Este estudo procura discutir a presença e as implicações da questão identitária antilhana na obra Le Discours antillais (1981), de Édouard Glissant. Levando em conta o contexto histórico de formação da sociedade antilhana, sua especificidade cultural e o peso da pesquisa de identidade na região, serão avaliados o modo de apresentação dessa problemática no texto glissantiano, suas articulações internas, as possibilidades de diálogo com outras fontes, sua associação ao projeto literário do autor e o papel que desempenha na configuração de sua poética. Escritor de muitas facetas, Glissant é tanto reconhecido por sua ação política frente à assimilação cultural e à departamentalização de sua ilha natal, a Martinica, pela França, quanto pela vasta produção que desenvolveu, a qual reúne gêneros e matérias diversas. O fio condutor de seu trabalho, porém, é inegavelmente a questão identitária antilhana, responsável por seu empenho em afirmar-se como autor independente e em afirmar um campo literário antilhano autônomo, a partir do que contribuiu de maneira significativa para a reflexão acerca dos quadros pós-coloniais, das relações interculturais na contemporaneidade e da formação de novas identidades. Em Glissant, as Antilhas são o paradigma de um movimento que hoje abrange todo o mundo, a crioulização, que consiste na hibridização e nas trocas de elementos culturais, étnicos e linguísticos entre as coletividades, com resultados imponderáveis e surpreendentes. No exame da questão identitária antilhana, o autor desconstrói categorias fixas do pensamento ocidental, propondo novos conceitos, mais flexíveis e dinâmicos como a Relação e o Diverso, que definem a possibilidade de a noção de identidade ser pensada para além de uma origem única, projetando formas originais de identificação. Assim concebida, a análise ora apresentada mostrará a maneira particular segundo a qual o escritor interpreta a busca de identidade nas Antilhas e o lugar central ocupado por Le Discours antillais na organização desse tema, além do alcance das considerações do autor para o entendimento das complexas tramas culturais que irrompem na atualidade. Espera-se, enfim, por meio desta leitura, concorrer em qualquer sorte para o enriquecimento da fortuna crítica sobre tão importante pensador contemporâneo. / This study aims to discuss the presence and the implications of the Antillean identity matter on the work Le Discours antillais (1981), by Édouard Glissant. Considering the historical context in which the Antillean society was built, its cultural specificities and the importance of identity research in this region, we will evaluate the way this issue is presented on Glissants text, its internal articulations, the possibilities of interactions with other sources, its association with the authors literary project and the role it plays in the setting of his poetics. A writer of many facets, Glissant is recognized both for his political action against the cultural assimilation and the departmentalization of his home island, Martinique, by France, and for his vast production, which includes various genres and subject matters. Although, the common thread of his work is undeniably the Antillean identity issue, that is responsible for his efforts to assert himself as an independent author and to reinforce the existence of an autonomous Antillean literary field, from what he significantly contributed to the reflections about postcolonial frameworks, intercultural relations in the contemporary world and the development of new identities. For Glissant, the Antilles are the paradigm of a movement that nowadays embraces the whole world, the creolization, which consists in hybridity and in the exchanges of cultural, ethnic and linguistic elements between the communities, leading to imponderable and surprising results. When examining the Antillean identity matter, the author deconstructs fixed categories of the western thought, proposing new, more flexible and dynamic concepts, such as Relation and Diversity, which define the possibility of an identity notion that goes beyond a unique origin, projecting original forms of identification. Being conceived in this way, this analysis will show the particular manner in which the writer interprets the search for identity in the Antilles and the central role Le Discours antillais plays on the organization of this matter, as well as the outreach of the authors considerations for the understanding of the complex cultural plots that erupt in the present days. Finally, it is hoped that this research will possibly contribute to enriching the critical fortune of such a relevant contemporary thinker.

