Description
Book SynopsisOdious Caribbean Women and the Palpable Aesthetics of Transgression examines the methods through which the works of French Caribbean women resist hedonistic conceptions of pleasure, art for art's sake aestheticism, and commodification through representations of uglified spaces, transgressive deglamorified women's bodies in pain and explicit corporeal and sexual behaviors. Gladys M. Francis offers an original approachthrough her reading together of the literary, visual, and performing arts (as well as traditional Caribbean dance, music, and oral practices) to arrive at a transregional (trans-Caribbean and transatlantic), trans-genre (with regard to forms of text), and transdisciplinary conversation in Francophone studies, postcolonial studies, and cultural studies. This interweaving is illustrated through the artistic engagements of artists such as Ina Césaire, Maryse Condé, Sylvaine Dampierre, Fabienne Kanor, Lénablou, Béatrice Mélina, Gisèle Pineau, Simone Schwarz-Bart, and Miriam War
Trade ReviewGladys M. Francis’s Odious Caribbean Women and the Palpable Aesthetics of Transgression is a fascinating, pioneering study. Applying her theory of ‘corpomemorial tracing,’ she analyzes texts by literary, visual, and performance artists–novelists, playwrights, poets, filmmakers, painters, and dancers–, demonstrating her expertise and contributing new insight into several disciplines. This excellent, interdisciplinary work is essential reading for scholars of the French Caribbean, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and Body Studies. -- Renée Larrier, Rutgers University
Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter 1 - Cultural Politics, Ekphrases Writing of Resistance, and Sensorial Aesthetics Chapter 2 - Meaning Making of Embodied Performatic Repertoire Chapter 3 - Aesthetics of Pain: Embodied Poetics of negation Chapter 4 - Transgression in Pleasure, Desire, and Gender Conclusion
