Dissident Diaspora: Genres of Maroon Witness in Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean Literature
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Dissident Diaspora: Genres of Maroon Witness in Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean Literature by Sarah Gabriella Waisvisz A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Language and Literature Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario © 2014, Sarah Gabriella Waisvisz i Abstract This study brings human rights criticism into conversation with postcolonial and transnational studies in order to contribute to a decolonizing of trauma theory. I demonstrate how generically innovative writers from the Caribbean diaspora invoke the tradition of the fugitive slave or maroon, and in so doing, put forward revolutionary ideas about identity, race, and belonging. The genre-bending literature examined in the dissertation is engaged in a form of dissident literary maroonage. Overall, the texts demonstrate a dual focus on ethics and genre as they confront the vexed representation of human rights issues, past and present. I argue that a human rights-oriented approach to Caribbean literature, in tandem with critical attention to form and genre, can attend to witness testimonies, memory, and representations of suffering in literary texts, and can, consequently, draw attention to an ethically-charged poetics of diaspora. The Francophone and Anglophone texts examined in the dissertation, by M. NourbeSe Philip, Dionne Brand, Gisèle Pineau, Myriam Chancy, Edwidge Danticat, Jan J. Dominique, and Saidiya Hartman, represent the paradoxes and tensions of human rights issues within a Caribbean context: they engage productively with loss and mourning; underscore the ambivalent impact of ethnic, cultural, and racial mixing; narrate survivor as well as perpetrator testimony; and contribute to alternative memory projects informed by an interrogation of belonging/un-belonging. I argue that the deployment of the maroon trope in these texts indicates an effort to “Caribbeanize” issues related to human rights; consequently, I introduce the concept of maroon witnessing to help bridge the gap between critical approaches to postcolonial studies and typically western-biased human rights scholarship and trauma studies. Ultimately, the diasporic writers discussed in this project emerge as witnesses and activists who, from their position “lòt bò dlo,” across the waters, confront the limits of genre and contribute to a dissenting, defiant re-articulation of Caribbean poetics. ii Acknowledgements It takes a village. First, I would like to thank my Thesis Director Sarah Phillips Casteel, for her unfailing support, encouragement, and invaluable mentorship. I must confess that I have enjoyed our process, and I know that I could not have done it without you. Please accept my thanks, with much gratitude, especially for encouraging me to “just write faster!” Second, I would like to thank the members of my committee. Brenda Vellino introduced me to human rights literature and theory as a scholarly pursuit and re-opened my eyes to poetry; Christine Duff first helped me to read Césaire and Glissant; and Sukeshi Kamra, Chris Bongie, and Catherine Khordoc provided invaluable insight and critique. I would like to acknowledge the support of the Department of English at Carleton University. I am grateful to the Graduate Chairs who supervised my time in the program- -Grant Williams, Brian Johnson, and especially Barbara Leckie, who always had a moment to talk. I would like to thank my thesis siblings Devika Wasson, Chris Vanderwees, Emma Peacocke, David Mastey, Gabrielle Etcheverry, Aliesha Hosein, and Steve McLeod: I am glad we were all brothers in arms. I owe a debt of gratitude to Lana Keon, Jennifer Warren, and Judy Katz, who over the years made sure I did not accidentally sabotage my degree. Many thanks are due to Franny Nudelman, Jodie Medd, Julie Murray, and Jennifer Henderson for their mentorship, as well as to the members of the “'Postcolonial' Research and Working Group” and the Centre for Transnational Cultural Analysis (CTCA). My doctoral studies have been funded by the generous support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the Ontario Graduate Scholarship program (OGS), and at Carleton, the Department of English, the Faculty of Graduate and Post-Doctoral Affairs, and the Natalie Luckyj Scholarship Fund. I have been fortunate to also find support outside of my home department. I would like to give special thanks to Alexandra Schultheis Moore, Elizabeth Swanson Goldberg, Greg Mullins, and the members of the ACLA Human Rights and Literature seminars over the years: your vibrant scholarship has helped me to find my intellectual moorings. My thanks to all of you. I am thankful for the generosity of the friends and strangers I met on my own diasporic, nomadic, maroon wanderings; this dissertation was researched and written in more locations than I can count, and I am grateful for the help I had along the way. For keeping me laughing, even while crying: Christine Armstrong, Connie Crompton, Tamara Fathi, Jacynthe Fugère-Bourdages, Lesley Hoyles, Emily Pearlman, and Bronwyn Steinberg. To Megan MacDonald and Jerilyn Sambrooke: Megan was right: it is a marathon! For giving me a soft place to land in Ottawa and in Berkeley, I owe much to Monique Andrews and Tamara MacIntyre for their unparalleled generosity during a challenging time. Thank you to Camille Rudney and Roxanna Vahed, my intrepid interlocutors and companions in belonging / un-belonging. I would like to thank my Gold Crescent family and my OrH family for standing in for those far away. I offer gratitude to my parents and to those in my family whose stories have inspired this book. The last note is to my brother: David, I did university for both of us, which is why it took so long. And through it all I have learned one thing: remembrance will be our sole inheritance. iii Dedication In her small village of le François in Martinique, my great grandmother was famous for encouraging her children and the village children to pursue their studies. Even though she herself was illiterate like most slaves and those who grew up on the plantations, she would help the younger generation to revise their lessons. She admonished their laziness and celebrated their successes, and she could often be seen holding a book. She was a proud and formidable woman. If an insolent young person, who was tired of her nagging, mocked her for holding a book upside down, she would say with confidence: “Quand on sait lire, on lit dans tous les sens: If we know how to read, we read in all directions.” This book is dedicated to the memory of my courageous ancestors. iv Table of Contents Abstract ................................................................................................................................ i Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................. ii Dedication .......................................................................................................................... iv Table of Contents ............................................................................................................... iv Introduction: ........................................................................................................................ 1 Chapter 1: Performative Diasporic Mourning and Maroon Witness in the Caribbean Long Poem: M. NourbeSe Philip's ZONG! and Dionne Brand's Inventory ............................... 36 Chapter 2: Vodou Novels as Alternatives to the Postcolonial Gothic in Chair piment by Gisèle Pineau and The Loneliness of Angels by Myriam Chancy ................................... 89 Chapter 3: The Maroon Bildungsroman and the Work of Dangerous Memory in Edwidge Danticat's The Dew Breaker and Jan J. Dominique's Mémoire d'une amnésique .......... 146 Chapter 4: “Where the stateless might thrive”: Queer Diasporic Un-Belonging and the Maroon Memoir in Dionne Brand's A Map to the Door of No Return and Saidiya Hartman's Lose Your Mother .......................................................................................... 197 Conclusion: Create Dangerously .................................................................................... 236 Epilogue: Notes From a Return to the Native Land ....................................................... 243 Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 251 1 Introduction And when we speak we are afraid / our words will not be heard / nor welcomed / but when we are silent / we are still afraid / so it is better to speak / remembering / we were never meant to survive. Audre Lorde, “A Litany For Survival” This dissertation participates in the emergent scholarly project of bringing human rights-oriented literary criticism into conversation with postcolonial studies in order to encourage a decolonization of trauma studies. In the chapters that follow, I demonstrate how genre-bending literature from diasporic women writers contributes to an understanding of contemporary Caribbean literature that is both locally and transnationally situated. The archive I address contends with the long legacy of colonization, slavery, and indenture, as well as the paradoxes and tensions of human rights issues within a Caribbean context. The literary texts narrate survivor as well as perpetrator testimony and postmemory; present alternative memory projects; underscore ethnic, cultural,