Este estudo procura discutir a presença e as implicações da questão identitária antilhana na obra Le Discours antillais (1981), de Édouard Glissant. Levando em conta o contexto histórico de formação da sociedade antilhana, sua especificidade cultural e o peso da pesquisa de identidade na região, serão avaliados o modo de apresentação dessa problemática no texto glissantiano, suas articulações internas, as possibilidades de diálogo com outras fontes, sua associação ao projeto literário do autor e o papel que desempenha na configuração de sua poética. Escritor de muitas facetas, Glissant é tanto reconhecido por sua ação política frente à assimilação cultural e à departamentalização de sua ilha natal, a Martinica, pela França, quanto pela vasta produção que desenvolveu, a qual reúne gêneros e matérias diversas. O fio condutor de seu trabalho, porém, é inegavelmente a questão identitária antilhana, responsável por seu empenho em afirmar-se como autor independente e em afirmar um campo literário antilhano autônomo, a partir do que contribuiu de maneira significativa para a reflexão acerca dos quadros pós-coloniais, das relações interculturais na contemporaneidade e da formação de novas identidades. Em Glissant, as Antilhas são o paradigma de um movimento que hoje abrange todo o mundo, a crioulização, que consiste na hibridização e nas trocas de elementos culturais, étnicos e linguísticos entre as coletividades, com resultados imponderáveis e surpreendentes. No exame da questão identitária antilhana, o autor desconstrói categorias fixas do pensamento ocidental, propondo novos conceitos, mais flexíveis e dinâmicos como a Relação e o Diverso, que definem a possibilidade de a noção de identidade ser pensada para além de uma origem única, projetando formas originais de identificação. Assim concebida, a análise ora apresentada mostrará a maneira particular segundo a qual o escritor interpreta a busca de identidade nas Antilhas e o lugar central ocupado por Le Discours antillais na organização desse tema, além do alcance das considerações do autor para o entendimento das complexas tramas culturais que irrompem na atualidade. Espera-se, enfim, por meio desta leitura, concorrer em qualquer sorte para o enriquecimento da fortuna crítica sobre tão importante pensador contemporâneo. / This study aims to discuss the presence and the implications of the Antillean identity matter on the work Le Discours antillais (1981), by Édouard Glissant. Considering the historical context in which the Antillean society was built, its cultural specificities and the importance of identity research in this region, we will evaluate the way this issue is presented on Glissants text, its internal articulations, the possibilities of interactions with other sources, its association with the authors literary project and the role it plays in the setting of his poetics. A writer of many facets, Glissant is recognized both for his political action against the cultural assimilation and the departmentalization of his home island, Martinique, by France, and for his vast production, which includes various genres and subject matters. Although, the common thread of his work is undeniably the Antillean identity issue, that is responsible for his efforts to assert himself as an independent author and to reinforce the existence of an autonomous Antillean literary field, from what he significantly contributed to the reflections about postcolonial frameworks, intercultural relations in the contemporary world and the development of new identities. For Glissant, the Antilles are the paradigm of a movement that nowadays embraces the whole world, the creolization, which consists in hybridity and in the exchanges of cultural, ethnic and linguistic elements between the communities, leading to imponderable and surprising results. When examining the Antillean identity matter, the author deconstructs fixed categories of the western thought, proposing new, more flexible and dynamic concepts, such as Relation and Diversity, which define the possibility of an identity notion that goes beyond a unique origin, projecting original forms of identification. Being conceived in this way, this analysis will show the particular manner in which the writer interprets the search for identity in the Antilles and the central role Le Discours antillais plays on the organization of this matter, as well as the outreach of the authors considerations for the understanding of the complex cultural plots that erupt in the present days. Finally, it is hoped that this research will possibly contribute to enriching the critical fortune of such a relevant contemporary thinker.

