The Poetics of Being Mad and Black: (Psycho)analyzing the Évolué

Abstract

I propose a new methodology of reading – psychopoetics – to interpret Cesaire's long poem, Notebook . To better tailor this method to a specifically psychoanalytic and anti-colonial literary object, I draw on Charles Bernheimer, but I also borrow from other thinkers like Shoshanna Felman, Walter Benjamin, Frantz Fanon, Suzanne Cesaire, and Paul de Man. I define psychopoetics as a way to examine the act of writing in psychoanalytical and rhetorical terms.