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The Literature of Catastrophe in the Francophone Caribbean

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The Literature of Catastrophe in the Francophone Caribbean Copyright 2015 Daniel Brant GEOGRAPHIES OF SUFFERING: THE LITERATURE OF CATASTROPHE IN THE FRANCOPHONE CARIBBEAN BY DANIEL BRANT DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in French in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2015 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Professor Jean-Philippe Mathy, Chair Professor H. Adlai Murdoch, Director of Research Associate Professor Margaret C. Flinn Associate Professor Patrick M. Bray ABSTRACT In the context of climate change and increasing vulnerability to catastrophe across the globe, this dissertation investigates the political, historical, and cultural stakes of disasters in Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Haiti from the nineteenth century to the present. In so doing, it examines how Caribbean writers respond to the political and social challenges that disasters pose using methodologies from literary criticism, cultural studies, and historical analysis. Attending closely to representation, textuality, and shifting historical contexts, this study analyzes major works by French, Martinican, Guadeloupean, and Haitian writers including Voltaire, Victor Schœlcher, Aimé Césaire, Maryse Condé, and Yanick Lahens alongside other primary sources like travelogues and administrative reports. Developed across four chapters, it makes three significant contributions to Caribbean studies while illuminating theoretical discussions in postcolonial studies, ecocriticism, and disaster studies. First, it underscores the role that the continual risk of natural catastrophe has played in Caribbean history and thought. Second, this project demonstrates how Francophone writing since the Haitian Revolution (1791- 1804) has refashioned catastrophe into a valuable critical framework for reconsidering the Caribbean from within and without. Third, it reveals how this “literature of catastrophe” rethinks domination in the region and articulates new discourses on culture, memory, and identity. Starting in the introduction, which outlines the theoretical and critical contexts for studying Caribbean discourses of catastrophe, this dissertation expands on the concern in trauma studies for the subject’s loss of and return to the ordering logic of narrative to argue that representations of suffering also constitute “geographies of suffering” that re-situate the subject in space and geography with respect to world-systems like European colonialism and postmodern globalization. The ensuing four chapters and conclusion examine the contours of this ii notion in Caribbean discourses on catastrophe at the global, regional, and insular levels. Chapters one and four engage with the cosmopolitan layers of writing about Caribbean catastrophe in which authors including the Guadeloupean novelist Daniel Maximin and the Haitian writer Dany Laferrière among others use worldwide experiences of catastrophe to create new forms of global solidarities. Conversely, chapters two and three focus on the regional and local ripples of catastrophe across the Caribbean as well as in twentieth- and twenty-first-century Martinican literature. In this way, chapter two interrogates cross-island reflections on nineteenth-century earthquakes and ruins in Haiti and Guadeloupe while chapter three explores the place of the 1902 volcanic disaster with regards to shifting discourses on ethnic identity in the work of Aimé Césaire, Édouard Glissant, Patrick Chamoiseau, and Suzanne Dracius. The conclusion, which highlights a burgeoning corpus of West Indian science fiction texts, builds on these previous reflections to demonstrate how Caribbean literature is also critically invested in exploring the possibilities of looming global ecological catastrophes. While the effects of climate change and the strains of capitalism augment global vulnerability to catastrophe, the varied responses by intellectuals and writers to catastrophes in this dissertation bespeak Caribbean resiliency against such disruptions and highlight these moments as critical points of departure for rethinking the region’s relations to Northern centers of power. Ultimately, this dissertation argues that reading this literature of catastrophe constitutes a critical practice of destabilizing the very hierarchies of power, cultures, and capital that marginalize the Caribbean and its inhabitants. