Abstract
The question of homosexuality in Francophone Caribbean literature is often overlooked. However, the ways in which the Haitian René Depestre’s Le mât de cocagne (The Festival of the Greasy Pole, 1979) and “Blues pour une tasse de thé vert” (“Blues for a Cup of Green Tea”), a short story from the collection Eros dans un train chinois (Eros on a Chinese Train, 1990) portray homoeroticism and homosexuality begs further study. In these texts, the study of the violence that surrounds the representation of sexuality reveals the sociopolitical implications of erotic and racial images in a French transatlantic world. Hence, the proposed essay “Man up!” interrogates a (Black) hegemonic masculinity inherited from colonialism and the homophobia it generates. This masculinity prescribes normative traits that frequently appear toxic as it thrives on hypersexuality and brute force. When these two traits become associated with violence and homoeroticism, however, they threaten this very masculinity. Initially, Depestre valorizes “solar eroticism,” a French Caribbean expression of a Black sexuality, free and joyful, and “geolibertinage,” its transnational and global expression. Namely, his novel and short story sing a hegemonic and polyamorous heterosexuality, respectively, in a postcolonial milieu (Haiti) and a diasporic space (Paris). The misadventures of his male characters suggest that eroticism in transatlantic spaces has more to do with Thanatos (death) than Eros (sex). Though Depestre formally explores the construction of the other and the mechanisms of racism and oppression in essays, he also tackles these themes in his fictional work. Applying Caribbean feminist and gendered lenses to his fiction bring to light the intricate bonds between racism, sexism and homophobia. Such a framework reveals the many facets of patriarchy and its mechanism of control.
Highlights
The ways in which the Haitian René Depestre’s Le mât de cocagne
Free and joyful, and “geolibertinage,” its transnational and global expression. His novel and short story sing a hegemonic and polyamorous heterosexuality, respectively, in a postcolonial milieu (Haiti) and a diasporic space (Paris). The misadventures of his male characters suggest that eroticism in transatlantic spaces has more to do with Thanatos than Eros
Applying Caribbean feminist and gendered lenses to his fiction bring to light the intricate bonds between racism, sexism and homophobia
Summary
The Greasy Pole depicts a community at the end of the 1960s in a grim parody of Haiti under François “Papa Doc” Duvalier’s dictatorship. The French title Le mât de cocagne, an ironic reference to the medieval land of Cockaigne—a delightful place where all is possible, pleasures abound, and sexual freedom is not restricted—supports such a reading It is a shortened version of Depestre’s first novel, the Spanish-language El palo ensebado (1975), which Depestre wrote and published in Cuba in 1975, where he lived from approximately 1959 to 1978. Sor Cisa, a vodou priestess, supports Postel through the spiritual aspect of sexuality (Depestre’s solar eroticism) and sees the pole’s potential to revert to life (a positive heterosexual paradigm) She tries to redirect the once-impotent Postel to a more life-affirming, masculinity-enhancing desire; if the pole functions as a floating signifier, she tries to “point” him in the direction of her interpretation of it, not Zachary’s. To desire the phallus within Zachary’s system can only result in death, whether intellectual or literal
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