File spoon-archives/postcolonial.archive/postcolonial_1998/postcolonial.9804, message 121


Date: Tue, 7 Apr 1998 19:52:20 -0400 (EDT)
From: Lisa McNee <lm23-AT-qsilver.queensu.ca>
Subject: Re: Glissant, Deleuze and Guattari II


This is great--thanks for sharing these citations and ideas. It's
wonderful to have an exchange about the ideas that are provoking me right
now (and I mean that just as it sounds--Glissant has been provoking me
lately). 

Lisa


On Tue, 7 Apr 1998, Keith Alan Sprouse wrote:

> 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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