore place Dahl’s stories in relation with a very different literary tradition, colonial literature.

Abstract:

Stream of consciousness is used by writers of fiction to presenting characters thought and feeling. It allows the readers to experience the characters emotion thought from inside a characters head. This article aimed to find out the use of Stream of Consciousness in What Ive Been Doing Lately short story by Jamaica Kincaid.Kimcaid successfully reflects characters mental experiencestrough interior monologue.Some literary devices are used to strengthen the power of stream of consciousness.She uses foreshadowing and repetition to illustrate pessimistic thought of the character.

Abstract:

This article analyses Jamaica Kincaid’s autobiographical novel See Now Then through the metaphor of the palimpsest with the aim of exploring the frictions between the different generic and thematic layers that make up the text. It argues that despite the novel’s generic openness, its thematic concerns, most notably its treatment of time and narrative temporality, encourage a backward-looking stance that reasserts the past. The theories of Sarah Dillon and Lene Johannessen on the nature of palimpsests, especially the difference between the palimpsestic and the palimpsestuous and the interaction between the horizontal and the vertical, the new and the old, will be drawn upon in conjunction with Leigh Gilmore’s investigations into limit case autobiographies – works, like Kin- caid’s, that question the borders between fiction and life-writing under the pressure of traumatic experiences.

Abstract:

The Caribbean has been characterized as paradise, yet the region’s story is a more complicated one. A means of accessing stories that move beyond the tourist brochure representations is to engage with regional fiction. This essay employs the idea of palimpsestic belonging, which highlights the layers of each generation’s negotiation with colonial legacies, as a tool to explore familial and community attachment in the novels The True History of Paradise (1999) and Crossing the Mangrove (1995). Burial rituals and haunting are mechanisms to engage with the multiple disruptions of an imaginary and unified postcolonial nation. By highlighting the collisions of history, gender, sexuality, and class, these novels navigate national (un)belonging in two distinct Caribbean spaces—Jamaica and Guadeloupe.

Abstract:

It is well known that the Swedish literary culture is open and that the most common overall translation strategy for high prestige fiction is adequate, in the Toury sense (2012 p. 70). But are there different degrees of adequacy? And do translators favor vernacular or cosmopolitan stances in their overall adequate translations? Are there any signs of commercial vernacular­ ism on the cover of the studied Caribbean novels translated from English, French and English/ Spanish? By employing the transformations reduction, substitution and retention, the results of the study show that retention is by far the most used transformation by the Swedish publishers and translators, concerning both the paratexts and translated texts. Commercial vernacularism is detectable on the covers. However, the strength of retention varies within the overall adequate translations; from an adequate translation conforming to Swedish expectancy norms for trans­ lated high prestige fiction, which is employed by the translator of the novel Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid, over a foreignizing translation strategy reminding the reader of the presence of the culturally Other, used by the translator of Maryse Condé’s novel Traversée de la mangrove, to the abusive fidelity translation challenging the tolerant Swedish reader’s expectancy norms and translation ethics reading the translation of The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz. The study shows that there are three nuances of adequacy in the studied material.

Abstract:

The Atlantic World, 1450-2000, edited by Toyin Falola & Kevin D. Roberts (reviewed by Aaron Spencer Fogleman) The Slave Ship: A Human History, by Marcus Rediker (reviewed by Justin Roberts) Extending the Frontiers: Essays on the New Transatlantic Slave Trade Database, edited by David Eltis & David Richardson (reviewed by Joseph C. Miller) "New Negroes from Africa": Slave Trade Abolition and Free African Settlement in the Nineteenth-Century Caribbean, by Rosanne Marion Adderley (reviewed by Nicolette Bethel) Atlantic Diasporas: Jews, Conversos, and Crypto-Jews in the Age of Mercantilism, 1500-1800, edited by Richard L. Kagan & Philip D. Morgan (reviewed by Jonathan Schorsch) Brother’s Keeper: The United States, Race, and Empire in the British Caribbean, 1937-1962, by Jason C. Parker (reviewed by Charlie Whitham) Labour and the Multiracial Project in the Caribbean: Its History and Promise, by Sara Abraham (reviewed by Douglas Midgett) Envisioning Caribbean Futures: Jamaican Perspectives, by Brian Meeks (reviewed by Gina Athena Ulysse) Archibald Monteath: Igbo, Jamaican, Moravian, by Maureen Warner-Lewis (reviewed by Jon Sensbach) Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones, by Carole Boyce Davies (reviewed by Linden Lewis) Displacements and Transformations in Caribbean Cultures, edited by Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert & Ivette Romero-Cesareo (reviewed by Bill Maurer) Caribbean Migration to Western Europe and the United States: Essays on Incorporation, Identity, and Citizenship, edited by Margarita Cervantes-Rodríguez, Ramón Grosfoguel & Eric Mielants (reviewed by Gert Oostindie) Home Cooking in the Global Village: Caribbean Food from Buccaneers to Ecotourists, by Richard Wilk (reviewed by William H. Fisher) Dead Man in Paradise: Unraveling a Murder from a Time of Revolution, by J.B. MacKinnon (reviewed by Edward Paulino) Tropical Zion: General Trujillo, FDR, and the Jews of Sosúa, by Allen Wells (reviewed by Michael R. Hall) Downtown Ladies: Informal Commercial Importers, a Haitian Anthropologist, and Self-Making in Jamaica, by Gina A. Ulysse (reviewed by Jean Besson) Une ethnologue à Port-au-Prince: Question de couleur et luttes pour le classement socio-racial dans la capitale haïtienne, by Natacha Giafferi-Dombre (reviewed by Catherine Benoît) Haitian Vodou: Spirit, Myth, and Reality, edited by Patrick Bellegarde-Smith & Claudine Michel (reviewed by Susan Kwosek) Cuba: Religion, Social Capital, and Development, by Adrian H. Hearn (reviewed by Nadine Fernandez) "Mek Some Noise": Gospel Music and the Ethics of Style in Trinidad, by Timothy Rommen (reviewed by Daniel A. Segal)Routes and Roots: Navigating Caribbean and Pacific Island Literatures, by Elizabeth M. DeLoughrey (reviewed by Anthony Carrigan) Claude McKay, Code Name Sasha: Queer Black Marxism and the Harlem Renaissance, by Gary Edward Holcomb (reviewed by Brent Hayes Edwards) The Sense of Community in French Caribbean Fiction, by Celia Britton (reviewed by J. Michael Dash) Imaging the Chinese in Cuban Literature and Culture, by Ignacio López-Calvo (reviewed by Stephen Wilkinson) Pre-Columbian Jamaica, by P. Allsworth-Jones (reviewed by William F. Keegan) Underwater and Maritime Archaeology in Latin America and the Caribbean, edited by Margaret E. Leshikar-Denton & Pilar Luna Erreguerena (reviewed by Erika Laanela)

Abstract:

David Scott; Conscripts of Modernity: The Tragedy of Colonial Enlightenment (Shalina Puri)Rebecca J. Scott; Degrees of Freedom: Louisiana and Cuba after Slavery (Olivia Maria Gomes da Cunha)Patrick Bellegarde-Smith (ed.); Fragments of Bone: Neo-African Religions in a New World (Dianne M. Stewart)Londa Schiebinger; Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World (J.D. La Fleur)F. Abiola Irele, Simon Gikandi (eds.);The Cambridge History of African and Caribbean Literature (A. James Arnold)Sean X. Goudie; Creole America: The West Indies and the Formation of Literature and Culture in the New Republic (J. Bradford Anderson)Doris Garraway; The Libertine Colony: Creolization in the Early French Caribbean (Charles Forsdick)Adélékè Adéèkó; The Slave’s Rebellion: Fiction, History, Orature (Owen Robinson)J. Brooks Bouson; Jamaica Kincaid: Writing Memory, Writing Back to the Mother (Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert)Gary Wilder; The French Imperial Nation-State: Negritude and Colonial Humanism between the Two World Wars (Nick Nesbitt)Fernando Picó; History of Puerto Rico: A Panorama of its People (Francisco A. Scarano)Peter E. Siegel (ed.); Ancient Borinquen: Archaeology and Ethnohistory of Native Puerto Rico (William F. Keegan) Magali Roy-Féquière; Women, Creole Identity, and Intellectual Life in Early Twentieth-Century Puerto Rico (Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel)Katherine E. Browne; Creole Economics: Caribbean Cunning under the French Flag (David Beriss)Louis A. Pérez, Jr; To Die in Cuba: Suicide and Society (Matt D. Childs)John Lawrence Tone; War and Genocide in Cuba, 1895-1898 (Gillian McGillivray)Frank Argote-Freyre; Fulgencio Batista: From Revolutionary to Strongman (Javier Figueroa-De Cárdenas)Juanita de Barros, Audra Diptee, David V. Trotman (eds.); Beyond Fragmentation: Perspectives on Caribbean History (Bernard Moitt)Matthew Mulcahy; Hurricanes and Society in the British Greater Caribbean, 1624-1783 (Bonham C. Richardson)Michaeline A. Crichlow; Negotiating Caribbean Freedom: Peasants and the State in Development (Christine Chivallon)Peta Gay Jensen; The Last Colonials: The Story of Two European Families in Jamaica (Karl Watson)Marc Tardieu; Les Antillais à Paris: D’hier à aujourd’hui (David Beriss)Rhonda D. Frederick; “Colón Man a Come”: Mythographies of Panamá Canal Migration (Michael L. Conniff)James Robertson; Gone is the Ancient Glory: Spanish Town, Jamaica, 1534-2000 (Philip D. Morgan)Philippe R. Girard; Paradise Lost: Haiti’s Tumultuous Journey from Pearl of the Caribbean to Third World Hotspot (Carolle Charles)Michael Deibert; Notes from the Last Testament: The Struggle for Haiti (Carolle Charles)Ellen de Vries; Suriname na de binnenlandse oorlog (Aspha E. Bijnaar)In: New West Indian Guide/ Nieuwe West-Indische Gids no. 82 (2008), no: 1-2, Leiden

Abstract:

In Pedagogies of Crossing (2005), M. Jacqui Alexander asserts that human rights are not rights at all; in fact, human rights does little to mitigate the violence perpetuated by late capitalism and the legacies of imperialism and colonialism. Alexander’s point of contention brings to bear the fact that the passing of human rights by the United Nations, among other groups, institutes a “dominant knowledge framework” that does nothing to mitigate the violence perpetuated by unequal power structures (2005; 124). My paper focuses on the function of literary counter-narratives as a useful pedagogical strategy for teaching about human rights in the undergraduate classroom. I frame my analysis within the theoretical debates in critical pedagogy and turn to what Stephen Slemon defines as the “primal scene of colonialist management”—the literary studies classroom—in order to examine the ways in which contemporary black women’s writing problematizes the rhetoric of ‘women’s rights as human rights.’ Despite the common belief that white middle-class readers are consuming ‘exotic’ literature when reading immigrant fiction, as noted by scholars Kanishka Chowdhury (1992) and Inderpal Grewal (2005), I maintain that counter-narratives are useful for intervening in the reproduction of a “patriotic education” (Sheth 2013) that undergirds rights-based discourse, in general, and human rights, in particular, as desirable global policies that mitigate the violence of social injustices. Through primary texts Michelle Cliff’s Abeng (1984), Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy (1990), and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah (2013), I argue that these texts perform a counter-“cultural technology” in teaching about human rights in literary studies through the lens of “race radicalism” (Melamed 2011), that is cultural production that interrupts the totalizing effects of neocolonial and imperial discourses so often produced in dominant Western literature. Cliff, Kincaid, and Adichie strategically produce oppositional “outsider” narratives that trouble the hegemonic narrative of ‘women’s rights as human rights,’ which implicitly positions women of color in a subordinate position (Mohanty 1986; Spivak 1986). As black feminist Patricia Hill Collins notes, the “‘outsider within’ status has provided a special standpoint on self, family, and society for Afro-American women.” This standpoint is especially productive for “producing distinctive analyses of race, class, and gender.” I extend Hill Collins’ concept to also include the category of ‘nation.’ Simply put, I argue that the counter-narratives produced by these writers make privy the position of the cultural outsider to American students who have “taken-for-granted assumptions” of human rights discourses as cultural insiders in the U.S. With insight drawn from critical pedagogy, I construct a counter-curriculum that intervenes in a reproduction of global human rights policies constructed through neoliberal ideologies.

Abstract:

-Selwyn R. Cudjoe, John Thieme, The web of tradition: uses of allusion in V.S. Naipaul's fiction,-A. James Arnold, Josaphat B. Kubayanda, The poet's Africa: Africanness in the poetry of Nicolás Guillèn and Aimé Césaire. Westport CT: Greenwood, 1990. xiv + 176 pp.-Peter Mason, Robin F.A. Fabel, Shipwreck and adventures of Monsieur Pierre Viaud, translated by Robin F.A. Fabel. Pensacola: University of West Florida Press, 1990. viii + 141 pp.-Alma H. Young, Robert B. Potter, Urbanization, planning and development in the Caribbean, London: Mansell Publishing, 1989. vi + 327 pp.-Hymie Rubinstein, Raymond T. Smith, Kinship and class in the West Indies: a genealogical study of Jamaica and Guyana, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. xiv + 205 pp.-Shepard Krech III, Richard Price, Alabi's world, Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990. xx + 445 pp.-Graham Hodges, Sandra T. Barnes, Africa's Ogun: Old world and new, Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1989. xi + 274 pp.-Pamela Wright, Philippe I. Bourgois, Ethnicity at work: divided labor on a Central American banana plantation, Baltimore MD: John Hopkins University Press, 1989. xviii + 311 pp.-Idsa E. Alegría-Ortega, Andrés Serbin, El Caribe zona de paz? geopolítica, integración, y seguridad, Caracas: Editorial Nueva Sociedad, 1989. 188 pp. (Paper n.p.) [Editor's note. This book is also available in English: Caribbean geopolitics: towards security through peace? Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner, 1990.-Gary R. Mormino, C. Neale Ronning, José Martí and the émigré colony in Key West: leadership and state formation, New York; Praeger, 1990. 175 pp.-Gary R. Mormino, Gerald E. Poyo, 'With all, and for the good of all': the emergence of popular nationalism in the Cuban communities of the United States, 1848-1898, Durham NC: Duke University Press, 1989. xvii + 182 pp.-Fernando Picó, Raul Gomez Treto, The church and socialism in Cuba, translated from the Spanish by Phillip Berryman. Maryknoll NY: Orbis, 1988. xii + 151 pp.-Fernando Picó, John M. Kirk, Between God and the party: religion and politics in revolutionary Cuba. Tampa FL: University of South Florida Press, 1989. xxi + 231 pp.-Andrés Serbin, Carmen Gautier Mayoral ,Puerto Rico en la economía política del Caribe, Río Piedras PR; Ediciones Huracán, 1990. 204 pp., Angel I. Rivera Ortiz, Idsa E. Alegría Ortega (eds)-Andrés Serbin, Carmen Gautier Mayoral ,Puerto Rico en las relaciones internacionales del Caribe, Río Piedras PR: Ediciones Huracán, 1990. 195 pp., Angel I. Rivera Ortiz, Idsa E. Alegría Ortega (eds)-Jay R. Mandle, Jorge Heine, A revolution aborted : the lessons of Grenada, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1990. x + 351 pp.-Douglas Midgett, Rhoda Reddock, Elma Francois: the NWCSA and the workers' struggle for change in the Caribbean in the 1930's, London: New Beacon Books, 1988. vii + 60 pp.-Douglas Midgett, Susan Craig, Smiles and blood: the ruling class response to the workers' rebellion of 1937 in Trinidad and Tobago, London: New Beacon Books, 1988. vii + 70 pp.-Ken Post, Carlene J. Edie, Democracy by default: dependency and clientelism in Jamaica, Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers, and Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1991. xiv + 170 pp.-Ken Post, Trevor Munroe, Jamaican politics: a Marxist perspective in transition, Kingston, Jamaica: Heinemann Publishers (Caribbean) and Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1991. 322 pp.-Wendell Bell, Darrell E. Levi, Michael Manley: the making of a leader, Athens GA: University of Georgia Press, 1990, 349 pp.-Wim Hoogbergen, Mavis C. Campbell, The Maroons of Jamaica, 1655-1796: a history of resistance, collaboration and betrayal, Granby MA Bergin & Garvey, 1988. vi + 296 pp.-Kenneth M. Bilby, Rebekah Michele Mulvaney, Rastafari and reggae: a dictionary and sourcebook, Westport CT: Greenwood, 1990. xvi + 253 pp.-Robert Dirks, Jerome S. Handler ,Searching for a slave cemetery in Barbados, West Indies: a bioarcheological and ethnohistorical investigation, Carbondale IL: Center for archaeological investigations, Southern Illinois University, 1989. xviii + 125 pp., Michael D. Conner, Keith P. Jacobi (eds)-Gert Oostindie, Cornelis Ch. Goslinga, The Dutch in the Caribbean and in Surinam 1791/1942, Assen, Maastricht: Van Gorcum, 1990. xii + 812 pp.-Rosemarijn Hoefte, Alfons Martinus Gerardus Rutten, Apothekers en chirurgijns: gezondheidszorg op de Benedenwindse eilanden van de Nederlandse Antillen in de negentiende eeuw, Assen/Maastricht: Van Gorcum, 1989. xx + 330 pp.-Rene A. Römer, Luc Alofs ,Ken ta Arubiano? sociale integratie en natievorming op Aruba, Leiden: Department of Caribbean studies, Royal Institute of Linguistics and Anthropology, 1990. xi + 232 pp., Leontine Merkies (eds)-Michiel van Kempen, Benny Ooft et al., De nacht op de Courage - Caraïbische vertellingen, Vreeland, the Netherlands: Basispers, 1990.-M. Stevens, F.E.R. Derveld ,Winti-religie: een Afro-Surinaamse godsdienst in Nederland, Amersfoort, the Netherlands: Academische Uitgeverij Amersfoort, 1988. 188 pp., H. Noordegraaf (eds)-Dirk H. van der Elst, H.U.E. Thoden van Velzen ,The great Father and the danger: religious cults, material forces, and collective fantasies in the world of the Surinamese Maroons, Dordrecht, the Netherlands and Providence RI: Foris Publications, 1988. xiv + 451 pp. [Second printing, Leiden: KITLV Press, 1991], W. van Wetering (eds)-Johannes M. Postma, Gert Oostindie, Roosenburg en Mon Bijou: twee Surinaamse plantages, 1720-1870, Dordrecht, Netherlands: Foris Publications, 1989. x + 548 pp.-Elizabeth Ann Schneider, John W. Nunley ,Caribbean festival arts: each and every bit of difference, Seattle/St. Louis: University of Washington Press / Saint Louis Art Museum, 1989. 217 pp., Judith Bettelheim (eds)-Bridget Brereton, Howard S. Pactor, Colonial British Caribbean newspapers: a bibliography and directory, Westport CT: Greenwood, 1990. xiii + 144 pp.-Marian Goslinga, Annotated bibliography of Puerto Rican bibliographies, compiled by Fay Fowlie-Flores. Westport CT: Greenwood Press, 1990. xxvi + 167 pp.

Abstract:

Abstract Marlon James's A Brief History of Seven Killings fictionalizes a historical incident, the shooting of Bob Marley in Kingston in 1976, and the larger political, economic, and cultural forces that led to it and emerged from it. Real people can enter fiction and retain their names if they have already entered history or journalism—if, in other words, they are already part of a shared imagination. But there is a difference between the local Jamaican and global collective memories, a difference that determines which people keep their names and how people are remembered. People seek to enter the imagination of others, but to do so is also to risk being hollowed out and rendered imaginable, becoming a fictional character and less than a full person. But if there is only fiction, fiction also contributes to the collective memory. An awareness of the performative nature of identity and action is precisely how one can control how one is remembered and, just as important, how one eludes the imagination of others. A Brief History adds to the collective memory of readers everywhere but recognizes that Jamaicans already have their own collective memory, that they are self-conscious about what it means to come to the attention of others, and that they have always contributed to shaping the larger collective memory, including when they do not appear in it.

Abstract:

The aim of this research is to analyze the novel, Things Fall Apart as a liminal Identity: Thematic approach of Identity Crisis from the perspective of Postcolonial Literature. The study analyzes the plot development and the thematic aspects of the novel on one level. On the other level the paper analyzes how the facts related to the colonial aspects of Africa and the impact of colonialism are embedded in this fiction. Therefore, it is a comparative study of Post-colonialism and Post-Colonial Literature. A brief introduction to Postcolonial literature is given at the outset. The indication of the word ‘post-colonialism’ along with the origin and development of the postcolonial theories and studies are critically examined. The research evaluates the thematic aspect of postcolonial literature, identity crisis with special reference to liminal identity. It also critically analyses the various representative authors like Rushdie, Achebe, Ondantje, Fanon, Derek Walcott, and J. M. Coetzee in addition to some female writers like Jamaica Kancaid, Isabelle Illende and Eavan Bolland. Furthermore, it also briefly examines the political history of colonization and the impact of colonialism on the literature produced during post-colonial period. The research introduces Chinua Achebe, the author of Things Fall Apart, from the point of his personal and historical background in order to compare the content and the context of his writing. Thus, the study reveals that the novel, Things Fall Apart, is a revelation of Identity Crisis.

