Edouard Glissant in Theory and Practice: a Diasporic Poetics of Politics
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Edouard Glissant in Theory and Practice: A Diasporic Poetics of Politics by Mamadou Moustapha Ly A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Romance Languages and Literatures: French) in the University of Michigan 2014 Doctoral Committee: Professor Jarrod Hayes, Chair Professor Frieda Ekotto Associate Professor Jennifer Wenzel Professor Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Columbia University © Mamadou Moustapha Ly 2014 DEDICATION To my late Mother Arame Ly ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Professor Jarrod Hayes, the chair of my committee, for his my kind and enthusiastic support throughout all the stages of my graduate education. I thank him for his valuable suggestions and careful editing of this dissertation. I extend my gratitude to Professors Frieda Ekotto and Jennifer Wenzel for being exceptional mentors from the very first stages of this project during my preliminary examinations to its completion. I thank Professor Souleymane Bachir Diagne for accepting to be part of this committee and for his gracious advice. I also thank my former professors at Cheikh Anta Diop University and Kansas State University namely Professors Gorgui Dieng, Mamadou Gaye, Amy Hubbell, Claire Dehon, Robert Clark, and Robert Corum. My special acknowledgements to my family, my father, Amadou Hamath Ly, my brothers and sisters, my uncles Souleymane Ly, Amadou Haby Ly, Mamadou Moustapha Ly, Amadou Moustapha Sow, Mamadou Moussa LY, my aunts Soukeyna Guèye, Halima Ly, my friends Grand Sana Camara, Grand Aly Dramé, Grand Ababacar Seck Grand Moustapha Diop, Grand Sara Camara, Soukeyna Sène Camara, Ndeye Pauline Ly, Mamadou Touré, Mère Adama Ndiaye, Grand Moussa Ndiaye, and Grand Abdoulaye Dièye for their persistent encouragements and precious duas. My thanks to Ousseyou Sy, Malick Guissé, Seydi Sall, Mamadou Selly Ly, Abdellah Mani, Moussa Thioune, Mohamed Diallo, Abdou Latif Mbengue, Abdoulaye Sidibé, Sophietou Faye, Mor Dia, Benjamin Harris, El Hadji Malick Faye, Lamine iii Fofana, Mohamed Bob, Ami Ndiaye, Serge Badiane, Marie Deirdre Jones, Babaly Ly, Ebrima Jeen, Omar Sowe, Massidy Kebe and Mohammadou Moustapha Ly for their true friendship and availability in critical times of need. Last but not least, I thank my dear wife Sawdatou Sow and my son Amadou Hamath Ly for their love, patience, and understanding throughout the completion of this dissertation. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Dedication…………………………………………………………………………………ii Acknowledgements……………………………………………………….………………iii List of Figures…...………………………………………………………………………..vi Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………..vii Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..1 Chapter I. Redefining the Black Experience in Edouard Glissant’s Poetics……………...16 1. Glissant’s History 2. Africa within the Literary Expressions 3. Rethinking Slavery Today II. The Archipelagic Exception…………………………………………………..57 1. The Spirit of Place 2. Trace: Reconstitution and Reconstruction 3. The Situation of the Archipelago Today III. France Disenfranchising………………………………………………..........93 1. The Debate on National Identity 2. Glissant’s Diagnosis 3. Glissant’s Alternatives IV. Towards Imaginary Wholelands……………………………………………129 1. The Tout-Monde 2. In Praise of Differences Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...161 Works Cited………………………………………………………………………….....167 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure Figure 1: Debate Caricatured by Libération 102 Figure 2: Taubira Caricatured 148 vi ABSTRACT My dissertation explores the oeuvre of Edouard Glissant (1928-2011), a prominent Martinican essayist, poet, novelist, playwright, philosopher, and theorist, who has played a considerable role in the emergence and recognition of French Caribbean literature as a whole. Through a central focus on his theoretical concept and literary expression of Antillanité, I analyze his poetic and political representation of contemporary Martinique and by extension the world in general, years after the “end” of the historic and historical events of slavery and colonialism. To give a more complete and updated assessment of the aftermath of these particular events, I examine his lesser known works published just before his death in 2011 namely Une nouvelle région du monde, Quand les murs tombent, Mémoires des esclavages, L’intraitable beauté du monde: Adresse à Barack Obama, Philosophie de la Relation, Les entretiens de Baton Rouge, Manifeste pour les produits de haute nécessité and Traité pour le Grand Dérangement. I argue that, in these “political interventions,” Glissant bridges the traditional divides between the poetic and the political, the theoretical and the practical, the aesthetical and the