Jerry White (University of Alberta)
Writing in his 1994 essay “The National,” Paul Willemen asserts that “it must be acknowledged that comparative studies in cinema do not as yet exist. What is worse, given the current insufferably ethnocentric bias of film theory, it may well be a while before this urgently needed discipline of comparative cinema studies displaces the kind of film studies currently being inflicted university and college students” (Looks and Frictions [London: British Film Institute, 1994], 207).
Although matters have improved considerably over the past decade in terms of opening up the canon of world cinema – films from Asia, Africa, and indeed the Caribbean are more available than ever before – the theoretical situation remains much the same as what Willemen so provocatively denounced. I would propose that one way towards displacing this kind of film studies is to integrate Édouard Glissant’s work into our understanding of contemporary world cinema.
Although I will range freely over Glissant’s considerable œuvre, my paper will pay special attention to the ways in which film scholars could benefit from his masterpiece – Le Discours Antillais (1981) – an important and much more accessible work – Introduction á une poetique du divers (1995) – and a recent, shorter but still very useful work – Quand les murs tombent: L’identité nationale hors-la-loi? (w/Patrick Chamoiseau, 2007). I will also use the work of Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck – especially Lumumba: la mort du prophète (1992) and L’homme sur les quais (1993) – as examples of where a Glissantian understanding of cinema is especially fruitful.
In short, I will try to explain the ways that key Glissantian concepts such as le divers, le tout-monde, and “le monde se créolise” can help move film scholars beyond simplistic conceptions of “National Cinema.” Glissant is someone whose explanations of cultural mixture and flow are indispensible to understanding the contemporary condition and to finding a new, more just and progressive form of internationalism than the current American-led version of globalisation that we seem stuck with. Film scholars could benefit enormously from his work, and from a more “Caribbean-centric” perspective generally.
Film Studies, I believe, very badly needs to “Go Caribbean.”