Abstract:

Le pacte romanesque suppose un cadre dans lequel le lecteur consent à suspendre sa méfiance envers les mensonges de la fiction, mais ce cadre a souvent été transgressé. La multiplication actuelle des récits brouille plus que jamais la limite entre fiction et réalité, et les théories du complot pourraient n’être qu’un avatar de cette perversion narrative. Il faut faire droit à une théorie de la réception des fictions complotistes, où le lecteur apparaît plus du côté de l’incertitude subjective que de la manipulation.

Abstract:

-Jay B. Haviser, Jerald T. Milanich ,First encounters: Spanish explorations in the Caribbean and the United States, 1492-1570. Gainesville FL: Florida Museum of Natural History & University Presses of Florida, 1989. 221 pp., Susan Milbrath (eds)-Marvin Lunenfeld, The Libro de las profecías of Christopher Columbus: an en face edition. Delano C. West & August Kling, translation and commentary. Gainesville FL: University of Florida Press, 1991. x + 274 pp.-Suzannah England, Charles R. Ewen, From Spaniard to Creole: the archaeology of cultural formation at Puerto Real, Haiti. Tuscaloosa AL; University of Alabama Press, 1991. xvi + 155 pp.-Piero Gleijeses, Bruce Palmer Jr., Intervention in the Caribbean: the Dominican crisis of 1965. Lexington KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1989.-Piero Gleijeses, Herbert G. Schoonmaker, Military crisis management: U.S. intervention in the Dominican Republic, 1965. Westport CT: Greenwood Press, 1990. 152 pp.-Jacqueline A. Braveboy-Wagner, Fitzroy André Baptiste, War, cooperation, and conflict: the European possessions in the Caribbean, 1939-1945. Westport CT: Greenwood Press, 1988. xiv + 351 pp.-Peter Meel, Paul Sutton, Europe and the Caribbean. London: Macmillan Caribbean, 1991. xii + 260 pp.-Peter Meel, Betty Secoc-Dahlberg, The Dutch Caribbean: prospects for democracy. New York: Gordon and Breach, 1990. xix + 333 pp.-Michiel Baud, Rosario Espinal, Autoritarismo y democracía en la política dominicana. San José, Costa Rica: Ediciones CAPEL, 1987. 208 pp.-A.J.G. Reinders, J.M.R. Schrils, Een democratie in gevaar: een verslag van de situatie op Curacao tot 1987. Assen, Maastricht: Van Gorcum, 1990. xii + 292 pp.-Andrés Serbin, David W. Dent, Handbook of political science research on Latin America: trends from the 1960s to the 1990s. Westport CT: Greenwood, 1990.-D. Gail Saunders, Dean W. Collinwood, The Bahamas between worlds. Decatur IL: White Sound Press, 1989. vii + 119 pp.-D. Gail Saunders, Dean W. Collinwood ,Modern Bahamian society. Parkersburg IA: Caribbean Books, 1989. 278 pp., Steve Dodge (eds)-Peter Hulme, Pierrette Frickey, Critical perspectives on Jean Rhys. Washington DC: Three Continents Press, 1990. 235 pp.-Alvina Ruprecht, Lloyd W. Brown, El Dorado and Paradise: Canada and the Caribbean in Austin Clarke's fiction. Parkersburg IA: Caribbean Books, 1989. xv + 207 pp.-Ineke Phaf, Michiel van Kempen, De Surinaamse literatuur 1970-1985: een documentatie. Paramaribo: Uitgeverij de Volksboekwinkel, 1987. 406 pp.-Genevieve Escure, Barbara Lalla ,Language in exile: three hundred years of Jamaican Creole. Tuscaloosa AL: University of Alabama Press, 1990. xvii + 253 pp., Jean D'Costa (eds)-Charles V. Carnegie, G. Llewellyn Watson, Jamaican sayings: with notes on folklore, aesthetics, and social control.Tallahassee FL: Florida A & M University Press, 1991. xvi + 292 pp.-Donald R. Hill, Kaiso, calypso music. David Rudder in conversation with John La Rose. London: New Beacon Books, 1990. 33 pp.-Mark Sebba, John Victor Singler, Pidgin and creole tense-mood-aspect systems. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1990. xvi + 240 pp.-Dale Tomich, Pedro San Miguel, El mundo que creó el azúcar: las haciendas en Vega Baja, 1800-873. Río Piedras, Puerto Rico: Ediciones Huracán, 1989. 224 pp.-César J. Ayala, Juan José Baldrich, Sembraron la no siembra: los cosecheros de tabaco puertorriqueños frente a las corporaciones tabacaleras, 1920-1934. Río Piedras, Puerto Rico: Ediciones Huracán, 1988.-Robert Forster, Jean-Michel Deveau, La traite rochelaise. Paris: Kathala, 1990. 334 pp.-Ernst van den Boogaart, Johannes Menne Postma, The Dutch in the Atlantic slave trade, 1600-1815. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. xiv + 428 pp.-W.E. Renkema, T. van der Lee, Plantages op Curacao en hun eigenaren (1708-1845): namen en data voornamelijk ontleend aan transportakten. Leiden, the Netherlands: Grafaria, 1989. xii + 87 pp.-Mavis C. Campbell, Wim Hoogbergen, The Boni Maroon wars in Suriname. Leiden, the Netherlands: E.J. Brill, 1990. xvii + 254 pp.-Rafael Duharte Jiménez, Carlos Esteban Dieve, Los guerrilleros negros: esclavos fugitivos y cimarrones en Santo Domingo. Santo Domingo: Fundación Cultural Dominicana, 1989. 307 pp.-Rosemarijn Hoefte, Hans Ramsoedh, Suriname 1933-1944: koloniale politiek en beleid onder Gouverneur Kielstra. Delft, the Netherlands: Eburon, 1990. 255 pp.-Gert Oostindie, Kees Lagerberg, Onvoltooid verleden: de dekolonisatie van Suriname en de Nederlandse Antillen. Tilburg, the Netherlands: Instituut voor Ontwikkelingsvraagstukken, Katholieke Universiteit Brabant, 1989. ii + 265 pp.-Aisha Khan, Anthony de Verteuil, Eight East Indian immigrants. Port of Spain: Paria, 1989. xiv + 318 pp.-John Stiles, Willie L. Baber, The economizing strategy: an application and critique. New York: Peter Lang, 1988. xiii + 232 pp.-Faye V. Harrison, M.G. Smith, Poverty in Jamaica. Kingston: Institute of social and economic research, 1989. xxii + 167 pp.-Sidney W. Mintz, Dorian Powell ,Street foods of Kingston. Mona, Jamaica: Institute of social and economic research, 1990. xii + 125 pp., Erna Brodber, Eleanor Wint (eds)-Yona Jérome, Michel S. Laguerre, Urban poverty in the Caribbean: French Martinique as a social laboratory. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990. xiv + 181 pp.

