Beyond Francophonie: Contextualizing Éloge de la créolité

Abstract

This essay sets Éloge de la créolité (and the créolité movement) in the comparative context of earlier identitarian movements in the Caribbean and Afro-America, such as the Caribbean Artists Movement (anglophone Caribbean), Wie Eegie Sanie (Suriname), and the Grupo Antillano (Cuba). It stresses the extent to which each of these other movements relied on active dialogue among differently positioned individuals, from artists and poets to dancers, musicians, journalists, publishers, and politicians—people with a variety of backgrounds and perspectives and priorities who engaged in debate over a period of years in order to arrive at answers to questions of mutual concern. And it argues that the authors of the Éloge, unlike their cultural forefathers in Martinique, Aimé Césaire and Édouard Glissant, missed an opportunity to include creative people outside of their own francophone literary universe when composing their manifesto.