BOOK REVIEWS Lieven D’hulst, Jean-Marc Moura, Liesbeth De Bleeker, and Nadia Lie, eds. Caribbean Interfaces. Textxet: Studies in Comparative Literature 52. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2007. 368 pp. ISBN: 978-90-420-2184-6. Christina Dokou (Athens, Greece) The bilingual set-up of this volume – English and reductive (cultural) monolingualism (22), either French – is a major step towards practicing what is Anglo- or Franco-, that both isolates the various posited in it about the nature of the Caribbean, or Caribbean literatures in their exclusive relationship the way scholarship should respond to it, in the with their colonial metropolis (25) and limits critical manner suggested by the region’s native son, and theoretical thinking or research, arguing instead cultural critic Stuart Hall: plurivocity, multiculturalism, (29) for a research that is (a) comparatist, (b) multidisciplinary exploration of “transversal” pluridisciplinary, (c) transnational/globalist and (d) concepts, discursive relationality, an understanding unflinchingly honest regarding regional realities – of “positionalities,” and the perennial “displace- such as the limited representation of gender ment” of the critic. Indeed, the contributors and polyphony, a taboo addressed by Vera Kutzinski’s editors of Caribbean Interfaces go a long way essay on “Violence and Sexual Others.” Through towards showcasing the dynamic compositeness of her close reading of Shani Mootoo’s 1996 novel, the Caribbean, with its history of colonization, Kutzinski offers a new model for con-structing hybrid, migrating populations, problematic oneself/the community as a dynamic and delightful geographic relations, bloody political upheavals, confluence of “visible disjunctions” (39) versus the blend of languages, traditions, races, rhythms, notion of “identity,” which presupposes economies. This proceedings volume from a confer- “assigning” a violent, separatory taxonomy of ence in the universities of Lille III and Leuven, Otherness (42). Campus Kortrijk on May 19-21, 2005 declares itself In view of the above, Maarten van Delden’s essay (12) the latest addition to a series of critical projects seems oddly limited and slightly out-of-place. in Caribbean Studies, notable among which are the Though Alejo Carpentier indeed belongs within the works of Aimé Césaire and Édouard Glissant; Jean wider Caribbean canon, no Caribbean focus exists Bernabé, Patrick Chamoiseau and Raphaël Confiant’s here. In reading Carpentier’s presentation of “The 1989 Éloge de la Créolité; and A. J. Arnold’s 1999 Museum and the Opera-House” as positive three-volume A History of Literature in the approaches to urban “high culture” modernity, the Caribbean. The introduction usefully sets both the critic overturns the stereotype of “bad city, good theoretical framework, especially the concept of country,” but leaves unquestioned the modernity interface as a Derriddean “shared boundary” (14) (rather than post-modernity) of urbanity, nor does and its related issues, though one wonders why the he fulfill his promise for a wider theorizing on the Caribbean status is repeatedly called “a problem” “concepts of modernity.” (10, 16) instead of an opportunity reality offers for On the contrary, Véronique Porra’s excellent article creative critical input. Perhaps it is because a on “La Diversalité à l’épreuve de la pensée de scholarly project of “encompassing the Caribbean” l’Universel” offers a clear and current overview of (10) urges towards the assumption of a “panopticon” the theoretical struggle between “universality” or vantage point which is both unfeasible and, ultimate- “diversity” that ultimately subsumes Caribbean ly, undesirable for a space that “distrusts exogenous literature under the hegemony of Franco or Anglo theories that ... could indeed distort the literary and neo-imperialist umbrellas, projecting a historical realities of Caribbean societies” (11). decontextualized unity or compartmentalization of The essay launching the first segment of the book, Créole literary identities against the polemic content “Interdisciplinary Exchanges,” bravely responds to of the authors themselves. She instead proposes such tensions, as A. J. Arnold discusses the the notion of “diversality,” which allows for a methodological problems (and solutions) faced in Caribbean common ground without reducing compiling his History, and the new tangents it opens dynamic differences between authors, or their need up in Caribbean Studies. He particularly deplores a for emancipation from the Francophone canon. 