Abstract:

In the contemporary postmodern era, the boundaries that once rigidly separated well-established genres have become more fluid, resulting in what scholars Raffaella Baccolini and Tom Moylan call ‘genre-blurring’. This phenomenon of incorporating elements from diverse genres represents a challenge to dominant ideologies and expands the possibilities within fictional texts. The dystopian fiction written by feminist writers towards the end of the twentieth century and beyond significantly exemplifies this form of hybrid textuality. In doing so, these writers seek to renovate the dystopian genre by making it both formally and politically oppositional. This article aims to explore Midnight Robber (2000), a feminist dystopian novel by Nalo Hopkinson, a Jamaican–Canadian writer, to illustrate how the author manipulates the generic boundaries of science fiction, fantasy and mythology. By amalgamating Afro-Caribbean religious and cultural beliefs, mythical creatures and traditional knowledge systems with a technologically advanced future world, Hopkinson challenges the essentially White, Eurocentric model of dystopian fiction. The article will also examine how, as an Afrofuturist writer, Hopkinson attempts to challenge and subvert the patriarchal discourse of dystopian fiction, traditionally dominated by White male writers, through a strong Black female character, Tan-Tan, who seeks to resist the patriarchal structures governing her, and finally succeeds in emerging as a female leader figure. For this purpose, Barbara Creed’s insights into the monstrous-feminine are explored, introducing novelty into the discourse of feminist dystopia.

Abstract:

-Bill Maurer, Mimi Sheller, Consuming the Caribbean: From Arawaks to Zombies. New York: Routledge, 2003. ix + 252 pp.-Norman E. Whitten, Jr., Richard Price ,The root of roots: Or, how Afro-American anthropology got its start. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press/University of Chicago Press, 2003. 91 pp., Sally Price (eds)-Holly Snyder, Paolo Bernardini ,The Jews and the expansion of Europe to the West, 1450-1800. New York: Berghahn Books, 2001. xv + 567 pp., Norman Fiering (eds)-Bridget Brereton, Seymour Drescher, The mighty experiment: Free labor versus slavery in British emancipation. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. 307 pp.-Jean Besson, Kathleen E.A. Monteith ,Jamaica in slavery and freedom: History, heritage and culture. Kingston; University of the West Indies Press, 2002. xx + 391 pp., Glen Richards (eds)-Michaeline A. Crichlow, Jean Besson, Martha Brae's two histories: European expansion and Caribbean culture-building in Jamaica. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002. xxxi + 393 pp.-Christopher Schmidt-Nowara, Joseph C. Dorsey, Slave traffic in the age of abolition: Puerto Rico, West Africa, and the Non-Hispanic Caribbean, 1815-1859. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003. xvii + 311 pp.-Arnold R. Highfield, Erik Gobel, A guide to sources for the history of the Danish West Indies (U.S. Virgin Islands), 1671-1917. Denmark: University Press of Southern Denmark, 2002. 350 pp.-Sue Peabody, David Patrick Geggus, Haitian revolutionary studies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002. xii + 334 pp.-Gerdès Fleurant, Elizabeth McAlister, Rara! Vodou, power, and performance in Haiti and its Diaspora. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. xviii + 259 pp. and CD demo.-Michiel Baud, Ernesto Sagás ,The Dominican people: A documentary history. Princeton NJ: Marcus Wiener, 2003. xiii + 278 pp., Orlando Inoa (eds)-Samuel Martínez, Richard Lee Turits, Foundations of despotism: Peasants, the Trujillo regime, and modernity in Dominican history. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 2003. x + 384 pp.-Eric Paul Roorda, Bernardo Vega, Almoina, Galíndez y otros crímenes de Trujillo en el extranjero. Santo Domingo: Fundación Cultural Dominicana, 2001. 147 pp.''Diario de una misión en Washington. Santo Domingo: Fundación Cultural Dominicana, 2002. 526 pp.-Gerben Nooteboom, Aspha Bijnaar, Kasmoni: Een spaartraditie in Suriname en Nederland. Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Bert Bakker, 2002. 378 pp.-Dirk H.A. Kolff, Chan E.S. Choenni ,Hindostanen: Van Brits-Indische emigranten via Suriname tot burgers van Nederland. The Hague: Communicatiebureau Sampreshan, 2003. 224 pp., Kanta Sh. Adhin (eds)-Dirk H.A. Kolff, Sandew Hira, Het dagboek van Munshi Rahman Khan. The Hague: Amrit/Paramaribo: NSHI, 2003. x + 370 pp.-William H. Fisher, Neil L. Whitehead, Dark Shamans: Kanaimà and the poetics of violent death. Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2002. 309 pp.-David Scott, A.J. Simoes da Silva, The luxury of nationalist despair: George Lamming's fiction as decolonizing project. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000. 217 pp.-Lyn Innes, Maria Cristina Fumagalli, The flight of the vernacular. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2001. xvi + 303 pp.-Maria Cristina Fumagalli, Tobias Döring, Caribbean-English passages: Intertextuality in a postcolonial tradition. London: Routledge, 2002. xii + 236 pp.-A. James Arnold, Celia Britton, Race and the unconscious: Freudianism in French Caribbean thought. Oxford: Legenda, 2002. 115 pp.-Nicole Roberts, Dorothy E. Mosby, Place, language, and identity in Afro-Costa Rican literature. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2003. xiii + 248 pp.-Stephen Steumpfle, Philip W. Scher, Carnival and the formation of a Caribbean transnation. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003. xvi + 215 pp.-Peter Manuel, Frances R. Aparicho ,Musical migrations: transnationalism and cultural hybridity in Latin/o America, Volume 1. With Maria Elena Cepeda. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. 216 pp., Candida F. Jaquez (eds)-Jorge Pérez Rolón, Maya Roy, Cuban Music. London: Latin America Bureau/Princeton NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2002. ix + 246 pp.-Bettina M. Migge, Gary C. Fouse, The story of Papiamentu: A study in slavery and language. Lanham MD: University Press of America, 2002. x + 261 pp.-John M. McWhorter, Bettina Migge, Creole formation as language contact: the case of the Suriname creoles. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2003. xii + 151 pp.

Abstract:

Résumé Depuis 1980, on a pu recenser au Québec la publication de plus de deux cents récits, c'est-à-dire d'ouvrages qui portent de façon explicite l'indication générique « récit » sur leur page couverture. L'article propose de retracer les traits constitutifs de cet ensemble (la poétique du récit contemporain), dont le processus d'autonomisation amorcé dès le milieu des années soixante aboutirait vers les années quatre-vingt à une conscience générique plus nette. Capable de recouvrir autobiographie et fiction, formes brèves et longues, poésie et narrativité, le récit semble marqué par l'hybridité et les préoccupations de la littérature contemporaine. À cela s'ajoute toutefois un parcours historique qui dégage un pacte de lecture et un rapport à la subjectivité faisant du récit un genre, depuis longtemps lié à l'expression de soi et à la quête existentielle. N'ayant jamais constitué un ensemble générique « fort », l'état présent du récit apparaît sans doute provisoire. L'examen mené ici conduit tout de même à le soustraire de la stricte série des fictions narratives.

