Between virtuosity and despair: formal experimentation in diaspora tales

Abstract

Formal experimentation is a recurring feature in the literary output of works dedicated to the African diaspora, both in prose and in verse, and is easily understood as the artistic response to the need to recount a story that is abnormal – a story, that is, that could not be told using conventional literary models. But virtuosity is more than a merely formal device in these works: it affects both how and what it delivers, and can thus be read in light of the testimonial function the work of art performs towards the millions of people who died in the years of the slave trade, and as a celebration of the public role of art. Using trauma theory as a framework to approach two works of poetry, Zong! by Tobago-born Marlene NourbeSe Philip, and “Ruttier for the Marooned in the Diaspora” by the Trinidadian writer Dionne Brand – writers who belong to the Afro-Caribbean diaspora – this article addresses the importance of both formal inventiveness in rendering the traumatic experience and the relevance of testimony in order to explore the ethics of reading.