63 The European English Messenger, 17.2 (2008) First in the segment called “Transversal Applic- The final segment, “Caribbean Research ability,” Amaryll Chanady takes on a highly Projects,” opens with another highly engaging A. J. interesting Caribbean topos, that of the cannibal/ Arnold essay that supplements his first: in the Caliban and its re-appropri-ations, parodies, re- process of building the Caribbean Literature significations, and other resistance techniques Archives (ALC), Arnold researches the case of within native anti-imperialist polemic and identity- Exquemelin, the French doctor that served with generating literature, while also cautioning against Caribbean buccaneers against the Spanish slaver a new colonization by theory (91-92) or abuses of fleet. By tracing the transformations of Exquemelin’s hybridity discourses (98). Ottmar Ette crosses narrative identity in its various European literary geography with fractal theory to provide a translations, Arnold argues powerfully on how daring and rich new model of thinking the Caribbean European religious wars influenced colonial politics, – with its insular political history, world of islands, forming a selective image of the Caribbean for each and island-worlds – as theory and vice-versa (a target audience. hegemonic gesture he doesn’t question). He calls “Intra- and Intersystemic Relations in the Carib- for a trans-disciplinary, transareal turn in Caribbean bean,” separate or combined, are theoretically studies focusing on symbolic geographic gestures modeled by Lieven D’hulst, who uses Systemic such as exile, migration, house, camp and prison Theory to examine the extended Caribbean as defined (like Guantanamo). by (a) “latent or overt tension between its Geography is the theme of two more essays, Peter constituent strata” (242) and (b) its various types of Hulme’s “Oriente” and Jean-Marc Moura’s “Des “relationality” (243). This appears rather as a call to discours caribéens”: the former argues for a “literary further projects, such as the one by Nadia Lie, where geography” of shared topography and landscape changes of policy in the Cuban literary review Casa semiotics instead of nation-based categories, though de las Américas appear dictated by the system of he does not question the artificiality of such tightening or loosening political directives, and the concepts as “place”, or (as van Delden does) urban ensuing tensions between internationally- versus rural Cuban literature. Moura also introduces in-fluenced literary criticism and domestic Marxist the concept of scenography – i.e., situating an literature favored by the (concluding?) Castro regime. enunciation in the internal or external circumstances Liesbeth De Bleeker’s case study of scenography of place (scene, ethos, and code) that configure and as “defining conditions of enunciation that it itself legitimate it, while noting that the Caribbean presupposes” (269) also relates politics to text, in constitutes a “paratopia” where literature and how sceno-graphy supports the antillanité of language are both in and out of place. Patrick Chamoiseau’s novels. This essay repeats Theo D’haen’s solidly informed essay shows the many notions of the first segment (where it might influence of Caribbean revolutions on Faulkner, have fitted better), such as the use of sceno-graphy Carpentier and Helman, both in the subject matter to subvert francophone hegemony, or “the Creole and form of their novels (the element of the village” as a resisting topos, concluding that “marvelous real”). Although the Caribbean Chamoiseau, by speaking not for but with non- functioned as the “dark margin” of European literate people and other Caribbean authors (through modernity since the sixteenth century, it also allusions), re-conquers Caribbean (literary) space for counter-transformed European conditions, as Creolism. during the Haitian revolution, where domesticated A more original case of re-appropriation is French Revolution ideals turned against French presented by Biagio D’Angelo’s analysis of “Neo- colonialism. The section concludes rather oddly Baroque Poetics” as “one of the most relevant with Paul Bandia’s well-argued piece on cultural discourses in the Caribbean and Latin “Postcolonialism, Literary Heteroglossia and America” (283). D’Angelo shows convincingly, Translation,” better suited to the next segment. without failing to caution against possible abuses Bandia delineates the problems of translating that turn the gesture into empty simulation, how multilingual Caribbean texts in a world-context New World authors sensed and appropriated dominated by the monolingualism and “glotto- “plutonistically” (287) the deconstructive potential phagia” of a few powerful languages. Strategies of baroque to convey their own metaphysics of the proposed for maintaining pluricultural flavors are marvelous real (285). In the same vein, Kathleen code-switching and code-mixing, while translators Gyssels’ excellent essay echoes Chanady’s focus