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My academic journey would not have been possible without the tremendous support of several institutions, many different individuals, and my friends and family. To the members of all of these groups I offer my deepest thanks. As an undergraduate at the University of Idaho, I was lucky to take my first French courses with Dr. Sarah Nelson and Dr. Joan West whose dedication to their students and enthusiasm for this subject attracted me to the field. A fellowship from New York University’s Institute for French Studies allowed me to nourish my growing curiosity for French and Francophone Studies while completing my M.A. In addition to the many public lectures and events that I attended at the Institute for French Studies, I am most grateful for the seminars led by a team of scholars whose high intellectual standards and innovative scholarship remain models for my own work. At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Graduate College provided substantial support for coursework in the form of the Illinois Distinguished Fellowship and later for research and writing with a travel grant to Martinique as well as the Nina Baym Dissertation Completion Fellowship. The Department of French and Italian was also instrumental in providing me summer support and grants for travel to conferences numerous times over the last seven years. I would like to thank Prof. Armine Mortimer who, as department head, convinced me to continue my graduate studies at Illinois. I am very much indebted to the faculty of the Department of French and Italian, particularly Prof. Marcus Keller, Prof. Karen Fresco, Prof. Zsuzsanna Fagyal, Prof. Laurence Mall, and the late Prof. Larry Schehr for their mentoring, support, and gentle critiques of my ideas. iv My dissertation committee deserves special credit for shepherding me through the arduous process of completing this thesis. I would like to thank my director of research Prof. H. Adlai Murdoch for his thoughtful guidance as I researched, wrote, and revised this project. His initial enthusiasm for this work was an important spark to begin this project while his suggestions at critical stages vastly improved the final product. I remain much obliged to him for his willingness to see this project to completion despite his move to Tufts University. Thank you to Prof. Jean-Philippe Mathy who without hesitation agreed to serve as chair of my committee at a point when this project was already well underway. Both Prof. Margaret Flinn and Prof. Patrick Bray took me under their wings during my very first semester at Illinois and remained insightful readers of my work all the way to the end. Their honest assessments and detailed feedback on each chapter provided valuable roadmaps for improving this project. I thank both of them for their dedication to this project and for their unflagging support as mentors. Without good friends and my family’s loving support, I never would have been able to finish this project. At Illinois, I formed many friendships that have sustained me throughout the long grind of graduate school and all the stresses that come with it. Sean Curtin, Chris Ice, Jessica Jacobson, and Sarah Bradley offered much moral support and were always available when it was time to unwind. Brian Hunt and Dan Maroun have been valued friends and stalwart intellectual companions this whole time. Jenelle Grant, Arnaud Perret, Johnny Laforet, Malyoune Benoît, and Nick Strole have all been important sources of support during my time at Illinois as well. I would also like to thank John P. Walsh and Jason Herbeck for engaging with my research and accepting me as a peer on the Haitian Studies conference circuit. Furthermore, I was lucky to receive much encouragement in this endeavor from my parents Charles Brant and Katie Tauscher as well as my mother-in-law Ornella Simonetti and my father-in-law Roberto v Zulato. I would like to dedicate this work to my wife Alessia whose patience and sacrifice made this dissertation possible and to my daughter Eleonora who joined us along the way. In their own ways, both have helped me keep my feet on the ground and maintain perspective during this entire process. I would like to thank the editors of the journals where portions of this research originally appeared for their permission to reprint them here: Portions of Chapter 4 were originally published in the Journal of Haitian Studies, vol. 20, no. 2, 40-63, under the title “Traumatic Encounters: Negotiating Humanitarian Testimony in Post-earthquake Haiti.” Portions of Chapters 1 and 4 were originally published in the International Journal of Francophone Studies, vol. 17, no 2, 215-237, under the title “Disaster Cosmopolitanism: Catastrophe and Global Community in the Fiction of Daniel Maximin and Maryse Condé.” vi TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: THE LITERATURE OF CATASTROPHE IN THE FRANCOPHONE CARIBBEAN………………………………………………………………………………… 1 CHAPTER 1: GLOBAL SUFFERING IN VOLTAIRE’S CANDIDE AND MARYSE CONDÉ’S EN ATTENDANT LA MONTÉE DES EAUX……………………………………... 32 CHAPTER 2: THE GHOST OF DISASTERS PAST: THE HAITIAN REVOLUTION AND NINETEENTH-CENTURY CARIBBEAN RUINSCAPES…………………………... 82 CHAPTER 3: CREOLIZING CATASTROPHE:
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