Abstract:

-James Sidbury, Peter Linebaugh ,The many-headed Hydra: Sailors, slaves, commoners, and the hidden history of the revolutionary Atlantic. Boston: Beacon Press, 2000. 433 pp., Marcus Rediker (eds)-Ray A. Kea, Herbert S. Klein, The Atlantic slave trade. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1999. xxi + 234 pp.-Johannes Postma, P.C. Emmer, De Nederlandse slavenhandel 1500-1850. Amsterdam: De Arbeiderspers, 2000. 259 pp.-Karen Racine, Mimi Sheller, Democracy after slavery: Black publics and peasant radicalism in Haiti and Jamaica. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001. xv + 224 pp.-Clarence V.H. Maxwell, Michael Craton ,Islanders in the stream: A history of the Bahamian people. Volume two: From the ending of slavery to the twenty-first century. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1998. xv + 562 pp., Gail Saunders (eds)-César J. Ayala, Guillermo A. Baralt, Buena Vista: Life and work on a Puerto Rican hacienda, 1833-1904. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999. xix + 183 pp.-Elizabeth Deloughrey, Thomas W. Krise, Caribbeana: An anthology of English literature of the West Indies 1657-1777. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. xii + 358 pp.-Vera M. Kutzinski, John Gilmore, The poetics of empire: A study of James Grainger's The Sugar Cane (1764). London: Athlone Press, 2000. x + 342 pp.-Sue N. Greene, Adele S. Newson ,Winds of change: The transforming voices of Caribbean women writers and scholars. New York: Peter Lang, 1998. viii + 237 pp., Linda Strong-Leek (eds)-Sue N. Greene, Mary Condé ,Caribbean women writers: Fiction in English. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999. x + 233 pp., Thorunn Lonsdale (eds)-Cynthia James, Simone A. James Alexander, Mother imagery in the novels of Afro-Caribbean women. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2001. x + 214 pp.-Efraín Barradas, John Dimitri Perivolaris, Puerto Rican cultural identity and the work of Luis Rafael Sánchez. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. 203 pp.-Peter Redfield, Daniel Miller ,The internet: An ethnographic approach. Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2000. ix + 217 pp., Don Slater (eds)-Deborah S. Rubin, Carla Freeman, High tech and high heels in the global economy: Women, work, and pink-collar identities in the Caribbean. Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2000. xiii + 334 pp.-John D. Galuska, Norman C. Stolzoff, Wake the town and tell the people: Dancehall culture in Jamaica. Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2000. xxviii + 298 pp.-Lise Waxer, Helen Myers, Music of Hindu Trinidad: Songs from the Indian Diaspora. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. xxxii + 510 pp.-Lise Waxer, Peter Manuel, East Indian music in the West Indies: Tan-singing, chutney, and the making of Indo-Caribbean culture. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000. xxv + 252 pp.-Reinaldo L. Román, María Teresa Vélez, Drumming for the Gods: The life and times of Felipe García Villamil, Santero, Palero, and Abakuá. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000. xx + 210 pp.-James Houk, Kenneth Anthony Lum, Praising his name in the dance: Spirit possession in the spiritual Baptist faith and Orisha work in Trinidad, West Indies. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers. xvi + 317 pp.-Raquel Romberg, Jean Muteba Rahier, Representations of Blackness and the performance of identities. Westport CT: Bergin & Garvey, 1999. xxvi + 264 pp.-Allison Blakely, Lulu Helder ,Sinterklaasje, kom maar binnen zonder knecht. Berchem, Belgium: EPO, 1998. 215 pp., Scotty Gravenberch (eds)-Karla Slocum, Nicholas Mirzoeff, Diaspora and visual culture: Representing Africans and Jews. London: Routledge, 2000. xiii + 263 pp.-Corey D.B. Walker, Paget Henry, Caliban's reason: Introducing Afro-Caribbean philosophy. New York: Routledge, 2000. xiii + 304 pp.-Corey D.B. Walker, Lewis R. Gordon, Existentia Africana: Understanding Africana existential thought. New York; Routledge, 2000. xiii +228 pp.-Alex Dupuy, Bob Shacochis, The immaculate invasion. New York: Viking, 1999. xix + 408 pp.-Alex Dupuy, John R. Ballard, Upholding democracy: The United States military campaign in Haiti, 1994-1997. Westport CT: Praeger, 1998. xviii + 263 pp.-Anthony Payne, Jerry Haar ,Canadian-Caribbean relations in transition: Trade, sustainable development and security. London: Macmillan, 1999. xxii + 255 pp., Anthony T. Bryan (eds)-Bonham C. Richardson, Sergio Díaz-Briquets ,Conquering nature: The environmental legacy of socialism in Cuba. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000. xiii + 328 pp., Jorge Pérez-López (eds)-Neil L. Whitehead, Gérard Collomb ,Na'na Kali'na: Une histoire des Kali'na en Guyane. Petit Bourg, Guadeloupe: Ibis Rouge Editions, 2000. 145 pp., Félix Tiouka (eds)-Neil L. Whitehead, Upper Mazaruni Amerinidan District Council, Amerinidan Peoples Association of Guyana, Forest Peoples Programme, Indigenous peoples, land rights and mining in the Upper Mazaruni. Nijmegan, Netherlands: Global Law Association, 2000. 132 pp.-Salikoko S. Mufwene, Ronald F. Kephart, 'Broken English': The Creole language of Carriacou. New York: Peter Lang, 2000. xvi + 203 pp.-Salikoko S. Mufwene, Velma Pollard, Dread talk: The language of Rastafari. Kingston: Canoe Press: Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press. Revised edition, 2000. xv + 117 pp.

Abstract:

RÉSUMÉ Parler de scénario fictif, c'est évoquer un texte au statut « trouble ». S'il existe seul, sans sa source, s'il est sa propre source, ou encore s'il ne s'est jamais réalisé dans un film, il demeure un texte qu'on ne sait comment lire. C'est un texte de nature transitive et, pour décider de sa valeur, il faut évaluer comment s'opère le passage entre la source, événement ou fiction, et sa réalisation, un film. C'est le cas qui est développé dans cet article. Comment passer de la lecture à la « spectature »? Comment respecter les deux médias impliqués sans avoir à inventer une position neutre où tout pourrait se retrouver, s'étudier? La question est d'autant plus difficile que le transit s'opère à partir du domaine privé de la lecture vers le domaine public de la « spectature ». Les Fous de Bassan, roman d'Anne Hébert et le film d'Yves Simoneau qui porte le même titre servent d'exemples.

Abstract:

L’année qui s’achève marque le centenaire de la naissance de cet écrivain, penseur et essayiste protéiforme, mort en 1980. Fasciné par la fiction alors qu’il n’en a jamais écrit, Roland Barthes bouleverse toutes les oppositions traditionnelles pour écrire des essais comme des romans.

