Deconstruction of the White Creole Myth

Abstract

Chapter 4 explores how the Guadeloupean Sully Lara’s Sous l’esclavage clearly sets out to dismantle the narrative of the grandeur of béké (white Creole) culture and patriarchy by depicting the dysfunction of the emblematic Savalon family. Lara offers a rewriting of colonial Guadeloupe during the tumultuous period of the 1848 February Revolution that presents a critical vision of the white Creole oligarchy. Lara grapples with, and also manipulates, colonial archives (narrowly defined). Sous l’esclavage is thus a “historical” novel based on archival research to denounce the white Creole vision of Guadeloupean history. Lara denounces colonial sexual exploitation as exemplified by the motif of rape (of the slave Sida) and the forbidden liaison between a white Creole woman and her Black slave. However, Lara’s narrative praises the French colonial order and minimizes the negative effects of French colonialism even as it betrays his loathing of békés. His discussion of the Code Noir (1685), the set of laws created to govern the relationships between colonizers and the New World peoples under their rule, shows the limitations of his critique of colonialism: Lara argues that the Code Noir was beneficial to slaves and as such was humane, seeming to takes this document at face value.