Description
Book SynopsisSex, Sea, and Self reassesses the place of the French Antilles and French Caribbean literature within current postcolonial thought and visions of the Black Atlantic. Using a feminist lens, this study examines neglected twentieth-century French texts by Black writers from Martinique and Guadeloupe, making the analysis of some of these texts available to readers of English for the first time. This interdisciplinary study of female and male authors reconsiders their political strategies and the critical role of French creoles in the creation of their own history. This approach recalibrates overly simplistic understandings of the victimization and alienation of French Caribbean people. In the systems of cultural production under consideration, sexuality constitutes an instrument of political and cultural consciousness in the chaotic period between 1924 and 1948. Studying sexual imagery constructed around female bodies demonstrates the significance of agency and the legacy of the past in cultural resistance and political awareness.
Sex, Sea, and Self particularly highlights Antillean women intellectuals’ theoretical contributions to Caribbean critical theory. Therefore, this analysis illuminates debates on the multifaceted and conflicted relationships between France and its overseas departments and expands ideas of nationhood in the Black Atlantic and the Americas.
Trade Review‘Sex, Sea and Self brings cutting-edge critical analyses of overlooked texts to a broad scholarly audience. It is a timely and original contribution to French Caribbean studies.’ Anny Dominique Curtius, University of Iowa
‘Couti’s book is essential reading for students and scholars of French Caribbean literature from the early to mid twentieth century.’ Antonia Wimbush, French Studies
‘Couti weaves a richly detailed historical tapestry… Her work offers example after example of how reading against the grain, and in pointed suspension of our own critical value judgments, can nuance and expand our understanding of transformative periods in postcolonial history, elucidating the diverse notions of citizenship and identity held by Black French subjects prior to and immediately following departmentalization.’ Kaiama L. Glover, Small Axe
Table of ContentsIntroduction –
On ne vous a pas oubliés: Re-Scripting and (Re-)Gendering French Antillean Discourses
Part I – She Says: Nascent Black French Feminist Thought and the Theorization of “New” Epistomologies of Self from the Interwar Period to the Aftermath of Departmentalization
Chapter 1 – The
Doudou Strikes Back: Dissecting
Doudouisme during the Interwar Period
Chapter 2 – Transatlantic Women’s Voices: The
Doudou Writes Back
Chapter 3 – Mayotte Capécia: From “I am Martinican” to “I am becoming French”
Part II – He Says: Black Male Recolonization of Space in the Tropics
Chapter 4 – Deconstruction of the White Creole Myth: Creole Desire and the Flip Side of the Coin
Chapter 5 – Whiteness and Masculinity Gone Wild: Impossible Redemption
Coda – Who Speaks for Whom?
Bibliography
Index
