{"id":44567,"date":"2015-12-10T21:43:03","date_gmt":"2015-12-10T21:43:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=44567"},"modified":"2015-12-10T21:46:55","modified_gmt":"2015-12-10T21:46:55","slug":"creole-renegades-rhetoric-of-betrayal-and-guilt-in-the-caribbean-diaspora-by-benedicte-boisseron-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=44567","title":{"rendered":"Creole Renegades: Rhetoric of Betrayal and Guilt in the Caribbean Diaspora by B\u00e9n\u00e9dicte Boisseron (review)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Creole Renegades: Rhetoric of Betrayal and Guilt in the Caribbean Diaspora by B\u00e9n\u00e9dicte Boisseron<\/a><\/strong> (review)<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The Americas <\/a>
\nVolume 72, Number 4, October 2015<\/a>
\npages 661-664<\/p>\n

John Patrick Walsh<\/a><\/strong>, Assistant Professor of French
\nUniversity of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania<\/em><\/p>\n

In this outstanding book<\/a>, B\u00e9n\u00e9dicte Boisseron<\/a> challenges received ideas on Caribbean literature and critical paradigms that have sedimented around them. Organized around individual trajectories and texts of \u201csecond-generation\u201d Caribbean diasporic writers, the book argues that these authors resist the cultural obligation to Caribbeanness that enjoined an earlier generation to \u201cwrite back\u201d to the metropolitan center from the peripheral spaces of empire. Boisseron eschews this historical binarism in order to call attention to writers who have pulled up stakes from a \u201chome\u201d that has become a \u201cnew center\u201d (p. 7). The oppositional stance they adopt is marked by less by political engagement, Boisseron contends, than by the desire to explore personal stories. The rejection of prescribed identities makes them \u201crenegades.\u201d<\/p>\n

Boisseron anchors her use of \u201crenegade\u201d in C. L. R. James\u2019s Mariners, Renegades, and Castaways, the study of Melville that calls attention to Ahab\u2019s crew of isolatoes, or those \u201cliving on a separate continent of [their] own\u201d (p. 8). Throughout, Boisseron moves between textual analysis and biography to frame the renegade as one who questions allegiance to the Caribbean. As the book unfolds, \u201crenegade\u201d shifts meaning according to the writer\u2019s particular form of defection. Therefore, it becomes an umbrella term that encompasses the itineraries in question.<\/p>\n

By arguing that local spaces of the Caribbean have developed their own centripetal power, Boisseron suggests that the so-called global turn of literary studies still has a way to go to break free of the colonial legacy of center and periphery. Boisseron draws on numerous schools of thought, from diaspora studies and postcolonial theory, to psychoanalysis and deconstruction, and her ability to distill a range of ideas is evidence that European theoretical models take on new life in the location of their translation. The book thus performs the very \u201cdecentering\u201d of authority that it underscores as the hallmark of second-generation Caribbean writers.<\/p>\n

The five chapters make for an engaging read. The clarity and consistency of Boisseron\u2019s prose, and the balance it achieves between historical overview and close reading, make it suitable for both experts in the field and students new to these texts. The first chapter, \u201cAnatole Broyard: Racial Betrayal and the Art of Being Creole<\/a>,\u201d explores the phenomenon of racial passing<\/a> as an exemplary act of being Creole. In contrast to the book\u2019s generally extensive use of primary written sources, this chapter is largely a study of the life of the long-time literary critic, including the biography penned by his daughter<\/a>, Bliss Broyard<\/a>, and the posthumous \u201couting\u201d of Broyard by Henry Louis Gates Jr. For Boisseron, \u201cthe incompleteness of kinship is what makes the Creole, just like the passing subject, a born renegade\u201d (p. 51).<\/p>\n

Chapter 2, \u201cMaryse Cond\u00e9\u2019s Histoire de la femme cannibale: Coming Out in the French Caribbean,\u201d foregrounds Cond\u00e9\u2019s refusal to adhere to the critical norms of Postcolonial Studies. \u201cBecause she resists, while seemingly adopting, the postcolonial trend,\u201d Boisseron writes, \u201cCond\u00e9 is strictly speaking a postcolonial renegade, or a \u2018postcolonial antipostcolonial\u2019\u201d (p. 58). Cond\u00e9\u2019s most significant betrayal of Caribbean sensibilities is her portrayal of the macoum\u00e9, or the Creole term that refers to an unsayable homosexuality through its association with \u201cthe source of gossip (comm\u00e8re)\u201d (p. 68). The trope of \u201ccoming out,\u201d Boisseron concludes, \u201crevealing the covert presence of Creole homosexuality, allows Cond\u00e9 to break open the walls of sedentariness in the French Antilles\u201d (p. 85). Given the enormous critical attention to Cond\u00e9, the originality of Boisseron\u2019s reading is a rare feat.<\/p>\n

Chapter 3, \u201cParasitic and Remittance Diaspora\u2019\u201d turns to two writers of the Haitian dyaspora, Edwidge Danticat and Dany Laferri\u00e8re. The conflict between the perception of resident writers and those on the outside is a complicated issue that owes to a rigid idea of geographic and affective borders. In an arguably cynical approach, Boisseron describes the texts of Danticat and Laferri\u00e8re as \u201can uncertain mixture of opportunism . . . and remittance,\u201d or a kind of cultural repayment that the expatriate makes to the native country (p. 128). Yet her close readings betray a more nuanced way of thinking about the texts of these immigrant artists.<\/p>\n

Chapter 4, \u201cV. S. Naipaul and Jamaica Kincaid: Rhetoric…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Creole Renegades: Rhetoric of Betrayal and Guilt in the Caribbean Diaspora by B\u00e9n\u00e9dicte Boisseron (review) The Americas Volume 72, Number 4, October 2015 pages 661-664 John Patrick Walsh, Assistant Professor of French University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania In this outstanding book, B\u00e9n\u00e9dicte Boisseron challenges received ideas on Caribbean literature and critical paradigms that have sedimented […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,5,21,1196,8,6462],"tags":[22239,22243,4775,5981],"class_list":["post-44567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-book-reviews","category-latincarib","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","tag-benedicte-boisseron","tag-john-patrick-walsh","tag-john-walsh","tag-the-americas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44567"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44567\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44568,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44567\/revisions\/44568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}