Aimé Césaire’s Cahier: Re-claiming the “native land”

Keithley Woolward (College of the Bahamas)

Panel: Paradise or Plantation?: Unpacking the Myth with Ms. Régine Isabelle Joseph and Linda Waldron

The historical relationship of the colonizer and the colonized or the modern day one existing between tourist and Antillean local continues to frustrate and even destroy the colonized/local’s sense of identity and has produced a sense of alienation from his/her native land. The material realities of “paradise” and “plantation” imagery can be traced in the rigorous reconfiguration of both the interior (the psyche) and exterior (geographic) landscapes of the Caribbean archipelago and its inhabitants. These related foundational myths often render the Caribbean space almost unrecognizable through the material and symbolic domination, exploitation, and consumption of the regions people and the island themselves. Can the dual images of the self and the land imposed upon the Caribbean region be overcome? How can and do Caribbean authors in particular resist the imagery and the representational discourse of domination, recovering a renewed identity anchored in its Caribbean place of origin?

This paper considers Aimé Césaire’s Cahier d’un retour au pays natal as a powerful counter-representation of “paradise” that belies the past, supporting a certain amnesia of the archipelago’s brutal colonial history and the often mythologized reality of the “plantation.” Employing an impressive array of poetic forms, literary tools, and artistic influences, the Cahier unlocks the mythical portraits and constructed images that have represented, imprisoned, and justified the consumption and exploitation of the psychic and geographic territories of the Caribbean space. By wri[gh]ting the inner and outer landscapes of his native Martinique, Césaire recovers and re-claims a Caribbean identity by reaching into the overlooked and often forbidden liminal spaces of the “native land.”