Judith Misrahi-Barak (Université Paul-Valéry, Montpellier III)
When speaking of the Caribbean, one often finds it difficult to reconcile the singular used to refer to it and the plurality of the linguistic, social, historical and aesthetic experiences. Even if the archipelago has shared similar traumatic transportation, be it into slavery or into indentureship, the specificities of each island, on all the levels mentioned above, have hindered the emergence of a common cultural identity that would be ‘Caribbean’. Part of the role of literature is to endeavour to reach across and cross over. In this respect, the erasure — and survival — of the indigenous Amerindian peoples may not have been granted sufficient scope. A few writers have made the choice to jump back into that Amerindian past that precedes the trauma of forced transportation, a past that has almost receded out of collective memory, dominated as it has been by the African dimension. Wilson Harris has been among the few writers of his generation to be interested in the Amerindian past of the Caribbean. In a different way, writers of the following generation like Cyril Dabydeen or Pauline Melville have also been trying to gain access back to a collective past, a collective identity that would be ante-colonial. Through myth, story telling, a particular use of voice or genre experimentation, imagination and creativity run free. In this presentation focusing mostly on Cyril Dabydeen’s Dark Swirl and Pauline Melville’s The Ventriloquist’s Tale, I will try to read the Amerindian culture made present in some Caribbean fictional texts as a renewed symbol of resistance to domination of all kinds as well as a symbol of a shared identity, providing a stronger bond between the land and the people. The detour through the Tainos and the Kalinagos may find its purpose and meaning in the desire to override colonial dispossession and disinheritance, thus providing a possible focal point of connection for the Caribbean at large.
