The Blue Savannahs of Memory: André and Simone Schwarz-Bart's Un plat de porc aux bananes vertes

Abstract

With the traditional parameters of what constitutes history and historical event as alienating as colonization itself for the francophone Caribbean, Edouard Glissant argues to historicize alienation by plotting new forms of resistance against domination and oppression, forms based not on defining moments but instead on intuitive, neurotic instances that bubble to the surface thus breaking the silence. Using the abyss as a metaphor for this history/memory, Glissant writes of “a reverse image of all that had been left behind, not to be regained for generations except (...) in the blue savannas of memory or imagination.” It seems that it is in these blue savannahs, in this synesthetic space, that the past comes to life. A closer look at André and Simone Schwarz-Bart's Un Plat de porc aux bananes vertes, a novel that itself has been largely side-stepped by traditional literary continuums and criticism, offers a literary approach to these blue savannahs.