L’œuvre romanesque d’Édouard Glissant propose une exploration, ample et rigoureuse, de quelques problèmes majeurs affectant ce qu’il appelle « les humanités ». Dès ce pluriel (qui préfère à « l’humanité » – sans doute trop singulière – le pluriel que commande la diversité des expériences, des lieux et des cultures) Glissant affirme la place centrale qui revient à la Relation dans son œuvre et sa pensée. Envisagée sous l’angle des mouvements et errements des peuples du monde, cette Relation est décrite à travers des phénomènes divers tels que l’histoire raturée des esclaves dans les Amériques ; l’émergence des sociétés créolisées, portant le témoignage d’une vérité anthropologique qui les dépasse ; ou encore les rapports de ces réalités nouvelles avec les formes de récits qui les accompagnent. Or, l’une des forces du roman glissantien est d’ancrer l’exploration de ces problèmes dans une écriture qui s’interroge sans cesse sur ses propres moyens et modes d’énonciation. La place réservée au problème de l’oubli comme rature de l’histoire ainsi qu’aux phénomènes de répétition, de la forme fragmentaire et de l’énonciation-relais révèle une œuvre qui inscrit dans sa forme énonciative la clé des enjeux qu’elle se propose d’élucider. C’est cette hypothèse que le présent travail vérifie. Ce faisant, il s’agit de contribuer aussi bien aux recherches menées en sémiotique énonciative qu’en littérature française contemporaine. / Édouard Glissant’s novel is an ample and compelling exploration of some major issues regarding what he terms “humanities”. Already the plural form (which replaces “humanity”, with its undertones of oneness) conveys a sense of diversity of experiences, of places and cultures. Thus Glissant stresses the central role assigned to the concept of Relation in his work and thought. Considered under the perspective of the movements and ills of the world’s peoples, Relation is described through such phenomena as the crossed-out history of slaves in the Americas, the emergence of creolized societies (which bear an anthropological truth valid for all), or the relationship between these new realities and the forms of narrative that account for them. Interestingly, one strength of Glissant’s novel is that it explores these issues through a narrative which constantly examines its own means and ways of enunciation. This can be seen through the role devolved to forgetfulness resulting from the crossing out of history, as well as through phenomena such as repetitions, the novel’s fragmentary form or relayed-enunciations. With these phenomena, Glissant’s work engraves in its enunciation system a key to understanding the issues it explores. That is the hypothesis verified in the present work. The latter aspires to be a contribution to research in semiotics of enunciation as well as in contemporary French literature.

Trata-se aqui de uma aproximação entre João Guimarães Rosa (1908-1967), escritor brasileiro, e Édouard Glissant (1928-2011), filósofo, romancista, poeta e crítico martinicano. Os textos escolhidos para tal aproximação foram o Grande sertão: veredas (1956) e a produção ensaística de Glissant de modo geral. Pretendi identificar e analisar ressonâncias entre a escrita de ambos. Consideraram-se primeiramente as extrapolações de seus gêneros originais, ficção e ensaio, e como muitas vezes procediam paralelamente no trabalho da linguagem e sua implicação política, isto é, a relação entre ética e estética. Longe de formalismos, os autores entendem a expressão como intimamente ligada ao seu conteúdo e assim assumem a opacidade da linguagem, potencializando seu aspecto poético e retirando-a de práticas automatizadas ou instrumentais. Investigou-se principalmente: (1) a partir de Deleuze e Guattari, a concepção rizomática do texto e suas linhas de fuga; (2) a situação narrativa em Grande sertão: veredas; e (3) a partir da noção de opacidade de Glissant, sua realização como procedimento estético na contaminação do tratamento do espaço ficcionalizado. / This text aims at showing how an approach between the Brazilian writer João Guimarães Rosa (1908-1967) and the philosopher, novelist, poet and martiniquais literary critic Édouard Glissant (1928-2011) is possible. The texts chosen for such a reading were Grande sertão: veredas (1956) and Glissants essay production as a whole. Using those texts as a springboard, we intended to identify and analyze resonances between their writing procedures. First, it was considered their distancing from their original fictional and essayist genres. After that, our attention was drawn to the similar way in which they utilize language and understand its political implications that is the relationship between aesthetics and ethics. Far from being mere formalists, the authors seem to believe that there is an intimate relationship between expression and its content. This leads them to assume the opacity of language, bringing to the fore its poetical aspect and removing it from automatized or instrumental practices. Our efforts were concentrated on investigating: (1) the notion, drawn from Deleuze and Guattari, of rhizomatic text and its escape lines; (2) the narrative situation in Grande sertão: veredas; and (3) Glissants opacity notion and its accomplishment as an aesthetic procedure especially in the way fictional space is treated

