The consequences of “not‐Paris”?

Abstract

Postcolonial modernity has meant the creation of a very unusual set of circumstances for writers of the French‐speaking Caribbean. Called upon to insert themselves forcibly into a space from which, historically, they have been excluded, many of these writers have sharpened their revolutionary horns in Paris, political and cultural capital of the former imperial power. Indeed, throughout the 20th century, Paris has been a veritable inevitability for the francophone elite, a seemingly unavoidable destination that has served at once as a space of painful disillusionment, self‐interrogation, and even community‐building catharsis. While the quandary of negotiating this difficult relationship has been widely discussed, what has been less thoroughly considered is how the very framework in which this tension is negotiated has had an impact on canon formation in the region. In effect, more attention must be paid to the correlation between a refusal of theory and a certain degree of marginalization; to the possibility that an unquestioning acceptance – expectation – of theory as paradigm sets problematic boundaries and subtly undercuts regional unity in the postcolonial Americas.