Abstract:

This essay explores the concept of storytelling in Jamaican culture by connecting my account of childhood stories told by my Jamaican father with the text The Woman of Colour (1808). As a mixed-heritage woman who discovered the text while living in Bristol, England, I highlight in my personal narrative why Olivia’s story was significant and how it helped me to contextualize my own identity and experience. Through a series of unexpected events, which are described through my own storytelling, this essay reveals how historic, fictional texts such as The Woman of Colour humanize historical accounts and bring an appreciation of the complexity of identity.

Abstract:

La crise financière internationale et ses conséquences particulières sur les économies des pays du Sud (en particulier celles de l’Afrique) viennent de redonner une actualité étonnante au film Bamako du cinéaste d’origine mauritanienne Abderrahmane Sissako. Plus que jamais ce long-métrage de fiction-réalité prend un sens, malheureusement douloureux, par rapport au destin des sociétés et des peuples africains...

Abstract:

Résumé Malgré l'importance que l'on attribue aux notes marginales dans Trou de mémoire, malgré l'insistance de l'auteur sur ce qu'il appelle « l'écriture dans les marges », il est rare en fait que l'on se livre à la lecture des textes évoqués en marge de Trou de mémoire. La lecture de ces textes, entreprise dans le cadre de la préparation de l'édition critique, du roman, nous a révélé toute leur importance : premièrement, ils constituent un type de roman marginal qui prolonge et complète la fiction; deuxièmement, ils sont le lieu d'un dévoilement autobiographique par le biais du trajet des lectures vitales de l'auteur, que nous baptisons biolectographie. En lisant les textes et discours évoqués dans les marges de Trou de mémoire en ce double sens, à la fois centripète et centrifuge par rapport à la fiction, nous proposons de lire, le roman, d'une part, en tant que fiction, et d'autre part, en tant qu'écriture intime, comme l'autobiographie que l'auteur n'a jamais écrite.

Abstract:

À ciel ouvert et sans jamais quitter le sol ni les saisons, Pierre Bergounioux s’emploie à déchiffrer le « grand livre », où se lisent le sens de l’Histoire et le mystère épais que l’homme est pour lui-même. De l’invention de l’écriture jusqu’aux promesses du numérique, des échos de Mai 68 au désenchantement politique du monde, de l’impasse de la fiction à l’art de la ferraille, ce forcené du sens prend à bras-le-corps les questions que pose un monde opaque.

Abstract:

In Caribbean Literature and the Public Sphere (2011), Raphael Dalleo draws on the concept of the field to note that Caribbean writers often “operate within a constrained set of possibilities governed by certain historically determined rules . . . from accommodation to opposition to more conflicted positions in-between.” Throughout her essays and fiction, the Jamaican writer, sociologist, and activist Erna Brodber recuperates discarded, illegible, or negative elements in the literary field of Caribbean literature. This essay argues that Brodber uses a mode of self-negation in her short novel Nothing’s Mat (2011) to open discursive space for individual and collective identities illegible within dominant theories of Caribbean literature such as pluralism or creolization: supernatural elements more readily identifiable in Latin American magical realism, a Pan-African vision decades after Negritude, and a commitment to the experiences of Afro-Caribbean womanhood.

Abstract:

La perfectibilité est à l’homme ce que l’instinct est à l’animal. Habitant le virtuel, l’homme est destiné à devenir sans fin ce qu’il est. Quel comité de sages pourrait fixer une limite aux métamorphoses d’un être totipotent, protéiforme et prothétique ? L’humanité n’est jamais acquise, mais en “hominiscence”, selon le mot si juste que Michel Serres forge sur le modèle d'“adolescence”. L’immense mérite des films de science-fiction est de nous faire (pré) voir quelques figures possibles de l’homme de demain. De Blade Runner à A. I. tout se passe comme si, la machine virtuelle devenait le modèle de l’homme.

Abstract:

Avec la publication du rapport Mueller en avril 2019 1 , soit deux ans après la nomination du procureur général chargé d’enquêter sur les soupçons d’ingérence russe dans l’élection présidentielle de 2016, la démocratie américaine semble sortie renforcée. Aucune preuve de collusion entre l’équipe Trump et la Russie lors de la campagne de 2016 n’a été trouvée 2 . La perspective d’une destitution (impeachment) du Président, qui n’a jamais été véritablement envisagée par les responsables démocrates au Congrès, relève désormais de l’ordre de la politique-fiction. Est-ce à dire que la présidence Trump serait dorénavant sur la voie de la normalisation ? .

Abstract:

Abstract Among Florence Marryat’s vast canon of work, scholars have mostly focused on her spiritualism, her alleged proto-feminism, and, not least, the racial politics of her most famous novel, The Blood of the Vampire (1897). Little attention, however, has been paid to the role of her abundant nature imaginations that infuse most of her colonial fictions. Among these, Marryat’s decades-spanning engagement with ‘the tropics’ stands out, ranging from the miasmic and deceitful Caribbean in Too Good for Him (1865), the lush Brazilian jungles of Her Father’s Name (1876), the glimpses of post-revolutionary Haitian Voodoo in A Daughter of the Tropics (1887) to the plantation settings of A Crown of Shame (1888) and The Blood of the Vampire. With attention to Marryat’s ecological fictions, I argue that these novels’ allegedly liberatory rhetoric marks the tropics of the Caribbean and the Americas as a distinct epistemic problem for the imperial project, in that they confound the affective balance of white, English perception, and colonial desire. As a result, charting, understanding, and thereby re-mastering ‘nature’ are framed as foundational processes for white – often specifically female – self-awareness. Written in the wake of the brutally curbed 1865 Jamaican Morant Bay Rebellion, Marryat’s tropics thus lament not women’s social exclusion per se but specifically white women’s exclusion from the imperial project. Ultimately, the nature encounter in Marryat’s tropics offers proto-feminist empire fictions as a remedy for the perceived erosion of the late nineteenth-century plantation ecologies.

Abstract:

Résumé La génération des baby-boomers a beaucoup enrichi l’institution culturelle au Québec, a soutenu des mouvements intellectuels et sociaux tels le formalisme et le féminisme, et a favorisé l’avènement d’écrivains de grand talent. Parmi eux, Louise Dupré mérite une place à part pour la qualité de son oeuvre, tant de critique que de fiction. Dès son premier recueil de poèmes, elle a manifesté une originalité et une rigueur jamais démenties par la suite. Encore peu étudiée, son oeuvre poétique reçoit ici une première lecture d’ensemble. Ses caractéristiques formelles et thématiques font l’objet d’une mise en relation globale. Nous cherchons essentiellement à dégager l’évolution d’un discours poétique sincère et exigeant.

