L'autre: essentiel pour le moi? Stratégies de survie aux traumatismes caribéens
Keywords
No Thumbnail Available
Authors
Issue Date
2017-07-09
Language
fr
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
In my Master thesis I focus on the novels Le Livre d’Emma and Un Alligator nommé Rosa, by Canadian-Haitian author Marie-Célie Agnant. The protagonists, Emma Bratte and Antoine Guibert are both traumatized; Emma by slavery, the Middle Passage, and the curse that pursues the black woman, Antoine by the murder of his family by the “fillettes-lalos”, who were part of “les militaires volontaires”, a branch of the armed forces under Haitian tyrant François Duvalier’s regime. In these novels the relations between history and memory, and memory and identity are problematized through the issue of trauma. The acts of telling and testifying also take a central role. The main characters are enraged by the trauma and injustices they have experienced (and still experience) and wish to unveil by way of their accounts (testimony) and counter-histories (memory). They are trapped in the past, incapable of confronting let alone transcending their traumas. Their being trapped in the past and/or in their traumatic experiences prevents them from constructing a “self” beyond the trauma and victimhood. Memorial traces (after Édouard Glissant’s “La Trace”) become important, as they are used by the protagonists to (re)construct the past and to construct an identity. The concept of “narration de soi” or narrative identity by Paul Ricoeur is important in relation to this, as it helps us understand how we construct our identities. A relation to an Other is essential, as he/she listens to the stories the traumatized person tells, confirms the identity the traumatized person constructs while telling, and can help transform their traumas into an “élan vital”. The central question of my thesis is “Which strategies do Agnant’s characters have (or develop) to construct an identity beyond trauma?”
Rather than simply exploring trauma, Agnant also examines what comes after trauma. In her novels, she creates a Haitian “réseau de traces”. Whereas recent Haitian history is much talked about and explored by Haitian authors in their novels, the colonial period sometimes seems absent. Agnant provides new perspectives and adds a new corpus by integrating these parts of history into her corpus.
Description
Citation
Supervisor
Faculty
Faculteit der Letteren