Trata-se aqui de uma aproximação entre João Guimarães Rosa (1908-1967), escritor brasileiro, e Édouard Glissant (1928-2011), filósofo, romancista, poeta e crítico martinicano. Os textos escolhidos para tal aproximação foram o Grande sertão: veredas (1956) e a produção ensaística de Glissant de modo geral. Pretendi identificar e analisar ressonâncias entre a escrita de ambos. Consideraram-se primeiramente as extrapolações de seus gêneros originais, ficção e ensaio, e como muitas vezes procediam paralelamente no trabalho da linguagem e sua implicação política, isto é, a relação entre ética e estética. Longe de formalismos, os autores entendem a expressão como intimamente ligada ao seu conteúdo e assim assumem a opacidade da linguagem, potencializando seu aspecto poético e retirando-a de práticas automatizadas ou instrumentais. Investigou-se principalmente: (1) a partir de Deleuze e Guattari, a concepção rizomática do texto e suas linhas de fuga; (2) a situação narrativa em Grande sertão: veredas; e (3) a partir da noção de opacidade de Glissant, sua realização como procedimento estético na contaminação do tratamento do espaço ficcionalizado. / This text aims at showing how an approach between the Brazilian writer João Guimarães Rosa (1908-1967) and the philosopher, novelist, poet and martiniquais literary critic Édouard Glissant (1928-2011) is possible. The texts chosen for such a reading were Grande sertão: veredas (1956) and Glissants essay production as a whole. Using those texts as a springboard, we intended to identify and analyze resonances between their writing procedures. First, it was considered their distancing from their original fictional and essayist genres. After that, our attention was drawn to the similar way in which they utilize language and understand its political implications that is the relationship between aesthetics and ethics. Far from being mere formalists, the authors seem to believe that there is an intimate relationship between expression and its content. This leads them to assume the opacity of language, bringing to the fore its poetical aspect and removing it from automatized or instrumental practices. Our efforts were concentrated on investigating: (1) the notion, drawn from Deleuze and Guattari, of rhizomatic text and its escape lines; (2) the narrative situation in Grande sertão: veredas; and (3) Glissants opacity notion and its accomplishment as an aesthetic procedure especially in the way fictional space is treated

Le concept de littérature nationale s’est développé de façon concomitante avec le concept d’État-nation en Europe à partir de la fin du XVIIIe siècle. L’État-nation est rendu possible en partie par la littérature qui agit, par un discours culturel, comme un vecteur déterminant permettant à une telle communauté de s’imaginer. L’institutionnalisation de la littérature sert alors d’outil aux pouvoirs et aux élites en place dans le double objectif d’asseoir leur dominance et de créer un sentiment d’identité nationale, non sans une certaine violence : une partie de la diversité culturelle évoluant à l’intérieur de la juridiction de l’État-nation est sacrifiée au profit de l’unité. Les premiers nationalismes modernes se développent en Europe dans un climat de rivalité : c’est en opposant sa propre culture à celle des États environnants que l’on cherche à définir son identité. L’objectif de notre thèse est d’étudier le rôle de l’écrivain contemporain dans la formation d’une littérature permettant à une communauté, cette fois mondiale, de s’imaginer. Nous analysons l’œuvre romanesque de J.-M.G. Le Clézio afin de dégager les stratégies mises en place qui permettent aux différents peuples du monde d’éprouver le sentiment d’appartenir à un groupe global dépassant les frontières de la nation tout en conservant la spécificité que chacun est en droit de revendiquer. Ainsi, le roman leclézien s’inscrit à plusieurs égards dans la tradition goethéenne de la Weltliteratur, qui se fait le pendant des littératures nationales : la littérature mondiale devient à son tour instrument devant promouvoir une identité et une unité, à la différence que ces dernières se vivent désormais dans la diversité assumée et dans un rapport lucide de relation plutôt que dans la rivalité. / The concept of national literature evolved in 18th century’s Europe at the same time as the concept of nation-states. As a matter of fact, nation-states were in part made possible by literature, which acts, because of the cultural discourse it conveys, as a key vector that enables communities to imagine themselves. The institutionalization of literature served as a powerful tool for the leaders and elites of each community. They used it to establish their dominance and create a sense of national identity. This institutionalization was often conducted with a certain violence, that is, by sacrificing—for the benefit of unity—part of the cultural diversity that was flourishing inside the nation-state’s borders. Moreover, modern nationalism was born in Europe in a climate of rivalry: it is by opposing one’s own culture to that of one’s neighbours that one sought to define one’s own identity. The objective of our thesis is to study the role of the contemporary writer in the creation of a literature whose objective is, this time, to allow the world’s global community to imagine itself. We analyze the novels of J.-M.G. Le Clézio to identify the strategies he uses to allow the world’s different nations to feel they belong to a global group while preserving the specificity they are entitled to claim. Le Clézio’s novels fit in several respects in the Goethian notion of Weltliteratur, that of a literature that’s a counterpart of national literatures. That world literature then becomes an instrument to promote a new identity and unity in a world where diversity is now valued and lucid relationships have replaced rivalry.

