French Caribbean Thought & Literature

Catalog description

This course will examine how the French Antilles, with their discrete set of sociohistorical coordinates came to constitute an ideal laboratory for the elaboration of the concept of "Tout-Monde" — a way of thinking of the world as a productive, though necessarily chaotic, maelstrom of cultural changes and exchanges. How did this cluster of small islands birth a term that offers a radically different understanding of globalization? We will first survey early ethnographies and imagery documenting the multiple immigration waves of Guadeloupe and Martinique to understand how diverse ethnicities coalesced under the banner of the République française universelle. We will then explore how this sociohistorical landscape shaped and was in turn shaped by poetry, fiction, and political and theoretical texts. We will examine images, political speeches, ethnographic texts, essays, poetry, films, and novels to open up discussions on notions of Negritude/Antillanite/Creolite/Litterature Monde, the particular and the universal; on the relationship between politics, identity politics and literary form; and on the role of the engaged author in producing and transmitting a multicultural Antillean ethos.