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Creolising Cultures: a Caribbean Perspective

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Creolising Cultures: a Caribbean Perspective Changing cultures in Europe C o u r s e M o d u l e Creolising cultures: a Caribbean perspective Kristian Van Haesendonck Centre for Comparative Studies - University of Lisbon E-mail: [email protected] November 11, 2011 Objectives • introduction in the concept of and the debate on creolisation, in the context of postcolonial theory • To shed light on the Caribbean background of the concept • In how far is the concept useful to describe the changing cultures in “Europe”? 2 Preparatory reading • Benitez-Rojo, “Creolisation and Nation-building in the Hispanic Caribbean” • Gyssels, “The world wide web and rhizomatic identity: Traité du tout-monde by Édouard Glissant” • Schwieger Hiepko, “Europe and the Antilles. An Interview with Edouard Glissant” [version in French here] • Van Haesendonck, “From Atavism to Creolisation” 3 Structure 1. Postcolonialism and postcolonial theory 2. From Creole to Creolisation 3. Edouard Glissant and Benítez Rojo: rhizomatic identity and chaos 4. Creolising “Europe”? [ THE LINKS IN THIS PRESENTATION WILL TAKE YOU TO SOME RELEVANT WEBSITES, IN CASE YOU WOULD LIKE TO LEARN MORE. SOME IMAGES INCLUDE LINKS ] 4 When ? . Implication of time: refers to the period after colonialism . Problem: Post-colonialism does not propose a new term . What´s next: post-post-colonialism? . Other terms with Post- as prefix: Postmodernity, Postmodern, Postmodernism Postnationalism, Poststructuralism, … 5 When ? We use the term ‘post-colonial’…to cover all the culture affected by the imperial process from the moment of colonisation to the present day. This is because there is a continuity of preoccupation throughout the historical process initiated by European imperial aggression. (Ashcroft, Griffiths & Tiffin, The Empire Writes Back) 6 Postcolonial theory: some key theorists • Edward SAID • Homi BHABHA • Gayatri Chakravorti SPIVAK 7 8 Edward SAID (1935 - 2003) 9 Postcolonialism and context Postcolonialism Aim: • to shift the dominant ways in which the relations between “western” and “non- western” people and their worlds are viewed since the 19th century • to debunk presuppositions and fixed views on (formerly) colonized countries • Responds to a paradigmatic change (end of Euro-centrism) 11 Knowledge / Power Thirld-world historians feel a need to refer to works in European history; historians of Europe do not feel any need to reciprocate…We cannot even afford an equality or symmetry of ignorance at this level without taking the risk of appearing ‘old fashioned’ or ‘outdated’ (Chakrabarty) Creolisation in popular culture • Food: “creole cuisine” • Music: Jazz • Religion: syncretism – Caribbean (incl. diaspora) • Santería (Cuba) • Voodoo (Haiti) – Candomblé (Brazil) – Mexico: Virgin of Guadalupe • Dance/performance: Capoeira (Brazil) 13 Cultural creolisation • Term mostly used by anthropologists as an analogy taken from linguistics • refers to process of mixing when cultures enter in contact (Pratt: “contact zones”) • creolisation is (wrongly) defined as synonym of “cultural mixing” and hybridity • Changing cultures –like any change tout court -involves conflict as much as negotiation: 14 dialogue or clash? • Creolization as “the encounter, the interference, the clash, the harmonies and disharmonies between cultures in the accomplished totality of the earth-world” (Glissant) • Creative interplay between the center and periphery (Hannerz) 15 Origins • Era of discoveries and consolidation of colonialism: Cape Verde / Caribbean & South America / Indian Ocean / Africa • Uprooting and displacement of large numbers of people in colonial plantantion economies • both slaves, colonizers and slave-traders 16 17 18 Anthropology • Use the notion to study the complex dynamics of cross-cultural contact and mixing • Cultural creolisation: “the development of new traditions, aesthetics, and group identities out of combinations of formerly separate peoples and cultures” (Spitzer) • Hannerz: “cultural creoles” in global society 19 Creole & Creoles • Etymology – Portuguese: crioulo < cria (“infant”) – Latin: creare – Spanish: criollo = Spaniard born in New world (e.g. Nueva España (Mexico) of foreign parents. • Progressively, the criollos (creoles) identify and interact with their local environment, making them “different” from their (overseas) ancestors as they blend and adopt different habits and “local colour” 20 Linguistics • Since 1950s : study of pidgins and creoles • Creolistics / creology as subfield of linguistics • Creole = new language as a result of contact between different languages • Here is an example of Haitian creole (or go further, if you would like to learn some créole!) 