L’œuvre d’Édouard Glissant est toute au cheminement d’une formidable et inédite pensée, une « poétique de la Relation » ; et aménage un passage, une « conversion de l’être ». L’image poétique, qui atteint à la plus sûre connaissance du monde et du vivant, y restaure le lien organique et immédiat avec la « chair du monde », dont elle peut, provisoirement, receler les formes signifiantes en perpétuel changement. L’étude de certains textes permettra de suivre l’itinéraire de « l’être qui se trouve », et les notions d’errance et de démesure, développées au fur et à mesure par l’auteur, de saisir les mouvements de ces transformations. Le « pli » d’abord, que la phénoménologie du roman imprime à l’œuvre pour accomplir la « thérapeutique globale » de la communauté antillaise. Le récit de Relation ne se trouve pleinement déplié qu’après coup, dans les années 90, avec le roman Tout-monde. La pensée de la Relation se résoudra par « consumation dialectique » dans un ultime aphorisme, « Rien n’est Vrai, tout est vivant » ; et l’œuvre, en sa « cheminaison », dans la profondeur de sa propre étendue, aménageant son apparition-disparition au sein du « grand livre mouvant » de tous ces siècles où se sont accumulées les littératures du monde entier. Cette intertextualité constitutive amènera (par une approche comparatiste) à considérer les « lieux-communs » qui relient l’œuvre d’Édouard Glissant à celle de K. Yacine, de S.-J. Perse et d’A. Césaire. De même, la question de la création de langages sera examinée sous l’angle de sa théorie sur la traduction considérant celle-ci comme une forme d’écriture à part entière, une composition traçant le « rapport entre les langues ». / Edouard Glissant’s work is the development of a great and a unique thinking: a poetics of Relation. It also allows a passage, a "conversion of the being". The poetic image attains the most accurate knowledge of the living, and restores the organic and immediate links with the “flesh of the world". This poetic image temporarily holds its signifying forms, constantly changing. The analysis of some specific texts will follow the itinerary of "the being that finds its meaning". The notions of wandering and “demeasure”, developed progressively by the author, will help to indicate the movements of those transformations. First, the "fold" that the fiction’s phenomenology prints to the work in order to accomplish the "global therapeutic" of the Antilles community. The narrative of Relation will fully unfold with the novel Tout-monde in the 90s. The thought of Relation will find its own ontological reduction in a final aphorism, "Nothing is true, all is living". The work itself will achieve the termination of its route in the depth of his own “Extent”, telling its appearance-disappearance in the "large moving book" of all these centuries, when the world literatures have accumulated. This constitutive intertextuality will lead us (by a comparative approach) to consider the "common places” that link the work of Édouard Glissant to those of K. Yacine, of S.-J. Perse and A. Césaire. In the same “horizontal” way, the "creation" of new languages will also be observed under the angle of his theory on translation, seen as a new form of writing that composes the “connection between languages".

In this essay I have read the novels Wide Sargasso Sea (Jean Rhys 1966), Desirada (Maryse Condé 1997) and Invisible Cities (Italo Calvino 1972) through Édouard Glissant’s notion of the primary scene in Philosophie de la relation. Poésie en étendue. I have examined how the primary scene can be seen as a political/an aesthetical strategy in the three novels. This was done in order to question the blunted tool of the notion of the identity, which is often considered in studies regarding ”postcolonial novels”. Invisible Cities is not belonging in this tradition, the method I used was ”The travelling theory” of Edward W. Saïd that proposes to let theories travel through different fields instead of trying to understand their ”original” meaning. I compared these novels in accordance to Glissants theory of questioning the notion of origins. The analysis compares how the novels depending on in wich tradition they have been read is being seen with different eyes. Novels interpreted as ”postcolonial novels” are usually read as a symptom of lack of origin. Whereas the protagonist tryes to understand the loss of identity. Glissants theory eases the analysis to reach other possible meanings of the novels, where they both meet and differs. My results indicate that The Wide Sargasso Sea and Desirada create a complex relation to time and space, where the primary scenes in these novels are steeped through different time levels. The two novels present a new way to understand time that rejects historicity, create new tools for thinking and evaluates new strategies to exist in the world, without origins in the classical meaning; Rhys through her imagery and Condé through her weave of times. The same goes for Invicible Cities, only though Venice the primal scene in the novel stays the center of interest, and even though borders of time and space are being questioned, the novel tends to make Venice the guzzling synthesis. / Édouard Glissant, Jean Rhys, Maryse Condé, Italo Calvino, Édward W. Saïd, Mary Lou Emery, Spivak.

