The Caribbean has been the site of a turbulent history, the arena where European colonial powers competed to control the resources of the Americas and to rule over its people and politics. The course spans several centuries, starting with 1492 to the present, and looks through the lens of the French presence in the Caribbean. We will examine literary works that engage this history as well as cultural artifacts that tackle the failures and successes of different forms of resistance in the region. Readings and class discussions will be centered around the culture of the plantation and its contemporary legacies, the Saint-Domingue Revolution and the challenges faced by the first black republic, nationalism and anti-colonial movements, and the question of cultural authenticity among diasporic subjects.
Required Readings/Films
Baron de Vastey. Le Système colonial dévoilé. Cap Henry: Roux Imprimeur du Roi, 1814.
Le Code Noir ou Edit du roy. Paris: Chez Claude Girard, 1735.
Césaire, Aimé. Le Discours sur le colonialisme. Paris: Présence Africaine, 1955.
— Cahier d’un retour au pays natal. Paris: Présence Africaine, 1939, 1960.
Chamoiseau, Patrick. Écrire en pays dominé. Paris: Gallimard, 1997.
Condé, Maryse, “Liaison Dangereuse,” Pour une littérature-monde. Paris: Gallimard, 2007.
Dubois, Laurent.“The French Atlantic, ”The Atlantic World: A Critical Appraisal, eds. Jack Greene and Philip Morgan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Glissant, Edouard. Le Discours antillais. Paris: Gallimard, 1997.
— Poetics of Relation. Trans. Betsy Wing. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997.
James, C.L.R. The Black Jacobins. New York: Vintage Books, 1989.
Laferrière, Dany. L’Énigme du retour. Paris: Editions Grasset, 2009.
Las Casas, Bartolomé. Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies. Nigel Griffin. London: Penguin, 1999.
Peck, Raul. Assistance mortelle (documentary, 2013)
Price-Mars, Jean. Ainsi parla l’oncle suivi de Revisiter l’Oncle. Montréal: Mémoire d’encrier, 2009.
Sartre, Jean-Paul.” Orphée Noir,”Préface à l’Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache de langue française, éd. Léopold Sédar Senghor, Paris: Éditions des PUF, 1948.
Thornton, John. “I Am the Subject of the King of Congo”: African Political Ideology and the Haitian Revolution. Journal of World History, Vol. 4, No. 2 (Fall, 1993), pp. 181-214.
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. “An Unthinkable History: The Haitian Revolution as a Non-Event”, Silencing the Past. Boston: Beacon Press, 1995.
Assignments and Requirements:
Four (1 page) reading responses on the class blog site (20%)
First (4-5 page) paper (25%)
Short 5-minute presentation (10%)
Second paper, (7-8) pp (35%)—includes 250 word final paper “abstract”
Attendance and Participation (10%)
Week 1 Introduction to the course; The Americas and European Arrival
Arawaks, Tainos, Caraïbes
Bartolome De Las Casas, Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies. (excerpts)
Laurent Dubois, “The French Atlantic”.
Week 2 The Plantation Society: Slavery and Colonization
Le Code Noir
Baron de Vastey, Le Système colonial dévoilé.
Week 3 Insurrections: Marronage and Revolts
Mackandal
Bois Caïman Ceremony (1791)
Vodou
Freemasonry in Saint-Domingue
Week 4 The Saint-Domingue Revolution: French Roots vs. African Roots
C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins
John Thornton, “I Am the Subject of the King of Congo”
Week 5 The Age of Revolutions: Failures and Successes
Michel-Rolph Trouillot, “An Unthinkable History: The Haitian Revolution as a Non-Event”
Sibylle Fischer, Modernity Disavowed: Haiti and the Cultures of Slavery in the Age of Revolution (excerpts)
Week 6 From Emancipation (1848) to Departmentalization (1946): Martinique, Guadeloupe, Guyane
Aimé Césaire, Le Discours sur le colonialisme
Week 7 Négritude Poetics
Aimé Césaire, Notebook of a Return to the Native Land
Jean-Paul Sartre “Black Orpheus”
Week 8 Cultural Alienation
Price-Mars, Ainsi parla l’oncle (excerpts)
Frantz Fanon, Black Skins, White Masks (excerpts)
Edouard Glissant, Le Discours Antillais (excerpts)
Week 9 A Hybrid Culture: Creolization in the French Caribbean
Patrick Chamoiseau, Écrire en pays dominé
Edouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation
Week 10 Littérature-Monde en français
Maryse Condé, “Liaison Dangereuse”
Michel Lebris “Pour une littérature-monde en français”
Week 11 Exile and Foreign Aid
Raoul Peck, Assistance mortelle (film)
Dany Laferrière, L’Énigme du retour
