Defining Caribbean Identity

Abstract

Since the sixties, Caribbean literary and theoretical writings have proposed models of identity that valorize the heterogeneity of Caribbean cultures by recognizing their multiple origins and challenging an Afrocentric politics of purity. In the French Caribbean, Edouard Glissant's concept of Antillanité (Caribbeanness) and writings on Créolité (Creoleness) by Jean Bernabé, Patrick Chamoiseau, and Raphaël Confiant (collectively known as the Créolistes) recognize their intellectual descent from Négritude but question its politics and its concept of identity. Although from differing approaches, H. Adlai Murdoch's Creole Identity in the French Caribbean and Simone A. James Alexander's Mother Imagery in the Novels of Afro-Caribbean Women examine literary works in the wake of these challenges. Whereas Alexander examines the work of women writers from the English-speaking and French Caribbean, Murdoch focuses only on France's Caribbean departments (Martinique and Guadeloupe) as represented by the work of both male and female writers. Murdoch's work deals more directly with the ideas of Glissant and the Créolistes, while [End Page 737] Alexander organizes her study around detailed readings of the literal and figurative uses of maternity, mother characters, and maternal images.