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 --- from list postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005