Arriving as indentured laborers during the latter half of the 19th century, the East Indian diaspora in the French Caribbean occupies a marginal space in literary and critical writings emerging from this region. This diaspora, the majority of whom were recruited from Indian settlements under French possession at the time, constituted a cheap source of labor replacement for the plantation owners during the post-slavery epoch. Contracted to work for a minimum period of five years, these laborers, unlike African slaves, had the right to repatriate at the end of their service. For those who decided to stay in the already socio-economically and racially hierarchized French Caribbean society, it meant that they were then positioned de facto at the lowest echelon of the pyramid. The Indo-French Caribbeans’ historical and social marginalization coupled with their ethnic minority status – to date persons of East Indian descent account for approximately 15% and 3% of the Guadeloupean and Martinican populations respectively – bled into their non-recognition in literary and critical writings. Admittedly, canonical cultural identity paradigms shaping French Caribbean discourse – such as Négritude and Antillanité, which focus predominantly on the African diaspora or even Créolité, which, though paying more attention to “minority” cultures, subsumes cultural difference into a homogenous creole identity – results in the sidelining of the Indo-French-Caribbeans’ cultural and physical presence. In my dissertation, Locating Indianité: Representations of the East Indian diaspora in selected novels by Moutoussamy, Condé, Confiant, and Minatchy-Bogat, I analyze literary depictions of Indo-French-Caribbeans in five novels by both well known (Maryse Condé and Raphaël Confiant) and lesser-known (Ernest Moutoussamy and Arlette Minatchy-Bogat) authors. I specifically examine the writers’ treatment of the East Indian diaspora’s exilic experience, its cultural identity formation and interaction with the surrounding cultural diversity characteristic of the French Caribbean to call into question and revise existing cultural identity models. I, therefore, examine the following questions in my dissertation: How does the East Indian diaspora in the French Caribbean add to or destabilize prevailing identity paradigms and processes such as Créolité and créolisation? How do authors imagine the East Indian diasporic identity in the French Caribbean novel? What role does space play in constructing and/or situating the East Indian identity in the French Caribbean novel? How do authors of non-East Indian origin represent this community in their fiction? How do their representations remodel cultural identity paradigms to render them inclusive of Indianness? Where do their representations position the East Indian identity in the broader cultural identity framework of Créolité and créolisation at work in the French Caribbean? How do characters of mixed East Indian descent, specifically mixed race female characters, figure in this literature? How does the mixed race identity challenge exclusivist identity constructs based on race and color? The theoretical framework for this dissertation draws on Francophone and postcolonial scholarship and pays particular attention to studies on identity construction, exile, diaspora as well as hybridity. The dissertation will, additionally, consider race theory, spatial theory, feminist theory, and affect theory in order to place East Indian identity in relation to the already existing body of literary and critical works on identity construction in the French Caribbean. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester 2017. / July 18, 2017. / East Indian diaspora, French Caribbean literature, Indianité, kala pani narratives, postcolonial studies / Includes bibliographical references. / Martin Munro, Professor Directing Dissertation; Pat W. Williams, University Representative; Aimée M. Boutin, Committee Member; Jeannine Murray-Román, Committee Member; Corbin McKenzie Treacy, Committee Member.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_552329 |
| Contributors | Mohammed, Shanaaz (authoraut), Munro, Martin (professor directing dissertation), Williams, Pat Ward (university representative), Boutin, Aimée, 1970- (committee member), Murray-Román, Jeannine, 1977- (committee member), Treacy, Corbin McKenzie (committee member), Florida State University (degree granting institution), College of Arts and Sciences (degree granting college), Program in Interdisciplinary Humanities (degree granting departmentdgg) |
| Publisher | Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, text, doctoral thesis |
| Format | 1 online resource (175 pages), computer, application/pdf |
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