ethical, as well as the fictional and the realistic to re-actualize and give meaning to his main concepts and political ideologies presented in his previous foundational and far more widely read essays, treatises, novels, and manifestoes such as Le discours antillais, Poétique de la Relation, Traité du Tout- monde, Tout-monde, and Introduction à une poétique du Divers. vii In this dissertation, I redefine Glissant as a diasporic “poetician” who capitalizes on the événementiel to expose in an engaging and relatable fashion the controversial issues of identity, race, immigration, and globalization in our current world, which he imaginatively defines as a “Tout-monde.” I examine his key theoretical notions of relation, imagination, intuition, and mondialité as centrally characteristic tropes, which he poetically and politically uses to challenge and propose alternatives to the “chaos” prevalent in the world in its totality from the West to the “Rest,” specifically in Africa, the French Caribbean archipelago, and France as respectively developed in the first, second, third and fourth chapters of this dissertation. viii INTRODUCTION Quand je dis poète, je ne veux pas parler de celui qui écrit des poèmes mais de celui qui a une conception du vrai rapport entre poétique et politique. “Solitaire et solidaire: Entretien avec Edouard Glissant.” When I say poet, I do not want to talk about the one who writes poems but about the one who conceptualizes the true connection between poetics and politics. “Solitary and in Solidarity: Interview with Edouard Glissant.” Since the publication of La Lézarde (1958) [The Ripening], a Prix Renaudot1 awarded novel, the prolific oeuvre of Edouard Glissant has attracted the attention of many a critic in an umbrella of disciplines in the humanities as well as the social sciences. The attentive interest in the latter’s oeuvre has in fact increased with the theorization of his literary expression of Antillanité [Caribbeanness] in his reference manifesto, Le discours antillais (1981) [Caribbean Discourse]. Antillanité, which symbolically pictures the diversely complex realities and identities of the Caribbean archipelago, occupies an important place in the genealogical history of French Caribbean thought all the more because it constitutes one of its three main literary canons in respective precedence and subsequence to Negritude and Créolité [Creoleness].2 1 Created in 1926 and named after Théophraste Renaudot, the founder of La Gazette, an influential weekly newspaper in France, the Prix Renaudot is an outstanding French literary prize that is annually awarded to an author of an original novel in French. 2 See second part of the first chapter “Africa within the Literary Expressions” in which I define each literary expression as it depicts the representation of Africa and its traces in the French Caribbean fiction and cultural studies. 1 Glissant’s Antillanité is “incontournable” [indispensable] in the analysis of both literary expressions because it is in perpetual dialogue with the latter. In other words, the understanding of both Negritude and Créolité necessitates a deep comprehension of Antillanité as Glissant constantly refers to these literary expressions in a contradistinctive yet interrelating fashion. In one of his early essay, Poétique de la Relation (1990) [Poetics of Relation], for instance he describes how creolization, a poetic and political barometer of Antillanité, departs from Negritude and Créolité: La créolisation, qui est un des modes de l’emmêlement – et non pas seulement une résultante linguistique – n’a pas d’exemplaire que par ses processus et certainement pas les “contenus” à partir desquels ils fonctionneraient. C’est ce qui fait notre départ d’avec le concept de “créolité.” … Les créolisations introduisent à la Relation, mais ce n’est pas pour universaliser; “la créolité,” dans son principe, régresserait vers des négritudes, des francités, des latinités, toutes généralisantes – plus ou moins innocemment. (103) Creolization, one of the ways of forming a complex mix – and not merely a linguistic result – is only exemplified by its processes and certainly not by the “contents” on which they operate. This is where we depart from the concept of Creoleness…. Creolizations bring into Relation but not to universalize; the principles of Creoleness regress toward negritudes, ideas 2 of Frenchness, of Latiness, all generalizing concepts – more or less innocently. (89)3 As I will analyze in depth in the opening chapter, “Redefining the Black Experience in Edouard Glissant’s poetics,” Glissant’s Antillanité questions the core essence of Negritude and its Afrocentric orientation, which he views in discrepancy with the Caribbean realities.4 As for Créolité, Glissant agrees with its Caribbean centeredness but rejects its limited and limiting impetus with its essentialist