<p>This study is concerned with subject formation in the fiction of contemporary postcolonial authors Abdulrazak Gurnah, Yvonne Vera, and David Dabydeen. In contextualised readings of a total of nine works – Gurnah’s Admiring Silence (1996), By the Sea (2001), and Desertion (2005); Vera’s Without a Name (1996), Butterfly Burning (1998), and The Stone Virgins (2002); Dabydeen’s Disappearance (1993), Turner (1994), and A Harlot’s Progress (1999) – it explores thematic and formal aspects of the subject’s constitution in the texts. Investigating the representation of material and discursive traces that constitute the individual, this study has a double aim. First, it describes the particular historical formations that mould the individual in the different texts. Second, it investigates the tactics used to imaginatively upset these formations in order to present new and more enabling modes of being.</p><p>Gurnah’s fiction depicts the intricate meshwork of social codes, emotions, and narratives that shape subjectivity in a highly unstable and cosmopolitan social reality. His novels repeatedly thematise cultural disorientation, migration, and the efforts of establishing a minimum of social and narrative stability in the form of a home. The chapter reads Gurnah’s fiction against a background of Zanzibari history and diaspora and suggests that various forms of “entanglements” paradoxically provide the means to pull the subject out of states of anxiety and alienation into more viable states of being. Vera’s novels engage a powerful Zimbabwean discourse on history, and the psychic and bodily wounds that result from its violent impact on the subject. Set at moments of special and contested historical importance, her novels address the exclusions and silences of this discourse in order both to assess its effects and the possibilities of imagining alternative versions that would allow other modes of subjectivity. These possibilities are manifested, thematically and textually, through an improvisational form of “movement,” geographical, linguistic, and musical. Dabydeen’s fiction investigates the textual dimensions of identity and its connections to larger cultural archives of tropes and languages. Focusing on the constraining yet constitutive impact of various modes of colonial and racial rhetoric, his literary texts display a manipulation of textual elements from these archives that approaches a re-conception of the subject. To describe this manipulation of English and Caribbean sources, thematised and dramatically staged in his fiction, I am using Dabydeen’s own phrase, “creative amnesia.”</p>

This study is concerned with subject formation in the fiction of contemporary postcolonial authors Abdulrazak Gurnah, Yvonne Vera, and David Dabydeen. In contextualised readings of a total of nine works – Gurnah’s Admiring Silence (1996), By the Sea (2001), and Desertion (2005); Vera’s Without a Name (1996), Butterfly Burning (1998), and The Stone Virgins (2002); Dabydeen’s Disappearance (1993), Turner (1994), and A Harlot’s Progress (1999) – it explores thematic and formal aspects of the subject’s constitution in the texts. Investigating the representation of material and discursive traces that constitute the individual, this study has a double aim. First, it describes the particular historical formations that mould the individual in the different texts. Second, it investigates the tactics used to imaginatively upset these formations in order to present new and more enabling modes of being. Gurnah’s fiction depicts the intricate meshwork of social codes, emotions, and narratives that shape subjectivity in a highly unstable and cosmopolitan social reality. His novels repeatedly thematise cultural disorientation, migration, and the efforts of establishing a minimum of social and narrative stability in the form of a home. The chapter reads Gurnah’s fiction against a background of Zanzibari history and diaspora and suggests that various forms of “entanglements” paradoxically provide the means to pull the subject out of states of anxiety and alienation into more viable states of being. Vera’s novels engage a powerful Zimbabwean discourse on history, and the psychic and bodily wounds that result from its violent impact on the subject. Set at moments of special and contested historical importance, her novels address the exclusions and silences of this discourse in order both to assess its effects and the possibilities of imagining alternative versions that would allow other modes of subjectivity. These possibilities are manifested, thematically and textually, through an improvisational form of “movement,” geographical, linguistic, and musical. Dabydeen’s fiction investigates the textual dimensions of identity and its connections to larger cultural archives of tropes and languages. Focusing on the constraining yet constitutive impact of various modes of colonial and racial rhetoric, his literary texts display a manipulation of textual elements from these archives that approaches a re-conception of the subject. To describe this manipulation of English and Caribbean sources, thematised and dramatically staged in his fiction, I am using Dabydeen’s own phrase, “creative amnesia.”