Abstract:

Dans un récent ouvrage (2011) consacré à l’essor et à l’expansion du genrer omanesque au Moyen Âge, Francis Gingras qualifie le roman de « bâtard conquérant ». Si les origines du roman s’avèrent difficiles à déterminer, onne peut que reconnaître sa « victoire » sur les autres genres littéraires, victoire qui s’amorce au Moyen Âge et se confirme aujourd’hui. Quoi qu’indéniable,la conquête du roman ne signifie pas pour autant qu’il n’a pas eu à affronter de fortes résistances au cours de son histoire. Le manuscrit Paris, BNF, fr. 375, un volumineux recueil arrageois composé de deux unités codicologiques réunies au xive ou au xve siècle, incarne de façon éloquente l’ambivalence à l’égard du roman et de son caractère fictif. On y observe à la fois la prédominance des romans en vers et une volonté de ne jamais complètement basculer du côté de la fabula, dont la présence semble sans cesse devoir être justifiée. Cette tension a peu retenu l’attention des chercheurs— pourtant nombreux à avoir décrit et commenté le manuscrit —, qui ont le plus souvent apposé l’étiquette de « recueil de romans » au volume. Or cette étiquette implique que l’on ignore certaines parties du codex, lequel présente en fait une véritable variété générique, alors que les romans en vers côtoient aussi bien des textes didactiques ou historiques qu’une série de textes religieux. Abordé dans son ensemble, du premier audernier feuillet, le recueil permet la mise au jour d’un rapport au genre romanesque et à la fiction pour le moins problématique et ambigu.

Abstract:

Com base principalmente na teoria tensiva desenvolvida por Claude Zilberberg, este artigo tem como principal meta averiguar quais procedimentos cinematográficos são adotados no filme Pulp Fiction para modular os efeitos de sentido causados pela violência, a fim de examinar os modos como extensidade e intensidade se articulam na construção do espaço tensivo do enunciado fílmico e como isso repercute na experiência estética do enunciatário. Inicialmente, percebe-se que a violência se insere em um regime fundado na regularidade, de forma que as variações intensivas são controladas pela dimensão da extensidade, dificilmente havendo uma saturação de intensidade e, portanto, jamais sendo atribuído à violência um estatuto de acontecimento. Valendo-se, assim, de alguns mecanismos fílmicos, que pretendemos descrever, Tarantino parece investir em andamentos, tonicidades, temporalidades e espacialidades adequados para o exercício da inteligibilidade, isto é, lança mão de procedimentos que promovem mais a apreensão cognitiva das cenas de violência do que a sua experiência afetiva, o que permitiria ao enunciatário fruir a obra preponderantemente na dimensão racional. Dessa maneira, a partir de estudos semióticos bastante recentes e, a nosso ver, extremamente adequados aos nossos propósitos, intencionamos ampliar o campo de discussão acerca de um aspecto muito peculiar do trabalho de Quentin Tarantino e lançar luz sobre questões que podem – e devem – ser desenvolvidas em pesquisas futuras.

Abstract:

Dans ses trois premiers romans, The Moviegoer (1961), The Last Gentleman (1966), et Love in the Ruins (1971), la vision romanesque de Walker Percy est profondément influencée par la ville. L'espace urbain, loin d'être plaqué sur la fiction, participe pleinement à la création du sens de l'œuvre. Gentilly, La Nouvelle-Orléans, Chicago, New York, Levittown, les villes moyennes du Sud profond, et enfin les cités du futur dans Love in the Ruins rythment l'odyssée du principal protagoniste tout en faisant ressortir des réalités culturelles, sociales, historiques et politiques différentes. L'allégorisme caricatural du troisième roman, avec sa terminologie ironiquement futuriste, n'est que l’ultime version d’une interrogation sur la ville déjà présente dans The Moviegoer, et que le lecteur peut moins que jamais éluder.

Abstract:

Il s'agit là d'une histoire sur les histoires, sur les témoignages divers et les fragments d'informations qui gravitent autour de la narration d'un récit historique. Elle commence par une plongée dans la culture villageoise de l'Angleterre élisabéthaine, emprunte les voies sinueuses de la gynécologie, des pratiques de sages-femmes, de la justice ecclésiastique, fait un détour par la littérature éphémère des pamphlets et s'achève dans les dossiers des membres du Conseil privé de la reine. En chemin, elle soulève de multiples interrogations sur la vérité et les preuves, la crédulité et la crédibilité, l'authenticité et la vérification, ainsi que sur le caractère insaisissable du récit historique. C'est une histoire qui rapproche les préoccupations des notables locaux et celles du pouvoir central, celles des magistrats laïcs et ecclésiastiques, celles des hommes et des femmes ; c'est également un défi pour l'historien qui doit faire preuve d'imagination et d'humilité quant à la possibilité de jamais donner un sens au passé. Quoi que ces matériaux puissent encore nous apprendre, ils nous obligent à réfléchir aux fondements de nos connaissances et aux critères de « crédibilité d'un récit ». L'un des acteurs de cette histoire déclarain fine: « il n'est rien de si secret qui ne sera percé à jour », mais même lui ne savait pas exactement ce qu'il fallait en penser.

Abstract:

The aim of my essay is to show how the Afro-American writer Michelle Cliff uses the concept of matriliny in the process of the feminist recovery of the history of Jamaica. I will argue that Michelle Cliff is a writer that honors the anachronistic tradition of essentialism that is based on the notion that cultures and identities have certain innate qualities immutable irrespective of time and place. I will contend that this essentialist worldview, skews the fictive world of Cliff’s much celebrated “Clare Savage novels”: Abeng and No Telephone to Heaven by reducing it to facile, Manichean oppositions between the colonizer and the colonized, white and black culture. My essay will particularly focus on how Cliff’s project of the affirmation of matriliny is undermined by her deep ambivalence about the institution of motherhood, which in times of slavery and decolonization was implicated in various discourses inimical to the well-being of black women.

Abstract:

Don DeLillo is an author who pays special attention to language, time, and space when constructing characters’ identity as well as their milieu. Considering this aspect of his fiction, the present article looks at how cinematic adaptations of his novels translate time, space, and the use of language onto the screen. Two of DeLillo’s novels have been adapted so far: Cosmopolis (DeLillo 2003) by David Cronenberg in a 2012 movie of the same name, and The Body Artist (DeLillo 2001) by Benoît Jacquot under the title À Jamais (2016). In light of the importance that the aforementioned elements play in the author’s works, this article delves into how they are represented in the two adaptations and analyzes the role that they play in the movies compared to the novels.

Abstract:

We propose a fictional reading of the contemporary French socio-political context from the analysis of the prospective novel Jamais de guerre civile le mardiby Yves Bourdillon (2020). It will be a question of reviewing the components of a national malaise caused by the identity upheavals that France has been experiencing for forty years and which leaves the threat of a fantasyorreal conflict, but whose hypothesis is pervasive in the public and media debate.

Abstract:

Résumé L’oeuvre de France Daigle présente un « rapport tortueux au langage » typique des littératures périphériques. Loin des revendications politiques et du mimétisme pittoresque associés au vernaculaire en littérature, son oeuvre fait progressivement une place à la matière et à la langue acadiennes, mais sans jamais renoncer à la primauté des structures formelles dans la création littéraire. Les référents acadiens, utilisés comme éléments entrant dans une organisation ludique et formelle qui produit plus d’ambiguïté et d’ironie que de sens arrêtés, perdent de leur charge émotive et idéologique. Les fictions de France Daigle permettent ainsi la représentation d’une Acadie moderne, dégagée des clivages anciens et dont le sens reste ouvert.