A mi-chemin: le zombi antillais

Abstract

The Zombie (zombi), or living-dead (mort-vivant), is a major literary and mythic figure in the Haitian imaginary that has begun to appear in the literature of other Antillean countries. I explore the potential this cultural and literary symbol has for representing the complexity of Antilliean identity in the post-colonial era. By juxtaposing ethnological studies (Hall, Fay, Laroche, Métraux) next to Antillean novels (Depestre, Frankétienne, Schwarz-Bart, Desquiron, Chamoiseau), it becomes clear that the figure of the Zombie in these works is more than a mere atavism of African cultural tradition. Looking at the ubiquity of the living-dead in the novel The Old Slave and the Mastiff (1997) of Martinican author Patrick Chamoiseau, I make the argument that the Zombie can be seen as an allegory, an expression of the mutable recursive process that is Antillean identity. Unfixed between the collective and the individual, oral and written tradition, le retour and détour, domination and resistance, I see the Zombie as a literary representation of the identitary engenderment articulated within the school of thought of Créolité.