Overview

This book is the first major study of French Caribbean literature in light of the concept of postcoloniality. Postcolonial theory debates have developed in the anglophone domain, and have not as yet referred prominently to francophone literature. Jeannie Suk investigates how the literature of Martinique and Guadeloupe provides a kaleidescopic view of the paradoxes at the heart of postcoloniality. Through subtle and provocative readings of Aimé Césaire, Edouard Glissant, Maryse Condé, Baudelaire, Freud, and others, she illuminates how the development of French Caribbean literature and debates about négritude, antillanité, and creolité contribute to theories of in-betweenness and incompleteness central to postcolonial modes. In each chapter, lively and detailed analyses of literary and critical texts reveal connections between key thematic, conceptual, rhetorical, and psychic issues that form the interface of Caribbean and postcolonial concerns. The first part paves theoretical ground, focusing on readings of two seminal texts, Césaire's Cahier d'un retour au pays natal and Glissant's Discours antillais; the second part concentrates on Maryse Condé's exemplary work. Lucidly articulating the overlap and interplay of the distance of oceanic crossing, the discontinuities of allegorical signification, and the gap at the heart of trauma, Suk probes the paradoxical dynamic of impossible yet inevitable returns in space, time, and the psyche. She shows how literal and metaphorical ""crossings"" both produce and impede history and representation. The result is a new framework for understanding the intersection of postcolonial, psychoanalytic, deconstructive, and French Caribbean problems in a language attentive to improbable recurrences across theories and registers. Postcolonial Paradoxes is a major contribution to criticism and theory, of interest to scholars and students of postcolonialism, Caribbean and African diaspora literature, French literature, and psychoanalysis.

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9780198160182

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Reviews

... engages adroitly with the relations between theory, fiction and politics, showing how they have taken quite a distinctive shape in Caribbean culture. Journal of Romance Studies ... offers an important and original contribution to the study of French Antillean literature ... Thoroughly researched, clearly written, and compellingly argued, it places this literature within the context of deconstructive, poststructuralist thought with ease and sophistication, while offering substantive close-readings of canonical texts that markedly extend our awareness of the subtle workings of these materials. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East This book is an important addition to the growing field of Caribbean studies, and underlines the truth that much of the most impressive work in this domain is being done in English. Modern Language Review Postcolonial Paradoxes should be welcomed as an important contemporary assessment of key figures within Antillean writing. Moving Worlds: A Journal of Transcultural Writings

... engages adroitly with the relations between theory, fiction and politics, showing how they have taken quite a distinctive shape in Caribbean culture. Journal of Romance Studies ... offers an important and original contribution to the study of French Antillean literature ... Thoroughly researched, clearly written, and compellingly argued, it places this literature within the context of deconstructive, poststructuralist thought with ease and sophistication, while offering substantive close-readings of canonical texts that markedly extend our awareness of the subtle workings of these materials. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East This book is an important addition to the growing field of Caribbean studies, and underlines the truth that much of the most impressive work in this domain is being done in English. Modern Language Review Postcolonial Paradoxes should be welcomed as an important contemporary assessment of key figures within Antillean writing. Moving Worlds: A Journal of Transcultural Writings

Author Information

Jeannie Suk is J.D. candidate (expected 2002), Harvard Law School, Harvard University

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