Unfinished Journeys:Exile, Africanity, and Intertextuality in �mile Ollivier'sPassages

Abstract

There is a tendency in much recent Caribbeanist criticism to view the region as a privileged site in the development of globalization. Because ofthe Caribbean's indeterminate, fluid relationship with time and space, many critics succomb to the temptation to read the islands as essentially postmodern places, or indeed non-places?prefigurations ofthe perceived postnational, hyperrelational future of the chaos-world. To be fair, the dominant strands of thought emanating from within the Caribbean, particularly from Martinique, openly encourage these readings. Edouard Glissant, in particular, has developed, or perhaps accumulated, a highly persuasive vision ofthe Carib? bean as an open-ended, outward-looking, inherently relational time-space. Problems arise, however, when this kind of criticism overflows into celebratory discourse about Caribbean cultural hybridity and creolization as manifestations ofthe inherent exuberance or creativity of island peoples. In focusing almost exclusively on cultural theories, as if these were unquestionably reliable reflections of real life, risk ignoring the historical, political, and social realities out of which Caribbean cultures have emerged. Haitian narratives of exile stand apart from those ofthe other islands in that they often express more nuanced, less celebratory interpretations of Caribbean life. Where, for instance, Glissant suggests the boundlessness of the islanders' perspective, saying that we never failed to . . . look out towards distant lands (Traitedu tout-monde 44), the Haitian author Emile Ollivier presents his island space as intensely claustrophobic and inward-looking. Ollivier s Caribbean is, moreover, a radically