File spoon-archives/postcolonial.archive/postcolonial_1998/postcolonial.9804, message 117


Date: Tue, 7 Apr 1998 15:22:26 -0400
From: Keith Alan Sprouse <kas3f-AT-virginia.edu>
Subject: Re: Glissant, Deleuze and Guattari II


At 11:14 AM 4/7/98 -0400, Lisa wrote:
>Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the D & G connection to Glissant. I'd
>appreciate it if you could give me the full citation of your article so I
>can read it--the quotes you gave us in your earlier posting are
>thought-provoking. 

Thanks for your kind words. The full citation is:

Sprouse, Keith Alan. "Chaos and Rhizome: Introduction to a Caribbean
Poetics." In _The History of Caribbean Literature. Vol. 3: Cross-Cultural
Studies_. Ed. A. James Arnold. Philadelphia:  John Benjamins, 1997. 79-86.

The article folowing mine, written by Roman de la Campa, is excellent and
quite worth the read. His contribution is much longer and situates
Benitez-Rojo and Glissant within a wider framework. Benitez-Rojo himself
also wrote a piece on Carnival that appears in again in his latest edition
of _The Repeating Island_.

>I've been very interested in particularly this angle on
>global creoleness. I'm not convinced by Glissant's arguments, not just
>because he writes in French, but also because he has never defended Creole
>(unlike Daniel Boukman, among others) as more than an abstract concept.
>The language itself has not received his support. As far as I know, he has
>consistently said that contemporary Creole really is a "bastard" language,
>(ok, this is a little polemical--he didn't put it that way, but it comes
>down to that, in my opinion) as it has lost the sophistication of the
>Creole of pre-WWII Martinique. 

I don't think your characterization is too harsh here. In general, his line
of reasoning is that creole failed to adapt to post-Emancipation needs, just
as the barter system that grew out of the plantation economy couldn't adapt
to the new situation -- it all falls into the argument he makes in _Le
discours antillais_ that there is a direct historical, sociological, and
cultural link between dispossession, establishment of the plantation economy
and its transformation into a monocultural barter economy (with its
dependence on external control), then stagnation or "non-production." This
plays out, for him, in the adoption of external (read imperial or colonial)
models or techonolgies being adopted for internal use -- assimilation.

I also think it's interesting to situate his view on creole within the wider
francophone Caribbean context, from the creolistes (who tend to be dogmatic
about exactly who gets to be "creole"), Conde (who argues against this very
dogmatism), Bebel-Gisler (who argues strongly for an acceptance of popular
culture and creole in _Leonora: l'histoire enfouie de la Guadeloupe_), and
so on. I taught a course in Comparative Caribbean last semester where we
read Glissant's _Caribbean Discourse_, Maximan's _Lone Sun_, and
Bebel-Gisler's _Leonora_ expressly looking at the question of creole
language (as well as the uses of folktales and folklore).  

>Perhaps I should say that I take issue with these kinds of points because
>Glissant is so important as a thinker. 

I couldn't agree more. 

Keith

____________________________________________________

Keith Alan Sprouse		e-mail:  kas3f-AT-virginia.edu
New World Studies		office: 804.924.4626 
Department of French	fax:  804.924.7157
University of Virginia		home:  804.243.4306
Charlottesville, VA 22903	http://www.people.virginia.edu/~kas3f



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