Petit pays : La Caraïbe à la proue de l’écocritique

Abstract

This essay demonstrates how petits pays, particularly small tropical islands assaulted by human-triggered climate change, are also at the forefront of an aesthetics and ethics of solidary vulnerability. Paradoxically, I argue, their smallness allows them to connect effectively with large planetary events, in a movement Édouard Glissant calls Mondialité, since they can function away from the stifling forces of globalization driven by continental powers. Virgin Islands writer Tiphanie Yanique declared the Caribbean as “Ground Zero for Climate Change.” This essay will explore her claim through a series of poems, philosophical essays, and installation art from Martinique and Guadeloupe. Thus, Aimé Césaire’s apparent prison-island is precisely what links Caribbean subjects to a world-geography of Negritude; Suzanne Roussi Césaire’s Martinique connects, through the tail of a hurricane, with the rest of the Antilles and the world. Guadeloupean artist Guy Gabon’s installation, Yué#sororité puts women climate refugees at the forefront of resistance to global warming. The hope put into play by these poets and artists can only be activated, the essay ultimately argues, if the demonstrated tendency of humans to devour their planet through colonization and over-consumption can make room to an ethics of ecological love.