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AESTHETIC EXPERIMENTATION AND THE SEARCH FOR A CARIBBEAN IDIOM BY MARIA D. MORENO B.A. UNIVERSIDAD DE LOS ANDES, 1998 M.A. UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA, 2003 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE DEPARTMENT OF FRENCH STUDIES AT BROWN UNIVERSITY PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND MAY 2010 © Copyright 2010 by Maria D. Moreno This dissertation by Maria D. Moreno is accepted in its present form by the Department of French Studies as satisfying the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Date ______________ _________________________________ Réda Bensmaïa, Advisor Recommended to the Graduate Council Date ______________ _________________________________ Esther Whitfield, Reader Date ______________ _________________________________ J. Michael Dash, Reader Approved by the Graduate Council Date ______________ _________________________________ Sheila Bonde, Dean of the Graduate School iii VITA Maria D. Moreno was born on April 21st, 1974 in Mérida, Venezuela. She spent her childhood and teenage years in her hometown, where she completed a B.A. in Modern Languagest at the Universidad de Los Andes in 1998. In 1997-1998, she spent most of the academic year working in France, teaching in two high schools of the outskirts of Paris. After graduating, she worked as an instructor of French for a few years before deciding to return to school to pursue graduate studies. In May of 2003, Maria obtained a M. A. in French Literature and Pedagogy from the University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ. While being a student at the department of French and Italian, she worked as a TA, teaching beginner, intermediate and advanced French language courses. During the summer of 2004, she was part of the instructor crew of the Arizona in Paris program. Maria entered the doctoral program of the Department of French Studies at Brown University in the fall of 2004. During her years at Brown, she was also a Teaching Assistant and instructed beginner, intermediate and advanced French language courses. She also worked as webmaster and co-editor of Equinoxes, an on-line journal created and edited by the graduate students of the French Studies department. Maria is currently Assistant Professor of French in the Department of Foreign Modern Languages at Mars Hill College, North Carolina. PUBLICATIONS: ―Ghosts of Africa in Europe‘s Museums‖. Translation of ―Les fantômes d‘Afrique dans les musées d‘Europe‖ by Hassan Musa. In Critical Interventions: Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture, No. 2, Spring 2008 ―Head above Water, Bandjoun Station, and the Venice Biennale‖. Translation (interview with Barthélémy Toguo and texts by the artist). In Critical Interventions: Journal of iv African Art History and Visual Culture, No. 2, Spring 2008 ―L‘exposition du Congo and Edouard Manduau‘s La civilisation au Congo‖. Translation of ―Édouard Manduau et son tableau La civilisation au Congo (1884-1885)‖ by Sabine Cornelis. In Critical Interventions: Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture, No. 1, July 2007 ―Du bovarysme à la créolité: le rapport des écrivains antillais à la langue française‖. Equinoxes journal, No. 9 (Spring/Summer 2007) http://www.brown.edu/Research/Equinoxes/journal/Issue%209/eqx9_moreno.html PRESENTATIONS AND CONFERENCES: ―Between the I and the We: Aesthetic Experimentation and the Creation of a Caribbean Poetics in French and Spanish‖, American Comparative Literature Association Conference. Harvard University, March 26-29, 2009 ―The Audacious Language of Birahima, child soldier‖, Northeast Modern Language Association, 40th Anniversary Convention. Boston MA, February 26 – March 1, 2009 ―Du bovarysme à la créolité : le rapport des écrivains antillais à la langue française‖, 15th Equinoxes Conference: “Snobismes”. Brown University, Spring 2007 ―Le langage de Birahima, l‘enfant-soldat à la verve audacieuse dans Allah n'est pas obligé, d‘Ahmadou Kourouma‖, 15th Annual GSO Colloquium "Politics and Persuasion". Indiana University, Spring 2006 ―Avatars cinématographiques de La Princesse de Clèves‖, 14th Equinoxes Conference: “La consommation littéraire”. Brown University, Spring 2006 v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The process of writing a dissertation is an arduous one, a process that can also be lonely if we do not count on a strong community to support us. I have been fortunate to have a wonderful community of people around me, people who have trusted and believed in me at times when I thought I could never ―pull this off‖. I‘m not big on long speeches, so this will be brief, but I do want to acknowledge all of those who have helped me in many different ways. First of all, I‘d like to thank the members of my committee, professors Réda Bensmaïa, Esther Whitfield and J. Michael Dash, for their support and guidance. As an advisor, Prof. Bensmaïa has been everything I could have asked for: an attentive listener and critic, a supporting mentor, a generous colleague, a stimulating influence. Thank you for supporting me in my decision to go ―off the beaten path‖, academically speaking. Prof. Whitfield‘s thoughtful comments and suggestions have not only pointed me in the right direction countless times; they have also helped me find fascinating connections that I‘ll be excited to keep exploring in my academic career and personal life. I‘d like to thank you for all of this, and for never making me feel like I should have already read this or that classic of Cuban or Puerto Rican literature (although I probably should have). As for Prof. Dash, the influence of some of his writings was –without exaggeration– pivotal in the direction that my dissertation ultimately followed. Your knowledge of French Caribbean writing and theory are a continuous source of inspiration; I feel truly fortunate to have had you as one of my readers. Thank you. vi I also want to thank professor Lise Leibacher, my unofficial mentor at the University of Arizona, for encouraging me to aim high and pursue an unconventional and stimulating path, and for convincing me that it was worth leaving the balmy winters of Tucson for the less-than-hospitable climes of Providence. Your passion for teaching and learning inspire me to this day. To my husband and best friend, Mike, thank you for your infinite love and support, for constantly reminding me that there is a world outside of books, for forcing me to have fun. These have been the best ten years (already!) of my life. To my son Miguel Armando, thanks for being my ray of sunshine, for giving me the opportunity to experience motherhood, with its joys and worries. Thank you, friends of here, there and everywhere, for making my years of grad school (both in Tucson and in Providence) rich, fun and stimulating: Erika, Jen, Clint, Allison, Teresa, Claudia, Adele, Meadow. Thank you for listening, for making jokes, for coming to the beach with us, but also for your sense of style, movies and literature, and for all the high-brow and low-brow conversations we‘ve had throughout the years: only now do I realize that this all helped shape this product that is now coming to fruition. Le dedico esta tesis a mi familia, por estar siempre a mi lado a pesar de la distancia: Mami, Papi, Martha, Pedro, Adrián, Paula, tios, abuelos y primos, Hercy (creo que no necesito decir más). Los quiero. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction Mapping the Caribbean as a Literary Region ............................................................1 Chapter One Grandes lignes of Caribbean literature in French and Spanish ................................8 One Caribbean or several Caribbeans? ..................................................................13 Representations of slavery .....................................................................................20 Racial relations.......................................................................................................28 Mulattos, an ―intermediate race‖ ....................................................................34 Race and cultural alienation ...........................................................................40 ―Ella es toda pasiñn y fuego‖: Mulatas in Caribbean literature .....................44 Manifestations of creole culture.............................................................................49 Chapter Two Creolization in the works of Patrick Chamoiseau and Guillermo Cabrera Infante .............................................56 Creolization: origins of the term ............................................................................58 Literary creolization ...............................................................................................60 Patrick Chamoiseau, marqueur de paroles ............................................................62 The ‗chamoisification‘ of French language ...................................................64 Chronique des sept misères ...........................................................................64 Solibo Magnifique .........................................................................................66 Texaco ............................................................................................................74 Écrire en pays dominé ...................................................................................77 A ‗schizophrenic‘ oeuvre? .............................................................................81 Guillermo Cabrera Infante, the iconoclast .............................................................84 Creolization in the works