21 Creolisation vs Hybridity • Hybridity – Biological term – Result is usually predictible • Creolisation – Linguistic term < créole – Ongoing process / change – Result is unpredictible – Involves both conflict and dialogue 22 Context: Changing cultures • After WWII: Decolonization of European colonies (mainly in Africa) • Era of Globalization – Hispanization of USA – Migrations to/within Europe (from ex-colonies) – Shift in economical superpowers 23 Édouard Glissant [Martinique] • Discours Antillais / Caribbean Discourse • Poétique de la relation / Poetics of relation [VIDEO – source: France24] Postcolonial theory: some key-figures • Edward SAID • Frantz FANON • Homi BHABHA • Gayatri Chakravorti SPIVAK 25 • Voyage à l'Isle de France (1773) J.H. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1737-1814) 26 Négritude [as counter-example of creolisation] Protagonists of Négritude • Literary, aesthetic, ideological movement founded by – Léopold Senghor (Sénégal) – Aimé Césaire (Martinique) – Léon Gontron Damas (Guyane Française) • Reaction to domination of the “white” colonizer and his racial politics of assimilation • Context: France, 1930-40s Aimé Césaire (Martinique, 1913-2008) Discours sur le colonialisme (1950) Discours sur le colonialisme (1950) • Key text of anticolonial literature • Published in the age of decolonization and revolt in Africa, Asia, and parts of Latin America • Other important anti-colonial texts: • Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (1952) • Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized • W.E.B. DuBois, Color and Democracy (1945) and The World and Africa (1947) • … Negritude • Term < Cahier d´un retour au pays natal [Notebook of a return to the native land] (1939), by Aimé Césaire – Alternative terms: mélanité (Melas: gr. black), africanité, éthiopité • Aim: to promote and express pride of the black race • The nègre (cf. negro) “acteur historique, un acteur culturel” (Césaire) instead of a passive object of domination Léopold Sédar Senghor (1906-2001) Negritude is the sum of the cultural values of the black world; that is, a certain active presence in the world, or better, in the universe. It is…a certain `way of relating oneself to the world and to others´. Yes, it is essentially relations with others, an opening out to the world, contact and participation with others. Because of what it is, negritude is necessary in the world today: it is a humanism of the twentieth century (Senghor, 28) Eloge de la Créolité / In Praise of Creoleness 35 Eloge de la Créolité / In Praise of Creoleness 36 Antonio Benítez-Rojo [Cuba] La isla que se repite / The Repeating Island The Repeating Island • Attempt to theorize the Caribbean from a poetic, ‘postmodern perspective’ • Chaos [theory] as a space where the pure sciences connect with the social sciences, art and cultural tradition • Caribbean as meta-archipelago without boundaries / center Fractal [Mandelbrot] • « …the Caribbean as an important historico-economic sea and, further, a cultural meta-archipelago without center and without limits, a chaos within which there is an island that proliferates endlessly, each copy a different one… » (Benítez-Rojo) The Caribbean The Repeating Island • meta-archipelago which connects the Americas ‘in a certain way’ (!) • Plantation as the ‘unifying’ factor in Caribbean culture • Problem: Plantation as essentializing metaphor ? • Performance and polyrhythm The Repeating Island • The certainty about creolization is that it inevitably refers to the plantation” • ...to my way of thinking none of our cultural manifestations is creolized, but is, rather, in a state of creolization. I think that creolization does not transform literature or music or language into a synthesis or anything that could be taken in essentialist terms (...)For me, creolization is a term with which we attempt to explain the unstable states that Caribbean cultural artefacts [such as orishas, cf. santería], continuously transformed by a series of performers, present over time (C&T, 149) 43 44 Overseas / outermost Europe EU outermost regions • Martinique, Réunion, Guadeloupe, Guyana, La Réunion, Mayotte (Départements d´Outre Mer of France) • Azores, Madeira, Canary Islands EU overseas territories • Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten (autonomous countries of the Netherlands) • French Polynesia, Saint Barthélemy and Saint Martin, Futuna & Wallis (Overseas collectivities of France) • Falkland Islands, Bermuda, … • Greenland * Most territories and regions are part of the European Union but not of the Schengen Area. Their habitants have European citizenship (incl. Greenlanders). 45 Video: Wallis & Futuna: Forever French? [source: Australia Network] 46 http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xgjoa1_la ncement-de-l-annee-des-outre-mer-discours- de-m-maximin_news 47 Daniel Maximin (Poet, Guadeloupe. Commissioner of the French Year on Overseas Territories) “Where Europe is concerned, I think habits are hard to break, especially
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